"On the count of ten, it will all be over".
Ten, his eyes snapped open. Shouts of anger echoed against the stony hallways. Dark robes swirled in a chaotic waltz. People fell, they crumbled.
Nine, his own hand lashed out and crimson splashed across the walls. An eye stared out at him, rolling back into it's orbit. It was green, a vibrant and brilliant green. They tumbled down to the ground as well.
Eight, he discovered pain was a strange thing. His own knees joined his victims upon the stone floor. Rage washed in, taking away the last shreds of his humanity.
Seven, he learned what was the essence of war: hatred. And god knows that he despised them all, from the deepest confines of his soul to the point of his wand.
Six, flesh burned, blackening and recoiling under the scorching blazes of his wrath. Bones shattered, screams were ripped out from gaping throats. He laughed.
Five, the cold heartless laughter built up into his chest, swallowing him whole. It drowned everything. Faces blurred and they became all the same. His lord joined in to laugh with him, crushing living corpses underneath his steps. They squirmed and twisted like agonizing worms. They mocked louder.
Four, masks shattered against the ground. He understood they were bleeding too. The rose would be buried; he crushed another soul.
Three, they were breaking through. The lunar lady danced on their graves while he kept plundering their terrorised faces. Fear was ecstasy and ecstasy was his. He laughed harder.
Two, minds broke. Branches bent under the force of the wind and their capes whipped their hands as they swung one more body into the placid waters of the lake.
One, he forgot what was home. Who ever spoke of home? The noise of the crowded hallways was no more, the warm orange glow of the sun's light had faded to a dull gray. The world his child self had grown up into and loved never existed. His laughter died in his throat and his gut clenched painfully. He was standing before ruins.
Zero.
It was all over.
He realised he had lost.
The rose stands as a reference to Evan Rosier, a death eater killed by the aurors during the first war, and the lunar lady as the not-quite-completely-there Bellatrix Lestrange.
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