Tenant Eight

The merge will deliver you to salvation. Your sins will deliver you to slaughter.

Lily can barely hold herself up before the shimmer. Her once blonde hair hangs in strings around her face, the black blight spreading even there.

"Yes," she rasps as she looks upon the merge. Her voice is weak and somehow reminiscent of the black slime that eats away at her. "The merge is my answer."

The Luminary reads out the tenants behind her, putting on a show for the Great Sacrifice. Lily cannot look, can no longer do anything except yearn for the sacrifice. Her death will end the agony her body carries. This will end it all.

"As you live, you will be quietly devoured. It is your honor," The Luminary declares.

"This is my honor," Lily repeats with a whisper, her body barely able to hold itself upright.

Someone shouts her name behind her, but the blight is slowly clawing its way across her eyes. The world is slowly going dark. Soon, she will be nothing but a shell of rot, nothing but an end to it all.

"Lily! You don't have to do this! We can cure you!"

The words are far away, strangely so. Lily should recognize the voice screaming them. She does. She does. She does. She coughs into her hand and the shine of red-black blood shines against her pale palm.

"The merge will deliver me," Lily says before taking a stumbling step forward.

More words. More pomp and circumstance, but Lily doesn't care. It'll finally be over. The pain will stop.

"This is the decision," she says with the crowd. "This is the end."

Someone screams, their shrill voice making Lily turn. Her voice is mottled by the rot, morphed into something horrific, but her eyes are unchanged. Despite the growing darkness in them, they're as clear as the day she was born. There's acceptance there in those eyes. She's haunted by it.

She moves her lips, but no sound comes out, her vocal cords stolen by the blight.

May you be free in every lifetime. Her lips form the words even when her voice cannot. Then she takes a step backward as the black claws across her eyes and steals her vision entirely.

She tips back, spins, and pain blooms in her chest, but it's nothing compared to the pain of the blight in her chest. She slams around, rips to pieces, stitches back together, and then she slams into something hard and unyielding. This time, the pain is enough to make her cry out. She can't move, doesn't try to. Let this be where she dies. Let this be the end.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" a voice coos.