adiaphoron | d.m

TWENTY-NINE

➸ DANCING WITH THE DEVIL

GRIEF ENGULFED HER LIKE CHURNING TEMPEST, violent and unrelenting. It swept away her ability to think, paralyzing her limbs and numbing her senses. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a vast abyss, teetering dangerously close to the edge, her feet unable to move even an inch forward or back.

Inside her mind, the echoes of frantic thoughts raced to regain control. "Pull yourself together," she silently scolded herself, but the words felt hollow. A cold realization gnawed at her that this wave of emotion was precisely what her parents had warned her against. They had always cautioned her about the dangers of becoming too attached, of letting her heart be too vulnerable, of feeling too much of an emotion.

But none of that mattered now.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

The relentless refrain echoed in her mind, drowning out everything else.

This was the boy who had been her confidant, her rock, and her friend. He had loved her—truly loved her—his feelings woven into their every shared moment. He dreamt of futures together, of what could be, his laughter now a haunting memory echoing in her mind.

And now...

He was gone.

She wanted to scream, to howl her anguish into the night, to cry until it felt like the weight of the world would lift from her chest. But she stood lethargic, paralyzed in the midst of swirling emotions that strangled any coherent thought.

It was a numbing disbelief that wrapped around her tighter than any physical chains.

In her fog, she didn't sense the figure closing in on her, didn't feel the grip of a hand as it seized her arm. She remained unaware as ropes tightened around her, ensnaring her like a captured bird against the cold, unyielding stone of a headstone. Panic never had the chance to rise in her throat; her mind was still marinating in shock.

And then there was Harry, desperately calling out to her, his voice a lifeline that she couldn't reach for. "Cecilia! Cecilia!" His shouts sliced through the haze, filled with urgency and fear as he fought to break her out of her stupor. "Snap out of it! Please!"

But all she could do was stand there, frozen in her grief, staring vacantly at the body of her best friend, the boy who had believed in the light when she could only see darkness. And as reality continued to close in around her, she struggled against the invisible chains that kept her from responding, from moving, from feeling anything other than that suffocating emptiness.

Time seemed to stretch indefinitely, but in her disorientation, Cecilia lost track of how long things had been unfolding. Through her haze, she heard a voice, cold and commanding: "It is ready, Master."

A chilling response followed, cold and commanding: "Now."

Harry found himself cursing Cecilia's parents for instilling in her a detachment from her emotions. Now, faced with the tumult of feelings crashing down on her, she seemed entirely unequipped to process them. She had receded into a state that barely resembled her true self, a mere shell of the person she once was.

But Cecilia was oblivious to her own despair, ensnared by the relentless cycle of torment spiraling within her thoughts.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given!"

"Flesh of the servant, w-willingly given— you will revive your master."

"B-blood of the enemy... forcibly taken... you will resurrect your foe."