The smell of burnt sugar is the first thing that hits you, a cloying, sweet rot that coats the back of your throat and refuses to let go, sitting there in the dark of the cellar where the air is thick enough to chew, and you are waiting, you are always waiting, for the door to open and for the weight of his expectation to crash down upon your shoulders like a wet wool blanket. You are a baker, or you were, before the city swallowed you whole and spat you out into this gray, stone-paved purgatory where the laws of physics are merely suggestions and the laws of the Guild are iron, and you stand there with your hands stained brown with flour and ash, looking at the loaf of bread that sits on the table before you, a loaf that is not quite bread, not quite stone, but something in between, something that pulses with a faint, rhythmic heat that feels uncomfortably like a heartbeat. You remember the day you married him, the way the light had fallen through the window of the chapel and caught the dust motes dancing in the air, and you remember thinking that you had found a solid thing, a foundation, a man who could hold up the sky with his hands if he had to, but now, years later, the sky has fallen and you are the one holding it up, and your arms are shaking, and the bread on the table is growing warmer, and you can feel the heat seeping into your fingertips, burning the skin, and you do not pull away because you know, with a certainty that is colder than the ice in the well, that this is the only way to save him, or perhaps the only way to destroy him, and you cannot tell which one you want, or perhaps you have stopped caring about the difference, because the line between love and obsession has worn away in the friction of daily life, leaving only a smooth, slippery surface that offers no purchase, no grip, no way to hold on without slipping.

The door creaks open, and the light from the street outside is a pale, sickly yellow, the light of a gas lamp that is about to burn out, and you see his silhouette against the door, tall and thin, a shadow that has lost its substance, and you know that he has come to check on you, to see if you have made the bread, to see if you have done your part in this endless, circular dance that has consumed your life, and you look at him, and you see the fear in his eyes, the way they are wide and wet and darting around the room as if looking for a way out, but there is no way out, there is only the bread, and the heat, and the smell of burnt sugar, and you realize, with a jolt that feels like a physical blow, that you have been wrong about him all along, that he is not the one holding you down, that you are the one holding yourself down, that you have built this prison with your own hands, brick by brick, crumb by crumb, and you are the warden and the prisoner and the key, and the realization hits you like a wave, cold and all-encompassing, and you look at the bread again, and you see that it is not bread at all, it is a mirror, a small, distorted mirror that reflects not his face, but yours, your own face, twisted in a grimace of rage and sorrow and love, and you understand, with a clarity that is terrifying in its simplicity, that the enemy you have been fighting is not him, it is you, it is the part of you that believes that suffering is the price of love, that pain is the only currency that has value, that if you do not burn, you are not alive, and you look at him, and you see the betrayal in your own eyes, the betrayal of your own soul, the way you have turned his love into a weapon, and you want to scream, you want to break the table, you want to throw the bread at his face, but you do not, because you are tired, you are so tired, and the heat from the bread is getting too much, it is searing your skin, it is melting the flesh, and you feel your hands starting to blur, the boundaries between you and the heat, between you and the table, between you and the bread, starting to dissolve, and you think, for the first time in years, that maybe, just maybe, you can let go, that you can stop holding the sky up, that you can let it fall, and when it falls, maybe you will fall with it, and maybe that is all right, maybe that is the only way to escape, to be unmade, to be scattered, to become part of the air, part of the light, part of the nothing that comes after the fire burns out, and you look at him one last time, and you see the tears on his face, the way they catch the pale light, and you know that he is not the villain, he is not the tyrant, he is just a man, a man who is as lost as you are, a man who is trapped in the same cycle, the same wheel, the same endless, turning darkness, and you feel a surge of pity so strong it makes your knees buckle, and you look at the bread, and you see that it is cooling, the heat is fading, the pulse is slowing, and the mirror is cracking, the surface is breaking, and the reflection is shattering, and you feel yourself breaking too, your heart, your mind, your body, all of it coming apart, and you think, this is it, this is the end, this is the beginning, this is the only thing that is real, the moment of breaking, the moment of letting go, the moment of release, and you close your eyes, and you let your hands fall, and you let the bread fall, and you let the light go out, and you let the dark take you, and you let the cycle stop, and you let the silence speak, and you let the truth come out, and you let the pain go, and you let the love go, and you let the fear go, and you let the anger go, and you let the hope go, and you let the despair go, and you let everything go, and you are gone, you are gone, you are gone, you are gone, you are gone.