The obsidian typewriter clacks, its crimson keys moving of their own accord, each stroke a relentless pulse that drills into my skull. It’s like the machine is alive, feeding on the words that spill from me, drawing out the last remnants of my soul. Whoever dredged it up from the abyss knew it belonged here—like it’s been waiting for this moment, for my story. To drain me dry and leave me cold, empty, husked.


    At the other end of the silver table, a woman sits cross-legged, a smug smile curling her lips as she leafs through a file—my file. I can tell she’s not quite human, my keen detective instincts pick up on the subtle signs right away. The way her eyes linger on me, as if she’s weighing whether to flay me slowly just to savor the screams or continue with the interview—the way her canines are just a bit too long, her smile stretched too wide, as if she’s already envisioning my entrails as her next accessory. Oh, and the horns sprouting from her head—yeah, those are a dead giveaway.


    I test the ropes again, feeling them bite into my skin, reopening the barely healed wounds on my wrists. In the corner, a shadow smokes a cigar.


    They’ve been at it for hours, peeling back the layers of my mind, savoring every strip they tear away. I can see the twisted delight in their eyes, crafting a report that will be their golden ticket to some better hell. I’m just another rung on their ladder, another stone ground to dust beneath their polished boots.


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    “So,” the woman says, her voice cool and clinical, like a scalpel slicing through flesh, “why don’t you start from the beginning?”


    Her words coil around my thoughts, yanking me back through time like a dog on a leash. My vision smears, the present bleeding into the past.


    I’m not here anymore. I’m somewhere else.


    The Tearing? I wonder. Is that where you want to go?


    The world around me cracks, shatters, and I’m there, standing at the edge of the abyss as the earth crumbles beneath my feet. The sky above splits open, a jagged wound in the fabric of reality, spilling chaos into the world below. The ground groans, buckling under the weight of its own destruction. Everything is caving in, collapsing, and I can’t stop it. I’m just a passenger, along for the ride.


    But that’s not where she wants me. Not yet.


    “Earlier,” she hisses, sharp as broken glass. “Take me back to the night you first died.”


    And suddenly, I’m yanked back again, the tearing world fading like a bad dream. The shadows close in around me, cold and familiar, pulling me deeper into the darkness, into the memory I’ve tried so hard to forget.


    The typewriter clacks in the distance, syncing with the pounding of my heart, each keystroke a hammer driving nails into my coffin. She wants every detail, every moment of pain, every bloody step that led me here.


    And she’ll get it. Every last drop.