Note: Each chapter has an illustration to go with it, but since I can't upload it here, I'll be posting links instead. Here's the first one: 
https://i.imgur.com/0PbA0EK.jpg

"They were all so...small," she murmured. In one hand, she regarded the small brass key that floated above her palm. In the other, the staff's ruby glowed with an unsettling red light.

"You don't have to do this!" I begged, desperately clawing at the floor. My nails scratched long furrows into the wood, but the black tentacles that wrapped around me held me in place.

"You knew, didn't you?" she continued, as if she hadn't heard. "Little fish, swimming in a little pond. Everyone wants to be the big one, but they want everyone else to stay small. There's only one way to leave."

I pounded on the floor with my fist, reaching out towards her. The tendrils of darkness were squeezing tighter by the second, forcing the air out of my lungs. Spots swam before my eyes, and I coughed. "I can help..." I gasped. "Didn't mean to..."

She turned her gaze away from the key, and looked at straight at me. Her eyes were lit with the same, nauseating red glow as the ruby. 

"You knew," she repeated. 

"Either you're born with it," she said, raising a hand high into the air, "Or you take it from someone else." She squeezed her hand tightly around the key. 

As she did, the tentacles jerked. Something cracked. Something ruptured inside me.

I spat out some blood.

"Please," I rasped.

There it was again, that old, blank stare. Like she was staring right through me.

"Thank you," she whispered back.

And then-