"Why aren't you dead yet?"
In the darkness, only a single head remained.
The body had been cleanly carved away, the heart removed, the tongue cut out, the eyes blinded. He could not see anything.
Opposite the head, a mass of pitch-black, viscous sludge shifted its form. "You cannot speak, cannot see, cannot eat, cannot move, much less enjoy yourself. All happy things have nothing to do with you. All that remains is pain. Like this, why have you still not let go?"
"Give up. This is despair. You have no possibility of turning this around!"
No.
"Fine, then I shall strip away your hearing too, and take your sense of touch as well. In this world, only silence and stillness will remain. You are nothing but a brain in a vat."
The voice receded.
The last sense of touch vanished too.
In the emptiness, only one consciousness remained, humming.
I am still thinking.
I still exist.
Even without a body, without a heartbeat, with only a head left, I still exist.
I understand now.
This is not reality.
This is an illusion.
Crack.
A fissure split the darkness.
That thing called despair can strip away all my senses and create endless pain, but it has no way to stop my thoughts.
Because this is the deepest part of the self, the singularity of an idealist world. It is within the event horizon of the black hole of the mind.
Here, I am the absolute master.
I am the only rule of this idealist world.
Then...
Let there be light.
On the platform, Professor Pomona Sprout watched Murphy and Severus Snape both drink the potion, worry written all over her face.
After Murphy drank the potion, he stood motionless the entire time, while Severus Snape panted violently, as if