From within the most abysmal of cracks, through the most twisted of shadows, something mangled and mutilated shivered. A small ball of despair trembled as it felt a freezing breeze. In a swift motion its head appeared, the formerly lush black hair and divine visage now nothing more than a hollow husk. Its glare was curious, but also terrified. It has been such a long time since someone has come to visit...
What used to be a woman lifted itself, barely supporting the lacerated body. In its arms, it held its dear child, a cute little girl. She was so obedient, she felt that her mother was hurt so she rarely cried. It stepped forward, nearly falling down with each step, it silently reached the iron bars. Oh how much did it wish to leave this forgotten damp cell. Oh how much did it wish for something better than rotten water and decaying worms for its child. And as if listening to her desperate wish, the bars vanished, they decayed out of existence.
Are we free? It felt full of hope for the first time since the start of its memory, it had long forgotten everything before this accursed cell. With each step it took, the dank blight from behind advanced too. With each step, the darkness followed. Yet it did not care, or it just did not see. It could no longer remember why it was here in the first place, it could only remotely remember the far, far, far past. The chains that used to bind the body, the flames that used to burn the soul, the drugs that used to sap all strength. They no longer mattered, they were no longer remembered. All that mattered now was the adorable thing it carefully caressed in its arms.
The only way forward were the stairs, so it commanded the bony legs. And each tread the feet touched vanished out of existence. It never noticed. As it walked up those familiar stairs it only thought of its child. It had long forgotten about the countless times it had walked up and down these very same stairs. Along the way it saw many cells like its own, each and every one of them only hosting abandoned bones. It would have also long given up was it not for its dearest child. It is easy for a distorted mind to give up when there is nothing left, it might have thought.
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Eventually it reached a closed door at the very top. It did not wonder where the breeze came from, nor why the abyss bellow was no more. It only smelled the all too familiar stench. For once it was not her own blood. It covered its dear's eyes, even though she was asleep, that is not something a child should see. The moment it wished to continue the door too faded from existence.
What awaited behind was a mess of mangled flesh and blood. She spotted faces she used to know in the large room, very few still even remotely attached to their bodies, scattered around the metal tools and stone walls. The smell of the gore and the worms had stopped haunting her long ago. Yet as she stepped forward she spotted one more face, a face she still barely remembered as the face she hated the most in the entire world. She no longer understood the fury the face invoked, yet it still brought forth an unbearable wrath. She suddenly wished that the man who used to own that face never existed.
And her wish was granted.
The scars on the body healed, the lush black hair grew back to her hips and her visage returned to eerie beauty. The face of the man disappeared together with the body and blood. Yet there was one more thing that ceased to exist. The woman stared in terror as the small skull she gently fondled in both palms was vanquished from existence. And finally something that should have fallen apart long ago broke. It finally truly collapsed into hopeless despair. It screamed, its screech echoed in the chamber. And the chamber too disappeared. And next was the building. The town followed and soon the world was enveloped in a plague unlike any before.
And so she was reborn, her sanity the price of power.