I probably lived only by whim or nostalgia. I could not have crossed the lake of fire. I could not have swam back up the multiple lifts. I had thrown away my life for the last time. She knew it.
I fled, and they slowly rose behind me. I heard the skittering again. The insects of the Rot, no doubt attending their new masters. They had all the time in the world to catch me. I was just another insect in their web.
I turned away from the path I had come. They would expect me there, and I would exhaust myself on the stairs beside. I needed to find something, somewhere to defend myself. A hallway to block their numbers, maybe.
Instead, I found myself above another chasm. A dead end of open air where the burning Rot poured over the edge forever. The insect-men were forming a wall behind me. I could burn a hole through them easily, but the Nox ant-riders crouched near the rear. They would cut me off. If not one of them, then my second daughter surely, who had abandoned her steed for such a creature.
My wife and other daughters gathered behind their chittering worshipers. The lure of the Frenzied Flame was irresistible. They would do more than kill me. I would become a thing like them. I saw my gentlest daughter try to stop her twin, but even she had the glint of madness in her eye as she pleaded. They were gone.
I… I tried to apologize. For abandoning them. And for everything else. For letting my daughters be born into a campaign of deicide.
Then I threw myself from the ledge.