Suddenly, I was screaming. My throat was scratchy and raw—perhaps I had been screaming the whole time. My connection to reality had become tenuous, my body too overwhelmed with warring sensations to separate the real from the imagined. Claim me. I am your birthright and your destiny. I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain, the heat, the weight, the voice. I was going to die from it. I wanted to die, if only to make it all stop. I lifted my hands to the gods as a great beam of light shot from my palms into the heavens. Take me, I whispered to the voice. I surrender.
