May struggled to open Dyst’s door, pushing before she remembered she should pull. She stumbled into the street. She didn’t have her coat, but welcomed the ice in the air, the snowflakes twisting in front of her eyes. Thorn followed her outside, jacket unzipped. She tried to swallow, her throat dry, the sky black and too large and threatening to choke her.

‘Skygge, stay back, okay?’ Thorn said, and May vaguely remembered that the bassist had been in Dyst with them, too. ‘I don’t know what’s happening.’

Neither did she, she wanted to say, but her tongue felt thick and foreign in her mouth. She stuck her hands out, and the arteries in her wrists were black, her skin marbled with a thick layer of gray. She tried to breathe faster, unable to get enough oxygen into her blood - but how much blood did she really have, if her veins were that black?

‘That’s not me,’ she choked out. She wasn’t sure if that made sense, but the right words wouldn’t come.

It didn’t hurt, yet, not as bad as Thorn had said it would, nothing that should have reduced him to a screaming half-naked mess in the shower. She’d heard him scream, hadn’t she? Why didn’t it hurt like that? Was she that weak, snapping at this when Thorn had managed so much worse?

The skugabor, suddenly much closer than she thought he’d be, grabbed her by the shoulders.

‘Look at me,’ he said, and May nearly wept when she realized she still had control of her eyeballs. She stared up at him, hoping he’d say that this was fine, this was normal, she’d be back in control any moment now.

Skygge, despite Thorn’s request to stay away, stood fidgeting outside the bar’s door. May wondered if he understood what was happening, somehow knew more than either of the skugabor.

‘Look at me,’ Thorn repeated. ‘What is happening, May?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, the words sluggish and slow in her throat. ‘Am I snapping?’

Had he even seen the dark in her veins, the thin gray film over her eyes?

‘Not like this,’ he said, ‘It’s not like this.’

‘Then what is it!’ she said, tried to scream, but her vocal cords didn’t work any more and she saw Skygge staring at her, with horrid wide eyes as though he’d only now realized this was real.

Her legs gave way, like they had when she found Erika’s body with her mutilated wrists in the bathtub, but this time there was no soft dark to catch her. Her kneecaps crashed against the snow and, worse, the cobbles beneath it. Her knees hurt at the impact, but the pain was too vague. Her vision was still swimming; the snowflakes falling up towards the thick black clouds. Thorn was kneeling beside her, now and she hadn’t seen him sit down. He was saying something but sounded very far away.

She didn’t feel drunk any more - she had never been drunk enough to warrant feeling this bad, not even when she was fifteen and lived on Havn still, those nights when she’d sneak out with near strangers and vodka bottles.

There was that yanking again, in her midriff, every nerve commanded to come forward and she fell into the snow. Was it cold? She wasn’t sure, but it should be cold, and someone was shaking at her shoulders, yelling something that could have been her name. The other - was it the vocalist? - grabbed her arm, pulling it up and her hoodies sleeve down. Her skin was gray, the artery black.

Gods, if that was inside of her, her heart must have been pumping around pure shadows and once she understood that, she dissolved into the dark.

She heard him yell for her, somehow, despite not having ears - but she was pulled away, with jerking motions. It wasn’t as smooth as it had been, the last time, when they’d found those sheep outside Klipvegen and Thorn had been spat out of the dark beside her. She couldn’t feel him, any more - she was alone, but Gods, she realized now what a sacrifice it had been for him to stay alive.

The dark spread out around her, further and deeper than May could believe, and she had to be careful not to let herself spread too thin. She was outside of Slakshaven, she thought - the city’s pulse was no longer around her, there was nothing here, nothing human at least. Was she slowing down? Perhaps, but she still could not resist against the dark - she was just a grain of sand caught in a current. She wanted to scream, push back, but her muscles were reduced to non-existence and it didn’t feel as though she’d ever get them back.

There still wasn’t too much pain when the dark spat her out on a snowed over field. The wind was harsh here; the snow so thick she could hardly see a half a meter ahead of her. It seemed the dark knew where to take her, and May’s muscles moved without her willing them too - but her movements were slow, unwilling and tentative, as if even the thing in the shadows was uncertain.

Very little could have frightened May more.

Her body wasn’t hers, nerves firing commands she’d never made, but she could control the tendrils of her mind, the dark tangles of shadow she could send forth. The thumping of Slakshaven was at her back - she hadn’t gone very far, then - and she was marching towards the cliffs. She could sense the violent waves somewhere far below her, and for a moment she feared she was to throw herself down into them. The sea crashed into the cliffs, over and over again, with plenty of power to tear her to shreds.

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Then she realized where she was.

