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LEVIATHAN CHURCH

First, there is only darkness.

The pulsing, pounding, descending night.

It pushes down on me.

Pushes in on me.

Pushes me out.

He pushes me out.

I am here and I am not.

I am dust and I am . . . nothing.

And so it goes. He has me locked in a room, seldom visited, cold and small and empty. Every now and again, a window appears. I see flashes of the world, the barest hints of the life we now live.

He wields the power I gathered. Puts into motion the plans that I made. They follow him—blindly, loyally.

Their blood king.

He twists the oaths they once made to me, infuses them with greater evil. He will not stop until the world is bowing at his feet.

He has taken my empire.

He has taken my body.

He has taken everything.

Regret. It is agony, woven into the very fabric of my being.

I’ve done so much wrong.

I’ve hurt so many.

I’ve hurt my children.

I’ve hurt him, and I’ve hurt . . . her.

Her.

My daughter. Flesh of my flesh, my blood and bone. In the lowest moments of drifting in this desolate nothingness, when I wish I could just disappear, vacate his mind and my body and this cruel, wretched life, she appears.

Rosy cheeks. Strawberry curls. And my own eyes, staring back at me.

Why couldn’t I let us be happy?

Why couldn’t it have been enough?

There is so much blood.

He wields it like food, like fuel. Its power presses into our bones, tears through our skin. And then there is more than blood. There is pure power—unfiltered, unrestrained.

It is changing him. Changing us.

They have come. They’ve come to stop him. Stop us.