Echoes of Ossian
For a time, I clung to denial, desperately trying to shield myself from the gnawing memories that clawed at my mind, threatening to swallow me whole. The drug still coursed through my veins, dulling everything, but it couldn't numb the torment that pulsed beneath the surface. I was adrift in a fog, torn between fragments of reality and the world I couldn't escape.
Then, as if the nightmarish horrors had come to life, she appeared.
Eryss face, was twisted with grief, with anger, with something else—something darker—stared back at me with an intensity I could feel in my bones. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her body trembling with unbridled emotion. She was here. But she wasn't the woman who had once been kind, composed, and distant. She was a mother broken by loss—by what I had done. And she had come to curse me, to condemn me for everything that had been lost.
"You..." Her voice cracked, raw with despair. "You are the monster who has stolen everything from me!" Her voice rose to a shrill scream, the weight of it settling over me like a shroud. "I curse you, you wretched thing! May you never know peace, may you never find rest, may you rot in this endless, torturous cycle of death!"
" I curse you !"
Eryss stood before me, wounded but burning with fury. Blood dripping from her palm as she clutches a dagger.
"You will carry the weight of my pain. You will know suffering as I have. By my blood, by my breath, by my very soul, I curse you!"
I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I just watched in disbelief as her hands, shaking violently, reached for the sharp edge of a blade. Her eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment, there was something almost tender in them—something that reminded me of the woman I had once known.
"You will never know peace. Every victory will turn to ash, every love will rot in your arms. The harder you fight, the deeper your curse will sink into your bones."
She collapsed before me. Her body hit the floor with a sickening thud, the sound echoing in the stillness of the room.
All I could see was red.
"You... you will walk this earth long after you beg for death."
She lifts a trembling hand, her fingers streaked with her own blood, and presses them to my chest.
"By my blood, by the moon's light, by the sorrow you have sown—I bind you."
A burning pain bursts from my chest right where her fingers were, sinking into my flesh. I gasps, stumbling back the best i could, pressed against the wall.
She traced something on my skin.
A crescent moon, black as the void, sears itself onto my skin, just above my heart.
"What have you done?!" I screamed at her.
" This is my curse...You will carry the weight of the crescent... until the moon itself fades from the sky."
Then with a sickening finality she slid the blade to her throat, red pouring from her fair skin.
The blood splattered across the floor, painting the walls in a crimson wash. The sight was overwhelming, suffocating.
I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe. My mind screamed in denial, but the horror of it was too real, too raw. This wasn't the nightmare I had just escaped from—it was real. It was happening.
With a final breath, Eryss collapses, lifeless. The storm ceases, leaving only silence—and I stood, trembling, as the weight of the curse settles upon me.
The guards, standing at attention in the doorway, watched with cold, judgmental eyes. Their faces were hard, their gazes filled with contempt. And standing among them, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, was my father. His expression was one of disgust, one of utter disdain looking at Eryss's lifeless form as the guards took her away from my sight. He looked at me like I was the cause of all of this—the instigator of this tragedy, the one to blame. Playing his act to perfection in front of the elders.
The council had gathered in the high, vaulted chamber, their faces as grim and implacable as the stone walls that enclosed them. I had been dragged before them in chains, unable to escape. They stood as judge, jury, and executioner, and their verdict was already sealed. My fate had been decided long before I had even been brought before them.
The murmurs of the elders filled the room, their voices thick with suspicion, anger, and disgust. Every word they spoke was like a cold dagger, twisting deeper into my chest. Each of their faces was etched with the weight of their decision, and I could feel it—their conviction that I was the source of the catastrophe that had befallen us.
"You cannot deny it," one of them, the eldest of them all, a man with a white beard like falling snow, spoke slowly, his voice echoing across the stone floor.
"The boy was the last to see his brother alive. The boy who claims innocence is the one who stood over him as he died. He kidnaped the heir. We have no doubt left that he is the one who killed him. And now lady Eryss died in his cell."
A low murmur rippled through the room. The others, the lesser elders, nodded in grim agreement, their expressions hardening with each word.
The weight of the accusation hit me like a physical blow, and my chest tightened. The boy—that was what they still saw me as, a boy incapable of the depths of responsibility they accused me of. How could they not see the truth? How could they not see that I had been played, manipulated, and broken long before any of this had happened?
