The Haunted: Revelations (Sequel to Rebellion)

Act I: Chapter 1

"You could afford a really nice house, in the center of the empire!"
-Drake, The Haunted episode 1: Reunion

***

Drake's point of view-

I have been to h**l and back, perhaps not physically, as far as I am aware, but my mind has seen it's horrors. I have seen things that are enough to drive any human insane. Even as the years past, nothing could keep me from seeing those white orbs in the dark whenever I close my eyes. My mind continued to struggle in order to comprehend my new life free from that demons control.
My family, my friends, I love more than the world, yet at times it feels like it is too good to be true. I still see them, bloodied and battered to the point where they looked like walking corpses. In my nightmares and waking state, like hallucinations. It is nothing new, as I have had those phantom images in my head for as long as I can remember, but after being tortured until my sanity was strangled, they have gotten worse. The images, the nightmares, the voices. No lucid dreaming nor magic can ever fix those wounds.
Eight years since I was freed and became almost all powerful, and ten since I lost my mind. I should have healed by now, right? I should have moved on by this point of time. Everything is fine. Everything is fine!... So why do I still see those eyes in the dark? Why do I still hear his voice or see my friends die?! Why do I still feel so anxious yet numb simultaneously? Why can't I move on?!
I open my eyes, the fear and frustration and anger draining away from my system. I feel nothing. My vision is covered with a blanket of a pearly white haze, a color that I have grown to secretly despise, a ringing in my ears slowly developing into something more. Screams, crying, voices. His laughter.
Images flashed before my vision, panicked faces, bloody corpses, buildings going up in flames. All of different people and different places that I found to be familiar. Then everything began to calm down in a single setting.
A rhythmic drum beat cycled through my ears, the repetitive pounding getting louder and more frequent. I knew better than to believe that it was real. I knew better than to believe that it was my own heartbeat thumping in my head, since my own heart had not made that lively sound in years.

It's not real...

I couldn't care less. Lucid dreamer or not, I could not control it. Did I really desire to? I was intelligent enough to know real from fake, or at least I would like to believe that intelligence actually played a role in determining fact from mindful fiction. Where was Lalea to pull me out of this? I did not care at the time, my mind lost in the past.
My vision began to settle, allowing me to fully take in what I would rather not gaze upon at all. Blood smeared on the walls and bodies were scattered across the slim streets of the city. I took in the agonizingly familiar screaming and the crackling of burning embers rising from the blazing rooftops that hovered above me. Smoke rose from the buildings, orange flames spewing from the windows and doors from every building that the eye could see.
Dark smoke and ash clouded the sky that glowed in a bright amber hue against the black of night. I had seen this all before. Time and time again. I had nothing left to feel for it; the destruction, the death. I felt too numb to care about the people running and screaming, begging for mercy and saying that they were not ready to die, nor anyone else in this kingdom destined for d**nation. All of them are as good as dead anyway...

It's not real...

I looked to the lifeless eyes before me, my own fist wrapped around her neck as her life force coursed down my arm, absorbing into my own body. And d**m it...it felt good. I let her corpse fall, no concern nor empathy whatsoever. Even as I looked down at my bloody hands and my blade dripping with liquid scarlet, I felt nothing. I knew that I should have felt something...but I had forgotten what it was like to care long ago.
In the back of my mind, perhaps I was just a bit shaken. How could you not when you watch someone die a gorey death? How could you not when it's your hands committing the slaughter? And yet, it was like I could not afford to feel a thing. This was just one out of many so why give a d**m? I have seen war, murdered so many and did not care. Mercenaries, bandits, soldiers, innocent civilians all alike...my own friends and family...I have murdered in cold blood. Why should I feel sympathy now?