Without wasting times, the monstrosity run to him.
The woman? She's vanished somehow, unnoticed. It was as if she had never been there before.
Facing the inevitable, Nyx brace himself. It's a fight or die scenario. So he swung the chair leg with all his strength, and the monstrosity caught it mid-air with a metallic clang of its cleaver-arm.
"Shit—!"
Nyx wasn't a fighter. Martial art was not his cup of coffee. So his swings were wild, desperate. The monstrosity moved like a cat toying with it's mouse, dodging or deflecting each strike with eerie precision. A slash of its blade sent hot pain flaring across Nyx's limbs. Another grazed his shoulder, staining his shirt crimson.
The wounds on his body increased as times passed by.
Nyx staggered back, breath ragged, warm blood soaking through his suit. This isn't working. Another slash came, he barely ducked in time, feeling the wind of the blade whistle past his ear.
Stumble, he bumped into the bookshelf.
Battered and powerless, leaned on it.
'I can't win this, I'll die here.' The thought come to him naturally.
The Phantasm loomed over him, its wounded faceless head tilting almost playfully as it raised its arm for the killing blow, when suddenly, a pale hand shot between them.
The woman with stitched eyes appeared like a gust of wind, her fingers brushing the monstrosity's chest with what looked like no force at all. Yet the monster flew backward as if hit by a truck, crashing through three more shelves before landing in a heap of broken wood, books, and scattered pages.
Before Nyx could process what happened, the woman's cold fingers closed around his wrist, her grip shockingly strong.
"Come." Her voice was no longer a whisper, but a command.
The woman yank him toward the reception desk. Blood dripped from his wounds, leaving a trail behind them.
"That won't hold it for long," she said, shoving him against the desk. The book lay there, its pages still open. The ink inside now swirling like living shadows. "The book can give you power. Enough to survive. But it requires your consent."
Nyx's vision swam. The pain was a fire in his veins. "At what cost?"
Her stitched eyelids trembled. "You're right, anything has a price. But the alternative is death, or worse, becoming one of them, the Phantasm."
Behind them, the monstrosity stirred, its jerky limbs untangling from the debris.
Nyx's hands shook. He didn't want this. Didn't trust it. But the blood on his clothes was his own. The Phantasm's murderous intent was fixed on him.
And the woman's final question cut deeper than any blade.
"Do you want to live?"
A breath. A heartbeat.
Nyx reached out and touched the book.
The library shattered.
—§—
Pain.
A moment later, nothing.
A void. A silence so complete it was deafening.
Nyx floated in the dark, unmoored, until a voice that was not a voice spoke.
"What will you sacrifice?"
Images flashed, his memories. His mother's laugh. His first heartbreak. The mundane events of his life.
"To get the blessing of the Night, you must give it something in return."
Nyx understood. This was the bargain.
In the emptiness between seconds, Nyx felt it, few parts of his memories disintegrates. Fragments of his childhood, laughter with friends he could no longer name, the warmth of a family dinner where the faces had blurred into nothing,gone. Sacrificed to the hungering dark, each one flickered like a dying flame.
The voice whispered one last time. "A fair trade."
—§—
Nyx gasped as reality slammed back into him. His knees hit the library floor hard, his skull splitting with pain. For a terrifying moment, he couldn't remember why he was here.
Wait—where is…? What was I just…?
Gaps yawned in his mind, black holes where memories should be. He clutched his head, nails digging into his scalp as if he could physically hold the remnants of himself together.
Above him, the stitched-eyed woman sighed.
"Treasure Eyes," she murmured, disappointment dripping from every syllable. "Of all the gifts the Night could grant, it gave you that. How… mundane."
Nyx barely registered her words. His vision swam, but when it cleared, something was different.
The Phantasm, now clawing its way free from the wreckage, glowed. Not its body, but something around it. A hazy, shimmering outline of something hovering near its chest. A shape Nyx instinctively knew wasn't meant to be seen by normal eyes.
