Everything goes white.

“How long have we been down here?” mutters Yashira, clutching her pulsing forehead with a weak hand. Her staff dangles loosely down at her side, the long wooden rod just barely managing to avoid scraping over the stones. It’s a light thing, but it feels so heavy in her hands. It’s been days since they last ate. About a week since they had gotten lost in the dungeon. He hadn’t blamed her once for it.

“You’ve been asking me that every day and I keep telling you, I don’t know,” says Mashif, lifting a tired, scale-mail covered hand. “Come on. Today’s the day, I can feel it,” he says, pressing on ahead a little faster. She knows he doesn’t have the energy either, he’s just trying to keep her spirits up. She sighs, barely having the strength to do so and paces after him down the dark corridor.

He has been saying that every day too.

Everything goes white.

Yashira opens her tired eyes, leaning back against the stone wall as she looks over towards Mashif, who is bathing his wound in the fountain. Water trickles down its basin, washing the blood of his body away, as it carries the red liquid down through the grates at the bottom of the construction. He had gotten hurt in the fight with that skeleton pack. All of that effort and all they had to show for it were some rusty weapons, some stupid, worthless gold coins and even less energy than before.

Looking over his shoulder, he flashes her a thumbs-up with his injured arm. She’s sure that he’s just making a show out of it again for her sake. “Dumb-ass,” mutters Yashira and closes her eyes again, trying to save her energy.

Everything goes white.

Yashira stares at Mashif’s back as they walk. His pace is slowing. He’s lost a lot of blood and while the day-old wound has somehow managed to stop bleeding, it’s clearly becoming infected and fast at that. She doesn’t have enough magic left to cure him, let alone heal him. She can barely stay up on her feet. Though, given the swelling and the strange, thick hair that is growing on his arm, she’s sure that he’s been poisoned with some kind of ghoul plague. The transformation usually would take about a week, but with his body being so weak and hungry, it could be a day or two at most until he changes into one of them.

“How long have we been down here?” she mutters, her voice echoing out into the darkness. Mashif doesn’t respond. He looks back at her, his face sunken and ragged. He’s even closer to death’s door than she is. He doesn’t say anything.

Ignoring the wet in her eyes, Yashira runs up to him and grabs his hand, opting to take the lead today. “Come on, today’s the day,” she says, not sure where she’s drawing the energy from. “- I can feel it!” she smiles back at his pale face that seems to become just a little brighter.

Everything goes white.

Yashira doesn’t have any tears left as she sits against the wall. She doesn’t have the energy to get up. Her eyes look across to Mashif, who sits against the opposite wall. He’s dead. The consumption has taken him. He’ll get back up soon now.

Everything goes white.

Wet meat rips as the sharp teeth tear through the soft body, ripping through pieces of dirty fabric entirely indiscriminately. Greedy hands dig into the gnawed open spot as the mouth presses itself in deeper, gnawing off the pieces of old meat that the bony fingers pry apart.

Yashira lifts her gaze, her mouth full of Mashif as she looks back down and eats her way towards his heart.

Everything goes white and this time, the color doesn’t return.

It simply stays white. Everything, all of it is just an endless expanse of white in which he floats. Having no body, he looks towards the thing that he sees suspended across from him.

A ragged, misshapen ball of light.

It’s made up entirely out of frayed strings that seem to have once made a whole, but have now long since come undone. They float around loosely on all sides, like an unraveling ball of yarn. The tattered thing falls to the ground and changes shape into a squiggly, shredded mass, which vaguely resembles something akin to a human. In a second, it collapses down into itself, as if its legs were unable to hold its body up. The torso stops as it meets the ground.

“I didn’t want to die,” says Yashira, looking at him.

“Huh?” he asks, trying to figure out what’s going on.

“I was scared,” explains Yashira. Loose threads splay out from her hand as she presses it against the ground, the strands wriggling like worms rising from the dirt, as her arm collapses down into itself, unable to support the weight of her upper body as she crawls towards him and leaves a trail of thread dragging behind herself, like loose entrails pulling out of her torso. “I was hungry.”

He relents, understanding that at least. “Look,” he says. “It’s not my business. Can’t you just move on or something?” asks the man, staring up towards where the sky should be, as if waiting for her threads to unravel and fly away. In the hopes that if he looks away long enough, that her eyes will stop looking at him. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

“I didn’t want it to hurt!” cries the voice and he feels something tugging on him. Annoyed at her insistence, he looks and sees that the unraveling threads are quivering. The threads at the back of her body, from the puddle of strings that she originated from, begin to decay. They crumble, as if they were smoldering ash being blown away by a wind that he is unable to feel. Is this his sin-eating ability? Is she confessing to him?

“Look, I don’t know what this is,” he says. “But if what I saw is real, then you’re fine in my books.” He nods. “I would have eaten him too. Survival is fair game. He was already dead.” He waves his hand, dismissing the subject. “No sins here. Sealed and approved.” Only after he finishes the motion does he look over and remember that he doesn’t even have a hand to swing. A window appears.

[Sin of Gluttony] : Incorrect

Yashira continues to burn, the fire smoldering even faster now than before and catching up to the broken torso that holds onto him desperately. Apparently that didn’t do it. Whatever ‘it’ is supposed to be. His wrong guess seems to have sped up her decay.

He watches as the fire burns her away, coming close and closer. He isn’t sure what it means, but he is sure that it isn’t good. Is this her soul? Is she being undone? Removed? Because of what she did? What did she even do?

“It was my fault,” confesses Yashira. “I got us lost on purpose. I’m sorry!” she cries, her torso falling down into the smoldering puddle beneath her, as the burn has reached her body and consumes what remains, pulling her lower and lower to the ground as she fades to nothingness. Her fingers slip loose from him as they become undone, the shape of a hand falling apart into a formless jumble. “I didn’t think we’d get so lost.”

“Why would you even do that?” he asks incredulously, trying to cross the arms that he doesn’t have.

She sinks into the ground as the last semblance of a coherent shape of her body becomes undone, her face unraveling and falling apart. “Please, bury Mas-“

Yashira falls into a formless gestalt, as the burn smolders through what remains of her, winding its way up to the last inches of the strings that made up her body only seconds ago.

He frowns, feeling bad for her and then lets out a long, agitated sigh, having figured it out. “You got yourselves killed because you had a crush?” He groans. “Give me a break.”

[Sin of Lust] : Correct

Led to 1 death

Led to 1 suicide

[Punishment] : DAMNATION

He stares at the window and then down at the last sliver of the person that was, the last rainbow thread that is smoldering away. She doesn’t have a mouth left to answer with. “Do better next time, okay? You animal.”

[Sin Removed]

The sinner will be returned once more to the well of souls.

The last fragment that remains of her soul shatters, just before the burn reaches it. As if the string had been frozen and then smashed into a fine particulate which wafts up into the air and floats towards him, drifting towards his face just as everything starts to go white. Feeling his gut rumble, his hands shoot out before he knows what he’s doing and he grabs the squirmy dust and shovels it into his mouth.

He hears Yashira’s voice. “Than -”

Everything goes white, her sentence is cut off.

He opens his eyes, gasping for air and choking. He hacks out mouthfuls of blood, which pour out of his lungs, as he writhes for air at the same time, breathing it back in. Drowning in his own body, he is unable to scream with more than a wet gargle.

{You are what you eat} [New ability] {Minor Cure}

Cure minor ailments and sicknesses