The darkness settles into my bones uncomfortably. Being a creature of death, I had belonged to the shadows for far too long. Never again will I kowtow myself to the dark, to the nothingness that follows. But despite myself, I am trembling before it.

All around, the lack of light pounds into my skull until I feel as if it will crack me open and fill the empty space between my bones, weave itself through my sinew. Reclaim me as a mother would her lost child. What is a return to the dark but a homecoming for a thing such as I? I cannot bare it.

I distantly feel myself begin to scream, the dark swallowing my panic whole. I cannot even hear myself, but I feel my throat go raw and a sting in my eyes. The shadows are cotton soaked in ink and it is filling my ears and soon enough my mouth will be stuffed as well. It is so thick, so heavy, I am choking on it. As the blanket of heavy dark claws down my throat, my fingernails drag bloody tracks down my throat, across my chest. Everywhere and everything is dark and empty and entirely too much. I am dying and my only comfort is at least no one is here to see it. Abysmal. Small and insignificant. My entire existence reaching an empty and lonely conclusion in the expanse of shadow.

As the dense darkness fills me, I feel my very soul release a gasping shudder. The absolute loneliness, the overwhelming despair snaking itself around my patchworked soul and squeezing. Squeezing until there is nothing left. Until I am empty. A vessel of darkness abundance.

I cannot carry it alone, so I will share it with the world.