Prologue: Unravel
The rhythmic ticking of a clock resounded through the darkness that surrounded what lifeless eyes could barely make out from a downward tilt. Gangly legs, pale, sickly, and tattered, smear something akin to ichor along the cold floor that toes barely touched. What light came from the solitary candle to the left made fresh blood glimmer like gold, slick streaks of starlight trailing the entrance of the being's cell, to where she hung by her limbs, whirling into galaxies where gravity pulled her life-force to the stone below. The ticking clock meant many things- one being that she had awoken yet again in the dungeon of the council, another that she was still alive. She didn't have the strength to tug at the chains cemented to the walls, reeking of layer upon layer of magic despite the many seals she had already shattered through countless times before.
The abrupt flutter of firelight sparking the lanterns near the entrance were her only warning as the door opened, beings veiled in shadow sliding into the chamber without so much a click of a heel. Any lowly being would have cowered at the aura of immense power that filled the small, concrete cell; if their consciousness didn't melt into a puddle, first. The woman's lifeless eyes meet her glamoured overseers, a flicker of hatred so deep welling up within her shattered core that it only made the splinters ache more, an eye twitching slightly at the now familiar pain.
"I thought," air hissing through bared fangs as failing lungs heave, "-I told you to never step foot in here again. If you want to keep living, that is."
The handful of council members stay silent, most of their heads bowed in pity, some in sorrow. Only one speaks, voice a cacophony of harmonies, glimmering shards of elders long past woven into a memorial crown of thorns and glass above their wavering form. The woman's eye twitches again.
"You have no power here, Lost One," the words flutter along wounds, cutting deeper than any tool they took to her skin. "We have come offering mercy a final time. For crimes laid into law of those long before you, you must sacrifice your power to the cosmic plane or die as we pull the threads from you."
Once lifeless eyes roar with fiery rage as chains groan at being yanked forward, bringing the woman just short of snapping her jaws into the council leader's throat, thwarted only by a silent step back.
"You killed her," she spits, blinded to the flood of fresh ichor trailing her numb arms. "You did this to yourselves. I would like to see you try to unravel my being. To let me loose from these chains, this room, for even a fraction of a second."
Straining as far as the chains and slick floors would allow, she scrapes the balls of her feet inches further, metal creaking as seals crack and bend, not acknowledging the displacement of her arms from their sockets. "I am not the kind of divinity your ancestors dealt with. I am no God. I have no masters."
The glamor over the council leader shivers and quakes as they back away with a growing fear, the other members already scrambling from the room and calling for help as the walls themselves begin to crumble and cave.
"No," she hisses, a wicked grin along pale lips, "I'm much...much worse."
