OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐗𝐈: And as the Earth Burns to the Ground

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AND AS THE EARTH
BURNS TO THE GROUND

OH GIRL IT'S YOU

┕━━━━ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ ━━━━┙
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[ fun fact!
if u listen to As the World Caves in, you will cry when u read this 😀]

          NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. Lyra's pulse thunders in her throat, incendiary and vengeful as gunfire. It is a merciless mantra that is seared deep into her mind, a sadistic fact weighing down upon her tongue and forcing her to be silent as a corpse, it is remorseless and unloving and it is cracking her glass heart and threatening to seep into her soul. If Octavia were to take a sword and cut through her, Lyra is afraid that she would not bleed ruby red but instead this desolate oblivion that leaves her every bit as void as a black hole: nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Praimfaya will burn her world to the ground and she is afraid that nothing will rise from the ashes; they will suffocate everyone she loves. Nothing will ever be the same again. A remorseless Grounder could tear through her with their most noble blade. These words would ooze from her wound forever; she could bleed these words for an eternity and still they would churn and writhe. Nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

     Everything is changing.

     "Just in case I don't get it, run me through the plan one more time."

     Drifting through the chamber like a cold, senseless phantom, Lyra halts dead in her tracks. Noah faces her in the scarce shadows; worry sinks his face and it makes him look older.

     Her blood freezes over. She swallows, wishing the agony would dissolve from her eyes. Reality is atom-defined, ruthless, like cut glass. They stand there together in that little stone chamber where the water cycler sits and, perhaps most importantly, the water tank. It is crafted from glaring glass and frigid water is utterly still within it, seeming like diamonds in the dim. Glaringly colorless ice drifts through the dead waters that seem inky and black; perhaps if Lyra squinted hard enough, they would look like stars in the night sky. But they are not stars. And the phantom thought floats through her mind too quickly for her to shut it out ━━ she isn't sure if she will ever see the stars again.

"I need to purge the residual code," she begins clumsily. "If it were a computer, I'd reboot it. So. . . I'm trying to do that. To myself."

"Right." Noah wraps his arms around himself as if anchoring himself, imprisoning himself. "Except that makes it sound like you're trying to turn yourself off. Or kill yourself."

Lyra grimaces.

"Not. . . kill myself, not really — "

"Not really?" Noah echoes sharply, his eyebrows narrowing against his otherwise chalky skin. He snaps the words out as if he is on the verge of snarling. "What do you mean not really?"

"I have to stop my heart long enough for for all electrical activity in my brain to stop, too." Lyra feels like an effigy of herself; one breath and she would be blown away into ash. "That means I need fifteen minutes."