Nym's Tears.
Blooms that heal. That ease the dying and cure the impossible. The lillium’s lament sprouting where grief takes root. But mercy can be a cruelty. White petals that drink memory like water. The healed wake hollow, mourning what they cannot name.
The tears blossom, but Nym does not cry for us. She does not mourn us. She remembers. Grasping memory as if her very breath.
Leif cannot remember dying. This too, taken from him. Memories he has not earned, yet still breathes. Keys that lie. Blackened bones. Divine with teeth.
Their pain his skin, their fear his breath, their death his own. The plagal cadence of a fading hymn.
But how can I trust a memory that is not my own?
SAMPLE CHAPTERS
PROLOGUE I
Antithar ponders memories that are not his own
CHAPTER II: LOCK AND KEY
Emil traverses the Mill with talking keys
\\INTERJECTION.PULSE
The awakening of a nameless tin
CHAPTER IX: GRAVESINGER
Darroh investigates the funeral of an Elder One
When did these fragile bones fail to grasp this plight, the wallow which these calloused hands wrought
A need pervades the null of that night, a liminal sight, a child holding on to the fright as if the blanket pulled overhead were not to their every fiber strained
A tumult of my marrow is made in shadow of plenary
Foot of crow and brittle ichor from those who do not adhear, A fedit festering sallow that by only my breath was brought
A vestige shaped by those who share no fear, who shed no tear, a canker barely contained
Pleroma grant me one last reverie
For how can one lament what is forgotten save for the baptismal hallow, the hollow ritual turned septic rot
A gaping maw and the abscess left fallow, a dearth as deep as it is shallow, a loss so hostile it snuffed the life that remained
This decay brines a putrid shade of emery
It reverberates in the chasm that was, a violent hymn intoned and the echo that follow, though in truth I wish would not
Like that of flesh rent and filed bone, my blood let from a stone, a reliquary of meaning in ruin and all but drained
An epitaph to my ossuary of memory