Chapter 256-3

I didn't want him to know that I was clinging to the edge now, hanging on even though the pain was crippling me, clouding my head and darkening my vision. I didn't want to tell him that I could feel time slipping through my fingers like sand and yet, almost as if he sensed this unspoken thing that haunted us, he picked up the pace, moving quickly through the ballroom and into the Gallery. With my strength depleting by the second, I had to conserve what little energy I had left and couldn't risk trying to light the path ahead so we continued through the oppressive gloom of Lucifer's prison, until we reached the glowing embers of what had been Garrick's painting and what was now Asbeel's eternal cell. The canvas was like a molten mess of black scar tissue and I could see nothing of the scene that it had shown before. The asylum was gone, as was Asbeel but I knew he was still in there somewhere, locked deep within some lonely realm where he had only his own screams for company. "This was