Chapter 0:

Prologue

Mal


The gray sky descends onto the barren land. Stagnant cold fog fills the empty spaces between mountains and rocks where nothing can live nor grow. There is no wind, no sound, only dead dreams and hopes.

And dying thorns.

Brittle tips of barbed vines stretch up high on a jagged cliff but never reach the top. Following them down they grow in number, forming jumbled masses like snakes entangled, growing denser and denser where they form an impenetrable wall.

The shades, neither living nor dead, throw themselves at the wall with the bared teeth of snarling dogs and taloned limbs of a harpy. Their werewolf bodies are pure black save for their yellow eyes starved for what lays in the cave protected by thorns. All they crave is magic to quench the wrathful curses clawing at their stomachs, for shades are shadows of repressed human desires given form.

Countless shades gather, snarling as they throw their bodies at the thorns as they have for the past one hundred years to no avail. Until today. One shade bites down and rips through a weakened tendril. The dry snap resounds into the pointed ears of every shade and they converge.

The tearing and snapping echoes deep into the cave where a single human body sleeps, a single blue rose laid upon his chest. His soft breaths are soon overwhelmed by the cacophony that soon stampedes inside and descends on him. A few shades snatch pieces in their mouth and dash back outside. Most fight amongst themselves for scraps, tugging bones and flesh between them until not a single drop of blood is left.

But the chaos doesn’t end, only crescendos as the shades turn on each other. Those that have eaten are now the ones being eaten, and those are then eaten in turn. For a day and a night the cycle continues until all have devoured and those that remain whimper and lower their heads for they don’t know what they are meant to do next.

Only a white skull is left where the boy had once slept, the single blue rose bursting out of its mouth. A ghost stares down at it, eyes haunted by the sight of his own demise. His gossamer, small body, slumps forward and eventually falls to his knees. Silent, he bends down and brings his lips to the pitiful, wilting flower. The lonely, mournful kiss is little more than a breath on blue petals.

END SCENE

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Mal


Perla Zul
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