Descent

My grandmother repeatedly taught me to find your myth as long as she lived.

To her, every person was a living piece of god, and every person is a story waiting to unfold. The myths of the gods are woven into the fabric of our lives like invisible threads pulling us toward our destiny: The inevitable.

I believed her, in a way. Though it wasn’t until later that I realized I had never really understood what that meant till it was too late.

Throughout my life, I have always seen myself as Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. How very vain of me. Born from my father’s pain and my mother’s absence, she has been a comforting presence for me. I came into this world from the painful severing of my father, an echo of a larger trauma that shaped my identity. I have had to bear the weight of a failed marriage. Without the delusional transformative experiences I’ve undergone, and without viewing my life through the lens of love and beauty, I wouldn’t know who I would be today.

Despite the void, somehow, I still blossomed in my own right. I loved the idea of being desired, adored, and free. I was a figure of beauty, surrounded by admiration, untouched by the darker aspects of existence.

But as life always does, it turns, shifting us in ways we never anticipated. I grew. I learned. And with each passing year, the face I once mirrored in Aphrodite’s reflection began to fade, morphing into something else entirely. It wasn’t the shift of aging or vanity; it was something deeper, something darker.

I became Persephone.

Not because I admired Hades or revelled in the sweet allure of the dead. Not because I chose to play safe while my heart wandered dangerously close to the edge. Rather because I descended into darkness, unwillingly, on a sacred night that was supposed to be my own.

Away from the festive ceremony outside my door, I sit alone in my chamber, draped in silk, corseted in uncertainty.

The wedding remains a mystery, my wedding, a ceremony arranged by forces beyond my control. There is no name, no face. Only the knowledge that I must go. With a sigh, I push away the dark thoughts and utilize my restlessness to step onto the terrace.

As if in a grim fairytale, the indigo sky shares my sorrow, and as the solar eclipse begins, the air turns heavy; a corona of violet and crimson pulses around the blackened sun. It all feels so wrong.

Such beauty won’t last, and soon enough, I’ll be a woman.

My vows will whisper promises of forever while my voice trembles. I will feel a shift, and things will click into place. And everything will go as planned in the heavens. Everything will find its way, and everything will fit in place. Yes, everything will fit in place.

It will. It will fit as everything does. It has to.

I sigh and watch the eclipse for a moment longer. I've lied to myself long enough. Now, one more breath to separate myself from the unavoidable. I look down at the tarot card in my hand. The Magician, face up.

I frown. I had drawn it this morning. I had left it on my desk. I was sure of it. I turn back toward my room, the candlelight barely touching the edges of the floor where I had last seen the deck. But my hands tremble, and my heart picks up speed.

A wry, bitter laugh slipped past my lips. The Magician... when I’m being nothing short of a Fool.

Somewhere in the distance, the wind shifts. A chill slithered down my spine.

At that moment, I had no idea I’d take residence in the depths of the underworld. The melancholic worries of the marriage seem so far away now. How much can change in one night?

That night, I did not meet my husband. That night, I met my captors.

With a call from the corridor, I was brought out of my daydreams and back into reality. I blew out the candle set on my bedside and carried my heavy silks out of the room. The moment I stepped outside to the waiting crowd, I felt the shift. And unlike what I was waiting for, it didn’t click. Nothing made sense. A heavy and familiar presence lingered just outside the edges of my consciousness. Something was wrong. I could no longer shake the feeling away, it overwhelmed my senses.

It wasn’t just the looming darkness on the horizon or the cold that bit through the layers of my dress. It wasn’t even how the street seemed to stretch forever as the bridal carriage headed towards the party, winding in ways that didn’t make sense, as though reality had become undone.

No. It was the way my pulse quickened when I realized that everyone around me, my family and my friends, didn’t seem to notice. They were laughing and carefree, their voices rising in celebration, while I felt the chill of a curse close in around me.

