Chapter 15 - Crushing loneliness

And never did he imagine that laughter would fade so fast. 
He sat up and noticed the absence. Their absence. 
He was alone. 

No traces were left of the camp outside of some embers where the fire was, slowly turning to ashes. 
They left. 

Lumen’s hopes shattered. He was important to them, right? 
Why would they leave? They needed him to enact the prophecy. 
And he was just starting to trust them. 
But not a single hint they ever came here. 

Alone. 

Yes. He was alone. Again. 
Alone outside. Alone, far from home. 

We know. 

The voices are still here. 
Everything will be fine. 
He only ever needed the voices. 

Fading… 

What?!
No! The voices would stay. 
They always stayed. 

Weak… 

Lumen felt his world turn on itself. They left him. And now the voices were turning to a whisper. 

…ang…us… 

Like a dam giving under the pressure, he was engulfed under a tidal wave of emotions. Anger. Sadness. Loneliness. Helplessness. Fright. Shock. Horror. 
Dread. 
Rising from the deepest part of himself, that dread quickly supplanted everything else, drowning the wave under its weight. 

Why? 
Why, why, why? 
I’m going to die. I won’t make it. 

He could feel a pressure building up in his chest. He couldn’t breathe. Only small huffs of air. The less air, the faster he was inhaling and exhaling. What was an unconscious reflex until now was becoming harder and harder to execute. His vision darkened. It was too fast to be from the lack of air. Soon, he couldn’t see. 

I’m going to die.

The pressure in his chest had reached a peak and was turning into a burning pain. His heart was racing, his lungs filling with air every other moment, but he was suffocating.
The pain radiated through his body. First, his arm. His left arm. A jolt of pain progressing through every part of his arm until it reached the tips of his fingers. He tried to hold himself, but he couldn’t move. Only the pain was coursing through his body. A pain he knew too well. Or rather… pains. His lungs filling with water. The heat. The thirst. The brazier burning. The pains radiating from every wound. Every place that was pierced, crushed, trampled, sliced, cut, gnawed, torn, punched, kicked, destroyed…

So, that’s how this one dies? Caught up by the accumulated pains of all the others. Crushed by the past mistakes. Betrayed. Alone. Not even the voices to keep him company in my last moments. 

Through the agony, the clarity that came with deliverance. 
A feeling deep inside. 
It was time to let go. 
Time to pass it on. 
A cursed heritage for the next one. And he would be one of them. He would join the chorus. 
He couldn’t hear them, but he could feel their pains. And the weight he was about to leave behind. 

I did my best. 
Sorry, it wasn’t enough. 
Good luck. 

The pain splitting his body into countless fragments was now so intense. Like a sun in his chest, a volcano in his gut, a blizzard in his limbs, a storm in his head. It wasn’t stopping. He was growing distant to the pain. But it was still raging. 

There’s no way this body can handle it all. Even if none of it is real, the consequences are. My vision is completely dark. My body is paralyzed. My heart will explode. My breathing stopped. 

He let go.