Life.
With a deep, rattling breath that echoed through the tiny cell, her eyes flickered open, sunken hollows pitted with the deep crimson of congealed blood.
She groaned, vision hazy, and toppled to her side; the cold, damp floor unpleasantly slimy against her skin. The impact jarred her bones and sent a curious rat scampering, squeaking in fury at the loss of a potential meal.
Blinking furiously, eyelids scraping painfully, her breathing quickened as she realised she could not see properly. Trying to relax, she focused on the ground before her, but all she saw was a hazy mass of grey and her thin, browning arm sprawled before her.
She tried to sit up, drawing her legs in when - with a quiet knoll that sounded death - her leg reached the end of its freedom and pulled against an unyielding iron chain.
She was a prisoner. Captive… how? Why? She could not remember. She could not remember anything. She knew what a prisoner was. She knew what a cell was, what a chain was. But with a panicked gasp that tore from a parched throat, she could not remember her own name. She tried to pull away again, for her shackled leg to painfully tear against the unforgiving metal and send her sprawling to the floor, gasping for breath and desperate to know what was happening.
Her vision was beginning to clear. She could just make out the rusting cell door, the rough, dirty slabs that were the walls. With a grimace she rolled to her back and tried to look up, for a painfully bright light to sear her vision, instantly snapping her head to the side. Rolling over to press her face into the dingy ground, she tried to groan, but her throat refused to comply, eliciting only a deathly rattle.
She stayed still for several minutes. She hurt all over; feeling like her body had been beaten and broken and beaten again, but some experimental movements told her that nothing was, in fact, damaged too badly. She did not know how she knew the exercises, she just did. Eventually, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, joints and muscles protesting every move, and opened her eyes again. The blinding white was fading, and she tried to focus on her hands. Though her vision was still fuzzy, something told her what she was seeing was wrong. Her skin was supposed to be a pale gold, not dirty brown. She was supposed to have muscles. Glancing down, she saw all of her skin was that same, filthy, colour. Somebody had taken her clothes, leaving just rags wrapped around her chest and waist.
Panic rushed through her. What was happening? Who was she? How did she know these things, know what she was supposed to look like, and not know her own name? She forced her eyes shut, feeling the last of the haze finally clear. With a deep breath, she crushed her fears, and opened her eyes again.
Her heart stopped.
Instead of the rich, firm, golden hands she expected, were wrinkled sacks of bone that looked like leather gloves left in the sun too long. With dread pulsing through, she dragged her gaze up her arms, seeing that same horrific brown flesh, sagging over her bones when some part of her knew she was supposed to be muscled and taut. She scrambled back, trying in vain to pull away from herself, leg again pulling at the chain holding her to the wall. Desperately bringing those foul appendages at the end of her arms up, she ran them over her body, shuddering as her decrepit hands ran over dead, leathery skin, rattling against the bones just beneath.
Dropping her head between her legs, hard knees rubbing against her head, she opened her mouth to try to vomit, instead emitting only an awful retch that echoed through the tiny cell.
Gasping for breath with lungs that did not want to take it, she tried to stand, again tumbling to the cold wet stone, brittle body protesting its horrific treatment...
When she saw herself. In a small pool of water in the centre of the room she saw her reflection. Her hair - once a clean and shiny ebony - was loose, filthy and ragged about a face devoid of anything resembling life. Her eyes were sunken back into her skull, their normal piercing blue misty with milky, pale cataracts. Her strong cheekbones pushed against cadaverous skin, drawing it taut. Her teeth were rotten in her mouth, purple lips drawn back by shrunken skin forcing her into a permanent, deathly smile.
Again she opened her mouth, and this time her throat cooperated as she let out a tormented scream that rang through the cell, echoing long after her withered lungs burned and demanded she stop.
Time passed.
She did not try to calculate how long.
Initially, it had been a time of somewhat limited firsts.
When she had stopped screaming - it could have been minutes or hours for all the sense of time she had in her cell - with an almost unconscious motion she tried to take a sip from the small pool of water… when she discovered with a sickening certainty that her tongue was naught more than a shrivelled worm in a cage of rotten bone. What she had managed to take in, her throat refused to swallow.
Some time later she had tried to eat: catching one of the rats that ventured too near and breaking its tiny neck. Apparently her taste buds still had some semblance of functionality, for she instantly retched up the foul, raw meat.
Days passed. She did not sleep; she tried once, but as she laid down and dragged leathery eyelids over dead eyes, it did not come to her. She was tired, but could not sleep. Hungry, but could not eat. Thirsty, but could not drink.
Was that life? Was that all she could expect from her undead existence?
It could not be. If there was nothing else, she would rather not live, body rotting away, chained in a tiny cell with no hope.
It did not take long for her to come to the dire realisation that she wanted to die.
