Drip. Drip. Drip.

Through the haze of my sleeping mind came that incessant sound. At first, it didn't matter. It was just a sound—but soon that sound was demanding more and more of my attention. It trickled and flowed and just didn't stop.

Drip. Drip. DRIP.

I woke with a gasp that pulled me from the hard floor. The cold assailed my lungs and sent splinters of pain spiraling through my blood, but otherwise I felt whole. Alert, whole—and freezing.

It was dark, but somewhere in my vicinity there was a covered window letting in just enough effulgence to outline blurred, hulking shapes. My fingertips skated over the gritty floor, finding unfinished concrete and lines of metal. Touching the frigid metal burned my skin, so I carefully avoided the curved lines as I sat up.

I decided I couldn't be dead, not with that damn dripping noise. Even death wasn't that cruel.

Glazed eyes glittered in the dark, watching me.

Meeting those eyes raised the hair on my arms. A hand brushed my back and I started with a cry.

"Sara!"

I recognized that voice before I could lash out. It was my father.

"Papa?"

The hand reached for me again, and I followed its arm to my father. My shoulders slumped with relief as I hugged him, and the familiar scents of home washed over me. He always smelled a bit like the astringent soap my mother preferred to buy, but also something fresh and green, a scent like an earthy cologne that was wholly my dad.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" I released him and patted his arms, his chest, then his face. I noticed he recoiled when I brushed his cheek. "Where's Eleanor?"

My mother's cold, thin hand found mine and gripped it tight. "Sara."

Lights were turned on and, despite not being overly bright, we winced at the sudden illumination. Luc and Eleanor were huddled together, the former sporting a large, congealing cut on his cheek while the latter had a swollen bruise across her throat. It had been so long since I'd last seen them, and I hadn't thought we'd ever have a chance to meet again. I hated that this was how we were forced to see one another. I hated that they'd been drawn into this catastrophe.

Together, we sat upon a slab of stained concrete with whorls of metal welded into its surface. The whorls came together and were met by the edges of a large ring that was about ten feet in diameter. Runes as big as my hand and as small as my fingertips were set in the concrete as well, all positioned along those long rungs and twists of iron.

It looked like a construct—but my rushed education had taught me enough to know it wasn't a construct. The metal whorls were a template, not unlike the lines on a piece of paper, and that template was being used to align the runes into a script. My soul held no sway over runes or scripts but Cage had urged me to study their meanings.

I spotted marks meant for caging. For imprisoning. For binding.

That was all I saw before I heard footsteps.

Bare lightbulbs buzzed with paltry, wintery light, revealing a disorderly storage room stacked with half-rotted crates and barrels. Two vampires skulked in the available shadows and held their heads between their knees with dirty fingers scrabbling at their temples and ears. Against a wall of cinderblocks were a medical table and a rolling stool.

A bloated vampire lay eviscerated on the table's surface, his blood creating the awful dripping sound as it pooled on the concrete.

Across the room lay a set of wood stairs ascending to a higher level. Someone was descending, each step casual and precise. The vampires whimpered.

Between us and the bulk of the room was a wall of iron bars. 

The Sin of Wrath fully appeared from the story above and rounded the post at the stairs' foot. His crimson eyes landed first upon me, then slid away as if bored and found the terrified vampires. He finally looked at the one upon the table, the poor beast that had been strapped down and dissected like a science experiment. I was grateful for the cold. It kept the stench to a minimum.

Sethan paused to rummage in one of the open crates and removed a spotted, wrinkled sheet. He threw it over the dead vampire as if he was covering a piece of ugly furniture. Red seeped into the cloth, stark and dangerous against the white fabric.

"Apologies for the state of my lab," the Sin of Wrath said to my family and me, sweeping an arm outward to indicate the woebegone space. "It's been out of use for a number of years."

He passed one of the vampires, a young woman with bleached hair and facial piercings. She wept as blood oozed from her right eye.

"What are you doing to them?" Luc demanded as he watched the pitiful creature curl in upon herself. "Stop it!"

"I am only holding her mind," the Sin explained in a calm, low tone. "That, in and of itself, is completely painless. Her own struggling is the cause of her suffering, like a bird in a cage who can't stop ripping off her own plumage."

Sethan came to the bars and looked down upon us—upon me. The uncovered light heightened the depth of the shadows in his countenance and set his scarlet eyes ablaze.

"Why am I here? Why are they here?" I demanded as I shrugged Eleanor's hand from my arm. "You gave your word that you'd let them go."

"I said I'd release them if you do exactly as I say."

