We change by the speed of the choices we make.
Sareena, like the others, rested on bare tatami mats in a secluded room within the Lin Kuei temple. On edge and unable to rest, her body ached and bruised, and begged for release.
Unaware of the time, she picked herself up from the floor and in a bruised haze ached with each step until she reached the sliding door across the room to find the night sky that faced inward to the courtyard. The moon blocked by the snow, and the night a dull grey darkness that blanketed the Earth, she had no sense of time, no sense of self.
Closed behind her, the others were dead asleep and she had this moment to try to grasp her surrounding. A frozen garden of stone and bamboo, caked with snow. Each step down to the bottom level of the garden pained her with aches and frost, but she felt compelled to see it from the bottom. A small stone set of steps down north, south, east, and west, surrounded then by bamboo and snow mounds between foot paths, she looked around at the small structures created by the Lin Kuei and the stone temple that had been there for centuries more.
The cold crept up from her toes to ankles to knees and thighs. She looked down, but the snow as fresh as it was could not have frozen her so fast. This wasn't the cold of the Lin Kuei either. A deep chill that rattled her bones rippled across her flesh where it met and burned at the tattoo to the Brotherhood of Shadow.
Etched into the curve of her shoulder, it began to sear her flesh and that was the last she remembered.
In the darkness of her mind she felt the demon upon her chest rattle her ribs awakened and pierce her flesh. A single old sickle crossed the line between her body and split her down the middle from neck to navel. She couldn't move, couldn't scream and all the energy she had as she felt herself awaken was taken from her as muscle flesh and muscle peeled back like a valley within her.
The dark grey sky began to form a blackened maw that opened. It would fade in and out like a dream. No pain coursed through her torn flesh, she was completely paralyzed.
The demon on her chest she could not see, only the shadow, only the darkness. Only the sickle that reached between her tender flesh and parted the red sea. Only able to breathe, she watched thick, oil colored blood ooze from the edges like globs over the edge of a tsunami. Thick wet drops and lines that traced the curve of her now bare flesh and warmed her body, from her fingers to her toes.
Over the wave of charred blood and pale cold flesh, she watched the demon finally emerge from within. A void, a shadow, nearly darkness itself pulled her apart to slowly squeeze from between Sareena's ribs and escape into the cold snowy air.
Breathe!
Twitch.
Scream!
The moment her body could move and her breath choked her, Sareena's eyes pierced wider than before as snow fell like daggers into her red, weary sockets. Sub-Zero and Smoke at her side, she reached for their arms as they knelt to assist her.
It was almost unbelievable that she could stand, even barefoot and walk or move or breathe. It took her moment to realize the robes the Lin Kuei had given her were still wrapped around her and not a single drop of blood or shadow had fallen from her person.
It was daylight and the darkness had slithered away from her like the sleep from her eyes. As they aided her from the courtyard, only her shadow remained at the bottommost step where the scratch marks of a curved blade scraped from where she had laid in torment.