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The entire diagram stuttered. Rhyzkahl screamed in fury and frustration as the rings of sigils fractured in a cascade of arcane sparks. Within three heartbeats all were dark, leaving only a lone amber sigil above us to cast any light. I hung, twitching, as the name, my name, reverberated in my essence. Kara.
“…here,” I breathed.
Rhyzkahl stood with hands clenched as he assessed the ruin of the diagram, clearly seeking what could be salvaged. With a flick of his hand he released the bindings holding me. I crumpled hard to the floor, barely feeling it amidst the other pain. I no longer heard the call, but it didn’t matter now. I knew who I was. I didn’t know much else, but I knew that.
My breath rasped as Rhyzkahl moved to me. He stood over me, looking down, right hand still locked onto the hilt of the knife. It no longer burned with the red fire. Now it gave off a mist, like dry ice.
Breath hissing through his teeth, he crouched and grabbed my left wrist, hauling my arm forward and sending another electric jolt of pain through the dislocated shoulder.
“…please,” I whimpered, “no…more.”
Rhyzkahl’s eyes lifted to mine, then lowered to the mark on my forearm. “I salvage that which can be salvaged,” he said, setting the hideous blade against my skin above the mark. I tried to jerk away, but his grip was too strong, and I was too weak.
“I take back that which I gave to you,” he said through clenched teeth as he sliced the skin of my arm. He began to excise the mark from me, breath coming heavily as the strands shuddered. “And we will begin anew.”
Of all the pain he’d dealt me, all the mind-fucking torments—my skin doused with acid, my organs shriveling and squeezing, my bones on fire—none could compare to the pure hell of this right now. The mark was more than an arcane brand or a mere symbol. Its strands hooked deeply into my essence, and as that horrible blade sliced through my flesh, it was as if all of those strands were ripped from me, tearing and stretching at the very core of my being. I screamed through a throat already raw, arching my back, near blind from the torment. A shudder went through Rhyzkahl, and a tiny part of me knew that the pain of the excision wracked him as well.
He dropped my arm and staggered upright, holding the strip of flesh in one hand and the blade in the other. I sucked in shallow gasps of breath as the echoes of the unholy pain continued to reverberate through me.
I jerked at a sudden harsh tug, though no one was touching me.
Kara
“…here,” I gasped.
Rhyzkahl gave a cry of primal rage. “Dahn. Dahn!” He dropped to his knees and dragged me up, holding my chest to his with his left arm as I sagged. “He will not have you!” He let out an animal scream. “You will not have her!” Breathing heavily, he brought the blade to my throat, looked down into my face.
I felt the blade part the first layers of skin. I met his eyes and forced my words through split and swollen lips. “I…am…Kara.” Even if I died now, at least I remained me.
The tug deepened, and I sucked in a ragged breath. Rhyzkahl continued to hold the blade at my throat, yet didn’t press it deeper, didn’t draw it across to make the slice that would end me.
His eyes stayed on mine as the pull increased.
“Kara!” My name burst from his lips in a harsh scream, reverberating through me as I dropped away from him and into the void.
Chapter 19
I felt smooth stone beneath me, cooler than the floor of Rhyzkahl’s summoning chamber. I lay sprawled on my right side and stomach, my arms twisted at impossible angles. Pain seared through my shoulders and the rest of me, but I could only twitch and whimper. Everything about me felt wrong, unclean, as if I’d been immersed in slime.
Shouted words penetrated the fog of pain, but I couldn’t understand them. The wrongness persisted, as did the shouted commands. I tried to see through swollen eyes. I thought I knew the two men in the room. I knew that neither were the Tormentor. I didn’t know much else.>He wrapped me again in the sheath of potency, taking some of the weight off my arms. My breath wheezed, and I twitched. I could barely think, but I knew I needed to be able to think, to remember myself. He’d told me I would forget, forget who I was, forget my name. I wanted desperately to lose myself; it was my only possible escape. But I also knew once I did, I would never come back.
“Kara…I’m Kara,” I managed to whisper.
He closed the distance between us, stroked the back of his fingers down the line of my jaw in a move that was more possessive than tender. “You will have a new name soon, and a new life.”
Licking dry lips, I fought to focus on him, barely able to believe that I’d endured such pain only seconds before. “I’m Kara…”
He placed his hand on the right side of my chest, just below the collarbone. “For now, yes.” My pain faded more with his touch. “And I will ever remember you as you were.”
I wheezed out a breath. “Fuck you…hate you.”
“That serves well for now.” He removed his hand, brought the blade to the base of my throat. “And so we begin anew.”
My tears fell as he began to slice. “Kara…I’m Kara.”
We went through the cycle again. And again. Carve the sigil, fire it with a new form of pain. Begin again.
I lost track of how many times we’d gone through this. Maybe it was only three…or seven…or thirty. Eventually I began to wonder if there was ever a time when I wasn’t here, wasn’t a canvas for sigils, wasn’t in agony. I tried to remind myself who I was.
