Clank!
The spoon filled with porridge fell to the ground, but no one took notice. Who could? There was no one, and the lone soul from whose hands the spoon had fallen had turned into the breathing dead.
Jiya sat frozen at the dinner table, her porridge gone cold, the spoon gleaming near her feet with a splatter of porridge on her full-length pyjama pants.
The holographic television was showing a single news story: "The disappearance of the sole heir of Suryavanshis in the Rift. A story similar to the last heiress?" No one needed more explanation, especially not Jiya.
The reporter went on to call out the names of other hunters who were missing or had lost their lives at the scene, but Jiya heard nothing, just like she couldn't hear the spoon slipping from her hands, with its contents on the ground.
Silence. Deafening silence.
She couldn't hear the news anchor's voice anymore, nor could she think or understand anything. Her mind went blank.
Slowly, memories of just this morning came back to her, overlapping with the memories of a night years ago.'She had the chance again,' a chuckle or maybe a laugh of anger passed her lips, 'but God, she still couldn't stop it.'
This thought was like poison, a poison gnawing at her heart, squeezing her lungs. She couldn't breathe anymore, couldn't think straight.
Thousands of fragments... memories... or maybe nightmares gathered in her mind, scrambling her senses. Visions of Mayra when they met, the last night they spent together, vision of Luv holding her just a few hours ago, all colliding with visions, or nightmares rather, of the sky with thousands of fractures, a dark place where even walking on grass hurt like walking on glass shards, and a crackling voice that sounded neither like a human nor like a monster.
All those nightmares were pouring down on her, drowning her, pulling her into unknown territory.
Her breathing turned laboured as one hand reached out to clasp the clothes binding around her chest, tugging in fury as if tearing them apart would make it easier for her to breathe.
Her other hand reached her head, pulling her hair in a fruitless attempt to get clarity of mind. Because the most terrifying thing wasn't the unknown territory, but the pleasure that rose from deep inside her chest within this pain.
Something that itched in her heart, something that kept telling her to smash her heart to pieces.
Jiya couldn't take it anymore. She fell from her chair to the ground, curling into a ball instinctively. Her whole body was trembling and sweating.
It was painful, painful to the core. But she didn't cry. Even when her eyes turned hot and burning, she bit into her lip, making it bleed, but not a single tear fell from her eyes.
This agony went on for God knows how long before she got half her sanity back. Jiya opened her eyes, vision hazy, mind blank now.
The room which was well lit in sunlight had somehow turned dark.
The only thing in her view was the heirloom... that beautiful Hand-Bearing Lotus... It had fallen to the ground at some point, or maybe it was on the ground to begin with; she didn't remember. But she felt like she needed to hold it. Hold it in her arms and keep it near her heart.
She dragged her body toward it, burning and panting, pulling it into her hands, which had turned bloody at some point from clenching too hard and digging her nails into her palms. But as the blood touched the heirloom, it looked even more beautiful instead of turning dirty.
The blood didn't smear on the heirloom despite its rough metallic surface. The blood droplets pooled on its surface just like water droplets condense on the petals of a real lotus. Now it really looked like a living being. The hilt carved as a hand turned rosy like a living hand instead of its pale, deadly appearance earlier.
Jiya's mind was muddled, and she couldn't tell if the changes on the heirloom were real or an illusion. She dragged the heirloom toward her anyway.
However, while doing so, she ended up pulling it from the tip of the lotus bud. It was pulled toward her, but the hand holding it, the hilt, remained attached to the stem of the lotus. But now, instead of a lotus, it was cradling a blade in its palm, an inky black shard of metal. Jiya stopped in her tracks, as if all the agony had paused as well. Her eyes were rooted to that sharp, dark blade.
It was, without a doubt, a blade. No one could have guessed that the heirloom was actually a dagger. The dagger had never left its ornate sheath, looking all harmless and beautiful. For how many years had people tried to find why this 'showpiece' was an heirloom, but now here... in this empty apartment, the answer was clear, maybe even dangerous.
The blade looked like it had pierced the hand-like hilt. Maybe it was once covered in blood, but over the years, the blood had oxidized with the metal and turned a dull black colour with a matte surface.
It looked like it was beckoning Jiya, or maybe it was her suicidal instincts.
She tossed the lotus bud scabbard aside and touched the blade with her blood-stained fingers, barely touching the blade's edge.
The edge was so sharp that just a little pressured touch of the cold metal pierced her skin. Blood starting to flow from her index and middle fingers touching the blade's edge.
As the blood flowed out and came in contact with the blade, it started shining, its dull surface turning starry and polished, reflecting and refracting light as if made of obsidian instead of metal.
Jiya scrambled up, picking it up. It looked like blood was pooling at its base, where the blade met the hilt, or the hand-like hilt. Like the pierced hand was trying to cradle whatever little blood it could in its carpal tunnel.
The blade was dark, but somehow it now gleamed a gleeful red as its metal surface turned warm like white jade.
Maybe it was an illusion, maybe not. Jiya didn't mind either way.
She mindlessly held the hilt with both her bloody hands, pointing it towards herself.
As she looked at it her eyes were deep, dark, a glint in them, but at the same time blank, reflecting the dagger she held in her hands.
Maybe that glint was the reflection of the dagger in her eyes, maybe not.
Her lips were bloody, her face pale as if all her blood had been drained.
Slowly she raised her hands... The blood flowed down the blade, some her own... some not hers, a few drops dripping on the ground a few on her clothes. But Jiya didn't care.
She instinctively... or maybe was it an instinct? Whatever it was, she followed it and inclined the blade downward toward the center of her chest... toward her heart.
In one powerful sweep, she pulled it toward herself. No hesitation, no regret... no emotions... just silence.