The Final Goodbye

Freedom

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For so long, all he knew was the same.

The darkness.

The torture.

The hopelessness.

Then one day, all of that changed.

It didn't happen like he knew it was supposed to.

A windy vortex of light didn't form overhead and whip him up into it only to expel him from Malivore like twice before.

No, this time started off less dramatically.

In one instant, the darkness around him changed.

As he sat in the infinite nothingness, haunted by the blackness around him and wondering when Father would return, he felt a strange shift in the air.

He wondered if a monster was near.

He struggled to stand within the darkness, preparing to run just in case.

Then things got really weird.

Flames burst out around him. The flames didn't hurt though.

Instead, they grounded him.

His eyes hurt from the blaring light, but he forced himself to look at his feet where he could see the flames flaring around his skin and rising up his legs, lapping at him without burning the entire way.

This is new.

As the flames approached his torso, he finally put the pieces together and realized what was happening.

The witch.

The unbreakable vow.

She actually came through.

He was gaining his new form.

He was being reborn in a burst of flames.

He was going to be human.

Once the flames reached the top of his head, completely covering him, he felt as if he was free-flying as gravity moved him and the fire upwards.

The flames came to a stop and on pure instinct he stepped forward out of the fire.

There was darkness around him again, illuminated by the flames, but the kind of darkness that came with nightfall.

On earth.

Spying three people in white lying on the ground, he wondered briefly who they were and if one of them was the witch he freed from Triad.

Then he realized one of the people was Hope.

He checked on her and noted with relief that she was still breathing, just passed out.

Sniffing the air, he recognized the scent of the hallucinogenic drug Triad used on witches to control them, the one he supplied the other witch—Andie—to help make his new reality happen.

Hope was okay, just sleeping off the drug. So were the twins, whom he recognized when he got a closer look.

He glanced down at himself.

In the meantime, he was in a muddy state of undress and in desperate need of a hot shower and clothes. He would take care of that before they woke.

With a giddy feeling swelling inside, he wondered barefoot through the mud until he found a cabin.