The walls are tight against my chest. I can no longer see the end of the tunnel.
I have my mind, for now at least. A previously occupied space, now as empty and vast as the black that consumes the tunnel. The ground once rich with life, now dead and cold.
There was a village here once. The folk were lively, the cloudless sky bright and inviting. Now not even stars break the dark.
I wasn't always alone, but I was the first. When shovel met ground, and planks of wood stacked to form my home. My ship landed at the coast as I fled from the war. None but me survived the landing.
I made this village to protect myself, and Her, from what came from the sea at night.
Tendrils slither from the depths, reaching out towards Her. As they inched ever closer, their bodies erupted into a thorny mass, hard and dense, and filled with heat, the ground around it bursting into flames at its touch.
Swords and steel were nothing to the beasts from the depths. All we could do is hide. One got me through the chest. I thought I failed Her.
Before long, other folk came to my village, all hoping to protect Her. Some old, some young, all lost, crawling up from the sea. They all wanted to escape.
Time aged, and so did the town, growing into a complex, madded ball of homes, markets, temples, stables, and courthouses. It was home, as lost as we all were. I loved our people, and our people loved me.
Time didn't last forever, though. The town broke down, as the sea swallowed up building after building, home after home. The beasts claimed more and more of us. The children were the first to die.
It wasn't the sea that would end us though. It was the dark that consumed the sea. It took the land, the sky, everything was lost in its tangled threads.
The walls are tight against my chest. The village, earth, sea, and sky are gone, and all that remains are the tangled thorns gripping my legs.
I'm losing my grip of Her; if She even remembers me. I won't be here much longer, and neither will She.
I'm going to miss being alive.