Time here didn’t seem to work like time before he died. It was slower and overlapped with things past and present like a scattering of leaves bunched up by wind, disorganised and close. Diath heard voices he had not heard since his youth; other street children, and the kindly woman who’d always given him leftover bread from her bakery. But when Diath tried to make out her face, he couldn’t. He didn’t remember what she’d looked like. But he recalled the three faces most important to him.

One would think he would look back fondly on Strix, Paultin, and Evelyn, but here, wherever here was, didn’t favour fond memories about them. All he could think of were the times he’d let them down, and there were so many of those. But the ones that cut the deepest all involved her. Every injury he was to blame for, every time his stupid plans went wrong and she got scared.

Nobody could break him the way that Strix could.

And the mists knew. They did not let him forget.

For the longest time he would hear her screaming in pain, crying out for him, and he could always see her, a hunched figure just ahead in the distance, but no matter how long he ran or how fast, she always remained far away. Always out of his reach as his heart broke ten times over to hear her calling for him. The final time he’d tried to get to her he’d stumbled and fell. There was no physical pain, even as he went crashing into the ground, but the ache in his chest ripped open and he’d curled onto his side, his own sobs mixing with Strix’s. He couldn’t remember how long he had lay there, his heart ripping to pieces inside of him, but eventually exhaustion overtook him and when he’d awoken, Strix was nowhere to be seen.

He wanted to die again. He wanted to die and for there to be nothing after, just all consuming nothingness would be a sweet relief. So he tried. If there was any small amount of reality to this hellish place, then he reasoned that there would surely be a way to make it all stop forever.

The mists saw an end to that line of thought. It threw Ironslag back at him.

He woke, though what time of day it was Diath wasn’t sure – did days even exist here? As the greyscale plane of despair settled in around him, he realised, to his horror, the face of a burned corpse lying down next to him. A moment of paralysis took hold of him before terror sent him clambering to his feet, scrambling backwards to get away from the sight of charred flesh and melted eyes. He couldn’t even scream, his voice was trapped in his throat, and something knocked into the heel of his boot as he stepped backwards and when he turned his stomach heaved.

The corpses of tens of dwarves were laid out neatly in rows, all of them burned, killed by the fire he’d started. The pungent scent of cooked flesh rattled him deeply until all he could remember were the screams, the flames that scorched his left arm and shoulder, leaving the skin a warped mess. He was hyperventilating, head spinning, and his lungs filled with smouldering air until he could taste it on his tongue.

And there she was in the middle of it all, stood between the corpses with the rawest expression of fear on her face. But she wasn’t scared of the bodies. No, he could see it in her eyes.

She was scared of him.

He reached out. She was so close. The closest she’d ever been to him in this place. But she jumped at his movement.

“Strix?” His voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper, and the look on her face was constricting his lungs.

“You’re a monster,” Her voice was venom and it ran Diath through like a blade, tearing through every fibre of his being and knocking him to his knees.

“It was an accident,” Diath gasped. He wanted to vomit, to scream until he tasted blood, he wanted to grab the guilt he’d carried for so long and tear it violently from himself like a second skin. But he couldn’t. Because hearing those words come from her mouth… It had to be true.

“You killed them all! You’re a monster, a monster!”

Tears welled up and burned down his cheeks, so profusely that he covered his face with his shaking hands. He was sobbing so hard now that he could taste bile at the back of his mouth and the muscles around his chest were working so hard that he thought they would cave his ribs in and crush his lungs. He fought for air, “I’m not- Please, I’m not. I’m sorry.”

But they were wasted words for she was already gone, dissipated in to swirling smog around him. He was alone with the rotting corpses, and the words rattling around in his head.

Monster. Monster.

“I’m a monster,” Diath Woodrow murmured softly to himself, his breath vaporising in the chill of the morning air. The sun was still rising and the dew on the grass was dampening his trousers but he didn’t care, his mind and gaze locked on the mist that stretched out into the forest before him. It snaked and coiled its way around the tree trunks, shifting fluidly.

Strix had said he had spent fifty years in that place, wandering formlessly through the mists of Barovia and it had been some months since he’d woken up in that grave with her looking over him. But it was all just words to Diath because he knew deep down that he never really had left that place, it followed him still. He could see it in the doubt of his friends’ faces, in the way his hands shook whenever a plan was left to him. He looked down at his gloved fingers and felt a surge of helplessness at the way they were shaking even now. He emptily blamed it on the cold though he knew they wouldn’t stop even after the sun had warmed the air.

His eyes turned back to the mists as they moved, creating shapes and restless forms. If Diath squinted hard enough he could see the faint outlines of the dwarves, watching him from afar. Always watching. Always reminding him.

“Hey, Diath, you should get some breakfast before-” Strix halted when she reached him, and when Diath looked up he could see her frowning, “Are you okay? You look pale.”

Diath gauged her for a second but he thought- no, he knew- he could see it; that little hint of doubt, that fear in her eyes he’d seen in the Barovian mists.

You’re a monster.

He curled his trembling fingers toward his palms to hide the jittering and put on a smile.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”