Tears of Blood

By this century's end, I will save you from this unwilling sleep, my dearest. When all else rots and fades to dust, I will remain--still, and beside you.

Your absence leaves a shadow too dense for night to hold. The darkness may have birthed my body, but it carries no warmth.

Not without you.

My sanity buckles under the weight of this wound. I fear I will turn into the very monsters mortals scream about if I am kept from you much longer. So, please--hold on, my love. I am coming. And when I do, we shall be together once more.

Outside, empires fell and reformed. Rivers and oceans were renamed so many times he lost count; maps redrawn, burned, and reborn from ash.

Yet within the chamber, the air remained unchanged--stagnant, thick, dry. Unmoving.

The silence of the room greeted him coldly, as though millenia of stillness had learned to breath its own frost.

Levon Destrix knelt beside the bed that had become both altar and tomb. Purple Saturnite silks--her favorite--were freshly washed. Blue incense curled through the air, redolent of sweet Mortem Rosas. His devotion was meticulous; he would not allow dust to take sanctuary upon her resplendent skin. Hours ago he had replaced the red Carmineas, their scent mingling with the faint metallic trace of blood clinging to him from past offerings, hunts, and desperate rituals performed in the hopes of drawing her spirit back. A tiny glass vial--dark as sunset--sat half-buried beneath a fold of silk, the residue on its lid the color of old iron.

Her body lay deathly still beneath the sheer black canopy, her deep mahogany skin dimly luminous in the candlelight. The sight split him in two: joy for her beauty, agony for her silence.

She still sleeps, his blood told him.

"I know," he hissed through clenched teeth, replying to the voice that haunted the edges of his sanity. It sounded like his own, yet not--the other voice was colder, older. "Do not remind me of it, of this horror."

Silence fell again--unforgiving as a poisoned arrow embedded into immortal flesh. But he felt her presence, heavy, suffocating, beloved.

He dropped to both knees. His breath shuddered, chest heaving. The motion cracked something inside of him. How was he supposed to break the spell cast upon him--the deep sorcery of her devastating beauty? His mind replayed their life together: her laughter, her cruelty, her honey-colored eyes that dared the world to defy her.

This woman was not a statue--Devil damn it--but a living, breathing being. My Maridia. My heart.

How dare fate turn her marble and leave him flesh?

His chest trembled. Blood welled behind his eyes; tears threatened to fall but refused to obey. "Do you hate me for surviving you?" he muttered to no God, no spirit, no one. He asked this question too many times. "I've cracked, haven't I? Like... like the shell of a serpent's egg..." He no longer knew who he was speaking to--perhaps only the echo she left behind.

Painfully, he turned his gaze--his whole body--away.

As if he was unworthy of her gaze, even in this cruel and unnatural forever-sleep.

The sounds that followed were a beastial yell and the thud of his fist hitting the floorboards. Once, then twice--enough to split the stone beneath the frayed carpet. The wood beneath creaked in protest beneath his wrath; faint scorch-marks and worn runes winked up from the boards--remnants of rites lit and relit. A third blow would have followed had he not caught movement from the corner of his own eye, subtle as a mortal's last breath.

A single finger twitched beneath the black canopy.

His breath--and reason--vanished. Drawn in silently, like prey to a snare, he leaned closer. His black hair tied with the blue ribbon she once praised, fell into his eyes as he crawled towards her like a wounded warrior. On the low table by the bed a folded banner lay--its thread once green, now dull--the sigil of his house pressed flat where he had left it the night he fled the battlefield. Beside it, a scrap of her braid was wrapped in blood-slick silk as if to say he wouldn't even let that slip from him.

Please, let this not be some cruel mirage of hope. Please, my love, move again.

His mouth opened soundlessly, trembling beige hands hovering, yearning to touch.

He needed to.

But how could he? He was filthy--smeared with blood from a hunt turned careless, a side effect of frustration and desperation. A smear on his sleeve matched the dark iron stain on both the vial buried under silks and the chilled-volcanic stone on the floor where he once knelt to carve a sigil. The pattern was almost invisible under the carpet, but like Maridia, clung to existence no matter what. Through illegal, repeated rites, it stayed and would continue to. His hands fell to his trousers, darker than his eyes, darker than the hollow in his chest carved in her shape. He was pale sand; his sanity the broken hourglass, his rocking body, the escaping grains. Every motion carried the weight of millenia: the offerings, the sacrifices, the spells, the renounced kingdom--his signet ring gone from his finger, its twin stone left as a gift in a shallow bowl of coagulated blood; the blood shed in ritual after ritual in the futile hope of stirring her spirit.

His heart stuttered at the faint flutter of her lashes. My heart. My love. Mine. Still alive. Still she fights. She is here.

Levon's hand shook, guilt heavier than strength. How dare I lose myself when she needs me most? What if her soul was caught between realms--lost, scared, waiting for his call? Could he reach her? Could he tear through the veil and bring her back? The thought made his breath hitch, his chest tighten.

He closed his eyes, trembling. To who shall I go? Who would dare to help me? What price would I pay for power enough to rip her free?

The question circled him like starving scavenger birds. His breath quickened. The sound of his heartbeat filled the room--steady, monstrous, alone.

When he opened his eyes again, the sight of her undid him anew. She looked like a sleeping monarch, cloaked in darkness, golden adornments tracing her ankles. No sound stirred within the chamber--only the slow crackle of incense burning low, and a half-hearted drip from an unseen lamp long forgotten, its wick starving for oil. On the sill, a cold wind knocked against the window, where a bowl of black petals and congealed blood shuddered with age and use. Smudges beside it hinted at the places where he had once pressed his lips.

Her lips were still closed, but he remembered the gap between her front teeth when she smiled. That smile lived inside him now, carved into his memory, etched into his blood.

She had once--using her teeth--torn the spine from a man who touched her without consent. He had watched, enthralled--not by her violence, but her sovereignty. That was the moment he knew he was hers.

He bowed his head and his hands trembled as he reached for a still wrist. He issued a threat, warning and vow all at once, through a whisper that did nothing to hide the crack in his voice, paired with a wide-eyed, glazed over stare.

"You are still mine." He held her unresponsive hand as gently as he could. But even that did nothing to quell the fire that began to boil his blood from within.

"And I will find the power to wake you," he vowed. "--even if I must tear this world asunder with my bare hands."