tfw you wanna post all that you have written but also no because you don't want to spoil everything.
compromises...................
Essek doesn’t realize he’s stopped breathing until his lungs spasm and burn with the need for air. Nor does he realize he’s reaching out physically and mentally for the Luxon Beacon that now sits on the table.
The moment his mind touches the beacon, he’s veiled in sinister darkness. The motes he expects to see are nonexistent here. It’s nothingness. A black, soulless abyss. There is a profound wrongness to this beacon; there is no possibility here, no potential for renewal. The feeling of being utterly and hopelessly alone is not something Essek has felt in many, many years, and it is not something he wants to experience ever again. When he tries to disconnect himself from it, Essek finds that he can’t. Instead, he feels the darkness clinging to him, holding him in that forsaken prison.
Essek feels as though he’s being drawn and quartered while simultaneously being crushed like a piece of parchment. The sensation echoes and intensifies, like a feedback loop. The screams of a trillion souls fill the liminal space, a cacophony so immense that it threatens to strip away Essek’s sanity and shake him apart until not even the smallest part of himself exists.
This is what he deserves, after all.
Essek betrayed his home, killed his father, and pushed his brother away. He is a disappointment to his mother and was unworthy of his position as Shadowhand. He started a war out of purely selfish reasons, murdering thousands to slake his thirst for knowledge. His friends abandoned him, and the love he once knew has withered and died…
Essek is suddenly bathed in light and thrown backward. He lands in a heap on the stone floor of Yussa’s laboratory and clutches his head, now enveloped in white-hot pain, and squeezes his eyes shut.
“You fool!” Yussa hisses as he roughly maneuvers Essek into a sitting position. His stomach flips dangerously.
“I don’t know what happened. I—” Essek tries to explain. His voice is hoarse and his throat hurts; it’s reminiscent of a screaming match he once had with Verin years ago. It takes a minute for Essek to regain himself and for the pain wracking his body to subside.
“It wasn’t you,” J’mon intervenes just as Essek feels like he won’t throw up the moment he opens his eyes. Their expression is undeniably fearful, “What you knew as a Luxon Beacon is no longer what it once was. It draws its victims in and rips their souls from their bodies. As you are already predisposed to using the artifacts, it was a simple thing to pull you in.”
Essek’s gaze breaks from J’mon and lands back on the table, where the beacon sits innocently on its surface. He feels the desperation now too as his heart thuds painfully in his chest. He is not a man of faith but the knowledge that beacons can be corrupted to such a disturbing level shakes him to his very core.
Essek desperately wishes, more than anything in the world, that his friends were still alive.
