At first, it was a scent—
Burnt wood, acrid and choking, curling through the broken arches and rusted iron gates like a ghost from a pyre long extinguished.
The soft, strange fog of the Abyss that had dogged their steps through the cursed city thickened, twisting into shapes that whispered of smoke and sorrow, the air growing heavy with the phantom weight of flas.
Azareel paused mid-step, his silver-white hair stirring in the mist, his torn robe clinging to his slender fra.
"Nyx..." he said slowly, his voice a gentle thread in the unraveling silence, his silver eyes, widening as the fog coiled tighter.
But Nyxsha was already frozen, her massive form rigid, her black fur rippling as if an invisible wind raked through it.
Her claws drew out instinctively, not in defense but in raw, unbidden reflex, her golden eyes dilating with a terror that made her seem smaller, more vulnerable than the beast she was.
"...No," she whispered, her voice cracking like dry branches underfoot.
The road had changed—warped, the cracked cathedral tiles dissolving into charred earth, the shadowy statues lting into the silhouettes of crumbling huts.
Now, they stood at the edge of a village—charred, blackened, collapsing in slow motion, buildings smoldering with embers that flickered like dying mories too stubborn to fade.
Ash danced in the wind, swirling like snow in a storm of grief, and in the distance, bells tolled—not for prayer, but for alarm, their peals echoing with panic and despair.
And in the middle of it all... a younger version of her.
Nyxsha, but smaller, leaner, her fur matted with soot, her tail still long and elegant but wrapped tightly around herself like a shivering child.
Her eyes wide, innocent, pleading, as shadows closed in.
Azareel stepped closer, his breath catching, but sothing in the air pulled him back—a force like invisible hands on his shoulders, whispering that this wasn’t his mory, not his pain to touch.
The illusion shimred, the village’s flas licking at the edges of reality, heat ghosting against his skin without burning.
"Get out," the real Nyxsha said beside him, her voice cracking again, low and vicious, her body trembling as if the fog had seeped into her bones.
Her golden eyes were locked on the scene, wide with horror, tears welling unbidden.
Azareel turned to her, his silver eyes filled with concern.
She was trembling, her massive form shrinking in on itself, her claws digging into her own arms.
"I said—GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she scread, her voice a raw, chaotic roar that shattered the illusion’s fragile hold, the village flickering like a candle in the wind.
But the city wouldn’t let them go.
The illusion warped, sucking them deeper, the fog coiling like chains, pulling them into the heart of the mory. Suddenly—screams.
From everywhere—n, won, children, the vision full now, layered like jagged glass shattering inward.
Soldiers in gleaming armor cornering a beast—her, the younger Nyxsha, curled beside a well, crying, her voice low, broken: "I... I just wanted warmth..."
They answered with spears, flas licking at the edges of their torches, a sword striking her tail with a wet thud, drawing blood that sizzled on the hot ground.
And then—everything went black.
And red.
The world tilted, the screams multiplying, blood pouring across the ground like spilled ink, soaking through dream-dirt that felt too real under Azareel’s feet.
Charred corpses slumped against fences, houses collapsing in waves of fire and smoke, lightning splitting the sky in a jagged, hateful grin that illuminated the carnage.
And in the middle of it all—Nyxsha, in full bestial form, larger than she ever let herself be in the present, her fangs bared, her eyes wild with pain and rage, her claws soaked to the wrist in gore.
She howled, a sound that tore through the illusion like a wound, the village screaming back in terror and agony as children ran, their small forms swallowed by the flas.
Azareel could hardly breathe, the air thick with smoke and the tallic tang of blood, the heat pressing against his skin like accusatory fingers.
But the worst part wasn’t the horror—the gore, the screams, the destruction.
It was that even here, surrounded by carnage, Nyxsha looked like a cornered animal, not a monster—a child betrayed, her eyes filled with tears amid the fury.
"She didn’t an to," he whispered to no one, his voice lost in the chaos, his silver eyes wide with empathy.
"She begged them," a voice whispered beside him, ethereal and broken.
It was the illusion of a villager—half-burned, translucent, his face twisted in regret.
"But we called her evil. Demon. Plague. We painted her na on church walls."
The fog thickened, the vision trembling like a heart on the verge of breaking.
Then it shattered, fragnts of mory dissolving into mist, the screams fading to echoes as reality snapped back—the mist-choked plaza, the faceless saints, the whispering veils.
But Nyxsha wasn’t moving.
She stood in the center, her breathing sharp and frantic, her claws twitching at her sides, her pupils narrowed to slits, her black fur rippling with tremors.
Her voice ca like a snarl, raw and haunted. "You saw it."
Azareel approached gently, his footsteps soft on the stone, his silver eyes filled with quiet understanding.
"Yes," he said, his voice a soothing whisper in the lingering fog.
Her lip curled, feral, her golden eyes burning with a mix of sha and defiance.
"Do you hate now? Is this the part where you run? Where you look at like a—like a thing?" she spat, her voice cracking, tears streaking her fur as the trauma unraveled her, chaotic and dark.
He said nothing at first, the mist swirling around them like ghosts of the past, the city’s watchful presence pressing in.
Then. "No."
She looked up at him, her golden eyes wide and burning, the fog reflecting in their depths like shattered mirrors.
"I saw soone who tried to be kind. Who begged. And got stabbed for it," he said softly, his words cutting through the surreal haze.
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