The moaning rose again, muffled at first, like a wounded animal gasping beneath a blanket, then sharper, clearer, threading through the air like a rusted needle piercing skin. She turned her head slowly, her mind sluggish, vision trembling. The room was dim, so dim that everything looked like a charcoal sketch drawn by an unsteady hand. Shadows bled into the walls, pooling like wet ink.
A large canopy net draped over the bed, torn in places, sagging under the weight of something moving inside. The silk threads clung to the fabric like veins desperate to hold it together. One thread snapped with a soft, wet twang.
Then another.
Then a whole section ripped open, and an arm, pale, trembling, slick with sweat, burst out of the torn net. A hand grasped the air violently, as if drowning in unseen water.
The woman's face emerged from the torn opening—her mother's face. Hair clinging to her cheeks, lips parted, eyes rolled back, sweat glistening like dew on a dying flower. And then a man's head rose from behind her, shadowed, familiar, but twisted by greed and hunger.
Her uncle.
Her breath froze.
But then, something else. Something worse.
Her father lay beside the bed, eyes half-open, chest barely lifting. His skin was fading, his warmth slipping away like sand through fingers. Not dead. Not alive. Suspended in some dreadful in-between.
She cried out in anger: "Father! Help mother! Uncle… uncle doing wrong! Wake up you bastard!"
But her shout died. Not because she fell silent, but because another sound rose, silver and cold:
Chhan… chhan… chhan…
The anklet bell. The nupur.
She turned sharply. There, on a wooden chair too large for her small frame, sat the child version of herself, no older than four, legs too short to touch the ground, swinging in slow, languid arcs. She was playing with threads, red and white, twisting them, forming shapes without understanding why.
"Mother, why are you crying and laughing?" the little girl asked, head tilted, innocence shining like a doomed candle.
Her mother's voice trembled, soft and breathless: "Don't worry, child… we're playing. We're… saving your father. Stay quiet."
The small girl frowned, confused. "Uncle… what are you playing? Mother, are you hurt? Should I call dad?"
Her uncle's voice rose, low and crooked: "See? Even now, this woman gets hotter when her own child watches."
Her mother laughed, a sound cracked open from somewhere ugly and hollow. "Ahh—ahh—don't worry about us, child… we're just… playing. Go sleep."
The small girl nodded but didn't move. She crawled onto the chair, curling up like a kitten, eyes glazed, drifting into a numb daze as if her young mind was shutting down to protect itself.
Her uncle sneered at the half-conscious father. "Now she's asleep. That useless bastard never knew his wife was a whore warming by his brother's body. How does it feel? On your husband's bed, in his room? Do you like it?"
Her mother's voice choked into a broken moan: "yes... yess… don't stop… ahhh…stop say about that useless bastard. Just fuck me. Ahhh…. ahhh… Just… don't talk about that useless man. Don't stop…"
The world darkened.
Ink spread over the floor.
Her vision blurred.
Her tiny fists clenched, shaking violently. She didn't understand the words. She didn't understand betrayal, lust, death. But she understood wrong. She understood pain. She understood fear.
And she understood her father was leaving forever.
Anger surged—then collapsed into despair. Tears spilled from her eyes, hot and salty, burning down her cheeks like acid. She screamed—not a sound of rage, but the wail of a child watching her world decay in front of her.
Suddenly—
A woman stepped into the room.
Time froze.
The threads in her little hands stopped moving.
Her mother and uncle turned into wax figures.
Her father stopped breathing altogether.
Everything hung in a silent, suffocating stillness.
Then the voice of the demoness echoed softly, dripping poison into her ear:
"How naïve you were at that time… thinking everything ended peacefully. Look again. Didn't you see your father lying there? On his deathbed, his wife defiled by the man who killed him? And you… you couldn't do a thing."
The anger dissolved, replaced by a sudden, gut-wrenching cry. She was too young to understand the gravity of the words spoken or the horrifying scene she witnessed. Her father's disappearance was an unfillable chasm. She cried out, fuelled by pain, sorrow, and a nascent fury that longed to break free and destroy her tormentors. The rage wanted to tear itself free, a murderous impulse against the perpetrators. But now, I understand. And now, I want them all to die.
Her heart twisted, breath shattered and darkness tightened around her like a mother's embrace turned murderous.
