Chapter 7: The Breaking of Elijah
The darkness had fully enveloped me, swallowing any sense of time or reality. It felt as if I had been trapped in this twisted cave of torment for years,
though it was impossible to know how long it had truly been. The witches had succeeded in breaking me, but they weren't finished yet. They never would be.
I had lost track of the experiments, the spells, the rituals designed to chip away at my mind. Every moment bled into the next, a series of endless horrors.
I could no longer distinguish dreams from reality, truth from delusion. My body ached constantly, but the pain was nothing compared to the torment inside my head.
The whispers were my constant companions now, echoing in every corner of my mind. At first, they had been subtle, mere suggestions of my failure and guilt.
But now, they were a deafening roar. They screamed at me, cursed me, mocked me. I could hear the witches' voices among them, chanting spells that twisted my
thoughts and erased whatever was left of my sanity.
"You're nothing, Elijah. You failed them all. You couldn't save anyone."
The voice was Günther's now, the knight who had killed my parents, the man I had sworn to destroy. His laughter filled the cave, cruel and mocking.
I could see his face in the shadows, sneering at me, holding his bloody sword—the same sword he had used to kill my mother.
I lashed out, my fists slamming against the cold stone walls, but it did nothing. The cave was impenetrable, and so were the nightmares.
My wrists were still shackled, the chains biting into my skin, but it was the chains in my mind that held me down, that kept me prisoner.
I had tried, at first, to resist the madness. I had fought against the witches' magic, clawing desperately to hold onto my identity.
I had thought that if I could just stay focused, I could escape. But they were relentless. Day after day, they unraveled my thoughts, bit by bit,
until there was almost nothing left.
And now, I had given up.
There was no escape from the madness they had woven around me. It consumed me, devoured my every thought. I was drowning in it, and I no longer had the strength to
fight. The witches watched from the shadows, their faces twisted with cold satisfaction as they saw me slipping further into insanity.
"How does it feel, Elijah?" Nyssa's voice cut through the chaos. She stepped forward, her face lit by the flickering torches in the cave.
"How does it feel to lose your mind, to lose control?"
I wanted to answer, to scream, to fight back. But all that came out was a hollow laugh. It bubbled up from deep inside me, uncontrollable, hysterical.
The laughter echoed off the walls, mixing with the whispers, the chants, the endless torment.
Nyssa smiled a cruel, victorious smile. "You've finally embraced it, haven't you? The madness. The chaos. This is what you deserve."
I could barely understand her words anymore. Everything was a blur, a haze of disjointed thoughts and images. The faces of the witches I had failed appeared before me,
but their features melted into grotesque, nightmarish shapes. They screamed at me, blamed me, cursed my name. Their hands reached out from the darkness,
clawing at my skin, dragging me down into the abyss.
My laughter turned to sobs, and then back to laughter again. The madness was complete.
"You can't run from this, Elijah," Nyssa continued, her voice cold and steady. "You will live with this torment for the rest of your days.
You will live with the knowledge that you failed, that you are nothing. And no magic can save you from that."
I closed my eyes, trying to block out her voice, but it only grew louder. The witches surrounded me, chanting in unison, their magic digging deeper into my mind.
I felt my thoughts unraveling like thread being pulled from a frayed cloth. My memories—of my parents, of my life before all this—were slipping away,
replaced by the madness, by the nightmares they had created.
There was no Elijah anymore. Not really. The man who had once been driven by revenge, by the desire to destroy the Mad King, was gone.
I had become something else—a broken, shattered version of myself, lost in a sea of insanity.
I stared down at my hands, barely recognizing them. They shook uncontrollably, the muscles twitching beneath the skin.
I could feel the magic pulsing through my veins, but it was twisted now, dark and corrupted. The power that had once been my greatest weapon was now my curse.
In the distance, I heard Nyssa's voice fading into the darkness. "You will never escape this, Elijah.
Not until you are nothing but a shell of the man you once were."
I slumped against the stone wall, my body trembling, my mind fractured beyond repair. I was alone, trapped in the endless nightmare they had created for me.
And deep down, I knew that the worst part was yet to come.
Because even in the depths of madness, I could still remember—faintly—that there had once been a time when I had believed in something more.
When I had believed in hope.
Now, there was only chaos. There was only the madness.
And I had become its willing prisoner.
