Erina De'Atella left her ring on the dresser on the day she was to kill a man. She stared at her reflection through a sea of burning tears, enraged at the mascara running down her face, sorrowful for the deed she must commit. She had no choice but to murder her own husband.

The thought struck her with radiating intensity. Kill her own husband. Kill the man she had loved so dearly for so long. Kill a man who was once so sweet, gentle, and just. Kill a man who was now nothing but a shell of what he once was.

The suffocating blanket of guilt hardened into an enveloping shield of resolve. This was no longer the man Erina married, she reminded herself. All that remained of him now was another victim of the Final Hysteria, nothing more than a psychotic king surrounded by a court of fools too afraid to take action.

It had all come down to her. The tears came to a halt, her vision cleared. She slipped a long slender knife into a slit in her dress and put on a placid expression that befit a woman of her station. She stalked out of her richly decorated antechamber as if on a casual evening stroll.

As she descended down a hallway so cluttered with wealth it resembled the feathers of a peacock, a booming cacophony of festivities seeped in from beyond the palace. She glanced out into the glittering lights of the capital, staring down at endless dots of movement. Each one symbolized a life with goals, achievements, and regrets. Each one a potential corpse if her mission ended in failure.

She realized with a chill that the moon was absent, and the city lights, blue and silver, became stars that littered an empty sky. She felt a tightening in her chest. There was once a time when she'd spend hours staring up into the night sky, a time when moonless nights were few and far between.

She forced herself to look away from the void. Her gaze settled once more upon the path ahead. A deep sigh escaped her lips, she took a step forward, feeling all her many thoughts, emotions, and fears dig deep into her shoulders, and continued moving ever forward.

Despite the festival remaining in full swing, a deafening silence creeped into every crevice of the hall, her heavy footfalls punctuating it with the song of something sinister.

She came to an abrupt halt. Without even realizing it, she had arrived at the royal study. The silence grew so loud that even the sound of her heartbeat resembled a booming of drums. She absentmindedly took a step back, her emerald green eyes dilating as she stared at heavily decorated hard oak doors before her. The very world around her seemed to come to a standstill. The door handles, once merely an arms length in reach, seemed a thousand leagues away.

Erina knew all too well the emotion that seized her heart. It was fear. There was once a time where standing before the end of a blade couldn't raise that feeling within her. Now, the man who was once her shining star in an empty sky had her yanked into the deep end.

"How long are you gonna stand out there, I can hear your blood rushing from in here!" A deep hoarse chuckle rumbled through the door. A twinge of insanity could be heard on its edges. It lasted a little too long. Sounded a little too forced. Erina's shaking stopped. Her heart slowed. Defiantly, she thrust her arms ahead, took a deep breath once more, then stepped forward, straight into the devils nest.

A humid miasma lingered in the air, filling her lungs with the unforgettable stench of death. She recoiled, and instinctively lifted a pale hand to a quivering mouth. The inside of the study was bleak and dismal. Where once windows the size of horses lay open on the other end, giving a full view of the capital. Curtains the color of midnight covered them letting nothing other than candlelight fill the room. Long iron tables that were usually covered in various devices and machines to tinker with were shoved roughly against the wall. The endless bookshelves that lined every corner were nearly half empty, ancient tomes that were covered in splatters of red lay scattered across the sparsely furnished floors. One remained in the center of the study. It seemed rusted and damaged despite its supposed new condition. It was surrounded with a crescent of dying candles. And upon it was laid a gore stained tarp draped on the shape of a small human body.

Before she could register what was going on, the distinct crunch of bone snapped her gaze to the figure before the body. He was stripped to the waist, his bare skin revealing the shape of an olive skinned man who was young, spry, and athletic. Too young in fact. His uncovered arms unveiled slit wrists that were trailed with a mosaic of blood along his forearms. His long, slender fingers were painted a fresh vibrant red. This was not the body of a man nearing fifty.

She heard the pang of snapping bone once more, and discovered it came from the jittery motion of his neck as he cocked his head in curiosity. His face was covered with a demonic mask of gold stained steel that seemed as though it were attached to his skin.

"W-what's under that tarp." He looked at her blankly, his expression hidden by the mask. Various chunks of rotting meat could be seen on the outer edges of where his mouth should be. "Who's under there Adonis!" She shrieked, any semblance of control slipping away at the sight before her.

The very contours of his skin began to rip and twist. As if defying the very laws of the universe, he appeared before her in a single, distorted, step. He was close enough that she could smell the putrid scent of decay upon his breath. Close enough that his once caring eyes, now bore down on her with a stare that could have belonged to either a wild beast or a god.