This was Slaksfórn they were dragging her towards, with its huge granite stones where one could still see the blood stains of old sacrifices if you looked hard enough. She could not see them yet, just the twisting of the snow, but at once she wished her mind was as fogged up as it had been moments ago. She could imagine how they’d loom over her in moments, the tall silhouettes covered in snow and never speaking of what had happened here.

May had been here before - what history student hadn’t? - but it had been summer, then, and there’d been tourists everywhere and overpriced ice cream cones. She’d read the vandalized information signs, words she couldn’t properly recall any more.

As her strained muscles forced her towards the threatening set of rocks - just fucking rocks, she reminded herself - she tried to keep the one thing she did remember about Slaksfórn out of her thoughts.

Had it been a summer day, she would have been able to see it by now, the crooked circle of half-fallen rocks. In the middle of the circle she’d see that horrid, flat stone, with it’s carefully carved grooves and dark stains, just large enough for an adult to lie on. To be tied to.

Don’t, she screamed at herself, don’t remember!, but whether she dared think about it or not, the dark forced her forwards. Was this her punishment? Was she going to die in Slaksfórn of all places, because Thorn had not?

With violent desperation, she send out her thoughts again, as the first of the Slaksfórn stones appeared as silhouettes on the edge of her vision. May nearly missed it - but her dark brushed along that center stone, the rough granite of it, and it’s surface was already occupied.

There was someone there, on that altar that had lain dormant for life times, for centuries. Whoever it was, they were dying already, the heartbeat so quiet May had nearly missed it in the vast dark around her.

The shadows controlling her staggared, and for a moment she was free, but just as quick as it let go it caught her again. Her feet were heavy, the cold finally sneaking into her. She passed the first stone, skewed enough that it should have fallen already. May wanted to grab at it, stop her moving, but could not - and the granite radiated something ominous that she didn’t want anywhere near her skin.

She willed the dark to move her faster, make her take longer strides, get it over with - but it seemed hesistant, still, despite dragging her all the way here. The constant snow had cleared up a little, and it allowed her to see the center stone as she approached. She could tell there was something, someone on top of it indeed; if she hadn’t known there was a person there, perhaps she’d have mistaken them for a pile of snow.

The dark forced her closer still, and the circle of crooked pillars stood guard around her, unwilling to let her escape. May could almost imagine a crowd of cloaked men and women around of her, and perhaps those lost souls of old had called her here, to end that fluttering life tied up on the altar of Slaksfórn.

She wanted to cry when she saw how young the girl was still - to call her a woman would be a wild exagarration. Still May’s muscles weren’t her own, despite the hesistance in the shadows, the sputtering of it’s force - she would not save this life. The girl was shivering, half frozen already, in only a shirt and underwear but with large, half-opened eyes that reminded her too much of Asrun. For a moment, the shadows held her still, and she dared hope perhaps they’d let both of them go-

Then the rage came, that murderous rage the itch had promised to her, and with it the burning in her veins and nerves she’d so dreaded. She crossed the remaining distance to the ziptied girl in two long strides. May wanted nothing but to close her eyes when her nails found the girl’s arteries, stop herself from watching, pretend this wasn’t real. She tried to tell herself it was kindness, this was better than freezing - but as the dark forced May to do its bidding, the girl screamed with eardrum-piercing wails. Gods, how much May wanted to cry. How she savoured the pain in her nerves, how hard it was to believe this girl wasn’t Asrun.

With blackened veins and a burning heart, the dark made her tear and rip at everything soft enough to yield beneath her nails and teeth. They were sharper than she could have imagined them to be, but the taste of blood was just as sickening as it should be.

The girl trashed, so alive still, but whoever had bound her had done too good a job. May had never realized how long it truly took for someone to die. The girl screamed her throat raw, and May pushed back at the thing in the dark but it simply would not let her - and the center stone of Slaksfórn stained red again, for the first time in centuries.

When finally May fell back into the snow, failing to remember how to use her body, hot red blood was melting small holes into the snow. She was panting. Everything hurt, as though she’d ran a marathon, as though she was the victim here.

Had it been like this, in times long past? Had priests of long-lost deities called on skugabor to take their sacrifices?

May spat on the ground, trying to wash the taste of rust out how her mouth. Across the clearing, one of the Slaksfórn stones - slimmer and less crooked than the others - seemed to move. It took her muddled brain a moment to realize it was a person there. Whoever it was, they were leaving, fast, and May could barely will herself to stand up.

She pulled her knees against her chest and hugged them to her body. Snowflakes collected in her eyebrows and eyelashes, and the cold tore through her body. May shivered.

She refused to look back at the mutilated body.