To wait until what was left of herself rotted away and gave her some final rest.
She waited, and waited, allowing her mind to wallow in the desolate emptiness of her existence.
But... she did not die. Some part of her knew that going for three days without water should cause death, but after waiting for at least ten - time becoming hazy in her tiny, solitary, cell - she realised what was left of her dying body would not give out on her.
She screamed again. A horrific moan dragged from decaying lungs through a withered throat, she screamed in agony at the torture of her moribund existence.
More time passed, screaming and empty as she wallowed in her stone enclosure, desperate for release from her torment, when the atrocious realisation came to her. She could not wait for her body to die. Whatever unholy force had resurrected her rotting corpse and given it life, would not allow it.
She would have to kill herself.
Gravely, desperate to end herself before she lost her nerve, she stood and braced her hands against the wall… then slammed her head as hard as she dared into the cold stone.
An instant sickening pain shot through her skull, sending her reeling backwards to the end of her chain and pitching down as a dry snap echoed throughout her prison… and as her head impacted the floor, darkness took her.
When she woke, she still hurt all over. Tenderly touching her head, shuddering at the thought of those foul hands touching her, she found that the front of her skull - where she had hit the wall - was painfully shattered, but she had not died. The back of her skull throbbed with pain, and with a gentle exploration she discovered it had been cracked as she fell.
That kind of injury should have been the death of her.
But still she lived.
Crying out in resignation, voice little more than a rattling groan, she pitched herself again to the floor -
When a brilliant pain shot up her leg like a poison bite, and she glanced down to look, shrunken stomach clenching as she saw her bone protruding from her dry, dead skin. Broken during her suicide attempt, her shattered ankle dangled useless at the end of her cadaverous leg.
Breathing heavily, she clenched her eyes shut, then looked again… and saw an opportunity. Feeling a black haze encroach on her awareness, she gritted her foul teeth as she wrapped both hands around her shattered bone… and pulled.
And screamed.
And pulled.
She passed out from the pain.
Then she woke.
Then she pulled again, and again… until finally, with a hoarse cry of agony, her foot slipped from its shackle, and she was free. Still confined to her cell, not five steps across either way, she was free and her dried out ducts failed to produce the tears of joy her freedom demanded.
More time passed.
She bandaged her ankle: memories without origin or context showing her how to strip the rag from her chest, then set and bind her foot.
It was then she discovered the burned, puckered mess that was the skin over her heart... and a terrifying revelation. Two shrunken, fleshless sacks where her breasts had once been swung with a sickening, dry scrape when she deemed to move, but over her left, over what was left of her heart, was branded a brilliant orange circle; like fire made flesh, embedded into her skin.
The Darksign.
The memory came, as always, without any clue as to how or where she had learned it.
She did not know what the Darksign meant, or why it was seared into her flesh.
But she knew it was the truth nonetheless, and an important one.
Not that there was anything to do for it.
She healed, slowly. Her skull somehow repaired itself; she had cut open her palm on a sharp rock out of curiosity, unsurprised to see no blood seep from the wound, and yet her body healed itself nevertheless. Her skull became whole once more, her set ankle eventually allowing her to walk again.
She kept track of time through scratches in the wall, for what little good it did. Each time the sun passed the small hole at the top of her cell, meant one scratch.
Some days she simply sat, unmoving, waiting for the sun so she could add another mark to the wall. Some days she paced, endlessly, her body always aching and hungry and tired, but never failing.
Some days she clasped the bars of the cell door, gazing into the pitch dark corridor, screaming into the silent abyss beyond.
She counted the scratches when she filled the first brick. Twenty three days in the cell, without sleep, without water, without food, without anything.
She did not count the scratches on the second brick.
Or the third, or fourth.
It was sometime during the fifth brick that the snow came. It had rained before then, sometimes; the water pounding through the hole in the top of her cell, drenching her and forcing her to sit in a pool of foul sludge and drowned rats, but the snow was different. It drifted in at first, forcing her to bury her freezing but still undying flesh into herself… before the hole became snowed over.
For the first time in what seemed like an age she panicked again. The reassuring presence of the sun - even buried behind thick clouds as it often was - was the only thing she could rely on in her life to give her anything beyond her tiny cell, and once more she screamed in terror at her horrific existence… and had again tried to kill herself, again breaking her skull in the pitch black… again not dying.
Time was immaterial in the dark.
There was no day or night: though she was hungry, thirsty and tired, she never ate, drank or slept, and did not have even those basic necessities to base her life on.
So she laid and wept, silently and endlessly in the dark, her pitiful sobs echoing against the cold stone and rusting metal.
It could have been weeks, before the snow finally melted. It could have been months. But when the glimmer of sun shone through the tiny hole in the top of her cell, blinding her ill-adjusted eyes for hours, she wept dry tears and fell to her knees, hands clasped in praise, crying out wordless sounds of joy through her dead throat.