"Erina… I've done it at last." Erina thought she could hear an undertone of finality within the statement. "With this sacrifice… what happened to the twins will never happen again!" He followed, his mindless words turning into a wail of passion. She felt herself go numb, her ears began to ring. The death of her two eldest children. She had attempted to block that memory out years ago. She caught a glimpse of his eyes once more. Under the impenetrable cloud of frenzy and ferver, a sliver of pity rushed through. This above all, made her come to the realization of what was truly going on.

His closed lips came to a yellow edged grimace. He pulled the tarp off the body in a single swift motion. Under it, dim candlelight revealed the rotting corpse of their only daughter. The right side of her body was eaten bare, strings of meat hanging loose on the bone. The remainder was covered head to toe with signs of struggle, bruises and welts shone in a violent flush of indigo. The once vibrant look in her eyes was overcast with a sheen of betrayal. As if accusing Erina for not realizing sooner.

The scream that ripped from her throat sounded like the blare of a dying hope. Her knees cracked against the stone ground, sending a searing jolt of pain up her body. She didn't even register it. She couldn't register it. It was as if her mind had retreated into a shell of its own making, sending up iron doors and locking them twice.

Adonis continued, seemingly unperturbed, even satisfied. How could he have been satisfied? The last sliver of her mind that hadn't shut off thought.

"Don't you see, Erina!" He flared his arms outward, as though he were an actor about to bow after his performance. "With this, I have at last achieved what countless have sought for! The Elixir of Youth, the Will of the Shifters, the Price of the Endless, the Bane of Decay!" His madness reached a crescendo, his sanity sent hurdling straight off the edge and into true hysteria. "Immortality! I have achieved immortality!"

His arms abruptly dropped to hang by his sides, sending more droplets of blood to patter against the floor. He took deep, suffocating breaths, his lungs hoarse from strain. He bent down to grab her tightly by the shoulders, as if clinging on to her for dear life. She recoiled, her pure animalistic instincts screaming at her to run to no avail. He had her in a vice grip, Adonis wasn't clinging to her, he was holding her down.

"I want us to experience this together Erina, it doesn't have to be a lot, just take a small sliver of her flesh and I'll take care of the rest." He reasoned, his eyes beginning profusely. She stared into those eyes, not with the mind numbing fear that ruled her a moment earlier, but with emptiness. He faltered. Confusion clouding his deranged expression. Inside, from the very depths of her bones, boiling rage threatened to bubble to the surface.

She wrapped herself in a knot of trembling wrath, letting her bright golden hair cascade down her face as she gritted her chattering teeth. Adonis drew his face closer as though looking through her for any hint of anything beyond the emptiness. Erina let a furtive hand slip under her dress. Her hands, now cold, were gripped firmly on the hilt of the dagger.

The moment his eyes flickered down to the dress it was too late. The vivid red of his blood felt warm against her milky chalk skin. His jugular throbbing as she thrust her blade hilt deep into his throat, her knuckles white from strain. Racking sobs were the only pause to the heavy silence that now hung in the air.

Even as he leaned his body against hers, his body shaking in violent twitches of pain, the low muffled gurgle of his dying breaths resounded audibly against her ears. She steeled herself to give him one last look in the eyes. Steeled herself to discover if the hysteria would still remain in his final moments. And what if it isn't? He'll have died knowing that his blood is on your hands, knowing that his beloved did the same thing to him as she did to her eldest children. A little voice in her mind leered, challenging her to deny it.

"No…Please…I-it was…I had to!" She wailed, not even knowing if she was trying to justify it to herself, to her family, or to god. But something other than god came in answer. Blood on the floor. Blood on your hands. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood on the walls. Blood on our mind. Who'll bleed next? The voice chanted with glee, ignoring Erina's anguished shrieks. She screamed even louder, so loud it ripped her throat to shreds, so loud that even the voice was drowned out by her tears.

Before she knew it, it was gone. Forced to a quiet muttering in the corner of her mind. She released a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Forcing herself to be calm, she raised her head to face a pair of eyes as hollow as an empty casket. Lifeless? No, not lifeless like a corpse. It was like staring into an empty vessel. An empty vessel that began to crumble before her eyes.

Even as Erina held onto the warm flesh of a living body, she felt him begin to molder into a piling heap of ash. Not even leaving any bones behind. An involuntary intake of breath sent her choking on the remains of her own husband. She staggered back, and immediately heaved up a mound of bile. A groan escaped her raw throat but stopped short at the disgusted sound that resounded throughout the room.

Trembling, she whipped her head backwards. Before her, a fully living Adonis loomed, scarlet tears running down his face. Erina felt the exact moment where the hope that made her human perished from within. So when the true oblivion of death had grasped her by the throat, she welcomed it like a friend long forgotten.