[center][img] https://fontmeme.com/permalink/210131/53a200cc81a754fbfea32363291eca9d.png [/img][/center]
[indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=92278f][b]Location:[/b][/color]The City of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color]
[hr]Time’s lungs were full, this time it was Seele doing the gasping. 

Graves dropped his knife, limp, whimpering. Whatever it was he asked of Siegfried, he got a fist instead. It sent him tumbling back, blood lining the whole way—so much blood, oh god. Oh god. He’d stabbed himself. He’d [i]stabbed[/i] himself in the [i]chest[/i]. 

Siegfried seemed entirely unphased, more preoccupied with the knife. He absently asked them to heal Graves, but…she couldn’t do that. Seele wasn’t a healer. She was a support, but she hadn’t—pointedly hadn’t—taken a single healing spell anywhere along the way. Her place was to keep people from reaching the edge, not to pull them from the depths. Now, staring at her friend bleeding on the ground, she didn’t know what felt worse: the helplessness, or the fact that she didn’t regret her choice. 

Sif was a support though, surely she had something in her kit that could knit him back together. He might be grumpy about it, but at least he’d be [i]breathing[/i], and [i]alive[/i], and—moving. 

He was still moving. 

[i]He was still going.[/i]

[color=92278f]“Stop!”[/color] she yelled to Sif, in the same moment that her Shackles broke. The arcane [i]crack[/i] that accompanied it did not snuff out her voice, but rather carried it, amplified it, distorted her cry into a dozen different tones and emotions that all withered in the air as quick as a licked wick. [sub][right][color=#2E2C2C][i]don’t leave me[/i][/color][/right][/sub]
The air around her became charged with a ghostly puissance, like the whining before lightning struck. She hunched low, hands digging into imaginary earth, and then rose with slow, shaking effort as though she were lifting something massive. Her teeth grated together, her fingers stiffened and curled and began to blacken at their tips. The cobblestones around Graves [i]rippled and began to bubble[/i], boiling, roiling like waves whipped in storm winds. Like something was rising to the surface.  

[color=92278f][i]I dreamed I was a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea.[/i][/color]
[center][color=#2E2C2C][i]Don’t Leave me[/i][/color][/center][color=lightcyan]The Anchor[/color] breached. The air smeared in thick jets around him, three, six, a dozen, two dozen.[color=#2E2C2C][i]DON’T LEAVE ME[/i][/color]They shimmered unnaturally, not glowing but rather [i]pushing[/i] off the light around them, revealing in negative their ghostly, chain-like forms. Each link was as thick as war hammer, and as wide as a person’s shoulders.[color=#2E2C2C][i]DON’T LEAVE ME[/i][/color]

Graves had noticed the whisperings when he’d taken Seele’s debuffs, but in his haze he may not have realized that the voice uttering them was different. When she shielded him, when she strengthened him, it was her in his ear, in his mind, making promises, asking for promises in return.[color=#2E2C2C][i]DON’T LEAVE ME[/i][/color]This was different.

This was not Seele’s voice.[color=#2E2C2C][i]D[/i][/color][color=f49ac2][i]O[/i][/color][color=#2E2C2C]N’T LEA[/color][color=f49ac2][i]VE[/i][/color] [color=#2E2C2C][i]ME[/i][/color]

And it was getting closer. It was coming from the chains. No, it was coming from his head and it was [i]speaking[/i] to the chains. It was the chains speaking to him. 

[i]Don’t leave me.[/i] It said. The air filled with the scent of petrichor. [i]Don’t leave me.[/i]

They surrounded him, a twisting, tightening maze between him and Sif. Don’t leave me. Closing in. Pulling forever up and down, endless, faster don’t leave me. The sound of waves lapping stone [i]don’t leave me[/i]. How deep was the terrestrial sea beneath him that it could harbor these things these chains that were not alive but they spoke DON’T LEAVE ME they screamed [color=f49ac2]DON’T LEAVE ME[/color] this voice this little voice it was so [i]clear[/i] in his head [color=f49ac2]DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME[/color] but it was garbled and blurry it was submerged it was an anchor [color=f49ac2]DON’T LEAVE ME IT’S SO COLD DON’T LEAVE ME PLEASE PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS[/color]

The chains ran faster they ran closer they ran tighter they wanted him they wanted to hold him keep him [color=f49ac2]DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME[/color] Don’t leave me DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME Over and over and over so soft so weak but so loud and so there and [color=f49ac2]DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME[/color][sub][color=f49ac2]DON’T LEAVE ME DON’T LEAVE ME Don’t Leave Me Don’t Leave Me Don’t Leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me dontleaveme dontleaveme dontleaveme dontleavemedontleave medontleave medontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedo[/color][/sub][sub][color=#2E2C2C]ntleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleavemedontleaveme[/color][/sub][/indent][/indent][/indent]