With a creak of the door, she felt that embrace reach for her, welcoming her back to a familiar place, one where she'd smiled once, wandered around in innocent joy, laughing when that same looming figure, face obscured and only smile visible, seemed to hold her in that same embrace one of unfamiliar, caring kindness that had no source – only the corpse of its victim lay among surreal shadows in a fog of slumbering haze. And she almost shivered despite the bright eyes above her and the warmth seeming to wrap tendrils of cruel thorns around her arms, dragging her forward unwillingly; into the light that burned her, leaving the face she knew as a pile of ash on the ground, and bones among soil. Closer. Further. Closer. Closer. Nearer. Before she swiftly slowed and began to glance behind tentatively. Almost like the corpse awakens as the moon rises, the crows wail out into the night, and the fires burn – he almost stood there. A shadow stitched onto the tapestry. Gold scattered around that phantom only to vanish when she glanced around. He would never reach her, yet always lurk mere breaths, moments behind. However, he couldn't be here. He was far below the rivers that lay below the golden noose; there was still that mark on her hand. Always lingering. Corpses can't scream. Corpses can't scream. If everyone laughed perhaps it drowned out the cries of the hysteric madman, almost joy – yet always twisted. The light didn't even allow for shadows to linger behind you, haunting every word you said. That was the one thing that was always the same, the darkness she dwelled among while so many couldn't see; because if everyone laughs, it drowns out the cries of hysteria in the shadows. And though there was no shadow looming behind the light, no figure behind her, the doorway almost reflected perfection. But what lay before her was the flame so far out of reach to the frail figure, stumbling along with no light, that it had seemed so close, edging nearer in the chasm of sorrow and paused time. And it seemed only just out of reach before, fingertips brushing its pure agony. The anguish almost made her stumble – because you couldn't reach back through every layer of stitched tapestry. Only fumble to unpick the stitches, hazily stumbling through time and scattered, sporadic moments.

But when there was no mirror, when the door began to segment and shatter the shadows spilling in from outside, the light seeming to coat it in those golden white feathers, almost pure and hopeful, joyous, a smile painted on with a graceless hand in black ink that never once gazed at the sorrow in the eyes of the child as they wept into the shadows while the light gave no warmth, only bittersweet masks. That wrathful smile drawn with black ink had teeth that glimmered, each and every one sinister and stained with scarlet dread; stained with the terror that the victim screamed in – stained in woe and guilt. And it closed with a single mocking laugh, filled with a trenchant disdain that only the apparitions of the perished could wield before them. And yet still that laugh was stale, as if sorrow hid behind the mask of a smile, of bright eyes. The shadows were still there, seething. She knew they were. Because this light was stale as the laugh that echoed, like a comfort so far in the past it almost seemed inches away from her reach; it was that brightness that flickered, dull, fragmented smiles cackling with disdain among the light so blinding it almost seemed dull. Somehow, just as faces are where the memories remain, items merely vessels for the souls to whisper when they can't scream. Corpses can't scream. Corpses belong beneath the soil. Unseen. Unheard. Just as the crow's caw signals woe, that dread lingered within her mind, crawling with questions that murmured into the darkness, never returned with an answer. This was supposed to be perfect – maybe even a home, with an embrace that held no growing thorns, no deadline stretching into the distance; And yet it was simply a web of every word ever regretted – one flinch of the wind as it breathed deeply in and out of great jaws, and it trembled. A single word and the vipers seemed to hiss in seething vitriol, sinister glows in their gazes. This light had thorns, all growing from her. Suppose she was the madman trembling in the corner, face pale and stepping back further and further as his hand raised, and his eyes were dry in terror as his voice cried out; but though he saw a witch, the fires of satanic joy dancing, it is never seen as what it was to that weary, ancient gaze. People only believe much too late, when every moment is spent dreading the flames that emerged and devoured all.

She stuck to the shadows, knowing that the vipers hid, almost not caring as they slithered down her back and across her shoulders, under the corset of her dress, worn for days with no rest despite lassitude dragging her down with thorns, breath quivering and strained as the water began to rise, light beaming through a little too late. Restlessness was the relentless curse of the crow's caw, she supposed, gazing around. The bright eyes were nowhere to be seen, almost hidden by that eerie mask, and the cruel anguish it hid among; and though they seemed only to crawl with shadows that seethed and boiled, claws and talons seemed to scratch at the flesh of the walls behind her mind, malady driving her to run – to tear away those webs of a smile closing and cry out and wail into the shadows. Because the lights blinded even the sane – those who stopped. To gaze at that single painting, a tapestry of brushstrokes seeming to glimmer. To writhe as the golden eyes of those vipers crawled toward it, writhing among her shadow, among the gloom that lurked in her gaze, a music box ticking by. A pulse. That trenchant moment of tentative hesitation. A pause. A whisper of time in every breath. Golden threads lay among the painting's perfect complexion, marks of... A smile. Such fleeting elation. Then the hands rose from the graves, faces shattered; memories almost erased by the seeds of woe that grew and destroyed desolate landscapes of thread.

