There's a long silence there as she mulls it over. Wonders what the words might sound like in the ears of those she knows, those running from what would chain them and those who are striving towards something better occurring in the world. For a second, there's a bright and shining hope, a wish to gather all of them near, to say there's something to this. It doesn't solve their problems, but it offers them respite. Even if one day they have to return, take on those burdens - there's a rest, as deep and easy as the midnight sky. Even the parasites can't reach them. They won't lose themselves.

They won't lose themselves.

It is fog curling at her ankles, soaked in red, it is damp and sticky shadows painted in more blood, it is the choked back desire to rip off the head of the faceless woman, to give her a face with a dagger and see if she can scream without a mouth. It is rot set into the membrane of her skull, dripping through her veins like any drug. Kill your way out. Slaughter them until they release you, or you seize the key from their corpse's grasp. Snap their bones under your heel as you walk over the bodies. Build a portal from their nerves and sinew, and go back, because you are not done. You have already lost yourself. But to reclaim-

The thoughts are shoved away as one might heave off an enemy attack, to dissolve into their mist and shadows, to leave her be. On the outside, she's merely pulled back, looking somewhat sorrowful, but she forces herself to take a breath, to smile a little.

"Absent of any reason to be evil, why would you keep going? It wouldn't make sense."