The visceral scene of my father’s head in my hand blurred past my sight as the darkness engulfed me again. My mind was tired and scared of the things I would see further. Nothing happened when I tried to claw at the darkness around, screaming inside and wanting to get out of here. Yet I kept on falling in its embrace, deeper. Light was seen in the distance again, rapidly approaching and spreading its warmth. But I hated the light more than this solitary darkness. After all, light threw me into the memories that I had buried deep inside. And so it came again. The light brightened my sight and I fell deeper into despair.

My eyes opened as I noticed that I was in a body again, however it wasn’t my old self. I glanced around the room and corresponding memories rushed into ‘me’. ‘My’ hand touched someone, lying beside ‘me’ on the bed and ‘I’ turned my head to take a look. The eyes of the person I was inside, fell upon the woman who was too beautiful to describe with words. She laid beside ‘me’, without any clothes and her skin touched ‘mine’ within sheets.

The door burst open and a man walked in. The man had blonde hair and blue eyes, his clothes dripping in blood as he stared at ‘me’ with his enlarged eyes that had a clear thirst for blood. The man who had just walked in… was my past self. Change was evident from the bright young man, who commanded the respect of people, to the crazed monster whose thirst for blood pierced the sky.

“M-Mehr?” Words escaped ‘my’ mouth as my past self slowly walked towards ‘me’.

“Funny how you call me Mehr now, when you have been calling me Amon for a long time.” My past self picked up a chair and placed it beside the bed. The woman beside ‘me’ woke up, saw my past self and choked on her breath.

“Amon, the demon who killed his friends for power and ate his family for wisdom. You’ve chosen a nice name for me.” My past self spoke, without once losing eye contact as he stared into ‘my’ eyes. The woman beside me had pulled the sheets up to her chin and was trembling softly. My past self stood up and clutched ‘my’ neck as he started dragging ‘me’ through the room. He held ‘me’ up against the wall and stabbed his spear through ‘my’ shoulder that ended up making me hang from the wall. My past self turned around and walked towards the woman while spewing his hate filled words.

“I’m the one who turned a little, worthless kingdom into the giant empire it is today. And yet, you all cross me so blatantly. The lives you live and the peace you enjoy is mine to give. So why don’t you beg for it.”

My past self grabbed the woman’s hair and dragged her out of the bed. He dragged her to the front and made her kneel. My past self lifted his leg up and stomped on the ankles of the woman, resulting in both the ground and the ankles breaking. The room was soon filled by the screams of the woman.

“I wonder if the Emperor will come to see the desecrated corpse of his son and his traitorous whore that I will hang on the castle walls for the world to see.”

The scene blurred again as my consciousness was ripped apart from the foreign body. The hand of darkness was clutching my heart, threatening to squeeze as I fought the battle against my mind. I kept falling for a long time before feeling the ground beneath me. I opened my eyes and looked around to find myself within some sort of a cave. I thought of getting up, but rejected the notion almost instinctively. With a defeated soul, my back to the wall and my head in my knees, I sat in the cave asking my mind not to think much. And yet it did.

All the memories of the past came crashing down and turned into soft sobs that escaped my mouth. My legs felt weak and the thought of getting up had gone too far away now. I kept sitting there, terrified of what I would see next that I even failed to notice the person standing beside me. The person’s small hand touched my head and I looked up. My eyes fell upon Sirius, standing beside me with his face full of worry as he gently rubbed my head.

“Are you okay, Mehr?” Sirius asked, in a voice that didn’t sound as chirpy as usual. I nodded, with my cheeks still wet, and tried to get up. Sirius wrapped his hands around me and hugged me tightly.

“It will be fine. I’m here now. Don’t be scared.”

Here was a child, who was encouraging an adult while the adult had broken down. Unwittingly, a small chuckle escaped my mouth and I hugged him back. I didn’t know a friend’s embrace had such warmth. I stayed there for a while, standing still. Sirius kept rubbing my back as he told me that nothing would harm me.

I took in a deep breath, turned around and smacked my head against the wall.

“That felt refreshing.” Sirius looked at me dumbfounded and soon began to laugh. We started walking, after deciding to find a way to get out of this strange cave.

“How long have you been sitting here though?” Sirius asked as we walked in the direction that hosted a trace source of light. I looked at him, confused as to why he would ask this. If he was also pulled in like me, then he must have also seen some kind of illusions.

“I just arrived here. Where were you prior to showing up in the cave?”

“Hmm? I was with you and Grandpa Blake at the forest. Don’t you remember? I saw those strange cats and suddenly I was in this cave. I had been walking towards the light for a while before I found you. Were you somewhere else before you ended up in the cave?”

“.......No.”

It wasn’t long before we reached the light that we had been seeing from a distance. It was the mouth of the cave, covered by fallen debris and only a few spots were big enough for us to cross through. I bumped Sirius up, to the larger rock from where he pulled me upwards. We crawled through the cracks and soon were able to get out.

We jumped down from the rocks and our feet met the damp ground that smelled like fresh soil in rainfall. We glanced around to look at the scenery around us which on a closer inspection did not feel welcoming. Stabbed in the ground were hundreds of swords, some cracked and some broken in half. We noticed, while walking through, that there was a little field of flowers up ahead. The flowers looked pretty in the mild moonlight but as we got closer, we noticed that the flowers were all wilted white lilies, secreting a liquid akin to blood. We didn’t want to stay in the place anymore and so we picked up the pace. However, the moonlight slowly diminished in the area. The area, which was already filled with the smell of decay, seemed more vile now. That's when we looked up, towards the moon and the scene that greeted my eyes made my blood turn cold. It felt as if worms were squirming under my skin and a sardonic menace creeped inside. I wanted to avert my gaze and yet I was too afraid to even look away.

There, in the sky, the moon had slit open in the middle and an eye was visible, as deep as despair itself. The moon, or rather the eye blinked once and it slit open in the middle yet again. And from within the slit, the narrow undercutting in the eye, came out a tongue with squirming little parts attached to it. The tongue moved around the eye and the eye narrowed down into a smile as it looked at us ravenously