I swallowed and waited for him explain. He continued to lean upon the bars and said nothing, content to observe us like animals in a zoo—or like experiments he wasn't quite sure how to dissect.

"Sara, what is going on?" Luc angrily inquired, never taking his eyes off the Sin. "What does this monster want with us?"

"She's exchanged her life for yours," Sethan told him with the first sign of an inflection entering his voice. "If she does as I say."

"No," Luc said, grabbing me by the elbow. "No!"

"Why am I here?" I demanded again. I tried extracting myself from my father's grasp, but he refused to let go. "You said...you said you were going to hand me over to Envy—!"

Sethan smiled. There was flecks of dried blood on his face. I didn't want to know how he acquired those. "I lied."

Alarm swept through my veins—but I kept my expression still. Wrath was deliberately being calm, and though I wasn't sure why, I intuited that panicking wouldn't be wise. Pushing him would not be wise.

"Why?"

Sethan crouched and brought himself to my eye-level. Somehow that was even more unnerving than having to look up at the Sin.

Luc attempted to shield me, but I put myself between my parents and Sethan. My legs dragged on the floor and the metal burned my skin through the pants. "You said you wanted to save Darius, and Roman told me before that you sought a way to return me to Envy. Why am I here?!"

"Because I fully intend to save my brother, because I fully intend to do as Envy says. I will give you to Balthazar, and I will even release your parents—but first you will do as I say, and I will save Darius...by ending his life."

Drip. Drip. Drip. In the background, the blood dribbled from the wet sheet.

Adrenalin rushed in my ears as Sethan set his chin upon one of the cell's struts and sank his sharp teeth into his lower lip. Though outwardly his mien hadn't changed, the vampires flattened themselves on the floor and the chill was more cumbersome.

"You're out of your mind," I hissed as I laid my hand upon the ground to lever myself up—but I dropped when pain lanced through my palm and wrist.

There was nothing below my hand besides the metal. The rune I'd touched began to smoke.

"Being out of my mind doesn't mean I'm in the wrong. It doesn't mean I am unaware. I know of...events that will transpire. I know of nightmares that lurk in the peripheries and wait to devour this world. I know of the mercy I extend, Sara Gaspard, because we are all but a thought waiting to end."

His nails phased to talons and curled upon the struts.

"Summon him," he murmured, sneering silently as his bones creaked and his teeth narrowed to points. "Summon Darius."

The script hummed. My eyes flicked from rune to rune and read their meanings in my memory. Cage. Bind. Imprison. Wreck. Ruin.

Break. Sunder. Sever.

Sin.

I knew this script! I had seen its many layers implemented before, in Imor Advances, by a mage who had been able to summon the runes without placing them prior to their use. It had crushed almost every bone in Pride's body.

This...this was a trap, a trap for Darius. Wrath had commissioned—or coerced—a mage into creating this snare, and it was meant to hold Darius in place. Sethan wasn't going to hand me over to Balthier to help Darius survive. He was going to ensure Darius's doom. The runes burned when I touched them because I was his shadeborn.

An arm wound about my middle and tore me away from the bars. My dad all but threw me into Eleanor, who threaded her arms about my body like a straightjacket. She pressed me into her side so firmly I could hear her heartbeat racing. My mother, the most rigid and collected woman I knew, was afraid.

"I haven't a clue what this is about," Luc shouted at Sethan. "But you won't be handing my daughter over to anyone!"

Sethan exhaled—but he didn't lunge at the bars or try to assault my father. In fact, he seemed keen to remain on his side of the cell with his feet firmly planted beyond the metal rings.

He can't pass the script. It's meant to contain a Sin, so he can't pass into it without being trapped!

"Papa—," I choked past Eleanor's hold. "Papa, he can't enter the cell—!"

Sethan scoffed. "Why do you think I have them, mortal?" The Sin twitched to indicate the two mewling vampires. "Either you summon my brother, or one of your parents becomes a meal."

Prying myself from Eleanor, I looked at the runes—then at the vampires now staring at my parents with famished expressions and blood on their teeth.

Summoning Darius would pull him right into the script, and the script would lay him out like a sacrificial lamb for the Sin of Wrath.

I couldn't let Darius be hurt, and I couldn't let my parents be tormented. I didn't know what to do.

"If you touch them, I will do nothing!" I got to my feet in spite of Eleanor's hushed command for me to stay down. Sethan rose as well and centered his attention upon me. In disturbing synchronization, the vampires lifted their heads to mirror Sethan's movements. Like puppets on strings, they were utterly under his influence.

