One gesture and their minds linked, existence blurred, devoured, and became darkness. Absolute. Endless. He was that darkness. The presence of Lilith, Aria, and everyone else vanished as if they had never existed. Only Vance and the weeping woman remained in the void.
He looked down at the pathetic woman. Even here, she kept begging him to devour her. Her shattered soul wanted nothing more than for everything to end, and he was that end—all her hopes were pinned on him. He didn't care. He shouldn't care. And yet...
"What is this...?" Vance muttered softly, placing a hand over his chest as if the gesture could erase the deep, subtle ache blooming inside. It wasn't an unbearable pain, but it lingered like a sharp thorn that refused to be ignored.
He knelt before her and gently caressed the woman's cheek, wiping her tears away with a touch as soft as a summer breeze. He felt that something was missing, as if he should have just recalled something very important, something precious and lost from a far distant time... but he didn't.
"No more tears..." he continued in a soft whisper.
She nodded weakly. Vance offered a soft, quiet smile.
Deep within her mind, the mental landscape was a chaotic, fragmented storm. Thousands of overlapping images spun around her—a man with a warm smile and three little girls were plastered across every waking moment of her memory, repeating endlessly, bleeding into her present reality until she couldn't distinguish the past from the now. Her consciousness was completely corrupted; by all rights, she should have died, but some twisted luck had kept her breathing, her mind fractured into pieces that could never be mended.
In the brief instant his hand wiped away her tears, Vance navigated backward through every memory in her mind. Day by day. Month by month. Year by year...
Then, abruptly, the storm ceased.
He watched a younger Mrs. Gena standing on the wooden docks beside a sturdy vessel. Around her were two little girls, and she held a baby in her arms—six, four, and two years old—the absolute center of her world. They were watching a man moving diligently from one side of the ship to the other, securing ropes and checking cargo. Her husband. He carried a worried frown.
"Can't we wait and sail tomorrow?" the man insisted, glancing up at the darkening sky. "It's going to be night soon."
"I want us to surprise my mom! Tomorrow will be too late," she answered, her voice brimming with warmth and laughter. "Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark, silly."
The man didn't answer. He was afraid of many things, Vance could tell. All men are terrified of the world—of how dangerous it could be, and is, for their women and children. A man knows real fear only when he gains a family of his own. This man was terrified, but he would never let it show, for he was her source of confidence, the reason she felt fearless.
Vance's expression hardened as the tragedy unfolded.
The scene shifted to the dark, silent waters of the lake under a full moon. There was barely a breath of wind; the surface resembled a giant mirror reflecting the rising lunar orb. It was beautiful, tranquil, and the distant shore of Silver Lake Town offered the cruel illusion of safety.
It began with a dissonant harmony that had no physical origin. It simply existed around them, as ambient as the air they breathed. Then came the massive, translucent silver wings spreading wide across the night sky, swallowing the stars and the moon. Before anyone on board could process the terror, a colossal, predatory beak descended upon the vessel. The crew attempted to shriek in absolute horror, but their voices failed them—imprisoned within their own paralyzed bodies.
The husband, driven by the primal, desperate instinct to protect his wife and children, managed to move a trembling arm. He pulled a glowing spell scroll from inside his coat, cast one final look toward her, and rushed directly at the creature.
The beak snapped shut around him in an instant with a horrific, wet crunch. A fraction of a second later, a violent explosion erupted. The shockwave threw Mrs. Gena off the deck, launching her into the freezing water alone.
Panic settled in. Pure, primal horror.
Her children were still on the ship. She tried to swim.
She tried...
But she was weak... far too weak...
Screams—only a few—echoed across the water as the massive beast fed, followed by a lifeless, bubbling silence as the vessel sank beneath the surface. She kept swimming. She tried to dive, clawing through the dark water over and over until the air ran out and her muscles completely failed her.
She tried...
She was just too weak.
Vance stood in the void of her memory, watching the agony loop endlessly.
Her trauma meant nothing to him. It was merely data he required for the hunt. Yet, the persistent ache in his chest kept him from severing the link.
I have to go back... set a trap for that monster... he thought. I should go back now... I should... But...
He hesitated, looking down at her shattered spirit.
You won't be needing to carry this burden anymore...
Reaching into the architecture of her mind with surgical, terrifying precision, he began to erase the memory entirely. He unstitched every single ramification of that horrific night, wiping away the terror, the loss, and the agony that had plagued her for years. Where trauma had torn through her brain's physical neural pathways, his power washed over the delicate tissue—smoothing the hardware, rewriting the software, and restoring her baseline to perfect, peaceful coherence.
He didn't have to do it, yet he felt a strange sense of relief knowing that, from this moment on, she would know peace. He regretted, however, that he could not heal Aria in the same way. The touch of the Abyss was fundamentally different—deeper, real, and unerasable.
The darkness dissolved. The mayor's office snapped back into existence. Not a single second had passed in the physical world.
Mrs. Gena blinked slowly, her hands sliding down from Vance's boots. The crazed, fanatical terror in her eyes had vanished, and her weeping stopped abruptly. She looked up at Vance, then around the room at the Mayor, her nephew, and Aria, her expression settling into a quiet, confused clarity for the first time in years.
"I... where..." she whispered, her voice steady, sane, and light. "Nephew? What am I doing on the floor?"
The mayor stared in absolute, stunned silence. Lilith and Aria looked at Vance with pure, breathless awe.
Vance simply withdrew his hand, his expression calm and unreadable.
"Now," Vance said softly, looking down at the restored woman before turning his gaze to her nephew. "It won't be easy to live if the very reason to do so is gone. That I cannot help with. But she knows peace now."
"Thank you, lord! Thank you!" the nephew choked out, tears pouring down his cheeks as he helped his aunt to her feet.
"Take her home. Give her a good life," Vance added, turning his back to them.
The ache in his chest was gone.
"Wait, but wasn't she going to tell you the story about the bird?" Aria asked, tilting her head.
"True," Lilith added.
"She already did," Vance replied plainly. "I know now what our enemy is."
Lilith smiled with absolute confidence in him, Aria's expression hardened with focus, and the mayor stepped forward, awaiting instructions.
Vance thought of what he had done. She would know peace. Yes. But he had taken far more from her than just pain. The happiness, the grief, the mundane quiet of daily life—everything that involved her husband and children was gone from her mind. It left behind only the shell of who she was before they existed: an incomplete being who would never know they lived, never miss them, and never feel their devastating absence.
If memory was the soul of living beings, then he had mutilated most of hers—and devoured it without a second thought.
He felt... cold. Cold and distant from everything, as though he were no longer entirely standing in that room, but watching it unfold from somewhere vast and far away.
The ache was gone, but a dark, wicked thought crept into its place. The doubt crossed his mind: Had the ache disappeared because of the mercy I displayed... or was it gone because I devoured a soul, and the meal finally satiated me?
She will know peace... that is all that matters, he convinced himself.
He pushed aside every lingering thought on the matter, turning his focus back to the true reason they had come.
He already had a clear picture of the creature's skill set, its predatory intelligence, and its raw power. Strategies were already interlocking in his mind, and the prospect of devouring the beast brightened his mood instantly. He was confident this monster would be easy to slay—and would yield a copious amount of essence.
"Summon your men, Mayor. I will explain what the creature is like to all those who will take part in this hunt," Vance declared with a smirk.