Arc 6: Chapter 18: Reanimation
The forest burned.
I’d lost count of how many times I’d walked through it while locked within haunted dreams. But the bloody creeks and murmuring ambience of my many victims were gone now, replaced by the crackle of a spreading wildfire.
The heads remained, but they’d changed. They were charred and warped, some reduced nearly to bare skulls. Many looked bigger than they’d been, bloated like cancerous fruit, white fire spilling out of their mouths and eyes. Even the shadows seemed to burn, writhing like worms rather than being chased away by the unnatural light.
What had I done?
What you had to.
I’d become the very monster I’d sworn to fight. Yith spoke the truth. This was profane, and the sacred flame I’d been entrusted with, it was…
The dead were not gone or destroyed. The fire seemed to invigorate them, and most were lost in some strange euphoria, mumbling and gibbering to themselves while they basked in its haunting radiance. Unlike previous times, my red cloak wasn’t soaked with dripping blood. Instead, its ends burnt away into colorless flame, and creeping hands extended out to me from the bramble-carpeted ground, grasping longingly at my ankles. The distant woods were lost in a pale, blinding glow.
There had to have been another way.
Many, but that is what it is to live.
To make choices.
To be awake.