Night Shadows 3: the Breaking Light

The murky day surrendered to the sharp shadows of night, all hope of serenity lost to the utter blackness of despair. A lifeless cloud of ominous oppression threatened the bleak world throughout the twilight of the day, delivering ill omens. In the foreboding, abysmal night, they had come. As the cloaked, hooded figures approached from the distance, terror and the silence of death in their wake, the warmth drained from my soul, leaving me pallid, chilled, and as dry as a corpse. I knew not what had been unleashed, only that it manifested before us, a vile parody of our figures, emerging from the swimming void of darkness.Frozen in indescribable anguish as their phantom procession advanced, we seven mortals observed in abject horror. Enshrouded in our cloaks, their feet obscured by dank shadows, they approached as terror paralyzed me like taloned hands clutching at my throat. The leading entity wore Kiera’s blood-colored, velvet cloak. Feelings of black doom and woe invaded me, bludgeoning my soul into a hasty retreat, draining my life’s blood, and leaving only helplessness bahis siteleri and desolation. The figure pointed at us, to me, its foul digit stabbing like an icy sword, as it pulled back the cloak’s hood. The stench of wretched rot filled my lungs, a fearful scream escaping me.Although I felt the vibrations of my terrified scream escaping my lungs, my voice was inaudible. The shroud of deathly silence permeated all. The only sounds I heard were the callous, wheezing, sinister laughs emanating from the other six cloaked figures. Sounding more like the desperate last gasps of a dying, maimed man, their cackles lacked the resonance of the voices of living things, soulless and empty. Simultaneously mesmerized and repelled by the demonic vision before me, my mind, though splintering into shards of insanity, commanded me to close my eyes, to wash the horrendous sight of fright from my mind. I could not.A brilliant flash of lightning, its color as pale as my skin, highlighted the horrific visage of the figure before me. It was my face, but more harshly beautiful than canlı bahis siteleri I, colder, more vile, sadistic. It was an evil, unsympathetic death mask, my inner darkness made dour flesh. Her hair billowed, waving in a ghostly, nonexistent breeze. Her lips were the color of dried blood, magnificent and harrowing. The mottled, grayish pallor of her skin was the sheen of death seen in monochrome; her eyes lacked the vibrancy of life, merely two burning embers of shrill, cold fire burning my soul with their gaze.As the other six aberrations lowered their hoods, revealing monstrous, beautiful parodies of the others’ faces, the leader, my hell-born twin, opened its gaping maw inhumanly wide. Flecks of dried, dead skin fell from its rotting jowls as its lips cracked open. Black, vile puss oozed from the wounds. Still horribly beautiful in its power, its mouth held no teeth, no jagged fangs. In its cavernous mouth of despair was only eternal blackness, with malevolent creatures of nightmare swimming in the eternal blackness, so dark as to dim the light of the life-saving canlı bahis fire.The other shadow creatures followed suit, pointing at my friends, their mouths revealing more twisted darkness, readying screams. Their communal wail didn’t bellow from their gaping voids of pestilence; instead, the wind howled in lamentation, great gusts of demonic misery assaulting my flesh. Feeling my pulse throbbing with fearful convulsions, I cried out once more, again silent, soundlessly screaming in uncontrollable terror.Then, they vanished, leaving me questioning if I was dreaming or hallucinating. My sanity tumbled into a fiery, blackened pit of tortured despair. Simply blinking out of existence, accompanied by silent tridents of lightning, there was only wavering, dark nothingness, as if I had dreamed them.“More wine?” Sylva asked me, her face a mixture of humor and concern.The dark entities were gone as if they were a nightmarish mirage. The others were conversing softly, with feigned joviality, all of them warding off the coldness of the quiet, still night in their cloaks. Timidly glancing to where the figures had stood, horrified that they’d still be there, I saw nothing but the night’s cruel shadows, and heard nothing but my friends. The night was still dead, save for our bleak oasis of fire.