I tried to call out, to warn them, but the words caught in my throat. I’ve been here before. I gasped, panic rising in my chest as my eyes blurred the street, blocking a memory and hindering its resurfacing.

No one heard. No one saw.

They talked on, oblivious to the danger I sensed. And then, the moment the last carriage turned the corner, it happened.

A thick wooden and rusted metal wall fell behind us, blocking all possible retreat. The carriage shook and tumbled, and the ground shifted beneath my feet as though the earth had decided to swallow me whole.

A wall stood before me, and I was caught between fight or flight. I have never been a runner, so my freeze instincts took over. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my father step forward with a pocket knife in hand, but just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone without a sound. A tear ran down my cheek as I felt so passive to it all. As if watching my life unfold through a medium that is not myself.

And then, in a blink, I was in an apocalyptic wasteland. Everything around me was a collapsed ruin of forgotten time: broken buildings, twisted metal, and dirt. There was no sign of life, only remnants of what had once been.

I struggled against the cold, feeling the sweat on my brow as my heart raced faster. My hands shook. The panic rose in my chest as my family and friends were ushered away from me, their faces blurred as they vanished into the mist. I was alone now as the shadows pressed closer, and I was no longer certain whether the world I had just left behind was real.

I only understand what happened in flashes, disjointed like frames of a film skipping on a broken reel. One moment, I was in the carriage, the weight of obligation to my family pressing on me. The next, the road stretched impossibly long, the buildings twisting in ways that defied logic. Then, nothing. A blank space.

I remember the sound before the feeling. The crash of something unseen, the crack of reality splitting apart. The moment the eclipse reached its peak, and my world ruptured with it. I don’t remember stepping out of the carriage. I don’t remember falling. But I know I did because my knees are scraped raw, my hands are shaking, and the air smells foreign.

My mind tries to stitch the pieces together, but the gaps remain dark and unyielding. One frame shows the fear on my father’s face as he steps forward, a pocket knife in hand. The next shows a space where he should be.

I open my mouth to scream, but the sound is swallowed before it leaves my lips. Only then, in the pit of this silent, unraveling world, do I realize the burning pain in my wrists, the blood pooling down from my upward-stretched arms. My feet struggled to meet the ground. The air grew heavier, and I found myself shackled, my wrists bound so tightly that my fingers went numb. My eyes scanned the emptiness around me, desperate for anything to explain this twisted, nightmarish descent. Then I noticed him, a figure in the shadows, watching me with his face partially hidden. He had been there all along, but now I understood.

“You’ll need to be free,” he said, his voice as cold and measured as the fog around us. “Your hands—”

“They hurt,” I choked out, the ropes biting into my skin.

I longed for my old fears, oh how ungrateful I have been. The nameless husband, the confused vows, the dread of a life I hadn’t chosen. I had been blind to my fortune, ungrateful for the predictability of my misery. And now, the gods had answered my complaints cruelly, denying me even the misery I was promised.

My grandmother always warned that the world listens and that fate has a wicked sense of irony. I had begged the heavens for a way out, and they had given me this as a punishment for rejecting destiny.

The shadow looked at me for a long moment, and slowly his hands reached out and loosened the bonds, but it didn’t feel like freedom.

“Follow me,” he said, his eyes flickering with something unreadable. “It’s not safe here.”

I hesitated, every instinct screaming at me to run, but something held me back. Maybe the pull of the unknown or the hollow emptiness inside me yearned for answers. Regardless, I clung to the desperate feeling of safety his help provided, and I followed him up the crumbling staircase into the darkness.

When we reached the top, a strange man was waiting, his eyes filled with fear. His palms rubbed together, and his knees shook. “Hide, hide, must hide,” he warned, his voice trembling. “They’ll know you’re here.”

But the darkness had already found me, and I could feel it creeping in again. I wasn’t the same fearful bride anymore. The innocence and purity I had once clung to were left in another realm. I had stepped beyond that. I had descended, transcended, and transformed.

The world around me was broken, and there was no going back, no matter how homesick I was.