𝐋𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 | 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖁𝖆𝖒𝖕𝖎𝖗𝖊 𝕯𝖎𝖆𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘

| prologue |

MANY PEOPLE HAVE come face to face with the promise of death in the last century. Some say that death isn't the right term for what they experience. Others argue it's the perfect one to describe the emptiness of true, unknowing death.

Death is a man-made word, after all. If you research its definition, it will say that death is a term that describes the end of the life of a person or organism. Many people have been fortunate enough to come back from death. But none of them have any idea what dying actually feels like.

Nobody in the life cycle of our planet will ever possibly begin to understand what it's like to die. How it feels to hear your heart stop beating. What the last coherent thought in your fading, drying brain is when you see your entire body crumble and become utterly insolvent. As a practitioner of medicine, I often questioned, no, demanded to know what it would be like when my life ended.

Now I demanded to know why it couldn't end.

Because death, although the word was terrifying in itself, would have been a glorious mercy compared to what I had been cursed to endure. At least the dead didn't have to question themselves about what their place was in the balance of living and dying. They didn't wonder when the end of their persistent pain would come.

The dead didn't wonder what kind of god would allow such an existence.

But I did. Every single second of every day, though I could never tell the difference between day and night anymore. At first, the pain was excruciating. Feeling every single muscle and every single cell wither and crumble into nothing until all you could feel was the desperate beating heart in your deteriorating body.

But when it was all over, and the pain faded, I was almost glad. If I could be glad. I felt nothing painful ever again. I felt nothing ever again. Every sense was diminished inside of me. I saw nothing. I heard, smelled, felt, and tasted nothing. My life had been thrown into the black void of eternity and left to rot. I had been left in this hell of a reality with nothing but my mind. Only my thoughts remained, being rehearsed and reused and unheard for as long as I could possibly remember.

My thoughts worked around the endless clock of immortality, spinning and spinning all around my mind until a new one, a happy, unseen one, could pop into place. But it never did. And never will.

Those thoughts consisted of memories. Of which I recalled stories and fables from my childhood. Tales about a helpless maiden who would almost always be rescued by a white knight from certain perils and travesties.

Although I couldn't recollect any memories about a white knight to rescue me or those who shared my fate, I did always keep to my heart the memories of love and loyalties. A family consisting of my two faithful and supportive brothers, an overprotective father, and a mother taken too soon, these are what kept me sane for however long I was trapped in this state between life and death.

I remembered a manipulative and seductive viper that had entangled my twin in a web of lust. Her name failed to come to mind, probably due to my oath to never forgive the wench for what she'd done to my family. Everything I'd known and loved had been burned down with the church that once stood above my grave. I had nothing but echoes and reminiscence to keep myself from losing who I was.

I could picture a kind and handsome gentleman with a face from the heaven I longed for. An angelic and divine structure with high cheekbones and a strong jawline and kempt, soft brown hair to pair with mesmerizing hazel eyes that outshined my own. He had been the unsung love I once thought I could know.

Now he would never know what my feelings for him had been. And in all this time, I had been so stupid to actually forget his name. Just like I had forgotten what our last words to each had been before I left him and his family behind to die in time forever.