It was strange. Staring up at the sky seemed so new, so unfamiliar. It was blue. Things were bright. Inside that cave, there was nothing but darkness and shadows, not one bit of it comforting.

When the rock started to crumble, I’d thought I had finally lost the rest of my sanity. That I was now so far gone that I’d imagined seeing a light of death. But there wasn’t death on the other side. There was the landscape I’d last seen years ago. It was familiar and strangely foreign. The trees had changed, grown taller. Some were gone. The ground, the one that I’d seen littered with bodies, was clear, clean, empty.

A human man had dumped a vial of blood at the entrance of the cave, both giving off distinctive smells. The blood, I’d smelled it before. And how could I not know the smell of an ordinary human.

But I didn’t want him here.

Thankfully, he left without a fuss and hadn’t returned with weapons or comrades. He was gone.

I could hear birds. The grass was green. The lake waters seemed to glitter in the light as the ducks and wind disturbed the surface. After being stuck so long in that cave, this looked like paradise.

I stayed close, stating my hunger and thirst before returning to the entrance of the cave. I glanced once more at the blood that had dried upon the rock and pursed my lips.

“They’ll come soon enough.”

Someone had to know the spell was broken. And when they showed up…

I sat down on the rocks, the sun warming my face pleasantly for a while. Laying down, I closed my eyes. There wasn’t much in the way of predators here. I had no reason to worry as I waited. And I was tired. My consciousness faded.

An image of a woman appeared in my mind, with flowing black hair that always seemed to get tangled so easily. Her lips curving up into a smile, her eyes closing as she beamed. A frown. Tears.

Her smiling faces came just as easily as her troubled ones.

That small body, held in my arms, wheezing. My arms were shaking, my voice unclear even to my own ears. I didn’t know what I was saying, just knew that something was wrong, everything was horribly wrong.

There was blood.

She was dying.

And I was mad.

Suddenly, she wasn’t next to me anymore, she was torn away by strangers, her arm weakly reaching for me, tears falling down her cheeks as she said something. I reached for her too, nearly catching her hand, only to miss it by a few centimeters.

My elbows were pulled back and I was thrown into the entrance of the cave, stumbling and falling down to the ground.

Racing forward, nothing to hold me back this time, I slammed into an invisible barrier, just at the edge of the rocks above me. I scanned the crowd, seeing a smiling figure that to me, looked more like a walking corpse.

My fist banged against the barrier but it didn’t budge. And that was when I saw it.

Her.

My voice caught in my throat, seizing as I tried to shout my agony at the sight.

A woman was kneeling next to her unmoving form. Her hand didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t blink.

Dead?

No.

No.

I shook my head, even as I saw the woman’s eyes widen, fresh tears slipping down her face. Her hands reached forward to check her neck, her wrist, her chest… looking for a heartbeat that wasn’t there. I knew, because I could see it in the way her eyelids squeezed shut, the way she murmured words while resting a shaky hand above her body.

It was a ritual the one who died had told me of.

A ritual they performed on the dead.

Screaming her name, I slammed my fists harder on the barrier that separated us, the invisible wall that kept me trapped. I wanted to be out there, needed to be out there. They’d taken my last moments with her, stolen them from me.

How was I supposed to accept this?

How was I supposed to say goodbye?

My body jolted as my knees collided with the ground.

Pain ripped through me, grief stealing everything left.

This wasn’t just a defeat. This was the end. Of everything.

She was my world.

And she was gone.

What was left for me now, after everything I’d done?

That woman, the corpse-looking monstrosity came over to the barrier, blocking my view of my broken and crumbling world. I glared up at her, knowing she’d enjoyed every moment of this. That smile hadn’t left her face the whole time.

This was all her doing.

All her fault.

She… was the one who took my world.

She still smiled as she looked at me.

“You’ve done enough, haven’t you?” I growled at her. “How could you do that? How could you kill her like that?”

The smile never left her face, it only grew in sight of my misery.

“It was easy.”

She waved a hand and rocks formed in front of the barrier, blocking my sight more completely than her. A small window was left, and all I could see was the sky, scarlet in the end of day, and her, standing before it.

“Enjoy your eternal torment,” she flicked her finger my way.

I curled up in pain, feeling a spell hit me, sink in painfully. My head felt like it was splitting in two, but there was no way I couldn’t hear her next words.

“The next people who meet your eyes will make you forget all about you.”

That detestable woman’s voice.

It was the last sound I heard before the final rocks fell into place and blocked out everything the world freely offered. Light. Warmth. Nature. The sounds of life.

In the cave… there was only the sound of me.

I opened my eyes, sitting up, unable to erase the images in my mind. The memories. A single glance back into the darkness of the cave had me walking.

Away.

Waiting until nightfall.

I sat in the dirt, in the sparse grass.

What used to be blood covered soil.

I closed my eyes again and sat there, taking deep breaths to calm myself.

When night finally arrived, I moved back toward the cave, just inside the entrance, with my back to the wall, all in an attempt to sleep.