It was beautiful. A single golden ray shone down and warmed her, and she was unashamed to roll to her back and bask in the heat like a beast for those precious few hours, until again it disappeared in its endless orbit.
For the first time in what could have been months, she etched her first mark in a new brick, and eagerly awaited the return of the sun, on her knees and gazing up at the pitch dark sky spotted with stars, wishing and hoping.
It was coming.
Quickly counting her etches, she saw it was the fourth day since the snow had cleared. She recognised the particular pattern of light that heralded the sun's coming, and in eager anticipation she rolled to her back, ready for the heat to provide her the only reason she had left to exist.
When it came, it was magnificent. Slowly, it crept across the threshold of the tiny hole, and she was already in position to capture the rays from the moment it shone into her cell, ready to move with it so not a second of light was wasted.
She groaned in pleasure as the first rays came, warming, lighting, dragging dead hands across her dead body to enjoy what little sensation she could-
When a shadow was cast across her.
Looking up, anger beginning to pound through her at the interruption, she had to blink to be sure what she was seeing. Sometimes her eyes, without sun for most of the day, played tricks on her. She blinked again.
A steel head was silhouetted against the sky, casting a vast shadow through her cell.
She almost lost herself in her anger at the blocking of the sun, before what little semblance of civilised personality she had left, just an ember, roared to life.
It was another person. The first sign of life she had seen since waking in this horrific place.
A person!
Squinting, she looked up, to see the steel head pulling back. It was a helmet, an ancient memory told her, from a knight in full armour… and it was going away! She opened her mouth to let out a hoarse, wordless shout, her throat unable to even give form to the simple hail she wanted.
It was gone, and the sun returned in its place.
A deep dread ran through her: the sun no longer provided any answers or even simple pleasure, and instead she panicked, realising she had just missed her only chance. Somebody had seen her, and left… what else was there? Another failed suicide attempt? Or simply to give her mind up to the endless insanity of waiting for the sun and forget what little she kept of herself?
The concept terrified her. She bellowed out another rattling cry from her rotting lungs and parched throat, shuffling to her cell door, clasping bony hands around the bars and pulling in futility, mind scouring for what she could do to simply end it. She could use what was left of her chains, perhaps, to choke herself… but did she even need to breathe? She did not need to eat or sleep, what was one further function her mortified body could do without?
Or she could go through with what she had not yet managed: to pound her head into the wall until her brain was destroyed. Her attempts so far had been abandoned when she had shattered her skull, her willpower too weak to force her on. But after seeing that person, that one sign of life in a desolate existence… now gone, she knew she could do it.
To be without that, that promise of life, forever? The sun could not fill that hole in what passed for her life.
With one final glance upwards, she let her retinas burn from the sun's beautiful light, before positioning herself on the floor. It would be easier to do it kneeling than standing straight, and she wanted to do it now, before she began to doubt herself and fall back into her endless, pointless continuance.
Some part of her wondered if it would work. What would happen to her if it did. Or would she simply live on, brain dead, damaged from whatever she managed to achieve but still in this condemned state?
No matter. Anything was better than what she currently had. She forced her eyes open, looking straight down, and pulled her head back-
When that shadow came again.
Was this some evil joke?
Was she never to have some choice of her own?
"You! Move thine rotting form aside!"
A voice! A real voice! Her own throat could not manage a reply, and she was so shocked that her mind took precious seconds to catch up, to put meaning to words she had not heard since… since she had woken in this endless nightmare.
"Art thou Hollowed beyond all hope? I implore thee now; move aside else I find another!"
Terrified at the prospect of the armoured warrior leaving, she moved, pressing herself against a wall… and mere moments later a corpse landed before her with a heavy thump.
It looked just like her. Dry skin pulled taut over bones, face pulled into an endless, rotten smile. But this one was dead. It was unmoving, and its eyes showed no glimmer of life. Scanning down its form, she saw it had been run through with a weapon; rotting organs and splintered bone visible through a gaping wound in its chest.
She looked up again, to see the armoured form stand and slowly walk away, gleaming sword swinging from its hand.
Was this some disgusting trick?
No. It could not be. It had to be something, surely that person could not torment her so cruelly, let her rot in this place any longer!
Her eyes focused on the thing's rotten belt. Attached was the hilt of a sword with not more than a hand's width of blade left, broken and near useless. Still, she pulled it away, marvelling at how right the grip felt in her hand.
She felt good. Not just good… strong. This is how she was meant to be. Sword in hand! She felt that she could do anything. Forge something of her own life!
But she was still in the cell, still this horrific undead, how could she-
Her purple lips pulled her rotting teeth into an even wider smile. To the other side of the corpse, tied to its belt with decaying rope, was a single, rusty, key.