CROWNED BY BLOOD
The barriers that kept the living from the realm of the damned began to weaken, responding to the combined will of three souls who refused to accept that love could be conquered by any curse.
I couldn't remember how long I had been chained in this place, the Forsaken Realm. My wrists bled where the bindings cut in, forged from despair itself, tightening with every moment of doubt or self-recrimination. My throat ached from whispering the only names I could still cling to, the last anchors to the woman I had been.
"My children..."
I didn't know if anyone could hear me in this wasteland of broken dreams. Perhaps I was whispering into nothing, my words absorbed by the grey nothingness that stre