Lucilfer (ChrolloxReader)

Chapter 44

"Don't let him fall in love with you, (Y/n)."

Something thick and sludgy held me strained in place on the fast-shifting ground, tilting and teetering and making me feel dizzy and disoriented. I could hardly stay on my feet, and yet I was unable to fall or trip and drown in whatever liquid was forcefully churning around my thighs and waist—I couldn't see it or make anything out. An infuriatingly substantial murkiness shrouded my vision, as if my eyes were wide open, but unable to see; as if I had forgotten how to see, or as if I were blind.

I could feel the weight of the blindness, shoving and pushing down on my shoulders with massive tenacity and a cunning, sly smirk, as if it somehow knew it would get its way. I fought with every limp effort I could muster, but nothing helped—it tempted me to give up, to stop fighting, to succumb to what I subconsciously, and perhaps irrationally, feared with every cell in my body. But I didn't understand why. The current was gentle, but the sludge was so heavy that it felt turbulent and wild and, worst of all, unknown.

That fear of the unknown, of vulnerability, was perhaps more crushing than the blindness, a lonesome burden keeping me from seeing correctly, from looking desperately for land, for security, for safety. I didn't want to give up, but the effort it took to keep standing was colossal, unimaginable, and mentally shattering.

I could give up. I could allow myself to drown. There was chance I wouldn't die—was the water, or whatever this was, trying to warn me of something? Perhaps it was striving to keep me from stepping onto what I'd previously understood to be safety, to be land, because it knew something deeper.

But I already knew every secret of the land. I still wished to return to it. Why wouldn't the sludge let me go? Why did it insist on blinding me and hiding from me what I already understood, and still pleaded to go back to?

"Why did you let him fall in love with you? You're all I have left, (Y/n)."

Where was that voice coming from? I felt as though I were moving in slow motion, like every strain against the insufferable current was useless. But maybe, eventually, I would give up—it was determined to make me give in, to keep me from what I needed, or what I thought I needed.

How was I supposed to feel safe in something so shifty? My head pounded from the tension in behind my eyelids as I worked against the covering darkness to catch just a glimpse of where I was, or what I would be doing there. There was a strange nagging feeling swimming about among the stream of fever thoughts in my mind—perhaps I was missing something, some important piece of information to find a label for this odd image, this curious, hazy dream. I knew I was dreaming, and yet I couldn't take back any control or dominance over the course of what was happening.

Where was the land? I wanted to feel solid ground beneath my feet again; I wanted to stop shaking and being thrown about and given loose promises, all the while being manipulated into sinking further. The sludge was at my torso now, sucking me down, making the impossibility of fighting back just that much greater.

"I'm the one who loves you, (Y/n). Don't let him fall in love with you. Don't let him love you. He's lying to you."

Who was lying to me? Was I being lied to? About what?

The sweet voice was soothing and utterly heartbroken. But what did it want from me? All I wished for was to return safely to solid ground, to earn a steadfast grip on reality again, to go back to what I knew would protect me. The voice was trying to keep me submerged in this relentless current which dragged and pulled and tugged at every weak muscle in my body.

I longed to speak back, to beg the voice to release me from this trapped, burdensome weight, to free me. But my voice was stolen, as well. I was entirely stifled. In my mind, I sent screams to the land, to my protection, to my reality, imploring it to understand that I couldn't move, that I was straining to come back, but it seemed to be retreating from me, accepting the fact that I'd already given in to the angry, raging liquid.