It begins...

I remember now.

I can't remember yesterday but I remember when this all started. I remember when they did this to me. I remember when they put me in these chains.

The days go by in a blur. They used to be nothing but moments and pain, washed away on the haze of the injections. Little pinpricks, forced through my flesh with crippling force, barely enough to puncture my skin...

Barely. But enough.

The venom no longer works like it did. Perhaps I have grown used to the dolor. Perhaps I have been given another "gift" from below. Perhaps there are those who no longer want me to have the peace of oblivion. There are those who love me. There are those who hate me. Some do both. I... I try to no longer feel at all.

I try but I fail.

I do feel. I remember how I got here and I feel. I feel hate.

How long ago was it? A year? Two? Less than a week? Does time matter? It certainly means nothing to the immortal in my veins. The beast that lives within me, that was put here by those I trusted.

Trust. A game for fools, one you can only lose.

I close my eyes and feel the sting. They give me another shot, trying to keep me asleep. They have robbed me of so much. Life, time and even consciousness. They are the criminals here, the villains that steal the existence of those they "tend" and yet the world thinks they are heroes. They do not see what happens behind these walls. The world knows nothing and that is how they like it. No one wants to think of their heroes as flawed.

But they are. The police are corrupt. The paragons are imperfect. Their saviors are rapists and murderers given parades for their debauchery. I have seen much in my time here, a near-corpse in a cage of light and coma. They think I have been dormant...

...but a volcano can erupt at any time. It seethes and boils, waiting for the right moment to explode from its confines and change everything.

When a volcano detonates, the land burns. It is torn asunder and forever scarred.

I feel like a volcano. And my time is nigh.

Lying still, my shell of steel binding my limbs and keeping me from moving. They have taken the lightning from my suit but it no longer matters. What used to be circuit and metal is no longer so mundane. My second soul lives within it as well. I no longer need cells of power to make my limbs move; I am no longer both flesh and iron. I am both.

Flesh. Iron. Stone and Fire.

If words were written over my chest, they would read, "Here be dragons." Instead, my chest bears nothing but scars and holds naught but a broken heart. I feel hate but I also feel pain. A dull ache that will never leave me. Those who left me here are out of my reach, outside my vengeance. They are heroes...

...and I am now a villain. I am the sum of their sins, the goat that bears their darker halves. They marked me for sacrifice and left me on the Ararat of their own making. I was the blood that annointed their new world and the price they paid for immortality. I was cast aside, thrown away, buried.

But this grave is not a quiet one and I am not resting in peace. I may have been placed on my funeral pyre but the blaze that burns has not consumed me.

It burns within. I have risen from the ashes of being forgotten, stronger and darker than the shadows they forged into my shackles.

My chains are about to break.

My silence is about to end.

I am about to erupt.

The world will burn... and those who put me here will pay.