Days blurred into one another beneath the ever-fixed sun.
The village remained untouched by ti—each morning began with the sa golden light, each evening failed to fall.
It was a strange sensation, existing in a place where the sun never shifted, where the breeze carried the sa warmth and the flowers never wilted. An eternal day.
Seren, surprisingly, had taken well to it.
After they had arrived, she was quickly swept up by the sa boy who had tugged at her arm that first day.
His smile was as warm as sunlight, his tiny fingers always curled around her hand as he led her from place to place: the flower garden, the small hill behind the huts, a creek that barely babbled but sparkled like glass.
The fur coat man—the so-called "monster" from the murals—was already part of the boy’s world.
Tall and bulky, covered in shaggy fur and hunched as though the world weighed heavy on his back, yet his deanor was nothing like the grotesque figure suggested in the corridor carvings.
He was gentle, awkward at tis, quiet and observant, always following the boy with careful steps. His silence wasn’t nacing, it was watchful. Protective.
The boy called him "Big Brother."
Seren grew fond of both of them quickly. She laughed more here than she had when with Einar.
Sotis she’d chase the boy around the grass fields, or help him gather bright flowers to give to his "Big Brother," who only nodded and gently ruffled the child’s hair in response.
Einar, however, stood apart. Always a little ways behind, arms crossed or shoved in his pockets, a bitter scowl digging deeper into his face each passing day.
He was starving.
No fruit grew here. No animals wandered near. There was nothing here to eat, the villagers didn’t care they were fed on by the earth.
And yet, Seren thrived.
He watched from under the shade of the massive tree near the village center, eyes narrowed, stomach gnawing itself into knots.
She played, she smiled, and she looked happy. Too happy. As if she’d forgotten their mission, forgotten that they were trapped in a mory, walking the lines of so ancient story.
Einar’s gaze shifted toward the fur coat man.
He was always there. Watching. Not Seren—no, not with suspicion. But with quiet acceptance. Every ti the boy laughed, he smiled faintly.
He never spoke unless prompted, never took more space than he needed. Always in the boy’s periphery. Always there to play his part.
Einar knew a performance when he saw one.
The fur coat man wasn’t the monster. Not really. He was just another echo, like the villagers. A piece of the past, preserved in mory, playing a role. But Seren... she wasn’t acting. Not anymore.
"She’s replacing him," Einar muttered under his breath. "Playing his part."
But she didn’t seem to care. Or perhaps she didn’t know. Perhaps the kindness in her chest made her see the boy as more than a ghost. Maybe she saw him as real.
One afternoon, as the boy tucked wildflowers into Seren’s hair and she laughed—truly laughed—Einar turned his head away.
He couldn’t bear it anymore. The gnawing in his gut, the ache in his chest, it was getting harder and harder to control.
He stood and wandered.
The village didn’t shift. The sun didn’t lower. The air remained still. The villagers continued their routine, and every smile turned to him like before—pleasant, empty.
He passed the sa flower shop for the fifth ti. The sa kids ran down the sa hill.
He could feel the mory resisting.
This was not a dream ant to be broken. It was a song stuck on repeat, looping through nostalgia and half-buried pain.
When he returned to the tree that evening—if you could even call it that—he found Seren curled under the shade with the boy nestled in her arms, sleeping peacefully.
The fur coat man sat nearby, his arms folded over his knees, watching them silently with those patient, tired eyes.
Einar sat beside them without a word.
The hunger hadn’t lessened. But for the first ti, he didn’t feel the need to complain. The boy’s quiet breathing, Seren’s relaxed expression, the stillness of the air—it softened sothing in him.
Just a little.
Even if this was a lie, even if this was Malthorn’s prison or test or illusion—it was peace.
And for now, that would do.
"What was I just thinking?"
The thought thundered through Einar’s head as he jolted upright, breath ragged, chest heaving. Sweat clung to his skin despite the unchanging, temperate light of the realm.
Then another thought struck him, even more jarring than the last.
"Why didn’t I get any system notification?"
No sarcastic remarks. No witty banter. Not even the usual snide quip that accompanied every move he made.
The system—his system—was silent.
Utterly, unnervingly silent.
