"All that ugliness and agony, all that sin and disease — is flooding over her; into her! And it's not the creature's doing — it's Mercy's! … She wants the awful pain, she's claiming it as her own! Claiming skin/crust/darkness/filth/madness! And revealing, beneath it, not a nameless entity — but a lost soul. … I read the thing…the soul…and see an existence of despair, ended in suicide: Freedom — in a bullet to the brain. … But there was no freedom, not even in death; just Limbo. Trapped between two worlds — unable to move on. Unable to do anything — but feed on its own despair. And ultimately become it. … And now? … Has Mercy, through her suffering, lifted the soul's burden? Purified it? Set it free? … So it seems."