Therapy Bits

The damage was already done. The cataclysm had uncovered more than shattered stone and buried ruins—it had pulled back the veil on truths meant to remain hidden. When the great quake tore through the valley, mountains split open like cracked glass, and from their jagged hearts spilled not just molten fire, but relics of a civilization older than myth.

At first, people came to mourn. Villages were gone, rivers rerouted, entire forests collapsed into ash. But soon the grief was joined by awe. In the yawning chasms lay black pillars of an unknown metal, carved with glyphs that shifted under the eye as though alive. Beneath them sprawled the skeletons of colossal beings—creatures with ribcages like arches, skulls studded with horns, and finger bones long enough to bridge rivers.

The scholars called it revelation. The faithful called it blasphemy.

Elira, however, called it homecoming.

She had always felt like an intruder in her own world, an orphan with eyes too sharp, dreams too loud, and a voice that stirred unease in those who heard her sing. When she stood at the edge of the broken earth, the glyphs pulsed like the beat of her own heart. The wind seemed to whisper her name in a tongue no one else could understand.

“Stay away from that place,” warned Master Rolen, the elder charged with cataloguing the ruins. “It is not meant for the living.”

But Elira could not stay away. Night after night, she returned to the edge of the abyss, lantern in hand, until finally she climbed down into the fractured deep. The air grew warmer, fragrant with strange spices, though no plant grew there. As she traced a line of glyphs with trembling fingers, they glowed blue, spilling light across her face.

And then the ground breathed.

A cavern unfurled beneath her, walls shimmering with symbols, ceiling alive with constellations that mirrored no sky she had ever seen. In the center lay a sphere, black as obsidian, yet reflecting her image with terrifying clarity. When she touched it, the world convulsed. Memories poured into her mind—not hers, but belonging to those vast skeletal titans. She saw them walk among newborn stars, bending fire and stone to their will. She saw their downfall: not by war, but by their own grief, sealing themselves beneath the mountains to keep their sorrow from poisoning creation.

Elira collapsed, gasping, as the truth dawned. She was their echo, a remnant carried in bloodlines long forgotten.

Outside, the quake’s aftershocks shook the land again, but this time the glyphs rose from the ground, spiraling into the sky like banners of fire. Villagers screamed. Armies gathered. Priests declared the end.

Yet Elira stood at the cavern’s mouth, eyes blazing with borrowed memory, voice ringing with a resonance not of this age.

“The damage was already done,” she whispered, echoing the line of fate that had begun it all. “But from ruin, something greater will rise.”

And as the earth split further, she stepped into the light, no longer orphan, but heir to a forgotten world.

E.M.’s March 2022 Writing Prompts – Week 3 – The Ramblings of E.M. Kingston