I open my awareness -- but all I find is a darkness all around me. It's engulfing, entrapping... and everywhere. But did I really expect it to be any different? I did this to myself, after all.
It's so easy to blame it on Fiora -- but I know, after being trapped in this bleak darkness for so long with nothing but my thoughts, after thinking all this time, that Fiora isn't completely to blame. In part, I did a lot of this to myself.
I became too hopeful -- I believed that Kenji would come to save my soul so much that I would've done anything to have that. So I told myself when the mysterious vampire Drahn came to my doorstep claiming to be the Kenji who loved me that everything would be all right -- he'd come to break the curse on me, the wheel that keeps pulling me back to be killed time and time again by love.
But Kenji wouldn't have just abandoned me. I wouldn't have just been left with no explanation by my kindred soul. And now I start to wonder if Drahn even existed at all, or was merely my own self-created delusion, my frantic mind gripping for that last hope of happiness in my existance. But it really doesn't matter. All that really matters is that he left me, and I was naive enough to be shocked and crushed by it.
That is why Fiora found me, or so she says. Because I was in a pain and lonliness that she had once suffered, when she had been left by the one she loved. Of course I didn't think anything of when she said she'd "set me free" -- I've dealt with plenty a crazy spirit before, and it just sounded like basic spirit crazy-talk to me. But when it did happen, when she did take my spirit away and lock me here in this barren place, I wasn't too surprised -- and I didn't fight her. I was actually somewhat relieved to be away from it all.
But this... death is not like this, so cold and utterly lonely. I'm no more "free" now than I ever was. Because locked up like this, I can never reincarnate, never have a second chance. Because I guess, even now, I'm still holding that last bit of hope that my Kenji is still waiting for me, and my life could be good and happy.
I'm not sure how long I can hold onto that thought trapped in eternal darkness, though. Because I feel that soon, nothing but this darkness will be left of me...