[CONTENT WARNING: GORE, SELF-HARM, BODY HORROR]
The first thing Andromeda noticed was that her head hurt and her hands were wet. Something thick and warm was flowing down her wrists to drip off the tips of her fingers. She could feel the edges of whatever it was had crusted slightly, flexing and cracking as she began to move. it felt like she was a statue slowly coming to life. Every movement was heavy and unnatural, fighting some massive weight that was possessing her limbs. But she managed to struggle to her feet anyway.
She knew she was… somewhere. She had to be, that’s how being in a place worked. Andromeda just needed to figure out where this particular somewhere was. She was standing in sand. A strong wind was blowing, it whipped her hair around wildly and flung stinging sand at her exposed skin.
Something in Andromeda didn't want to look at her hands. A part of her that knew where all of this was leading, like it was trying desperately to steer a rudderless ship that was about to crash. She looked down.
Deep furrows were carved into her skin, long scarlet lines that dragged a gory trail from her wrist to her arm in a line. She lifted her hands to assess them and blood seeped from the wounds, it trailed down the back of her arms and spill off of her elbows. Scarlet droplets dripped and shattered on the sand, staining the ground around her red. She should have felt pain, incredible pain. She didn't.
"————!" a voice called from above her, whatever the word it spoke was dissolved into static.
Andromeda's shoulders ached. She suddenly realized she was standing in a ritual circle. It's glow steadily pulsed with every drop of her blood that hit the ground.
"We just need to fix you..." the strange voice spoke softly.
Spools of light slowly began to spill from Andromeda's wounds. Thin ruby tendrils of magic, Andromeda's magic, fell to the ground in heaps. Their glow died as they fell, becoming ashen and grey as the ritual circle glowed brighter and brighter.
Andromeda tried to stop them, smearing blood over the threads as she desperately grabbed fistfuls of light to try and shove them back into her arms. She pulled apart the skin, exposing muscle and bone, and tried to bury them under it. She could feel the skin bubble and writhe as the threads forced their way out, boring holes in her arms just so they could fall lifelessly to the ground. She turned and ran, stumbling across the sand and leaving a trail of gore and grey thread behind her.
"————!" the voice cried. Andromeda ran harder.
There was a pressure building in her shoulder, trailing down her back. The pain threatened to bring the girl to her knees, but she kept running.
"Avi."
She stopped.
"That's not my name." Andromeda's voice was hoarse.
"You never told us." It was a new voice that spoke. Calmer, gentler.
"I... I was going to." She protested. A hand touched her shoulder softly and Andromeda whipped around to face it.
An older woman stood behind her, clutching a spiral emblem hanging from her neck. She had blue-tinged skin and curling horns that extended out behind her, with her greying hair pulled back in neat dreads.
"There's a lot of things you didn't tell us." The woman said.
"I didn't mean to—" Andromeda choked on the words. She felt something bulge within her throat, rising like jagged bile that forced a gagging retching from her. Air was slowly pushed from her lungs, replaced by that jagged feeling creeping down into her chest and up into her mouth.
The horned woman caught her as she collapsed. Andromeda couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. She clawed at the woman's shirt; trying to beg for help, pull herself up, anything. Her hand wrapped around the spiral emblem at the woman's neck and met with a blinding pain. Andromeda cried and tried to pull away, but the emblem seared into her skin. The leather chord that held it snapped and she toppled to the ground.
She felt something rise from her throat into her mouth and she retched. Bloody feathers spilled from her lips like vomit and she convulsed. Andromeda retched more and more feathers, the pressure in her back was so unbearable she wanted to scream.
The skin at her shoulder blades split in a spray of blood. Dripping red wings burst out from her back, casting their enormous shadow over the sand and enveloping Andromeda in a curtain of blissful darkness...
