"Where… am I?"

Axel came to a place of complete darkness. In every direction he looked he saw nothing but black.In the corner of his eye, he saw a small light flickering in the distance. He began walking towards the light captivated by its soothing aura.

As he approached the light he heard a womans voice from the source of the flame.

[https://i.imgur.com/N60VuIl.jpg]

He couldn't make out the words at first, but as he got closer and closer he began to hear a woman's voice.

"You are never alone…. The light of the father watches over you" She chanted.

As Axel got within viewing range he could see she was a middle-aged woman sitting cross-legged on the floor with her hands on either side of her lap. She seemed to be in some kind of meditative state as she chanted her words completely unmoved by Axel's presence.

Everything from her black robe to the cowl on her head was black... For some reason Axel couldn't help but feel like everything around her was heavier. Almost as if the depressed gloom of the woman was spreading to his ligaments and dragging them to the ground.

The light he had followed was a ceremonious red candle that glistened in the dark. It levitated in mid-air above the woamsn head, held by some invisible force. She had her back turned away from it with her head bowed in a silent prayer. The candle's wick was slowly dying out, Its wick drooped and shriveled, as the last of its wax melted away onto the floor. Suddenly Axel was compelled to speak forgetting the circumstances that had gotten him there in the first place.

"Taliyah" Axel said softly.

"Yes" She answered.

"...I brought you another candle." he said

"Is it gothic wax?" She asked.

"Yes," Axle replied, withdrawing a candle from his side.

"Good… now leave it there and leave me be….." Taliyah muttered under her breath as she continued her chant.

Axel began walking away from the darkened scene. He was amazed at Taliyah's resilience, as she chanted away in the dark under the single candle. Although he had received a very off putting gesture from her he couldn't help but be curious for the reason for her strange isolation. Axel spun back around unable to contain his curiosity of her strange demeanor.

"So… Why is it that you spend your days here in this darkened place?" Axel asked, rubbing his chin.

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She stopped her chant and the silence of the room became extremely loud. In this deep trench, void of light, there was not even a breeze of wind or essence of life to be observed... Taliyah let out a sigh and began to stand up. There was a subtle eloquence in her movement as she turned around revealing the front of her appearance to Axel.

Upon seeing her front, Axle's face turned red with embarrassment. His hands dripped as he was overcome with desires he had never imagined having before . Never in his life had he been struck by such beauty.

Though most of her body remained covered in her dark robes, the robes were not tied, and the looseness with which they wrapped around her hips and revealed her skin was inviting enough to try any man. She had beautiful, black curly hair, and rich caramel skin, that even through the flickering of the small flame were captivating to the highest degree.

[https://i.imgur.com/uvlpBrb.jpg]

Half of her face however, was out of view. She had half of it covered by a white veil that dropped down from the top of her cowl. Axel lay frozen as this mysterious woman casually approached him placing her hands on his chest.

Taliyah looked up at him laughing to herself in the darkness.

"You know, I once spent my life fully surrounded by light" She began stroking his chest.

"24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it was a place so bright and so vibrant a thousand suns couldn't compare."

"But….. After a while I took it for granted", she smiled stroking the side of Axel's face before turning back towards the darkness. "I grew complacent, stumbled upon darkness… and I lost that light forever."

Reaching into her chest, she pulled out a pendant and admired it. The pendant was a circular gold amulet…. similar to Axel's necklace!

It held a small picture inside it that Axel couldn't view in the darkness. She stroked it softly, before slamming it shut and placing it back in her chest.

"This darkness... this place people fear. I fully embrace it. It makes me admire the little light I have left in my soul, and I will treasure it and protect it with my life. I don't want to see another light, or sun or warmth until I have returned to that place of light."

"And…. how are you going to do that?" Axel Asked

"Hahahaha" she laughed, "Weren't you listening?"

"A light shines brightest in the darkness." "I will remove the light from this world and in that absence I will find the light I once lost again shining brightly in the darkness."

"You have one life to live and this is what you chose?" Axel asked

"You're a fool," Axel said coldly.. "You lived in a world of light and lost yourself to darkness." "Even if you find that light, the light of your soul will never be restored", Axel said, putting out the light.

"You continue your search for your light knowing all the while you serve darkness covering the world with its evil." He said.

"Who are you to talk? How is what I'm doing any different than what you're doing?"

"The difference is you have a choice. I do not. Whether or not I walk down this path I will engulf this world in darkness. That is the price of my sin."

"Sin? So you are tainted as well, so what should we do about our sins?"

"What we lost… we cannot get back… We can no longer hold ourselves to the past."

"No… Never will I never let my past go! I will return to the world of light! I will see the glorious father again!"

"I see… then you are hopeless… You may very well make it back one day but until you can let go of your past you will never grasp the fruit of the future. What is lost in the dark can always be found in the light, but what is lost in the light loses itself to darkness…. Forever."

With a snap of his fingers he reignited the light disappearing from Taliyah's sight.

"What…. What was that!" Axel exclaimed waking up in his bed