Sethan's eyes quivered in their sockets as he continued to chew upon his bottom lip. The skin was torn and bloody but healing between each nibble. "There's something quite...unsettling about you. There's a stillness that shouldn't be, a quality of the mind that confuses me." The Sin of Wrath growled. "Summon Darius."

The Tongue of the Realm was an enticing caress wanting to be acknowledged, but I refused the touch, and though its cajoling restraints sought purchase in my thoughts, I was able to slough them off with a level of difficulty. Sethan's voice was potent, but not as potent as Darius's or even Amoroth's.

When his order did nothing, I spat on the floor and said, "No."

He frowned as something close to regret eased through his features. "A pity."

One of the vampires surged for the cell's iron door. Startled, I backed toward Eleanor and Luc but was too slow. The pale, stooped man snatched a fistful of my shirt and tore me from the cell. I fought to grab the bars, to hang on, and Eleanor screamed at him to let go. Luc's hands spun in an arc and wild, unleashed energy rose to meet his command—when the female vampire darted into the dungeon and struck him in the middle.

In a blur of motion, Sethan had me in his grasp and the male vampire went to subdue my father. The Sin's fingers cinched shut upon my hand.

"You're not as clever as you think," he taunted as the muscles in his palm flexed and the veins in his wrist were emboldened. "You don't make the rules, mortal. I am not an effete creature to be outsmarted by you, and I fear you've managed to escape retribution for your actions and arrogance for far too long. There is danger here. I am dangerous. I hardly believe you have thumbed your nose at Balthazar for as long as you have without him slaughtering you and your entire family.

"You've averted disaster for the last time, Sara Gaspard. This is no longer a game." There was a finality to his words that sent shivers through the flesh. "You do not challenge a Sin. You simply do as one says."

Sethan squeezed. Bones broke. 

My scream was stopped short when Sethan twisted my arm and the delicate bones in my wrist popped. 

"Stop it!" Luc roared. "Stop it!" One of the fanged creatures struck him hard enough for Luc to groan.

Sethan raised his empty hand and drew a talon over my cheek. From his touch came an infusion of warmth. Igneous heat roiled in my flesh and spilled through the arm Sethan had injured. Bones mended with a sudden, searing respite.

I stared at the limb in disbelief, then—with dawning horror—looked upon the Sin of Wrath and saw my doom written in his eyes.

Peroth's warning breezed through my ears. Darius can take pain. He can steal it from your flesh, and return it at twice the magnitude. We've all learned over the years to never touch him without thought. His brother was capable of healing any injury, no matter how grievous. It's why Balthier spared him and decided to use Sethan as a tool. He's notoriously difficult to kill.

The bones in my hand and arm broke and healed again. That's his throwback. Sethan's Absolian throwback is healing—

"Summon him," Wrath snarled. "And it will stop!"

Was this what I deserved for hoping to hold my own against an Original Sin? For expecting him to keep his word? Minutes before, I would have said I'd suffer through anything to see my parents and Darius survive this—but could I survive this?

Was this what I deserved for not cleaving to Darius, for not sacrificing my parents and not sacrificing the Sin of Pride? Was this my punishment for trying to keep them all alive?

"He's your brother," I panted through tears. "You should support him! You should fight Balthier!" I laid the hand he didn't have in his clutches upon the Sin's thin chest. "Fight your own goddamn madness!"

"You understand nothing." Before I could complete the construct I'd been discreetly sketching below the hollow of his throat, just above his heart, Sethan grabbed the hand and broke the fingers. "How could you? You insignificant mortal. Such folly, shadeborn, to not expect this end."

I hit the ground when the Sin swept my feet out from under me and slammed his foot into my ribs. His kick rolled me onto my front as I gasped for air.

Blood slid between my clenched teeth and slipped over my lips. Drip. Drip. Drip. Every droplet seemed to resound within my pounding ears as it struck the concrete. All my injuries were gone already, but their echo remained like phantoms clinging to flesh and bones, ephemeral and yet so cruel.

I was trembling. I was trembling so hard I couldn't rise.

"To think he ever loved you," I grated. My voice had lost all strength and was so rough it could have been a stranger's. "To think he spent so many years trying to save you. To think he suffered in such agony for you. To think he cared so fucking much for you!"

His fingers were like barbed hooks coiling through the front collar of my shirt. Sethan lifted me upright and I wanted to strike him, to claw out his eyes with my bare, whole fingers—but my limbs were shaking too furiously to obey.

Sethan was panting now. His face was streaked with wetness that gleamed in the harsh industrial lighting—tears, I realized. Tears? I couldn't understand why. I knew so little about Sethan so I couldn't understand his behavior or the fervor inside blood-colored eyes. I hadn't asked enough about the Sin of Pride's brother, and now I would never know, because I was going to find a way for my parents to escape, and I would die in this cellar.