Her breath trembled, more from disbelief than fear. "You shut up," she said, voice quivering not from weakness, but from the last strands of denial desperately clinging to her sanity. "This is all an illusion… my uncle, he took care of us. He protected the clan, he protected me. He followed Father's ideals. He even risked himself to send me away from danger. How dare you accuse him?" Her voice cracked, yet she still forced herself to stand tall.
The demonic woman laughed with a fullness that shook the silk realm, the sound warping the red threads like ripples on bloody water. "Naive. Naive to the core," she crooned, stepping closer with long, deliberate strides. Her shadow stretched across the floor, splitting into multiple limbs like crawling centipedes. "You were a pawn since the day you were born. Your grandfather started the cycle. Your father killed him. Your uncle killed your father. Your 'clan honour' was built with corpses like bricks. You worship heroes that were simply the best liars."
"No—" her voice was brittle, shaking, her hands trembling as her legs felt heavier.
"Oh yes," the demoness whispered, leaning in. "Your father regained consciousness that night, long enough to see your mother spreading her legs for your uncle. And he understood everything. He dragged that woman, oh yes, the whore, call her what she is, to them. Forced her into submission. And you?" She tapped her forehead with a long nail. "You were never the clan's child. You were the child he smuggled into the clan. A child born from another woman he truly loved. Your father also became pawn many years ago but she was saved by fairy, who was your real mother. That memory was sealed inside you, also there was more hidden things in there.""
The dream-world behind her twisted, blood dripping down walls that had no edges, shadows pulsing like beating hearts.
The real one's face stiffened, her mouth barely moving. "What… do you mean by controlled? By them? My father… me too…?"
The demoness tilted her head, smiling with the cold delight of exposing a festering wound. "Why don't you check your heart? In your real body."
At that word, heart, she suddenly felt it. A slow, dragging exhaustion in her chest. A heaviness that didn't belong. Her knees buckled, and she gasped as though hands were squeezing her lungs. The blood-silk realm tilted, and she grabbed a thread-wall for support, but it melted like warm wax under her touch, dripping onto her palms like thick scarlet tar.
She huffed, struggling to breathe in the soul state. Every inhale burned. Every exhale was weak.
The demoness lifted her chin with one finger, forcing her to look upward. "Do you feel it now? They implanted it into you when you were six. A Gu. A Hollow-Heart Devourer Gu. It would eventually replace your heart, combine your cultivation with it and when you will find out, you already became a hollow shell. And then someone from your dear family would absorb everything you had. I imagine your uncle was quite eager. After all," she smirked, "he already consumed many of them, you cherished."
Her eyes widened. "Who… whom were you talking about?"
The demoness leaned in, whispering like a lover. "You know them very well. You killed them with your own hands. Someone your uncle manipulated."
A vein bulged on the real one's forehead. The dream-world twisted again, walls turning into faces, faces turning into open mouths, open mouths stretching into tunnels of teeth, whispering her name over and over. She stumbled backward, clutching her chest, feeling something pulse under her ribs, something foreign, like a heart beating out of rhythm with her soul. Every pulse sent a cold spike up her spine.
"No… no…" she whispered, feeling her throat tighten, as though invisible silk threads were constricting it.
The demoness stepped behind her, wrapping her arms around her waist like a shadow forming flesh. "You feel it, don't you? The thing growing inside your heart. The little parasite that drinks your life drop by drop. Your father had one too. And do you know who placed it inside you?" She leaned close to her ear. "Your mother."
The dream-world flickered, an image of her mother smiling gently when she was young, then that same face twisted into a hungry smirk on the bed, then into a corpse with torn lips whispering, "My child…"
The world turned darker than ink. The silk threads climbed her wrists like living veins. Her heartbeat echoed like a blade scraping bone. The dream-realms trembled as her emotions fractured, and the demoness whispered, "And that was the day your uncle smiled"
...
The moment the question left her lips—"Who is he? Who is…"—something cracked inside her skull like a thunderbolt. A sharp, white-hot pain speared through her head. Her breath hitched. Her pupils shrank. She stared at the demoness as if finally seeing the grotesque shape behind the mask.
The demoness twirled around her slowly, her silhouette splitting and merging like living ink, laughter dripping from her mouth in warped echoes."What a naive fool you are…!" she sang, her distorted voice stretching like wet sinew. "You killed your own beloved with your own hands. Not because of justice, not because of betrayal, but because of a cheap illusion. A mere Gu swayed you. Even your 'profound' cultivation couldn't protect you."
