SAGE
Visions?
The word sat wrong in my chest. Like a lie dressed in something holy. If what I had seen were visions, then death had a cruel sense of narrative.
Because the only time the world had ever opened itself to me like that—the only time reality bent and peeled back its skin—was when I was dying, or felt depressed enough.
I laced my fingers together. Visions… No. I had struggled. I had fought my way back from the edge with teeth and instinct and something deeply unnatural screaming inside my ribs.
Blood had been the first thing. Always. The thirst. Not gentle. Not poetic. It tore at me, burned me from the inside out until there was nothing but hunger and the certainty that if I did not feed, I would become something far worse than dead.
And the dead…
I swallowed. They had swarmed me in those moments between breathing and nothingness. Hands dragging. Voices whispering through my bones. Eyes that watched me with the accusation of things I did not remember doing.
