Page 160 of Empowering the Wolf's Heart

If the mage did not want the emptiness back, it had to flee. And it flew to one person. This person had a storm of black emptiness around them, their very essence hidden behind the forces not of this world. The stormy blackness was an inky abyss that crackled with spikes of electricity.

But I wasn’t looking for the emptiness. I was looking for the person beneath it.

The emptiness howled at me as I parted it, diving into the abyss of my grandmother’s soul as Ahhanhi ripped more emptiness away to free mages.

And there, in the very center, beneath years of toil and unmet needs and downright abuse… was a child in chains. A child burdened with weight much too large for her little shoulders to carry. Her head was bowed, unable to lift under the pressure of the chain about her neck.

The chain read ‘Hopelessness.’

The emptiness tugged at me with prying claws, ripping into my soul, but I dug and I pushed and I, at last, fell to my knees before the girl.

She lifted her head just a hair, and I saw bright blue eyes wracked with pain and guilt. Her face was smooth but pale, and blood dribbled from her mouth in a steady tap-tap-tap against the chains binding her feet.

“You are not to be here,” she said, her voice wispy but clear.

“I know. But I’ve come to set you free.”

She bowed her head again. “Freedom is in the eye of the beholder. I chose freedom in power, and it bound me. I chose freedom in love, and it nearly killed me. Freedom is not what it is supposed to be.”

“Then I haven’t come to free you. I’ve come to love you,” I whispered.

I saw the path she took to get to this place. I saw the things that forced her into the bondage of searching for power enough to control the world so it would be peaceful and beautiful for all. Somewhere along the way, she lost her way and made a few decisions which paved a pathway to darkness that made her give up herself in the hopes of never feeling pain again.

But here, at her core, she was bound by those things she thought would bring freedom.

I pulled dark fingers of emptiness from around my neck and leaned forward, wrapping my arms around this broken woman who was once an innocent girl. This woman who perpetuated thecycle, breaking others in a bid for power. On and on, until she was a slave to the very things she’d committed to fight.

In fighting monsters, she had become one.

I wrapped my arms around her, chains and all, and I gave her the love I’d given myself. Some things weren’t about what had broken you, but about what healed you. When I had chosen to be there for myself, to be kind to myself, and to work on myself, it had healed parts of me I didn’t know existed.

People will be people. People will dislike you, blame you, hurt you. But what you think of yourself hurts you the very most—or heals you. And every creature of the five worlds was blessed with a soul, endowed with Gifts from the Creator, and connected to Source by the sacrifice of the son.

They were beautifully imperfect and lovely creatures. Every single one of them. But sometimes in their brokenness, they made choices that led them down a path they never wanted and then felt too stuck to change.

But that was the thing. No one was ever too far gone. No one was ever beyond the ability to recover. No one was ever too broken to heal.

We were all a little—or a lot—broken.

And that was ok.

We never have to be stuck. There was ever a pathway free. And we were never too broken.Never.

The being I was holding reached up a hand and grasped my neck. “You can be loved,” I whispered.

“I do not deserve love. Not anymore. But I can do the one thing weneed.” The child morphed. She took on a visage of wrinkles and gray hair. The chains fell away. She rose with my spiritual throat in her hand. “I can take it. To make everything we did right. To make it worth it.”

“Grandmother—don’t,” I choked out, a tear trailing down my cheek as I felt her intent. She was too broken to hold my Gif?—

She smiled at me. It was a gentle thing, tempered by love. “I was ever proud of you, my girl. But you were too altruistic to be used as I needed.”

“Don’t,” I whispered, unable to voice anything further as her hand tightened around my throat.

She set her hand over my soul and pulled. She ripped something precious from me, a part of me I had never realized was even there. The pain wrenched a scream from my lips.

She dropped me and I fell to my knees, clutching my chest. I was trapped. With no Gift and no way out, my soul was at her mercy.

She watched as I slowly withered in her mind, the emptiness clawing and pawing and slicing. The wounds Torem Filius had healed were reopened, my soul bleeding as the darkness of my grandmother swarmed my innermost being. I screamed.

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