"It's not true," I whispered hoarsely, my voice cracking from the weight of everything I had endured. "I didn't kill him. You have to understand, It can't be true—"
But they weren't listening. They couldn't hear me, not now. The damage was done.
"The facts are clear," another elder, a woman with sharp, hawk-like eyes, interjected. "The boy was found covered in his brother's blood. No one else was there. What other explanation could there be?" Her eyes never left mine, her gaze unwavering and filled with distrust. The truth was irrelevant to her, to all of them.
I opened my mouth to protest, but my words failed me. They had already made up their minds, and I was nothing but a ghost in this room, a condemned soul whose life meant nothing in the face of their accusations.
"And yet," a voice broke through the air, one that carried more weight than any other in the room. My father. His words came like a sledgehammer, as cold as ever, but with a finality that rang through the chamber.
"He has become a danger. To himself, to everyone around him." he said, his voice hollow, without a hint of emotion. His eyes met mine, and for a moment, I thought I saw something—he was mocking me—but it was gone in an instant.
"The boy was unstable before, but now he is a liability. His presence endangers everything we've worked for. He will only continue to destroy, until there's nothing left."
The air grew thicker. A sense of suffocation settled in my chest, my heart pounding in my ears. They had decided my fate, and no matter how much I pleaded, it wouldn't matter.
"He's cursed," another elder spoke, his voice trembling with fear. "The curse upon him—this madness. It cannot be allowed to spread further. It will only lead to more deaths, more destruction."
The word curse hung in the air, heavy with dread, like a black cloud that was smothering me. A curse, they thought. But it wasn't a curse. It was their choices, their manipulations that had twisted everything, that had made me what I was now. They didn't know the truth.
But that didn't matter. I wasn't allowed to tell it.
The decision was made in a heartbeat. The elders' consensus had already formed, and there was no room for dissent. My life had no value to them anymore. Not after everything that had happened. Not after what I had become, in their eyes, the murderer of my brother abd now of his mother.
The killer. The monster.
I was condemned.
I didn't even feel anger anymore. I only felt a suffocating emptiness. I had been abandoned. I had been betrayed. My father stood there, watching, unmoving, as though I were already dead.
But the worst part was, I felt dead already.
Cassian, standing in the shadows behind me, stepped forward. His face was unreadable, cold as ice. He was following the will of the elders, carrying out their command. He was my executioner.
His hand clutched the dagger, cold steel gleaming in the dim light. It was swift, precise—a movement honed over years of obedience. I saw the glint of it before it struck, but even as the blade pressed against my throat, there was no resistance, no fight left in me. I had already given up.
"Tell your brother I said "hi" " Cassian's voice was low, the words laced with a mockery, only for me to hear.
And with that, the blade was driven in.
The world went black.
I woke up, from a nightmare. I was not in peace. I was not dead, nor had I been granted the release I had longed for. I opened my eyes to the same stone walls, the same iron chains, the same stifling air. The weight of it hit me at once—the sense of déjà vu, the sickening realization that this was not the first time I had died. I wasn't in a nightmare.
This was not the end.
I had died at Cassian's hands, countless times by now.
The curse she had placed upon me had seen to it that death was not my final release. No, this was merely the beginning.
Every time, I had returned to the same day.
The day she had cursed me.
And as I felt the sharp pain of that memory surge through me, I realized the true weight of it all. It wasn't just the death of my brother. It wasn't just my own death. The curse wasn't just a punishment—it was a cycle. A perpetual loop of torment, of death, of rebirth, each time a little worse than the last.
The elders had been right I was cursed. But they had failed to see the true horror of my existence: the curse that would never let me go. And now, I too understood.
I was doomed to live it.
History repeated itself. Again. And again. And again.
I felt a surge of fury rip through me. My hands balled into fists at my sides, nails digging into my palms as the anger built within me. Vengeance against him, againstthe whole world. It surged like a wildfire in my chest, threatening to consume me, to push me beyond what little was left of my humanity. But it was more than that. It was the curse, the sickness that seemed to follow me wherever I went, a relentless chain I couldn't break.
Her blood, still pooling around her lifeless form, seemed to call to me. The weight of it—her death—was suffocating. The curse she placed upon me, the words she spoke as her life slipped away, felt like shackles tightening around my heart. Never peace. Never rest. Never freedom.
But it wasn't just her. It wasn't just her death. Every death, every tragedy, every wound inflicted on me by my father's hand or the hand of another—it was all part of the same nightmare.
