Around her, the warped, eldritch branches writhed within the haunted fog as if performing some macabre dance. She sat hunched and wailing into her wicked hands, mouth agape emitting a screech that pierced my very soul.

I felt my hands begin to quiver uncontrollably, I looked to my knuckles, now ice white from the force I gripped the dagger with. I knew what had to be done, I really did, yet I so desperately did not want to do it. Slowly, I crept across the forsaken moss and desiccated leaves to her fractured tomb, the gentle crunches of the dead undergrowth drowned out by her despaired wailing. Wilted roses clung to the cracks of the tomb, the same as they clung so hopelessly to life.

Now kneeling behind her back, warped like the roots around her, I lifted the dagger upward till it was pointed at her wretched skull.

"I'm sorry, my love."