Chapter Text
Don’t be surprised. I merely think that all the decomposition I’ve consumed within my lifetime has contributed to my own rottenness.
It is such a foolish act of me to sprinkle water upon a blazing fire, kindled by the brutalities entailed by the title of a sorcerer when agony is all I have ever known, but perceive it this way: if a child is repeatedly exposed to their peers’ abysmal behaviour, they will learn from them. The beginning of the fracture will stem from minimal, trivial matters to something that will be etched into their veins, unable to be erased or forgotten, records of their crimes written in piercing ebony upon flaxen, wrinkled paper. It will herald their death. Instead of being sheltered and unprotected in the face of unsatisfactory conduct, repugnance has forced itself upon me like the bite of a serpent — whatever they once viewed as insignificant has morphed into a beast, determined to haunt them for decades. They will cry. They will scream. They will beg for repentance. Their efforts will be in vain.
If you possess a heart that beats and transports blood to your arteries, you are not exempt from corruption. What, exactly, is corruption? Perhaps it is a cycle established by those who are deemed transcendent by our society. If you are revered, you gain access to an illusion standing at the pinnacle of superiority, a form of utmost divinity. This holiness then demarcates the manner in which those who are lesser than them have to endure, birthing creatures whose bitterness will merely make them watch their own rage fester, destroying all that lies around their feet.
Before I launch into my declamations, here is a secret: no condemned entities are ever forfeited, not under my presence. I swallow them to prevent the spread of havoc, a virus that would taint the peace of ordinary civilians, and their resentment lingers in my throat. I am capable of lying, but I am equally guilty of committing such an act. He has no knowledge of this — do not inform him, but confectionery does not completely remove its acridness from my tongue, for my prowess is an unending cycle of absorbing and waiting, repeated over and over again. What I could only call a seraph, laden with the pressure of his strength, had helped once, or at the very least, he endeavoured. To strip someone away from his humanity by assisting the putrid is a fate worse than death, however, and I simply did what I did best, feigning nonchalance and harboring mirth while pretending that I was completely unbothered by the carnage that had unfolded before me.
The bane of my existence arrived in the form of bodies composed of decaying flesh, and they were foul; they had the tendency to remain tangible even days after they had died, except none of them were ever dead. I am destined to resurrect them, but why did I possess the authority to revive someone despite how wrongfully they had once carried themselves, when I was simply a mortal, never a God? Cursed by their own continuations, they spread like an infectious plague and I, in turn, was inevitably damned by them. They steered me to my demise, before I smiled at the expressions of shock they harboured, escaped from the confines of my chrysalis, and danced with a kaleidoscope of devils.
Perhaps I was only corroded, my soul tainted and rancid, due to their influence; the blade is not directed at the scoundrels I devoted myself to, but the anathema.