The Dove

Apocolypse

I remember...my father, my mother. The fire that killed him, the grief that killed her. I remember the orphanage, the abusive foster mother. I remember resurrecting my own parents. We lived happily. I remember the meister, who came to Brooklynn to kill me. I remember my days in the crypt. I remember meeting Maka, the meisters, the weapons, Kid. Where's Kid? Where am I? I open my eyes to see a man standing over a table in the corner of the room, my hands were restrained to the arms of the wooden chair that I sat upon, my legs restrained to the feet of the chair, and my head to the tall peak of the back of the chair.

The man turned to me, then back to whatever he was working on. I couldn't see his face, the only thing lighting the room was a single candle on the table in front of him. Whatever he was doing, he had finished. He gently lifted a ritual knife from the table and walked quietly over to me with the candle for light. I recognized his face in the dim light, my father.

"finally awake, are we?" he didn't look like himself, the father I knew was always happy, always smiling. Here, he looked tired, almost angry.

"What are you-...where am I? What's going on?" I could barely breathe, it hurt to speak, what is he doing?

without another word, he set the candle on a small table next to my seat, and with his free hand, turned my right wrist over and brought the knife to the candle flame to make the cut cleaner. I couldn't do anything, every time I moved I felt like I was going to burn from the inside out. he slowly brought the blade to my wrist I could feel the heat searing my skin, I pressed my eyes shut, I cried out in pain as blood dripped from my arm to the floor, I was vaguely aware of voices outside the room and the door being broken down as everything faded to black.

---

I could barely open my eyes in the new bright light, I covered my face with the covers of the bed, then, out of curiosity, peeked out to see where I was. I looked around cautiously to find myself in the nurse's office, I examined my wrists, one was bandaged, the other was bruised all around, what happened again? I sat up a little too quickly and hissed in pain at the new headache, I laid back down carefully and waited for it to pass, as I didn't want to go running around the DWMA with a headache. Lest we see the day I end up picking a fight with someone else because they spoke too loudly in my presence. That would be a BlackStar move.

When the headache finally passed I sat up, slowly this time, and stood carefully to look myself over in the mirror before I went out to face the world. what I saw staring back at me...wasn't quite right, however. I stood there in awe, my eyes were dark, my skin was far paler than my normal fair skin tone. I raised a hand to touch my lips, which seemed to be cracked and as pale as the rest of me, black markings covered the sides of my face, snaking along my cheekbones to made treebranch like designs, I looked down at my bandaged wrist, and carefully unwrapped the carefully placed medical fabric, only to find the same markings surrounding a deep cut in my arm. I nearly fell back onto the bed, staring in awe at the shadowy tendrils. I rewrapped my arm and stood shakily, staggering toward the door. I grabbed onto the handle only to hear a click from the other side, I stepped back as the door opened near silently. Kid stepped in, I was behind the door, mostly out of sight, his eyes widened when he saw that I wasn't in bed, I stepped out from behind the door quietly as he glanced around the rest of the room, when his eyes fell on me, he looked both relieved that I was still there and shocked at the markings on my face and neck. He pulled me into a hug and muttered quietly, "you should be resting, Seikatsu." He stepped back a bit and tried to lead me back to the bed.

"What h-happened?" I asked quietly, my throat was dry, I needed water. Kid sat me back down on the bed and handed me a glass of water from the table next to the bed, sitting next to me and sighing.

"we haven't figured out how, but your father somehow defied the grave, he cursed you, Seikatsu, you won't be able to use your magic properly until we figure out how to break the curse." He was staring at the floor, deep in thought. Why would my father curse me? How did he resurrect himself? someone had to have performed the ritual, but...who? If I couldn't get my powers in check and stop him in whatever he was trying to do, the apocolypse was almost sure to follow this incident. Kid and I just sat in silence, it's not like there was anything to talk about, we didn't even know what was going to happen, until we did, there was nothing we could do except wait.