The forest held its breath. The constant chirr of crickets only made the silence heavier, like something waiting to be broken. Moonlight cut through the leaves in thin knives, lighting wet earth and the low silhouette of a boy moving through the trees. He was dragging a man by the hair — half alive, half wreck.
The man's body was a map of pain: burn marks, ripped flesh, countless wounds that told of long, patient torture. His eyelids fluttered but stayed mostly closed; it was hard to tell if he still lived or was already dead. Blood matted his beard and fell into the soil. The boy, too, was soaked in blood; it clung to his hair and shirt like a second skin. You could not say whose blood it was anymore.
The boy stopped. He looked down at the ruined man. No regret showed in his eyes. No pity. Only a smile that was raw and savage, like something brittle had finally broken inside him.
"Hah," he said, the laugh a little too bright in the dark. "How does it feel? I promised you. See, I kept my promise." He leaned close, his voice a whisper that sounded like a joke at death's own expense. "Aren't you happy? I'm happy. I'm very happy. Shouldn't you be happy that I'm happy?"
The man opened his eyes slowly, breath ragged, voice a thin rasp. "You… you are a demon," he croaked.
The boy's smile widened into reckless laughter. "What a compliment," he said, almost fondly. "My heart's all garden-garden now. For that you deserve a reward. Tell me — what do you want? What reward should I give?"
"Umm… you tell me," the man managed, spitting blood. "Because I don't know what to offer you. Maybe an easy death — what kind of reward is that? If I were you, I'd ask for that."
"Shut your nonsense," the man spat back, voice thick with blood and pain. "Stop pretending to be good. If you were human, you would not have killed those innocents. You would not have torn my comrades apart. You're an animal. A monster. All you know is killing."
The boy watched him without blinking. There was a hunger in his eyes — not hunger for food, but a hunger that wanted to tear the world open. He laughed again, the sound wet with blood, and it made him look completely mad.
"You talk too much," he said. "Alright. I've chosen your reward."
He slammed the man's face hard onto his knee. The crack of breaking teeth split the forest silence like a thrown stone. Then, as if answering some secret command, fire flared across the boy's hand. It did not burn the man; it drew back into the boy's palm, wrapping itself around him like a living thing. His hand glowed red as heated iron.
Without hesitation he grabbed the man's tongue between his fingers.
The pain that followed was endless and stupid and made sound impossible. Tears spilled down the man's face while his body convulsed and the world narrowed to one long, bright ache. The boy's face stayed cold — colder than stone.
He dragged the man to a pit that yawned like the throat of the earth. Thirty feet across, deeper than the eye could measure. It smelled metallic; moonlight found only a dark, glassy surface. The pit was full — full of human blood.
The boy heaved the man over the edge and let him fall. Flesh steamed. Bones went thin and vanished like thrown coals. The blood joined the pool and spread, a dark, living stain.
Standing on the rim, the boy walked beside the black water and thought to himself.
Had I always been like this? Or have I only changed now?
I kill and feel nothing. Children, women, the old — I have spared no one. Villages, towns — I burned them all. Why? Why did I do this?
Each step he took made the blood under his feet harden, as if it became stone. But when he moved inward, the blood bubbled and boiled, rising in red steam that licked at his clothes.
He found a flat stone and sat. "Now I have come too far to turn back," he told himself. "Desires, feelings — everything sacrificed. But for what? For power, maybe. Or… because I like it. I like crossing the line. I like cruelty."
Suddenly the pool heaved. The blood rose up, gathering into a dome of red over the pit. Spears of liquid light shot out from that dome and pierced his body. The pain was not only in body; it felt like his soul had been pierced too.
He gritted his teeth, held the pain down, but finally the pressure broke and he screamed, the sound raw and full: "Aaahhh!"
With each strike memories flashed in his mind — clearer than lightning.
Once, I was a man in another world.
There I had reached the place people spend their lives chasing. I rose from the ground and touched the sky. I had dreams, desires, mercy and compassion for others.
Now, sitting on that stone, bleeding and burning and remembering, the boy watched the red dome ripple and thought about a life he could hardly recognize.