The world shudders. The colors bleed away, draining into a flat, icy black and white. Every detail narrows into focus, every sound distorts or fades. I can feel the other students stumbling back, gathering together in a huddle of terrified, clinging life, but they are aningless. They are so far away now, as distant as the stars. I do not care. We do not care. All that matters is the monster and the storm inside , inside us.
The world is like before we think. There’s no line anymore between my mind and the voices that have haunted since my marks first burned themselves into our soul. All the suffering, all the terror, all the disgust and rage and agony of watching this abomination kill so casually, so gleefully it has snapped the leash I kept wound around my emotions. That leash was always thin, stretched ragged ever since the King forced to kill in that chamber weeks ago. When he promised my fate as his weapon before keeping like his pet in Lusa.
Cain was my only real friend in the outskirts, friends weren’t a luxury anyone could afford I didn’t realize how much that ant to . But even that was stolen from as I was not allowed to see him after being forced to endure the kings crash course training. Now here in the woods, surrounded by corpses, choking on the stench of blood I realize that my life will be nothing of death and destruction no matter how much I may have wished otherwise.
She smiles at , all teeth, her fangs painted red with the blood of my house mates. Then she bows, a mockery of courtly grace, hair swirling behind her like smoke. "Nos?" she taunts, her voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere. "Unus tantum es. Nisi alios canes significas?"
[We? There is just one of you, unless you an the other dogs?]
I et her gaze, the blackness of her eyes. There is nothing human in her, nothing but unholy evil radiating form her. I feel the storm that is , that is us, boiling just beneath the surface. My lips peel back into sothing that might be a smile, but it is cold, cold as a blade. "No," we say, our voice cold.
I am not alone. I am not fractured. I am whole in a way I have never been before. The voices are not whispers anymore they are my thoughts, my instincts, my hunger. When they think, I think. When I hate, they hate. Our rage is one.
"wow talis occidere intent?!" she purrs, eyes gleaming. "Sic, ostende mihi quid potes, puer."
[Wow such killing intent! Yes, show what you can do, boy.]
But I am not listening. Not to her words, not to the others’ muffled gasps, not to the crackle of burning trees or the weeping of the survivors. All my focus is turned inward and outward at once, searching for the pulse, the fracture in its foul soul, the place where this thing this ancient nightmare keeps its fear.
Everything has fears, we think. Even monsters. Even gods. Especially those who have tasted power. The stronger they are they more desperate they are to protect it.
I close my eyes for just a second, and the world recedes the burning forest, the stench of blood, the monster’s smile, the tremble of the survivors. All of it blurs into the background, and for the first ti, I reach inward not with dread or denial, but with purpose. With and the voices now perfectly aligned, I plunge into the dark, seeking the heart of my power or at least part of it.
It is like falling and flying at once. The noise of the world dies, replaced by a silence that is vast, endless, primordial. I stand not in flesh, but in sothing deeper at the edge of my own soul.
My soul is not what I expect, but then I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting. It is a black orb, floating in infinite void. It churns with shadow and light, swirling with galaxies, with stars and planets and fragnts of things I cannot na. Each pinprick of starlight is a mory, an echo, a piece of that survived every trial and tornt. Planets spin in slow orbits, so bright with hope, others dark with pain. Nebulas shimr and collapse, birthing new lights, swallowing others. The surface of the orb is not smooth but alive, rippling with the tides of everything I am and everything I could be.
I stare at it in awe. I feel the voices stir with , not separate, not other, but simply another current in the cosmic sea. This is . Inside the orb, three constellations burn brighter than any star. They are not random shapes but living patterns, each one a symbol, a story, a mark left by the gods. Each constellation is a cluster of burning stars arranged into the sa marks burned into my body, all shining with a piercing golden light divine, undeniable, beautiful and terrible.
The first is a wolf, etched in fire and shadow, its eyes two burning suns. The wolf paces the edge of my soul, its hackles raised, its mouth open in a silent snarl. It is Fearmonger the power thats caused the most grief the cause of the voices, my curse, my gift. The ability to sense and manipulate fear, to unravel the threads of terror woven into every living thing. It is not just a power. It is hunger, longing, the primal need to hunt.
The Möbius strip has no beginning and no end, a single surface folding back on itself in perpetuity. It glows with an impossible golden light, signifying Veilshaper the power to twist reality, to weave illusions so seamless and convincing that they beco truth, if only for those caught within their snare. It is infinite deception
My Regenerator mark manifests as a radiant band of golden light, orbiting close to the center of my soul a guardian and a seal. The ring is endless, untarnished pulsing with quiet authority.