The same cycle.
I could feel myself slipping, changing. My heart grew colder, the warmth of emotion becoming nothing more than a distant memory. I had lost my brother. I had lost my only family. I had lost myself. And with each death, I could feel the last remnants of my empathy withering away, replaced by something darker, something colder. I no longer cared about life. About anything.
I stood there, lost in the bloodstained room, my eyes fixed on Eryss's lifeless body as the guards moved to cover it, their expressions unreadable.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
And somewhere, deep inside, I felt the terrifying truth, how many time did I have to die to break this curse?
Wasn't she satisfied by now?
Laughter echoed through the chamber, cruel and mocking, seeping from the darkness, an unseen presence that reveled in my torment, I recognise his voice, it was my father. "Scream all you want," it jeered, the voice twisted, filled with malice. "It's your fault from the start. You brought this upon yourself."
And the worst part was—I couldn't argue. I couldn't defend myself. Because deep down, I didn't know anymore. The memories were slipping away, the truth drowned beneath the waves of madness, grief, and torture.
Days blurred into each other, weeks blending into an indistinct haze. Time had no meaning in the loop that I was trapped in. How long had I been trapped in this infernal cycle, forced to relive the same horrifying day over and over again, each time worse than the last? How many deaths had I endured, only to awaken to the cold stone of my prison once again?
Despite her vows of vengeance, the eternal curse she had placed upon me, I longed for release. I craved the sweet release of death, of escape from this torment. But deep down, I knew I didn't deserve it. I had destroyed everything. I had killed my brother, and no matter how much I denied it, the weight of that truth gnawed at my soul.
My spirit eroded with each passing second, crumbling under the weight of my own guilt and the torment that filled my waking moments. I questioned what was real anymore. Was anything real? Or was this nightmare all that remained?
I felt myself teetering on the brink of madness, haunted by the memories of my nightmares. Every night, every moment that passed in my twisted prison, I clung to the fleeting threads of wakefulness, terrified that if I let my eyes close for even a second, I would be dragged back into the abyss.
There I was, huddled in the corner of my cell, chained to the cold stone wall, gazing up at the hole in the ceiling through which rain cascaded, mingling with my own tears. My thoughts were a storm, a swirling mess of confusion and despair, but I couldn't escape them. My body was broken, my mind fractured, and I was no longer sure where one ended and the other began.
The silence before she came was maddening, broken only by the occasional drip of water, echoing through the stone walls. I let out sporadic screams, my voice ragged and hoarse, only to find myself pulled back into the abyss once my exhausted eyes succumbed to sleep. The nightmares would come again, torturing me with images of my brother's body, of the cruel curse, of my father's face as he watched me break.
I couldn't escape it. The cycle never ended.
In the wake of countless deaths and resurrections, the harsh truth was undeniable: I was losing my humanity. My body might heal, but the scars, both physical and mental, were permanent. They clung to me like a second skin. I could feel the creeping erosion of my sanity, the slow, insidious pull toward madness. And yet, I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop the spiral, no matter how desperately I tried to hold on.
The chains that bound me were a constant reminder of my captivity. I could feel them digging into my skin, my wrists raw and bloody from the constant friction. But I refused to let them break me. I couldn't.
I had to escape.
The first attempts were fruitless, leaving nothing but fresh pain and broken skin. My hands were too weak, too fragile to pull the chains loose. But time was running out. Each moment felt like a lifetime, each second dragging me deeper into the madness.
Then, one day—no, it didn't feel like a day, or even a night, but somewhere in the blurry expanse of time—I found the strength to act. The chains that bound my hands to the wall had been there for so long I could feel the very bones of my wrists protesting at the strain, but I knew I had to break free.
I had learned the method long ago, during my training, though I had never anticipated the true horror of it. The pain was unimaginable, an excruciating process of dislocating my own thumbs, the bones grinding and snapping under the strain.
Each moment was a jagged edge of suffering, but it was the only way.
With the grotesque, sharp crack of bone, I finally broke free. My hands, now mangled and bloodied, slipped from the iron shackles that had held me captive for so long. It didn't matter. I had no choice. I had to escape.
I had made the first move toward freedom, but the journey was far from over. My body was broken, my mind fraying at the edges, but I had to keep moving. I had to escape before I was consumed by the darkness that threatened to devour me.
It was only a matter of time before they would come for me again. But for now, I was free.
And that freedom was my only hope.