[Warning: disturbing content]

Necromancy, it's a twisted perversion of the world's rules. A reversal of the natural law, it revives the things that had once died.

I look upon the fields, the sun beaten cracked dirt lay barren. Every spec of green long since uprooted or withered away.

The trees, a missing patchwork of bark. When boiled, it's almost edible, bitter, but its juices try to calm the pains in the stomach.

I turn and enter the house. in the Living Room, A pair of small children, 6 and 8, run up.

"Papa were hungry"

I hold them tight. "Don't worry, Papa will make some food."

I pass the door to the cellar stairs on the way to the kitchen, it's been barricaded from the other side.

I check the cupboard... empty...

"Go to your room sweeties, I'll have dinner ready soon."

the children file off.

behind the rickety house, I pry open the outer cellar door. The putrid smell of rot stings my nose.

Down the stairs, on the table, lays a purple leather book.

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I spent a while scavenging from the nearby abandoned town.

whatever food I could find, long since picked clean.

I had left the church for last, not wanting to defile such a place.

there was something in its basement, a sealed room. from desperation I broke the locks.

within was a storage, tools, scripts, emergency food rations.

A locked box, within was a purple book.

Picking up the book I turn to the rest of the basement.

Before me lies a small festering corpse, ropes restraining its rotting limbs.

I approach and kneel down. My hand finding the knife. the book to my side, even if its knowledge is already carved into my memory.

The blade runs across my palm, gathering my blood. The tip etches the fresh crimson deeper and deeper into the symbols and lines scattered across the already stained floor boards.

A deep crimson glow appears. A horrific sight of flesh, regrowing, morphing, stretching tightly across bone.

Before me lies a puppet, a pure white young lamb. I can feel it, an existence entwined with my own.

it cowers as I brandish my knife. The bindings holding it still, the gag silencing its screams. I position the knife and run it deeply across the neck.

Burning white hot pain assaults me. I can feel it, every fiber of the cut, the agonizing screaming of the slash across its neck as if it were my very own. The encroaching fear, terror, of the darkness closing in.

I hold my breath, and squeeze my eyes shut, hearing the gurgling cries of the young creature. pleading screams. Rousing memories of thin arms, of the tear filled faces of children. Desperate, begging for something to stop the gnawing pains of hunger.

the string connecting me to the puppet finally falls away. The pain gone, I open my eyes, releasing my breath.

I must scavenge as much meat as possible from it.

I look at my arm and hand, smeared with years worth of the marks of age, gained from mere months.

Necromancy, it's a twisted perversion of the world's rules. A reversal of the natural law, it revives the hope that had once died.

Hope that one day, my children shall see the rain again.