Chapter 6: The Descent into Madness
The battlefield had been left behind, but its scars remained. The witches had fought valiantly, but the Mad King's forces overwhelmed them. Our village,
once vibrant with magic and life, was now a graveyard of shattered hopes. Ashen ruins replaced homes, and the air was thick with the smell of death.
We had failed. The unification of the magic-born had crumbled before it could even take root. I had led them to this fate, and now they were dead, scattered,
or captured.
I didn't know how long I had wandered, wounded and weak, through the darkened forest. My mind was clouded with exhaustion, and my thoughts spun wildly with guilt.
I had survived, but I was no hero—just a man fleeing his own failure. The King's soldiers were still hunting us, but worse the soldiers were the witches themselves.
Those who had survived had turned their anger inward, and I had become their scapegoat.
The night they captured me, I had no fight left in me. I was ambushed, struck down by the very people I had tried to save.
They dragged me into the heart of the forest, far from the devastation of the village, into a hidden lair that none but the witches had ever seen.
The caves were ancient, carved out by magic long forgotten, their walls pulsing with a dark energy that made the air heavy.
My wrists and ankles were bound by enchanted chains, and they sealed my magic with a cursed sigil etched into my skin.
The leader of this fractured coven was none other than Nyssa. She had once been a voice of reason, a mentor. But now her eyes burned with a different fire.
Her grief had turned to rage, and her once calm demeanor was twisted into something darker, more dangerous.
"You led us to ruin," Nyssa said coldly, standing over me as I struggled against the chains. Her voice echoed off the cavern walls, sharp and biting.
"Because of you, we've lost everything."
I tried to speak, but my throat was dry, and my voice came out as a weak rasp. "I didn't know it would happen like this. I didn't"
"Silence!" she hissed, cutting me off with a wave of her hand. A force struck me, pushing me back against the wall, the pain spreading through my chest.
"You were our leader. You were supposed to protect us, guide us to victory. Instead, you led us into a massacre."
Her eyes gleamed with a sinister intent. This wasn't about justice anymore. It was about revenge. The other witches moved around her, their faces blank with numb
hatred, their hands crackling with dark magic. They had lost everything, and now, they had only one purpose left to make me pay for their suffering.
"We've been left with nothing but despair," Nyssa continued, her voice trembling with barely restrained fury. "But despair has power. It can twist the mind,
bend the soul. And we will use it, Elijah. We will use it to experiment on you, to understand the depths of madness that magic can unlock."
I thrashed against the chains, fear rising in my chest. "Nyssa, please. This isn't right"
"What isn't right?" she sneered. "Everything has been taken from us! The Mad King slaughtered our people, and you failed us. Now, we will take something from you."
The witches began their work. Dark spells were cast, and the cave filled with the heavy scent of incense and blood. I felt the magic creeping into my mind,
tugging at the edges of my sanity. They whispered incantations designed to unravel me, to turn my thoughts inside out, twisting reality into nightmares.
Days passed maybe weeks. Time had lost its meaning in that cursed cave. The experiments grew worse with each day. They probed my mind,
breaking me down bit by bit. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the faces of the witches I had failed, the villagers I couldn't save, the devastation I had caused.
My guilt consumed me, festering like a poison.
But it wasn't just the memories that haunted me. The witches used their magic to warp my perception, distorting my sense of self until I didn't know what was real
anymore. They whispered lies into my ears, feeding me delusions and nightmares until I could no longer tell the difference between truth and madness.
My thoughts spiraled out of control, and soon, I couldn't trust my own mind.
The worst part was the voices. They grew louder with each passing day, a cacophony of whispers that never ceased. They told me that I was weak, that I deserved this.
They taunted me with my failure, my inability to save anyone. I tried to resist, to hold on to what was left of my sanity, but it was slipping away, piece by piece.
Nyssa watched it all with cold detachment, her eyes burning with hatred as she oversaw the witches' twisted experiments. "This is only the beginning, Elijah,"
she said one day, her voice echoing in the darkness. "You will know true madness soon. You will feel the weight of every life you've destroyed. And when you beg for
death, it will be denied."
I screamed, but the sound echoed in my mind, trapped within the madness they had created. The cave walls seemed to close in on me, and the darkness around me shifted,
twisted into shapes and faces that mocked me. The faces of my parents, Günther, the witches—they all loomed over me, accusing, judging.
I had once been driven by revenge, by the need to destroy the Mad King and reclaim what had been taken from me. But now, all that remained was the overwhelming fear
of losing my mind completely. The magic that had once empowered me had turned into a curse, corrupting my thoughts and twisting me into something unrecognizable.
The last vestiges of my will were eroded, and I knew, deep down, that I was losing the fight. The witches had succeeded. I had become their experiment, their pawn,
trapped in a prison of my own madness.
And as the darkness consumed me, all that remained was the endless, suffocating fear that I would never escape.
