Nyxsha’s lip curled again, her body trembling. "I murdered them. I killed children," she whispered, her voice breaking, the mory’s weight pulling her under like a tide of blood.
"I saw you cry before you did," he replied, his silver eyes unwavering, stepping closer through the mist.
"You saw slaughter them," she choked, her claws digging into her palms, drawing faint lines of blood.
"I saw you break," he said, his voice gentle, philosophical, wrapping around her like a balm on raw wounds.
Silence fell, heavy and surreal, the fog seeming to pause, coiling around them like the ghosts of the village, the city’s whispers fading into the background.
Nyxsha staggered back a step, her hands shaking, her tail unwrapping from her waist, limp and defeated.
"...I didn’t an to," she said, her voice cracking like the illusions around them, raw emotion spilling out in a chaotic flood. "I just—I just wanted warmth."
Azareel stepped forward, gently reaching for her paw, his touch light, grounding.
"I know," he whispered, his silver eyes filled with heartfelt compassion, the mist parting slightly as if the city itself held its breath.
She didn’t pull away.
Not yet.
The fog swirled, the past lingering in the air like smoke from a fire long extinguished, but in that mont, amid the dark and surreal unraveling, sothing shifted—subtle, emotional, a thread of understanding weaving through the chaos.
.
.
The air inside the cursed city turned thick, cold, and unreal, the mist coiling like fingers of regret, pulling at the edges of perception.
Azareel’s breath caught, his silver-white hair stirring as if in an unseen wind, the fog pulsing with a sickening hum that resonated in his chest.
The crumbled walls, the streets, the sky—everything vanished, dissolving into a veil of smoke and shadow.
A new world bled through, dark and relentless, the scent of burnt wood thickening until it choked the air, ash falling like poisoned snow.
It was night.
But the stars did not shine, blotted out by the roiling clouds of smoke that hung heavy over the horizon.
Flas lit the darkness instead, flickering hungrily across the scorched remnants of a forest, charred trees reaching for the heavens like skeletal claws blackened by fire.
The ground was a tapestry of embers and ruin, the wind carrying whispers of dying screams and the acrid tang of betrayal.
In the distance, shadows ran—fleeting figures silhouetted against the blaze, shouts echoing like fractured prayers, horses galloping in panic through the haze. And in the heart of it, a beast stood still.
Nyxsha.
But not the Nyxsha he knew—this one was massive, barely human, her fur thick and matted with soot and blood, her claws like knives forged in despair, her eyes wild and red, not glowing with teasing mischief but raw, unbridled madness.
Blood soaked her paws, smoke curling from her fangs like the breath of a demon awakened.
She stood over the broken remains of a stone gate, a town—no, a fortress—lay in ruin behind her, its walls crumbled, its hos devoured by flas that danced mockingly in the night.
Screams lingered, but only faintly, echoes of lives extinguished. The people were mostly... gone, their absence a hollow condemnation.
Then she moved—slowly, with a limp, dragging her hind leg through the ash, wounded and bleeding, a knight’s spear jutting from her shoulder like a cruel crown, still embedded, still burning her flesh with unholy fire.
She hadn’t pulled it out.
Maybe she couldn’t.
Maybe she didn’t care, the pain a numb companion in her shattered world.
And laughing—not joyfully, but a broken, hysterical sound that tore from her throat like shards of glass, echoing across the devastation.
"Monsters," she hissed to no one, her voice raw, trembling with betrayal. "They called a monster."
A knight’s spear remained lodged in her shoulder, its tip glowing with cursed light, searing her with every step.
The vision shifted, the flas leaping higher, the shadows lengthening as if the night itself recoiled from her pain.
Azareel tried to reach her, his hand extending into the illusion, but his body wouldn’t move, frozen like a spectator in a nightmare not his own.
This was an illusion.
A mory.
A truth etched in blood and fire, unyielding and unforgiving.
The vision shifted again, the flas receding to embers as she stood before a cathedral, her fur slick with rain, blood, and soot, kneeling in the mud, her claws sheathed, her eyes hollow, submitting to a judgnt she knew would break her.
A priest stood at the top of the steps, his golden robes billowing in the wind, a book clutched in his hands like a weapon of divine wrath.
His voice thundered, echoing across the courtyard, laced with condemnation.
"By decree of the Seventh Fla and the Will of the Divine, the Beast of Ruin is to be sealed. Her na shall never be spoken, her warmth never known. She shall be cast into the Mouth Below."
A choir chanted, their voices rising in a hymn of holy fury, knights approaching with shackles and chains that glowed with cursed glyphs, their armor clanking like the toll of fate.
Nyxsha whimpered—not like a beast, but like a child lost in the dark, her golden eyes pleading, her voice breaking.
"Please... please don’t send to the abyss..."
The priest didn’t respond, his face a mask of righteous indifference.
The chains pulled her down, wrapping around her limbs with searing heat, branding her fur, her skin, her soul.
The gates of the cathedral opened—not to an altar of rcy, but to a hole in the world, black and breathing, the Abyss yawning wide, its depths infinite and unforgiving.
Azareel’s heart twisted, a sharp pain in his chest as if the chains bound him too.
He wanted to scream, to tear the illusion apart, to pull her from the brink.
But he was helpless, a witness to the betrayal that had shaped her.
Nyxsha, now chained, was dragged—her nails scraping stone in desperate furrows, her tail limp and dragging, her mouth open in silent terror, sobs wracking her form.
No one looked at her, their eyes averted from the broken creature they had condemned.
Not even when she sobbed.
Not even when she scread, her voice raw and pleading: "I’m sorry. I was just hungry... I didn’t want to be alone..."
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