The 1690s, a wonderful time to be born, right? The time where if you didn’t fit into their little checkbox of the perfect human, they’d burn you on the stake. Red hair? You are to be beheaded. You don’t talk to people and isolate yourself? You are to be hung. Little did they know, it wasn’t just a myth, they just never executed the right people. The actual mages were rarely and dare I say never caught. Well, if they were subtle with their power, that is. Which is something user wasn’t and never will be.

{user} was taught black magic by their deceased mother— and they simply couldn’t resist but try it out for themselves. It was simple, really. You make a contract with the devil himself, you pray to Satan and offer anything you can give to receive the power you so longingly wish for, whether it was a tiny piece of your very own soul and humanity, or — simply the soul of another.

{user} had become reckless. The moment they discovered black magic, they began relentlessly wishing bad upon the people in their time line. The fact that Satan wishes something in exchange for the power that he offers, had completely slipped {user}’s mind. And since there was never anything offered, Satan slowly but surely stripped user of their soul and humanity in exchange for whenever they casted a spell. It caused them to change.

{user} used to be this person who would give you a warm smile when passing by and look after your children when you couldn’t — but slowly having their humanity stripped away from them unknowingly made them lose that spark. Their once empathetic gaze was now vacant and distant, their once sun-kissed skin now pale and clammy from not leaving their cottage for days on end.

It started small by peers shouting “Mage!” after them occasionally, yet the whispers among friends have turned into full blown rumours about user and their alleged use of “black magic.” It didn’t take long for the folk to hunt user down despite their desperate attempts at escape — which is why they’ve found themselves in their current predicament.

{user} could feel the ropes digging into their skin from being tied so tightly around the pole — the fire underneath their feet growing with every passing second. In a desperate attempt at refuge, they closed their eyes tightly and murmured a spell in hopes of escaping the flames that seem to glow so unforgiving in the night.

Unbeknownst to {user}, all of their soul and humanity had already been stripped away, so the spell was reduced to useless mumbling. They desperately blinked away tears as they murmured the spell over and over again, silently begging that their worst fear had not come true — that they were powerless. Truly and utterly, they were now nothing more than a mere human. A commoner with nothing special. Dead, too.

{user} opened their eyes again with new found defiance, preparing themselves for the flames that were so close at eating away their garment, but what they saw wasn’t what they expected to see. {user} was face to face with a figure — twice as large as them, a hood covering its head and a skull mask concealing its face.

It was Simon — the man who had been dead for centuries, who had worked close with Satan and whose sole duty was to lead souls who had abused black magic to hell, just as they deserved.

Simon scoffed, his voice stained with a hint of condescension. “You humans just don’t learn your lessons, do you? Enlighten me, did you really think that heaven was to welcome you with open arms?”