Have you ever felt like you were losing it?
Like your entire life—your very core—was unraveling? Like you were breaking, fading, slipping away… and there was nothing you could do about it?
Until you snap.
Have you ever felt madness?
Have you ever felt misery?
Have you ever felt… despair?
"Agh… water… water…"
Thirst had become something more than pain now. It was a law carved into her bones, tightening around her like a vise. Her thoughts were no longer thoughts—only one fractured command looping endlessly through a haze of heat and sand.
Water.
The desert gave no mercy. Its sun hung low and cruel, an incandescent eye that scorched everything it touched. Her skin burned raw beneath it, red and aching, every grain of sand clinging like a brand. She was no longer a person out here. Only something surviving. Something reduced.
Something animal.
She slithered forward, whispering through cracked lips.
"Just a little longer… just a little…"
Ahead—faint, trembling in the wavering heat—was water.
An oasis.
A lie that looked too much like salvation.
It pulled her forward like a promise stitched into the horizon, the only thing keeping her broken body from surrendering entirely. Even as her body began to fail her, even as thought dissolved into static, she clung to it. That shimmer. That impossible blue.
She crawled.
Dragged herself through the sand in broken, uneven motions, her tail twitching weakly behind her. Somewhere along the way, identity had begun to slip away—name, purpose, even fear. All that remained was need.
Water.
And then, at last, only a meter separated her from it.
A distance so small it felt infinite.
Her hands were raw and trembling. Her lungs refused obedience. Her body simply… stopped listening. A final spasm ran through her like a dying current, and she collapsed onto her back, staring at the merciless sky.
Stillness followed.
Moments passed.
Then—
"Ah… pathetic."
The voice did not echo so much as impose itself upon the world. Cold. Ancient. Thick with contempt that made the air feel heavier.
"How disgusting. Don't you hate it? How pitiful you've become… reduced to nothing but a beast driven by instinct."
A pause—almost thoughtful, almost pleased.
"Oh, but I do enjoy it. Watching you squirm. Watching you crawl like a worm left in salt. You deserve no pity, child. Only truth. And the truth is this—you are unworthy."
The silence tightened.
"This is who you are."
Then, quieter—yet somehow sharper, more absolute:
"…Nyx of Arel'thor."
The name struck like lightning through bone.
Nyx's body jerked violently.
"Shut up!" she screamed inwardly, her thoughts tearing against the presence coiled inside her mind. Her body trembled under the weight of it, every nerve recoiling as if touched by something diseased and divine all at once.
A low laughter followed—slow, delighted, unbearable.
"Foolish child," it said at last. "Do you think you are different from me? You are only a shadow of what I am."
She did not answer.
She refused it even the dignity of acknowledgment.
Instead, she forced movement back into her broken limbs.
One motion. Then another.
Dragged forward by spite, survival, or something indistinguishable from either.
And finally—
She fell into the oasis.
Water swallowed her face.
She drank like something half-dead returning to life.