Where I come from there is a gem, a gem called the black diamond. No one knows where it came from, or what it does, only that those who peer into its depths fall under its spell.

It’s intoxicating, this diamond’s allure. A depthless entity contained in glass armor. Legend claims there was a girl, how long ago she lived I cannot say. She held a timeless beauty, that of someone who could live in any era and still be desirable. Many thought her an angel.


Abounding in beauty though the maiden may have been, she was poor in all other aspects--until the day he came. He swore his life to her, sealing this endless promise in a jewel. On the day they were to wed the alter stood bare, her beloved nowhere to be found. News soon reached the heartbroken beauty that her lover, her saver, would not be there today. He wouldn’t be there tomorrow. He had passed on to whatever life waited beyond this one. The maiden never loved again, never removed his eternal promise from her finger. Days went, months went, and years went by and there it stayed. Time, cruel as it was, never ceased. The days slowly drained what exquisite beauty she retained until each pore was wrinkled, crusted, and dry. Even the promise upon her crumpled hand had grown cold and dark. She died, as all those living must do, and the black diamond would never promise the same.

But that’s merely a legend. How the black diamond came to be is debated by both the faithful and the fact-full. That is to say, the religious and the scientific. Some argue it doesn’t exist, others say it is a place for those too good for hell, but undeserving of heaven. I know the truth. It is the nature of the beautiful maiden’s misery, locked away in the one thing she ever truly had. Its enchantment was her enchantment, its sorrow her sorrow. Amazing, such a contraption.

Peering beyond casing’s shine and into the handheld universe is effortless. So perfectly daunting a jewel it is. The glassy shield winks at guilty onlookers, tempting all, while the dark shadow within emanates.

There’s a light inside. Many of them. They cultivate in the heart of the blackness, escapeless, though they try. Souls dancing and swirling within purgatory, those lost and forgotten to the diamond’s cruel loveliness, to its sins.

My soul is among them.