Deep inside the black, I remembered a simple truth that this world is governed by.
That once upon a lie, those who claimed to love me stripped away from my mind.
Everything has a price.
When I was a child, my mother and I went shopping for the perfect birthday gift for father.
We searched for days, heading through floors and delving down into the depths of crimson to find something for the man who gave himself selflessly to this world.
Decadent treasures and cheap gaudy trinkets, all of which said nothing of how we truly felt about him. We’d almost given up when we stumbled upon a store that we’d never seen before
A humble antique shop that seemed to appear just as we needed it the most.
Everything inside had a story, every item had a purpose and I could spent hours…days inside just marveling at each and everyone but I was looking for the one who spoke to me directly.
And it was a simple pen that screamed in my ear.
Seemingly carved in the finest of woods with delicate metal molded throughout, a seemingly never ending supply of ink and the most important feature of all, a resonance between the cap and pen itself.
No matter where he would be, no matter what depths of Arcadia he would have to delve into, as long as each of us had a part, we never would be.
It was perfect but the shop keep would allow no money to change hands, nor payment to be taken. A gift he said for a young man who truly needed it.
But everything has a price. And the destruction of our family was his.
That day, our home was burnt down. My mother died saving me. And thou the cap stayed with me, the pen itself was stolen.
I remember in my delirium spending hours following that frequency. Believing I would find my dad if I could just bring them together. All I found was that same antique shop, now long abandoned and damn near rotting.
I never did find that pen but I think I’ve found the shop keep. Because you’re younger, a little less charismatic but I could never forget those eyes Lamplight.
And even if it was the ghost of your father who gifted that cursed quill, his sins are now yours by default. His debts have fallen to you.
And I have come to collect for everything you hold dear.
You don’t even have to waste time pursuing my wares, because I have the perfect instrument of your destruction.
A tool that can be anything you desire, a weapon, protection, salvation, destruction.
Even the simplest of flint to spark a fire and a hammer to break down what remains.
Your father ruined my world and now I erase yours as your illumination grows dim permanently.
Before paradise comes destruction as everything has a price dear Albert.
And the decimation of your evil lineage is mine.