He ran. The sharp howls of tormented souls ringing loud in his ears seemingly piercing his yet bleeding heart. He ran. The very tears and blood they shed all around him seemed to flood his lungs, suffocating and drowning him in an endless grief. He ran… as even the once pure moon looming above began to weep.
Purity had left him and all others. Ripped from them by the claws of a thing most vile. The taint, it stuck to them like an unholy promise—the breath of a devil as it sighed in pleasure and rancour. And still he ran. That was all he could do as the trail of blood behind him seemed to mark him for death. In retrospect, however, was he not already dead?
He wondered this too as he ran and ran. The creaking and cracking of his bones echoed in his mind as his broken body seemed to want to give up, to succumb to this accursed fate that befell the world. To collapse like the buildings all around him, crumbled into piles of shattered lives and ruined memories. The flames that engulfed them all fueled by the lives that yet scream for deliverance. Their pleading ghastly hands grasp at his floundering legs, pulling him to a stumbling halt.
He fell upon the pavement, listening to the crackling embers and the discordant requiem of agony that filled the streets. This city was his home, but now it looked no more than hell on earth as dark tainted blood carpeted its grounds. Just how much life did it take to paint this landscape a bloody red? The answer was lost on him as the only ones who could even give him any such truth were laughing in their maniacal celebration.
They watched him in amusement as he tried to escape and fail. They watched as he tried to hide and still fail. Even the moon, now bathed in its own black ichor dripping with malice and curses, wept a truth written in gloom—that the world as they knew it has well and truly ended. What was left was a cancerous tumour that would eat away at all things, and there was no way to stop it.
And so he wept. His mournful whimpers, solitary and dead, carried an undeserved guilt and shame. For who was meant to protect one's home if not oneself? That was his responsibility, but he was ever the powerless mongrel. A mundane mortal living in transience with his meagre capabilities. He looked up to those with power, wishing to be like them—to be Deviant. But it was not meant to be.
They say power only comes to those who work for it. But had he not worked himself to the bone? Had he not scraped by with barely a breath left in him as the whole world was plunged into this godforsaken ritual? They say power is born of one's will. But had he not been wishing for it all this time? Had he not been doing all that he could to even replicate the tiniest and most mundane feats that power could bring?
He was hopeless and helpless. Even as the madmen dragged him by his legs, he could not free himself. The strength had left his body along with every drop of blood that leaked from every single cut across his weathered flesh. He was no longer pure. He had been tainted, violated to the extreme in a sadistic perversion of obscene bloodlust. This was a feast to them—a banquet of souls grilled upon the infernal pyre, a monument built in tribute to Sin.
Is that what Desire is all about?
A true unearthing of one's deepest and darkest secrets, an indulgent hedonism to free oneself from the one thing that made them human? Freedom, oh how they twisted you like a tinted mirror fragmented and scattered, a kaleidoscope of unfocused vision! They bled you dry and stuffed you yet again with all the filth that they could muster! For humanity, to them, is nothing but a shackle! It is the manacle by which they are bound!
To civility!
To sapience!
To existence….
Even as he was dragged into the pyre, thrown among the heaps of charred kin, the man wept. The lamentation of the forsaken who wished nothing more than to be a deliverer resounded within the ruined hollow labyrinth. And yet no answer came. He remained… burning in a flame so evil that its only desire was to devour. Gluttony, even in the thing that gave people light, remained a Sin so arrogant that it cared not for the nature it once embodied—the means to survive, to thrive, to perpetuate life.
Forgotten are the truths that in the universe's long lifespan had been marred by delusions and lies. No longer do they mean anything. They are no longer the sacred laws that hold the world together. No one is born evil. But absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even those that shone the brightest would eventually dim, eclipsed by the treachery that was eventuality. There was no hiding it anymore. And so it stopped, at least for him.
A cold blade licked at his flesh as it dug into him, finding purchase within his yet beating heart, his tainted blood trickling along its length like insidious tears. And as they dripped upon the heap of flesh below, he glanced down amidst the numbing pain only to find a face gazing back at him—his own. And as inexplicable dread welled up within him, he began looking around him, at the other faces among the piles of corpses both charred and not. And as though they understood what he was thinking, the madmen began laughing in amusement.
Because every face he saw staring back at him was his own. The same red hair. The same nose. The same mouth. The same moonlit silver eyes widened in utter horror as realisation dawned on him.
He was dead.
They had been killing him over and over again.
In the distance, he heard the sound of impact. He saw another man stumbled upon the ground, his body covered in similar cuts and gashes. His face was strikingly similar to his own. He wanted to shout, to tell him to run, but his throat was already melting in the infernal flames. And that was when he understood. There was only so much blood carpeting the city because there were so many bodies of himself that shed his blood.
Soon, however, his consciousness wavered, fading to the scorching infernal pyre. His brutalized mind singed as the dark edges drew closer and closer to the centre. He could feel it now, more than ever, the pain that ravaged his body. It was not his alone. It belonged to the multitude of him, the countless bodies they made of him all cut, maimed and burned like firewood, feeding this unholy ritual. And as his eyes, wide open in a vicious glare, dimmed to lifelessness, only one thought resounded in his minds:
'STOP! KILLING! ME!'