The real one's vision darkened at the corners. "N-no… that's impossible… I… I would have known…"
"You knew nothing," the demoness whispered, leaning close enough for her breath to burn like frost. "Because a Gu, was embedded inside you. One that sucked your cultivation, one that pretended to be your own heart."
The woman instinctively clutched her chest, feeling an ache that wasn't physical but felt like a rope tightening around her ribs.
"Your true heart was a treasure," the demoness continued, eyes gleaming with cruelty. "Stolen from you at seven years old. Right after your father died."
Her lips trembled. "Then… how am I alive…?"
The demoness smiled as though savouring the unravelling of a delicate silk thread."Give me your body, and I'll tell you."
"No!" she shouted instantly, stumbling backward. Even in this soul-realm, her limbs felt heavy, weak, drained, as if someone had siphoned her strength through invisible needles.
"Fine," the demoness hissed. "Then I'll show you instead. Everything. The truth you worship… the life you cherished… I will peel it open and let you choke on it."
And with that—
—the blood-silk realm buckled.
Colours bled. Shadows stretched. Something pulled her downward like a whirlpool made of memories and nightmares.
When her senses returned, she stood in a dimly lit room.
A bridal chamber. But the air was wrong—stagnant, sickly sweet, like rotting flowers left too long in the dark.
Candles flickered in unnatural colours. Red silk curtains twitched although there was no wind. The shadows on the floor didn't follow the shapes of the objects that cast them.
She saw herself, her past self, sitting lifeless on the bridal seat beside her husband. Her eyes were dull, hollow, like glass marbles stuffed into a corpse.
She felt her stomach twist violently.
"What… what is this…?" she whispered.
Her answer came in the form of footsteps.
Her mother entered.Then the seven generals.Grand elder.Her uncle.
All with eyes that glinted like wet insects in the dark.
The present-one stood frozen as they surrounded her past self. Her mother's gaze was full, like an lustful demoness… with her lips curved into an eager smile as she approached the groom.
"What… what is she doing…?!" the real one gasped, stepping backward, panic rising like bile.
The demoness leaned on her shoulder lazily, whispering,"Why panic? This is your perfect family, isn't it…?"
Real one was standing on a corner. She saw her mother clothes suddenly tore by her husband. She moaned in pleasure. He was none other than a sect's young leader who was chosen by his uncle to became her partner. Elder asked "how was it? It was your second time, but you wanted to fuck her mother first even a new virgin bitch was in front of you. Did you not enjoy her before marriage." he said "grand elder, what you are saying? She was nothing compared to her. She was best, see this curve, round body, plump ass. Also what marriage, there was no marriage at all. Did not she married to a donkey?" all of them busted into laughter.
Her husband's voice echoed, distorted and cruel.The grand elder's laughter followed, choked with amusement.
She tried to cover her ears, but the sound seeped into her skull like worms burrowing.
Her mother kneeled, opening his pants.The groom grabbed her by turning her upside down.The bed creaked under the weight of sins piled over sins. Her mother fell on the bed top of the groom.
The younger version of herself sat there, motionless, as if drugged, as if already dead inside. only moaning sound was heard throughout the room, with general's laughter and someone's soundless cry.
The real one felt her insides collapsing. Something in her chest cracked, demoness was laughing by nodding her head sideways and saying "ohhhh… you married to a donkey. What a great scheme they made. They even made the illusion of your marriage into reality. I understand now totally."
The demoness flicked her finger like she was turning a page in a book.
"Not done yet," she crooned. "You haven't even seen how the 'flower' was unsealed."
Real one's knees buckled. She sank to the floor, hands trembling uncontrollably. Her nails scraped the dark wooden planks, leaving thin white marks. Her throat felt raw. Her tears wouldn't fall. Her lungs refused to breathe.
"What… did you… do…?" she asked, voice barely a thread.
The demoness pressed a cold finger to her lips."Hush."
Then she smiled, wide, too wide, her cheeks stretching to an inhuman length.
"Let's watch," she whispered, voice like a blade sliding into flesh."Let's see how the flower was unsealed that night."
And the candles went out.
...........
