Kelsey hated insects. Ever since she was a young girl, living in her cozy little home in Vancouver. She hated spiders, centipedes, ants, anything that had spindly legs and crawled. So her mother had taught her a song, a little, nonsensical lullaby to sing whenever she saw one, whenever the fear gripped her body so tight she felt like she couldn’t even move. The song had always brought her back to those warm nights, wrapped up in a bundle of blankets and her mother’s warm embrace. Her mother’s sweet voice mingling with the chirping of cicadas and the soft sway of tree leaves, the light blue glow of her nightlight bathing the walls and the child-drawn paintings pinned onto them. The song had helped Kelsey through her life, in her every moment of fear and nervousness. It was the soundtrack to every final exam she wrote in school and every fight she ever fought at the side of her Guild Leader. She had sung it to herself as she received her Bachelor of Economics from the Dean of her university, and as she had fought through the pain of her Cleanse at twenty-five.

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And now, today, as she walked down the inky dark corridor, the small square hewn into the stone, she sang to herself. She sang as hard and loud as she could in her mind, and yet she remained mired in the oppressive dark. Her comforting childhood room was nowhere to be found, the soft blue slipping through her fingers. Her mother’s voice nothing but a distant echo.

Perhaps, she thought to herself, here in this deep and dark pit of insanity, even her mother’s incorruptible warmth could not save her.