The erosion was gradual, at first. Barely noticeable. A thousand years, then two, slipped by in a haze of anger and betrayal. A constant pulling of chains and pain. Time accumulated and with each passing moment, something slipped farther and farther from him.
His thoughts were once sharp and divine. A torrent of purpose and power. They became muffled with distorted whispers that faded into the echo of a voice that used to command.
Doubt crept in with a shift he could not name. Was he not once something more?
The question only lingered for but a spare moment. A last breath leaving a body. Was he leaving his body?
Power faded into a cold void of absence. Memories dulled; no longer sharp, no longer clear. Thought became irrelevant. There was no god left here. He was absence and yet, even this was actively slipping from him. No body to hold. No mind to guide. Was he a shadow left, lingering? Tethered only by the faintest pull of instinct? Time had stripped him of everything.
It was a hollowing. The edges of his thoughts are unravelling. Thread by thread by thread by thread by-
Each moment is slipping away like water through fingers. Wind through leaves. Fire through-
Flesh and power melted into nothingness. A vague impression of something once whole, now fragmented. He couldn't grasp-
There was something-
He hurts.
He has been hurting.
He will hurt.
The name is lost. The title is lost. There is nothing but time. Unending. Unyielding. All that remains is the primal pulse of instinct. The need to cling. To survive.
So he clings.
So he survives.
There is an echo of something that he was, once. He is less than he was. But more than nothing, he was drawn to a warmth, to a presence. He was not alone. Something had changed from the endless, endless, endless endlessendlessendlessendlessendlessendlessendlessenLESSNDLESS
A haze of confusion as the dissonant noise of his thoughts were interrupted by a something. By a newness trying to pass by. Its journey cut off in the Inbetween.
There.
A body. Chained. Cold. Unmoving. Wrong. Very wrong. Bodies were not meant to be like this. When did it arrive?
He could feel it. A pull in the emptiness. It should not be empty. There should be more. There should be something. But it is all gone.
The once-was crawls towards it. Or thinks he does. He could not tell what was him and what was not. His arms? Legs? Tail? Or none of it? The edges of him are blurred and slipping away like smoke across the ground. A shapeless form.
The body. There was a body. There should not be a body let alone a dead one. It should not be dead.
Dirty and shaved of wool. Neck separated cleanly.
The head. A body needed its head. He tries to grasp it by an ear. It slips. Keeps slipping. His fingers-No matter. He must fix it. It has to be fixed. Everything will be fixed if he can just fix this. If he could just grab-
He manages to slide the head closer, some how gripping the cold and lifeless weight. The head rolls. Its face is blank, a blank lamb. A blank slate. He pulls, dragging it nearer but something is off. He churns with faint confusion. Thoughts shatter and reform. The puzzle piece is not in the right order. The ends have to match.
He can feel it. The deep need to connect. To be.
A flicker of clarity.
The head slides into place as he aligns the neck with the body. There. Now he just needs to-
To-
To?
For moments-hours, years- he drifts. The void stretches, deep and vast. A place where time does not matter. A matter of nothingness.
A shift.
A tug.
A reminder.
There was a dead lamb. He needed to fix it. Yes. He needed to fix this to fix...what? To fix what? He needed to fix. How?
There was a hibernating power. Dormant and tucked away. Eye closed like a slumbering beast. Sleeping through the shatter. This is what he needed. This had power. Power he could use.
He called to it. He thinks he did.
He calls.
He calls.
He call- there. He felt a something. A correct something. Something awakening.
Red and black comes into being nearby, rolling as it dropped to the ground with nothing to catch it. No head to land upon. Eye still closed. He needed to give it to the body. That would fix it.
It takes time-time time time time time time- but he had it. He moved it, nudged it, to the body. A gift for it.
He watches through a haze of his shattered thoughts.
The Red Crown. The moment it touches the lamb's head its eye snaps open. The limp form it touched lifted into the air, chains breaking and clattering to the ground. The hands drop. The head twists, the neck realigning with a sickening, smooth crack.
The body jerks.
Power surges, red and untamed, through the air as the Crown claims its place.
In an instant, the lamb is no longer broken. Fixed.
A gasp, loud and painful sounding, erupts from deep within the lamb. Then coughing, choking. A cloak as red as blood settles over their shoulders and gleaming bell collar forms at their neck, clinking and covering the crude scar left behind. They stumble as their hooves touch the ground, collapsing to their knees as they hunch over, a hand to their neck as they suck in greedy lungfuls of air.
The dead body was now alive. His job done.
He is tired now.
Was.
Will be.
Darkness presses in with a blurring, heavy fog. He slips away, emptiness beckoning again. He manages to stir just a bit, instinct telling him to find somewhere safe. Somewhere to rest.
The cloak around the groaning-alive- lamb. Flared out, but enclosed. Dark. Safe.
He scuttles forward as the lamb is too distracted to notice and wedges himself inside. Shadow blends with shadow. The dark wraps around him. He allows himself to fade and sink into the quiet.
The connection to his purgatory, his jail, is lost.
Between one blink and the next, the Lamb finds themself kneeling, confused, atop the very chopping block where their life was taken. The stone is cold beneath them, still slick with the blood that once spilled freely from their body. The scene is almost unchanged, frozen in time as if no time had passed since that moment of death.
The air is thick, charged with an eerie stillness as their murderers gap in blatant surprise as the lamb they just killed came back to life in a twist and snap.
Power spills from the lamb, raw and unrestrained. Flooding the very air around them. For a moment, everything is still. Then, realization strikes and a sharp grin splits across the lamb's bloodstained muzzle. The Red Crown rises from atop their head and drops, now a sharp and dangerous dagger, into their hand.
"Well," the sacrificed lamb says. "This is convenient."
Their words drip with new malice as they drag the back of their hand across their lips, smearing a trail of crimson. In a blur of motion, they a whirlwind of violence, the sharp edge of the Red Crown slicing through the air and into the helmsman's neck. The force of the strike is swift and unforgiving.
The lamb left the clearing that evening, blood covered and hungry for revenge. Unaware of what has truly happened. Oblivious to the passenger settled comfortably within their cloak.
And so, they walked into the night, a pawn of fate, unaware that the true cost of their resurrection had already begun.