I wouldn't let Sethan take them from me. He wouldn't take my parents, or Darius.

I wouldn't give in to Wrath.

"Make this end," Sethan hissed as he lowered my face to his. Through the bloated lens of moisture forming over my eyes, his cold face looked almost like his brother's. "Call him here and let us have our end."

"No."

He shook me and his nails—those awful talons he couldn't control—sank into my skin. "I do all of this for my brother, because you don't understand. Because you cannot fathom what comes. You write your demise with your own blood. It won't be clean. You will summon him, or I will take your mind from you and you will have no choice!"

"There is always a choice." I winced as hot rivulets trailed down my chest and over the soft skin of my stomach. I could hear my mother's soft sobs and Luc's panicked words as he fended off the vampires. I prayed he could keep himself and Eleanor safe. I prayed he had the strength I lacked. "And I choose no."

It began again, the breaking and the surge of his unveiled power filtering through my bones. The warmth of it should have felt glorious. He had a glorious ability he could have wielded with benevolence—but he didn't. The Sin of Wrath turned that summery warmth of his gift into the scalding inferno of a curse, because every time the warmth overcame me, I knew naught but agony would follow.

When I was young, perhaps only six, I had been terrified of thunderstorms. My sister hadn't been, so when those infrequent storms had come rolling through San Barkett, she would lay with me in my twin bed and clasp my clammy hand close. She'd tell me to watch the sky through the open window, and together we'd see the lightning dance and I could brace myself for the thunder.

The pain was much like those childhood storms. Sudden bursts of light sung through my nerves and the thunder was the ache answering the light's passage before it, too, disappeared and was replaced by another dazzling, unbearable display.

A part of me wanted to give in. How could I not? I was a weak, foolish mortal girl and selfishness was ingrained into my very being. It was ingrained in every human's heart—but Darius had once told me to never hold myself to what I though human nature was.

"You are more than that. You are more than human."

My body was weak but my will was an iron tower and I clung to it. I clasped it to my heart, and even through the roaring thunder, I heard myself scream, "NO!"

In my head, I forced myself to look away from the lightning, to deafen myself to the thunder, and in that dark, unknowable pit of my mind, I found a shadow. That shadow peered back at me like a famished wolf with a vaguely human shape. Typically I would try to grab Darius' shade, to force it to conform to my control—but I didn't do that now.

Making no attempt to leash the sliver of darkness, I held out a hand, beckoning it nearer—and the shade came. I rushed forward, rushed through me, and it was as if every thought and every image and every moment of my life was condensed into a brief flicker of light. I knew the shade had just sifted through my mind, through my entire being, as I hurled my trust into its incorporeal hands.

Something splintered, and it wasn't my body. It was my mind. The shade altered my perception and stole all those sane bits and bobbles that told me I was going to die, that I should be terrified and screaming. It stole reason, knowledge, and sense.

Just as a person's mind could pervert the sensation of pain into pleasure, the shade had altered my perceptions. Oh, Sethan's torment still hurt, but the fear it elicited ceased to have meaning. Somewhere along the line, that message was being throttled, gripped in a fist of shadow so tight it threatened to break that line permanently.

The room was filled with laughter. The amusement careened around us in a heedless whirlwind.

King's breath, is that me laughing?

It was.

"What have you done?!" Sethan demanded as his ability rushed through me, trying to mend that splintered part of my mind that kept him from his ultimate goal. "No!"

I cared about only one thing as the darkness lapped nearer; I had thwarted Sethan's fatal plans. Whatever became of me, whatever awaited me at the end of this desolate road, I had spared Darius from Wrath this day.

My will and my choices remained my own. In the end, that's all we really have, our choices. Good or evil, moral or immoral, right or wrong—our choices and our reasons for making them were what defined us. As my Sin often reiterated, there was no such thing as good and evil. They were just illusionary constructs set up to help us mortals sleep at night. There was only being and unbeing, and what we'd do to protect or achieve those states of actualization.

I had made my choices. I had declared I would see Balthier answer for his atrocities and I had declared Darius would survive. My decisions had been made, and though the tidal wave that was Sethan battered the gates of my mind, I still stood. Weak, foolish, and misguided as I was, in that moment I felt like a titan.

Oblivion called and I ran to answer like it was an old friend knocking at my door. It caught me in cold, gray arms and I embraced the nothingness with loud, unending mirth. Together we walked hand in hand into the dark, and I let myself disappear into the waiting vision of terror's nihilistic kingdom.