The dead don't simply return, soil plucked away by crows and paintings etched with heartfelt, decaying grief. Because torment was better than purgatory of labyrinthine halls and dull, melancholy lights – turn a corner and it almost seemed to be an exact copy in her dreary malady of restlessness, stumbling on as the sorrow lurked behind, within every brushstroke. In every mournful cry of the widow as the corpse does not scream. Because corpses can't scream. Only whisper. Only whisper; in tones of that melancholy song, melody tainted with the tears of the lonesome rose; and when even the sorrow had vanished, there still seemed a darkness. It lurked in every step, an incessant, ever-flowing river of vitriol – always lingering in shades of gloom. In every path she took in cruel lassitude, there was that song of long passed dread, buried beneath the ground ready to be dug up by the crows. Their cries were full of agony, yet she could never help them. After the lights started to flicker, it was darker than the shadows, almost light – as if it were set in stone, painted on and etched. There seemed no exit, despite her wandering through the blinding mask for so long; every flame perished, all light would flicker, and sometimes the shadows were better – she clung to them with her life and her death, her sorrows following; somehow there were so many dances of the ritual flame that could seem to leave an imprint on your mind. And when the smoke reached out that melancholy arm, desperation incessant, every possibility followed it with embers tossed to the sky, as if it were a true light. A smile. A small flame of joy as she stumbled, her footsteps directionless; they too made that viper emerge once more. The winding silhouette of so many lights tossed up into the air only to perish and die with the grasp of smoke scarring their necks as they choked the light. At any moment another door would rear its grotesque, sinister complexion, as if emerging from a sea of ink. Black ink that the viper trails behind, leaving a hollow husk of narrow, melancholy intestines of corridors. At any moment a flower could appear through the fog of hope, penetrating the placid fog. And though it had thorns, it was the final one. Starting at the first flower placed.

Then as if the apparition of caring. Of people who remembered. Of the face that might once have been so joyous to see someone. It was as if the apparition had been cast before her. That door. She had finally found it – it was hers. It was someone she knew. And yet there was something uncanny about how perfect it was, and the rest of the world that surrounded her; it seemed so familiar. A viper's glare echoed from it – as if it had a stench of carcasses. With a murmur of dread in her mind, she felt the tendrils drag her closer. Closer. To that window; where the birds sang, and the paths was illuminated by moonlight alone; more peaceful than the sorrowful dance of decay and rot. Door closing, the room was... Hollow. Scars of such ancient agony ingrained in every whisper she heard; the carcass had every piece of flesh scraped away. And yet the walls remained. Throbbing, pulsing, dancing, thrumming heartbeats of ineffable memory. It was the complexion buried beneath the soil to rot, every memory contained in the scars – they never once halted their pulse of blood flowing. Still there. Lingering reminders. Carved into the gravestone that loomed over the sinister decay of innocence. The carvings of notes on the wall always remained a single scratch no matter what, like eroding words on a gravestone, covered in moss; the walls seemed to throb with that scarlet, raw flesh of a corpse left too long at sea – left to decay. To wander the realms of hopelessness and despair through the fog, finding nothing but tree stumps and autumnal husks. As if the corpse drifted, and the cruel reminders of false reflections always lingered in the entranced eye of the perishing, the window seemed to be simply a cut, the blood that poured out and trickled rivers of sinister words, acrimonious even to the most phlegmatic mind. It bled only images – just as the blood only ever reflected golden threads, never had a river that contained even one to choke the sorrowful nest of paths. And it reflected shadows. The window bled that single silhouette among the false light – it seemed stitched on, the gloom of grief not blending in despite so the reticent darkness seeming to flood out; and there was nothing to stop it. Bones could turn to ashes and dust. And yet it would spill out, blood onto a battlefield.

It was a scar on the sky – a great festering wound of clouds and stitched silhouettes, unpicked by crows yet always there, because corpses can't scream. Corpses can't scream. Corpses can't scream. They can only reach with long, tendrils, almost like branches into the fog; and yet it was simply a wound – one that festered and bled from the wall and even outside the familiar window – one that showed images rather than light. The room was dull and dreary compared to the blinding light of the halls. Perhaps it was the shadow behind the flame, the end of that life leading to a winding path of dread, knowing that the path leads nowhere; nowhere but the wounds still bleeding, scars that never faded despite the flowers having already themselves perished, the rose upon the grave. And the stars seemed to glimmer with phlegmatic mockery – stars are meant to flicker and grow inert, dull to ashes and ashes alone – and yet the sea didn't drown them. They reared their acrimonious tongues to devour the crows but let them pass by the swollen scars of crimson flesh among the sea. It was as if the sky decayed around that silhouette. She knew who he was without thinking, the golden eyes glinting from the horizon. Almost a reflection in their scarlet malice as if it was a candle flame. Burning. Leaping and yelling and wailing. Murmuring in fear. Then dancing in a false light of joy, a smile plastered. Then falling still. Tranquil. Before the paths all set themselves to the sky, winding and labyrinthine. The flesh of the sky almost began to grey, tainted purple then perishing.