Oceans of Time

Part 2 - My Damnation

The loyal subjects and servants of my castle had retrieved Elizabeta's body from the river. I came home to the castle deserted and her body on the floor of the church altar. Her features, I remember, were still soft, though lifeless. Had I known what would have happened next, perhaps I would have taken a different approach and joined my beloved in death. When I had renounced my God, that gift was forever barred to me. I had damned my soul to walk this earth for eternity, trapped in torment, monstrous forms, and devilish delights. I will never forget the searing pain of my soul set on fire, the evaporation of its essence pouring through my pores, burning my flesh to the bone. I screamed for hours, for this process was not quick and instantaneous but long and excruciating. The smell of my burnt flesh has been seared into my nostrils, as well as my hair singed and smoking. When I felt cold air on my bones I thought it was the end, I thought I was left for dead by my God.  Bones with no flesh, flesh with no soul, simply to become ash and forgotten. The gift of eternal rest taken from me as my punishment. I thought it was the end, but that end would have been a mercy. Instead, my bones felt new muscles wrap around their extremities. For as soon as my original body was destroyed, my new form began to take shape. I was no longer man, no longer a being in God's image; I was animal, nocturnal, beast, and cursed. My new body grew and changed in every instant. Learning I no longer held one shape but was cursed to many. Many forms that reacted to instinct and primal urges. I had lost myself, but I hadn't lost her. The memory of my beloved grounded me, fueled my anger and concentration. I held onto her memory throughout the process of becoming the creature I am today, and I awoke to feel my body as it once was: man.  Though I felt the same under my fingertips, my insides felt entirely different. They twisted and turned with newfound hunger, a hunger that blinded my other senses and focussed them all on one objective: blood, find blood.  In a swift moment of primal frenzy, I did; I grabbed my beloved's body in a tight embrace and fed off her and, upon doing so, sealed my fate. Her cold blood ran white hot in my veins; I gasped a hollow breath and opened my eyes to new, powerful life flowing within me.  A moment of elation, destroyed by the knowledge that my wife's broken body was done so by my own hands. I had broken her spine and her neck. Overwhelming guilt came over me for desecrating her so, and it consumed me. For the first time, my eyes cried blood, and my screams began to break the stone walls around me.