Augustine Hughes was losing his mind.

Time had become a fickle and unstable thing; it drifted through his fingers like the remnants of a bad dream. There were moments of clarity—breaths of hope among the rot filling his lungs—but it was never enough to drag him back to reality. The darkness was too hungry. The poison too thick.

It was almost comical, the absurdity of it all. Losing his mind in the afterlife. He would have thought the worst of his troubles were behind him once he had died. Yet there he was, wandering the outskirts of purgatory, mind fragmented, whispering to the darkness like a madman.

He was mad, wasn’t he?

August laughed and the sound grated against his skin. He was fairly certain he was lying on the dirt floor, though it was impossible to tell. The only thing he was truly certain of was the agony. It filled every crevice of his soul. Every ligament and bone. Every atom of his being.

How long had he been like this?

The last thing he could remember was Wren’s voice dripping into his mind, warm and inviting, and then…fury. An anger he had never known possible. Everything blurred after that, twisting together until all semblance of reality had lost its meaning. And now all he knew was this torture…this suffering.

Old memories flickered through his vision like a sun-damaged film reel, vignettes of a life that was no longer his.

August watched as a group of strangers slowly lowered his mother’s body into the ground. Next to him, his sister sobbed. She gripped August’s wrist as though she might float away if she let go. As if he were the only thing tethering her to the earth. Behind them, their father remained silent. He had not wept for his wife, and August was certain he never would.

Why would he?

He was the one who’d killed her, after all.