She screamed until her throat felt flayed, but the realm swallowed her voice as if it fed on the sound. The world twisted again—walls folding like wet paper, floorboards writhing like intestines, and she was forced to witness yet another nightmare-moment the demoness dug out from the pits of her memory. The crimson haze peeled away to reveal the chamber again, that cursed bridal room, except now it breathed, swelling with a pulse, the wooden pillars thudding like a giant heart.
The demoness flicked a finger, and the veil of illusion rippled like oil on water.
Women entered from both sides—ten of them—robes covering only their chests and lower bodies. Their stomachs were swollen like full moons, unnaturally round, their skin stretched thin enough that blue veins mapped across them like cracks in glass. Their faces were empty, drained, like puppets whose strings were still moving somewhere above.
Her uncle lifted a cup of dark wine and grinned. "Let's toast. Bring the feast. Look, meat from that bitch's husband. The clan truly blessed us tonight."
Laughter erupted, deep, ravenous, inhuman.
Then the young lord, the one who should have been her groom, leaned forward with a hungry smile. He said "let me release on this bitch first." Uncle said "take your time. Let's enjoy others."
They said in laughter " let's see. woww... what a good quality they are. 10 pregnant woman, everyone was on order. What an great opportunity. Lets toast on their mouth. Enjoy everyone..." They raised their glasses in toast and uncle laughed by grabbing two women "10th and 8th were mine." Seeing this, generals grabbed two of the pregnant women by the arms, as if choosing livestock. They tore cloth, pulled, dragged—
Suddenly with a loud, they found themselves in a situation without knowing anyone. they were being raped by another man, they shouted in unison for help but hands came out to stop their shouts. On that lonely night, only agony, pain their brutality was heard and a silent witnesser was seeing all things but she was not in her mind.
One of the generals turned, eyes glassy, sweat dripping like wax down his face. His gaze slid toward her as though he had forgotten she existed until now.
"What about her?" he asked, voice wet and too close to her ear even though he stood across the room.
Her uncle smiled, slowly, serpent-like. "Don't worry. Her turn comes soon."
But the illusion bent again. The light snapped. Shapes grew too tall. Shadows lengthened like arms reaching for her throat.
Suddenly she was stood up, standing, no, swaying, before her uncle. But now he held a woman draped over his arm. Water spilled from between her legs, mixed with blood that hit her head like warm droplets of rain. He lifted her by the hair. Her eyes were glassy. Her lips parted, but no sound came.
"I think this one died already," he said casually.
He lifted the woman's limp body and smeared her blood across his cheek like paint. And then of course, the illusion worsened.
The scene shifted violently, floor cracking apart, time skipping like a scratched record. Suddenly she stood in the aftermath of a battlefield. Her uncle was kneeling, holding a decapitated head. He wept. He screamed. He cursed.
Real one saw her one self's voice cracked. "What… what happened?"
He turned to her, grief twisting into rage. "The bastard you begged us to spare fled the prison," he said. "He killed your husband. Your clan's honour. Everything."
The murderous intent that rose inside her felt unnatural, as if injected. Not hers, but forced into her veins. A burning ink spreading through her bloodstream.
"I understand," she muttered, voice hollow.
Her figure flickered, and vanished.
The generals without clothes behind him laughed. "What a fool," one of them said. "That husband," another said, wiping his mouth, "was busy raping her own mother while she prepared for slaughter."
Another snorted. "A puppet, through and through."
The attendants, broken, barely alive, dragged themselves across the floor like insects. The walls dripped with something too thick to be water. The air became syrup. Every breath tasted like old blood.
And then—
And then again moaning began.
It echoed from every corner, every shadow, every crack in the walls. Bodies moved in the darkness, blurred and wrong, heads bending at unnatural angles, limbs twisting in ways that defied bone.
Their silhouettes merged and separated like things growing from a single rotten root. They convulsed. They writhed. They whispered things that scraped the inside of her skull like claws.
The demoness appeared behind her, whispering in her ear, voice smooth as silk, cold as a corpse:"Human evil surpasses demons. Even we fear what mortals do to each other."
The real one dropped to her knees. Tears, hot, stinging, fell, then dried instantly on her burning skin. She pressed her hands to her ears, but the screams crawled under her palms, into her skull.
"Stop it… stop it… STOP IT!" she sobbed."This illusion—stop it—please—SOMEONE—just—STOP IT! Please… I beg you…"
The demoness leaned down, her shadow engulfing her like a coffin closing.
"Little girl… this is no illusion."
To be continued...