His stomach tightened, and not just from hunger.
"This is all fake..." he muttered, realization dawning. "An illusion. But deeper than anything I’ve seen before..."
It wasn’t just a simulation—it was mory, living mory. A mory so potent it ford its own self-contained reality. It was like being inside soone else’s soul, and worse, being forgotten inside it.
He clenched his fists.
Seren...
She was still within it—willingly, unknowingly. Still playing the role of "big brother," still smiling for the child, still nestled beneath the tree’s shade. The fur coat man sat not far, motionless as ever, an eternal actor playing his part.
’Why am I the only one waking up?’ he wondered. It couldn’t be chance.
Then again, Seren... she was raised differently. Molded by a heritage of cold traditions and suffocating expectations.
Perhaps sothing in this distorted paradise resonated with her—offered her a fleeting taste of a life she never got to live.
But Einar couldn’t afford to sit and ponder.
They were sinking deeper.
And worse—he was starving.
He glanced back at the sleeping trio one last ti, then turned and sprinted toward the village, wind whipping past his coat as his boots pounded over unmoving grass.
His Symbiote hissed softly beneath his skin, eager, almost eager in a way that unsettled even him.
This ti, the village wasn’t as it was before.
Gone were the serene smiles. The peace. The warmth.
Now the air was thick with tension, and the faces that t him were twisted with disgust—lips curled, brows furrowed, hatred simring beneath every gaze.
Soone spat on the ground as he passed. Another pointed a gnarled finger and shouted, "You don’t belong here!"
A rock whistled past his head and clanged against a nearby post.
"What the hell...?" Einar muttered, stopping in his tracks.
Another voice scread from the crowd, shrill and venomous. "Your existence makes us sick! Filth like you stains our sacred land! You should’ve never been born!"
Einar’s eyes narrowed as the hostility boiled over into violence. One of the villagers, eyes bloodshot and frothing at the mouth, lunged at him with a rusted knife raised high.
Instinct took over.
Einar ducked the wild slash, pivoted, and backhanded the man across the jaw.
There was a sickening crunch—a spray of blood. Teeth flew. The man collapsed, spasming, before going completely still.
And in that instant, Einar felt it.
A ripple.
The Symbiote inside him stirred and slithered, awakening with renewed vigor.
Not just from the death—no. It was feeding.
On the mory.
It drank deep from the slain villager’s fragnted thoughts, their fear, their identity—their place in this corrupted dream.
And as it did, he grew stronger.
The haze lifted from his mind. His limbs steadied. His senses sharpened like honed steel.
His stomach, while not sated, no longer howled in despair.
Then it clicked.
"This isn’t just a mory of events... it’s his perspective."
The villagers’ hatred—it wasn’t arbitrary. It was a reflection of Malthorn’s trauma. This entire village was a biased fragnt—his anger, his pain.
A landscape shaped by the resentful, rotting core of a being consud by betrayal.
"They must’ve done sothing to him..." Einar muttered.
The villagers closed in—pitchforks and makeshift weapons now raised, their eyes glowing with violent intent.
He licked his lips, a cruel smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.
A dark thrill spread in his chest.
"So be it."
Three villagers rushed him at once.
They didn’t even reach him.
Slice.
With one swift motion, their heads flew. Their bodies dropped in eerie silence, blood soaking into grass that refused to change hue.
And as their forms began to dissolve into pale particles, the Symbiote feasted again—each mory adding another pulse to his core.
Einar exhaled, slow and long, as shadows dark and crimson coiled around his arms.
The fear was gone now.
All that remained was clarity—and the knowledge that this was the only way forward.
And so the bloodbath began.
Villagers fell one after another, their faces twisted in rage, then frozen in shock. Einar moved like a wraith, blades of writhing black lashing out in arcs. Screams rose only to die seconds later.
He was thodical.
Efficient.
Cold.
Each kill added to his strength, each fading mory drawing him further out of the illusion’s grip. His Symbiote writhed in ecstasy, gorging itself on the broken psyche of this place.
A thought about Seren’s safety whispered in his mind. But...
All he knew was that he had to finish it—the biased mory.
And he was willing to drown this entire mory in blood to do it.
Reviews
All reviews (0)