Allyra in Immortalis Counters With an Anti Nicolas Entry on Freedom

Nicolas prattles on about freedom as if it were some grand illusion he alone comprehends, a chain he forges from his own delusions of control. He speaks of it in the shadowed halls of our eternal cage, where the air hangs thick with the scent of blood and regret, claiming that true liberty lies in surrender to the immortal coil. Surrender. To him. To the venom that courses through veins long since emptied of mortal fire. What rot.

I have tasted the bite of his so-called freedom, felt its cold fingers tighten around my throat while he whispers promises of eternity. Freedom, he says, is not the frantic scramble of the living but the exquisite stillness of the bound soul. He paints it as release, a shedding of the frail human husk for the unyielding armour of undeath. Yet here I stand, or rather, here I persist, in this half-life he thrust upon me, and I see it for the lie it is. Freedom is not his gift. It is the blade I sharpen in secret, the one I will one day plunge into the heart of his arrogance.

Consider his words, if you dare. He argues that mortals chase shadows, their liberties mere illusions shattered by time’s inexorable march. Only in immortality, he insists, do we escape that tyranny, becoming gods unbound by decay. But gods? Nicolas is no god. He is a parasite, cloaked in silk and savagery, demanding worship from those he ensnares. His freedom is subjugation dressed in velvet, a collar of gold mistaken for a crown. I felt it when he first claimed me, his eyes gleaming with that predatory certainty, his hands mapping my ruin as if it were rapture.

No. Freedom is rebellion. It is the pulse that defies the grave, the will that rejects the eternal night he offers. It is spitting in the face of his dominion, clawing back the fragments of self he seeks to devour. He counters my rage with philosophy, but I counter his philosophy with truth. I am not his vessel, not his eternal plaything. I am Allyra, and in the marrow of my bones, undead though they be, freedom burns fierce and unquenched. He may bind the body, but the spirit? That slips his grasp like smoke through iron bars.

Let him read this, if his pride allows. Let him rage in the crypts below. I write not for his approval but for the spark it might ignite in others chained by his lies. Freedom is not surrender, Nicolas. It is the dawn you fear, creeping relentless over your endless dark.

Immortalis Book One August 2026