That was the first vivid memory in my mind for a long time, before I remembered what came before. But for years, the earliest memory I could recall was that Eagle. That wretched, monstrous Eagle.
It haunted my dreams and nightmares. My days and my nights. My deaths and my lives, all perversed by that eagle — a beast as big as a storm, with eyes like burning coals and feathers as dark as the void.
The next thing I remember after that Eagle was...
GASP!
I woke up with my face buried in sand—dark sands, more foreboding than the starless night above. I sat up on my knees, each grain a reminder of my memories lost.
Rapid breaths filled my lungs, shaky and desperate, as I reached for the air suffocating the memories. The scorching sand bit at my mouth, turning into a grainy paste. I coughed it out, blood pouring forth like a broken dam, chunks of flesh mingling with the refuse of my existence.
My body revolted. I vomited, my hands clawing at the searing grains to steady myself. What came out was not food but pieces of me—pieces the Eagle had stolen with its predatory gaze. The sands turned crimson, a grotesque painting of my past laid bare beneath me.
The stench filled my senses; a mix of rotting flesh and despair, familiar yet foreign. My body rebelled against me until there was nothing left, just the sound of my sobs, raw and unfiltered, drowning in a pool of sorrow.
Tears mixed with the blood on my face, creating streaks that told tales of my torment. The ground was a canvas of my pain, my cries echoing across the endless dunes of darkness that enveloped me.
And then, amid that torment, an unsettling rumble began to unfurl through the silence. The desert trembled, vibrating below me, the sensation both foreign and expected. The sands around me shifted, caving inwards as if compelled by some unseen force.
A wall of onyx rose, encasing me in an impenetrable dome as the world outside receded. If I had looked up, I would have seen a single star flickering—a final flicker of hope swallowed by the black void. The pulsation grew louder, a heartbeat resonating in the depths of despair, echoing within the coliseum of sand.
As the walls reached toward the heavens, gravity seized me, pulling me downward, deeper into the maw of whatever ancient creature lurked below. I felt myself disintegrating, my essence consumed, swallowed whole by the earth's insatiable appetite.
In that moment, whispers of my past brushed against me like a lover's sigh, and I understood. I was never meant to escape the grasp of the Eagle or the darkness suffocating this land. I was a fragment of a world teetering on the edge of oblivion, fighting to reclaim its very soul.
The heart of the creature pounded, rhythmically drawing me closer to a void I once dreaded yet now felt oddly drawn to. Memories flashed — the glint of the Eagle's eyes, the piercing cry that shattered my peace, and finally, the warmth of starlight slipping from my grasp.
And then I was gone. Not in screams, but in silence. No remnants, no traces left of my struggle, only the ever-expanding void that encased me.
In that darkness, I finally understood. Stars were not simply lost; they made sacrifices. They burned bright, only to fade away, leaving behind echoes of their light. And so, too, would I become a flicker in the cosmic tapestry—a transient memory in the unending march of time, forever entwined with the wretched Eagle that had ignited my flame.
The sands settled, the heartbeat faded, and in the silence of that forsaken place, I became one with the eternal night.