"You can see it, can't you?" The woman's voice was bored now. "The 'treasure' the Phantasm will leave behind when it dies. How… practical."
She sounded disgusted.
With a flick of her wrist, the woman sent a ripple of cold energy over Nyx's body, to his wounds. The bleeding slowed, the pain dulled, but the gashes remained, wet and half-sealed. First aid, not healing.
Then she tossed something at his feet.
A hatchet. Old, its wooden handle cracked, its blade flecked with rust but sharp and sturdy.
"Kill it," she said, already turning away. "If you can."
She settled behind the reception desk, picking up a book as if this were nothing more than a mildly inconvenient intermission.
The Phantasm lurched to its feet, its faceless head tilting toward Nyx.
"My friend," it crooned, cleaver-arm rising. "Receiving help… it's unfair, IT'S CHEATING!"
"This isn't a damn game!" Nyx exclaimed, bloodied fingers gripping the hatchet as he whirled toward the woman.
She didn't even look up from her book.
The Phantasm advanced, its cleaver-arm scraping against the floor, that sickening thuuk-tack filling the air. Nyx's new vision pulsed, the glowing outline near the Phantasm's chest sharpening into something. A key? A weapon? He couldn't tell.
"You're strong, please kill it," Nyx pleaded at the woman. "This hatchet useless on me, I don't know how to fight."
Finally, she glanced up. Her red lips twitched in what might have been annoyance.
"Whining to a girl. Sir, that's unbecoming," she said coolly. "The book gave you what you paid for. That you find it... lacking is not my concern. I already help you thrice."
The Phantasm lunged.
Nyx barely dodged, the cleaver whistling past his ear. He stumbled back, running and dodging the Phantasm's attacks, pain flaring through his half-sealed wounds. "Then why help me at all?!"
The woman sighed, snapping her book shut. She tilted her head. "Because the Night enjoys irony. Very well. The last ones, one lesson and one trick, since you insist on whining."
She raised a single finger.
"A Phantasm are a collection of a human's darkside given form. It could grow from dreadful imaginations, sins, strong emotions, or even their own depraved soul. To kill one, you must attacks it with your spiritual power. But I know you can't do it right now so..."
Her nail, long and glossy red, pointed at the Phantasm's chest.
"Tell me, sir. What do you see?"
Nyx forced himself to focus through the pain, his vision sharpening as he stared at the Phantasm's chest. The glow intensified, solidifying into a rusty, bloodied key, pulsing with a dark, vengeful aura.
Floating around it were other objects. A small flask swirling with crimson light, six shimmering orbs of pale energy, and twelve jagged fragments that looked like broken glass, each reflecting distorted scenes or person.
The woman's voice cut through his observation.
"The key is its treasure," she said, sounding almost bored. "The rest? Trinkets. Tools. Useless unless you claim them. But that's not what you want to see. Focus on your eyes more, look at the Phantasm more deeply, search the Primal Essence within it. Destroy that, and the Phantasm dies."
Nyx's mind raced. "How do I—?"
The Phantasm moved.
Its cleaver-arm slashed downward, forcing Nyx to roll aside. The blade bit into the floor where he'd just stood, splintering wood.
No time to think. Only act.
The Primal Essence was inside the Phantasm's chest. With that knowledge, Nyx concentrated on his eyes with the thought of seeing what couldn't be seen. Pain assaulted his eyes as tears of blood flowed. He didn't stop, all to survive. Then, the flow of time seemed to slow down in his vision, a moment later it stopped completely.
He saw it.
The Primal Essence.
A lump of red smoke the size of Phantasm itself. It was eerie, repulsive, turning his mind hazy the longer he saw it. Even with all that, he didn't stop to gaze it. Slowly, the red smoke swirl around to a point, forming into something like a beating heart.
Nyx come face to face with the Primal Essence of a Phantasm. An achievement that ninety-seven percent of the Tainteds who wandered in The Night Realm can't hope to obtain.