An Eldritch Legacy: Sin & Sacrilege

"Look! Boy! This is the true face of the world you are chasing."

The Duke's voice reached an octave far too deep for his ears as they rattled.

"This is the truth we have all come to accept. Let it fill your mind, and you will learn what it means to give respect where it is due."

Romeon stepped past the Duke's outstretched arms, and the world bloomed in ways that flooded his perception—suffocating him with truths far too profound. Yet his mind greedily drank in the knowledge, caring not for its incapacity to handle the magnitude of what he was seeing. He drowned and yet could not die; the torture was both frightening and introspectively wonderful.

The change was slow—agonizingly so—as the essence of what lay before him filled the gaps in his mind, pushing it beyond limits he had never imagined.

Like a noose tightening around his neck, his breath ebbed away. His heart raced, seeking air on behalf of his failing lungs. The blood in his veins slowed to a crawl, and he felt it push against the walls of his vessels, each throb sent another round of discomfort and varied torture.

His mind was metaphorically full, and the stimulus from everywhere was too suffocating. His breath faltered, his heart beat violently within its cage, and his blood sought to etch patterns of its flow onto the fleshy walls of his veins.

The world around him dissolved. The stairs behind him faded like a dream. The ground below gave way to a weightless sensation—as though he floated in the expanse of a dark sky. The Duke vanished from his senses. Only the lamp he had held remained, until even that surrendered to a pressure that arose from within—when the prisoners inside escaped.

Their cries of pain were the only other sound in this strange reality, mingling with his labored, shallow breaths.

The flickering lights wept—sweet and sorrowful—and the fluttering of glass accompanied each cry. Their pain threaded through every note as their bodies swelled beyond their natural forms, which even now he could not truly see, as though he were unworthy of seeing their true nature.

The lights resisted, stuttering and fighting against the force that demanded they change. Yet they could not. With unnatural brilliance, they bloomed, exploding against the confines of the darkness around them.

Their light was so beautiful that his heart stilled for a moment. He forgot to breathe, as their glow banished the darkness that had hidden what his spirit could see but his eyes could not.

He heard them before he saw them, felt them before he heard their pain, and wept for them before he even understood them. His spirit trembled, aching with sorrow for what lay before him.

These lights had given their lives so that he could see beyond the veil that had denied him sight.

But soon, he realized it wasn't only their voices he could hear. Other screams emerged—from a world that had just bloomed into place.

These were filled with a different kind of pain.

Resentment.

So ancient and potent that it had gone beyond comprehension. His heart and a hidden part of him ached for them.

His ears and heart heard the echoes of men and women broken by their minds—knowing things they should never have known.

And then he saw them. Truly saw them.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

Millions.

Endless...

They stood like sculptures molded by the most perverse of artists. Their beauty was otherworldly—but corrupted.

The taint seeped from fine cracks running along their bodies, fading into the air and feeding the world born of their agony. He did not know whether his mind was being played tricks on but thought he could hear the moans of pleasure and contentment that came with the slow ebbing of this taint through these cracks.

Twisted into forms that defied anatomy yet still seemed right—as though they had never been meant to look any other way.

Their cries of pain were belied by their prayers—forgiveness begged from beings that would never listen.

Beings that would never forgive, for the sin they bore was too great.

'Tears' streamed down Romeon's face, and still, he could not look away. Something bound him to the sanctity of this world—something older than instinct.

To look away was to insult its truth.

But beyond the grip of that higher force, he blinked—

And they were gone.

The urge to scream filled his chest. Were it not for his instincts seizing control, he would have screamed in anger. He wanted to feel their pain longer...

But they were gone.

And so too was that world.

Now he stood in a different place.

Before a massive mirror—cracked, and framed in thorned iron and mortal skin, giving it a sort of perverse beauty, just like the statues that had been frozen in torment and corruption. Along the finer cracks in its mercury-like surface, the blood of gods flowed like living ichor.

How he knew it was divine, he could not say. But somehow, he knew it was alive and that it watched him with rapt attention, waiting for the chance where he would slip up.

Yet that was not the most terrifying part.

He saw himself—older, taller, paler, and broken.

His eyes were consumed with a fear he could not begin to describe. Every twitch, every tremor, dripped with a cynical insanity that had long devoured whatever sanity or sense of self that once remained.

He bore an aura of regality and dignity he simply lacked as he was—but it was tainted.

His eyes had become golden glass, frozen still in endless cycles of terror and a misguided indifference, betraying the fear embedded in him like an ocean beneath his gaze. His mouth was a sealed seam of flesh and golden thread. The reflection tried to scream, to warn, to speak—but it was futile.

The Romeon of now could only watch his reflection writhe like a deranged dog, and if his mind were not so consumed by the strangeness of the situation, he would have looked at this version of himself with disdain.

Around his reflection's neck hung a garland of names that writhed with hate—pulsing and shrieking with such vitriol that they branded themselves upon his memory, never leaving the realms of his mind.

The mirror image shifted. Behind his reflection stood her.

The one who consumed his every thought.

So much so that he did not notice the way his reflection trembled violently at her presence.

The Duke's daughter.

His wife.

His wife.

—Rena Northflame.

Or what she had become.

A crown of blackened bones, scorched and hardened beyond recognition, rested gently on her tender head. The bones wept in a symphony composed to please her alone.

Her smile—warm, serene, radiant—carried the unbearable weight of love warped by damnation and obsession, stretched and pushed beyond the edge.

Her hair, still the withering gold he adored, retained its silken luster. No longer braided, it now flowed freely—animated, caressing her body with reverence and worship.

The ancient script on her skin—the one he once traced with longing—was now tainted, crawling with crimson-black filth that reeked of rot and decay.

And yet her beauty had only deepened.

Roemeon cursed himself.

Even now, with the weight of forbidden knowledge crushing his mind, his heart skipped, and a heat stirred within him.

The way she sat on that throne—crafted from unrecognizable flesh and ichor—was too alluring.

The way her body glistened beneath the worship of her living hair was maddening.

The need to possess her body and take her right where she sat, regardless of the cynical carnage around, erupted within his mind and his flesh pressed against his thighs as he almost lost himself in lust.

Then she spoke.

And he nearly melted. Only his loathed instincts kept him from crumbling.

She beckoned him—wagging a finger, her eyes glinting with an arrogance that even her murky sapphires for eyes could not hide.

Her voice was a thousand lullabies, sung from the depths of the ground below.

"You came back... My love, you really came back to me."

She spoke even as blood wept from her eyes—and his heart shuddered.

"I'll not let go of you this time, my love. If it means taking your very life so you do not run from me... I'll do it."

"We shall be together forever, you and me."

He watched as her sapphires became murkier and a sweet madness took hold of her.

While he should have been afraid, he felt a blooming and twisted sort of accomplishment within him as his mind raced.

'She wants me... She needs me—hah! HAHAHA! Of course, she does! How could she not?'

'She's mine; she always was, always will be. She wants me! SHE WANTS ME!'

And then the veil buckled—

And she was gone.

So too was that world.

He had seen too far.

Something never meant for him to see.

Something even the Duke, in all his power, could never have foreseen.