[ x ] Bodies littered on the ground around them. They’re not dead, perhaps some of them were unconscious but there could be a few who were dead but Anastasia could craft up some lie if deemed necessary. A fire was burning nearby but that was thanks to the demoness - having the need to lit it up as she needed to dispose of such evidence that could compromise her in the future.
It was his voice that brought her back to the present, having calmed down from her little altercation with the opposing party. “No, child. It’s never your fault,” her ruby lips part as she whispered such words in hush tones, her arms snaked around the younger in a warm embrace whilst turning him away from such a horrid scene. “They’re the ones at fault and for that, they were punished.”
in winter’s frigid embrace, the nearby fire feels white-hot against his skin, threatening to sear through flesh and muscle until his blood boils. every part of him stirs restlessly, from the ridges of his bones to the crowded pockets of his lungs, and it all feels wrong. to bear in the chambers of his heart this overwhelming sense of life, to feel it in the tips of his fingers like crackling static in the midst of so many bodies losing their own signals to encroaching white noise--it doesn’t feel fair.
however long he stares at the scattered bodies, he can’t tell for sure with the ringing in his ear. it’s only anastasia’s touch that finally prompts him to look away, but the image of twisted limbs and blossoming bruises refuses to leave him. a life is a life, no matter what, and he has yet to count how many must be fading before him.
“are they dead?” he eventually asks after finding some semblance of coherence in his storming thoughts, and his fingers find the soft material of anastasia’s coat, desperate to hear another heart beat. “what’s going to happen to them?”
