just don't know when to die
where the hero walked, death was always close behind- for they were one and the same, now.
They stand in front of the bureau mirror, fingers tugging at the lower lid of the left eye, tinged purple from sleep deprivation. Swallowing hard they stare at the thin tendrils of black seeping into the sclera, branching out till they reached the pupil (they ignored in it the tint of red. ) Uneasiness rested deep in their gut, even if they knew exactly why this was happening. No sickness, no disease, no curse was possibly the cause… no.
They, the Hero of Lore, were dead .
Their other hand braced against the hard oakwood, the other drifted down to a scar-littered bare chest, where the most prominent feature was a giant gaping hole .
A hole where their soul (and their heart, and quite a bit of flesh for that matter) used to be, until Drakath reached in and just… tore it out. Killing them instantaneously. Ah, good times, good times . Calloused fingers grazed over the scar tissue surrounding the wound, then against broken ribs and what remained of their sternum. The hero tried to ignore the fact that their bones were slowly turning dark yellow-grey, like the rest of the undead around Shadowfall. They could say that now, couldn’t they? They were undead, just like so many creatures that had fell before their blade. They were dead… Dead tired , honestly.
Artix would get a kick out of that, they thought as they chuckled at their own internal monologue.
If he’s still alive, that is.
Ah. There was that voice. Always there at the back of their head, sinister and scheming. It wasn’t imagined, no- Reens had said that it must be a sort of… mental after-effect of their Chaos possession. Like the little devil on one’s shoulder, except that it was always there and there was no angel. Chaos wasn’t a concept like good, or evil. It was a thing . An unseeable being coiled in the ley lines of Lore, always waiting for someone to just reach out and touch it, to use it to their own ends- be that good or evil.
Unfortunately, Drakath chose the latter and that is what the hero had been tainted with, along with the rest of the planet. There was too many nights where they would wake up in a cold sweat, mind teeming with the leftover nightmares of writing tentacles and the screams of their friends as they were cut down like livestock .
Suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious about their scars (many of them fresh, inflicted by fellow heroes), they reached for the tunic draped across the back of a nearby chair and pulled it on, but not before taking a deep breath ( unneeded, perhaps ) and watching their lungs deflate.
They may not be alive in the technical sense, but they were sure as hell still kicking . Would take more than a trip to Death’s realm to change that .