I reach for the wolf, this is the one I need the one I ca here to confront. As my hand touches passes into my own soul orb, I feel a rush of cold and heat, a torrent of sensation that is not mine alone. The wolf snaps its jaws around my hand, and the world implodes. I fall through the black, through myself, through every nightmare I’ve ever had, and I sense no, I beco the engine of fear.
When I open my eyes, I am back in the woods. The monster still stands before , her cruel smile stretched wide, her hair floating like a halo of knives. The others are huddled behind , but they are only shadows at the edge of my vision.
"Ita?" she hisses ["So?"]
I can feel it my hate, my rage, my purpose all swirling together. And then, with sudden clarity, I see her not just her body, but her soul, her secret heart. I see her fears, her sins, the black rot that festers at the core of her unholy being.
It is like staring into an abyss inside an abyss.
Her soul is a wound, a pit of writhing filth, a thing that should not exist. I see flashes images so foul, so alien, that my mind recoils, trying to protect itself. But I grind my teeth and force myself to look, to know.
I see her not the abomination she beca, but a woman. Human once, centuries before the First King raised his banner in this land and founded his Empire. She’s beautiful, proud, full of hunger for life and knowledge. Her eyes are bright, clever, ambitious, but there’s a coldness there too a seed of sothing that no one around her sees until it’s far too late. I watch her walk among the old cities, places whose nas even the Empire has long forgotten, wielding a power that is nothing like the marks of power we have now. It’s not borrowed from the gods, not a blessing bestowed by the divine it’s raw and unfiltered, sothing drawn from the very marrow of the earth and sky. She bends fire and water, commands the wind, shakes the ground but it’s never enough. The hunger inside her is always growing.
Then I see the mont it all changes. She is desperate fading, her beauty withering, her strength leaking away. She reaches for the pit, for the void, for the thing that is the opposite of everything the gods ever were. She wants more. She wants forever.
She dabbles in the dark, and the dark answers.
I see her slaughter her own siblings three sisters and a brother, their faces twisted with fear and pleading. She steals their life force, rips it from their bones and veins, drinks it down like wine. Their blood stains her hands, their screams echo in her dreams, but she feels nothing but joy.
I see her rampage through the world, consuming n, won, children anyone who crosses her path, anyone who is unlucky enough to catch her eye. Sotis she kills quickly, other tis she draws it out days, weeks, even months of tornt. She delights in pain, in suffering, in the way fear makes people dance. There are acts I cannot na, things so savage and evil that my mind tries to turn away, tries to shield . But the I force myself to watch. I see her break a mother’s mind, then force the woman’s children to eat her. I see her break down boys, then pit them against their own fathers for sport. I see her eat the hearts of priests, she rapes virgins, burn whole villages on a whim. She is not just cruel she is inventive, tireless, a force of nature devoted to nothing but her own survival and pleasure.
Tears run down my face before I even realize it. I am shaking, my stomach twisting, bile burning in my throat. I have seen death, I have caused my fair share of it, but nothing compares to the rot that is her soul. Even the the worst in the Empire would be appalled. Here is true evil, the kind that has no reason, no excuse, no limit.
Eventually, she succeeds in what she wanted most immortality. Not the type of immortality you read about in stories, but a dark, twisted eternity. She used the life force of ten of thousands of people including her siblings to achieve it. But in doing so, she shatters her own soul orb, the core of what she was, and replaces it with sothing else. Now there is nothing inside her but endless hunger and malice, a void that can never be filled.
She moves from age to age, always changing, always hiding. When the first king with his cohort of Elites blessed by the Gods, she fought and killed many before eventually hiding in plain sight here in the mountain ranges in the heart of the Empire, carefully finding new victims as she moves around.
I see her now, as she stands before , and I finally understand. She is not just a monster she is a hole in the world, a wound that will never heal. She has forgotten her own na, forgotten what it ant to be human, to be alive, to be loved.
And yet, beneath all the hatred and cruelty, I sense it the fear that gnaws at her, the terror that nothing can ever soothe. She is terrified of death. Her deepest horror is nonexistence. She is terrified of the sa void that granted her the power she wields. She clings to every scream, every life she ends, because it is proof she is still here, still real.
I open my eyes, blinking away the tears, the hate, the horror. She is still there, grinning at , her claws wet with blood.
If fear is death, then I am her executioner, and she will know the end she has always dreaded.
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