In the depths of the night, I found myself in a void. Time had shattered like the pieces of a broken mirror, each shard reflecting a different agony.
In one corner were Rebecca's eyes, but they were not eyes, they were bottomless pits. When I gazed into them, I saw my own inadequacy: I had been granted a second life, yet I was a wretch squandering it all over again. The darkness coiled around her neck was feeding on my weakness.
In another corner stood Annabel… clutching her stomach, blood seeping from it like a cracked vessel. The life that had been growing within her slipped away like sand between my fingers. She screamed, but her voice was not for me — it was for the heavens — because in her eyes I was no longer a savior, but her executioner.
And then, an infant… a body bearing my face, but without breath. This was no stillbirth; it was a void born directly from my inadequacy. The tiny corpse I cradled in my arms whispered to me:
