"Do it. Turn me into one of your mindless creatures, like those twisted beings you bind and break…
"…Make me your puppet, your slave, your pawn to grow you stronger." Maran spoke with a voice that bled resignation. Sadness, anger, and bitter disappointment tangled within every word.
In an instant, Mr. Morningstar's trident smashed across Maran's face, hurling him violently across the stone floor.
The blazing crimson weapon, wreathed in black fire, sent a spike of agony through Maran's head, as if his head had been split open.
He lay sprawled and helpless.
"The reason you still possess free will… the reason you have a consciousness akin to humans, their knowledge, their emotions…" Mr. Morningstar's cold, elegant voice echoed
His tone was graceful, aristocratic, dripping arrogance.
"…is so you can perform your duties flawlessly. Pain, rage, hatred, disappointment, despair, sorrow, desperation… those are the shadows in the human soul."
"The crimson eye I granted you allows you to see what no human ever could. Invisible beings, fragments of thoughts and emotions drifting like vapors, auras buried beneath flesh and memory..."
Mr. Morningstar's eyes burned like twin furnaces as he continued.
"And because you still possess a functioning mind and soul, you can refine and calibrate the crimson eye. You can see the deepest layers of human thought and emotion… and break them."
"But never, ever, you tiny rat be foolish enough to misuse that free will of yours." His voice sharpened, it was both explanation and ultimatum.
Maran remained on the ground, dizzy, unable to think clearly.
In the smallest corner of his heart, he had always dreamed of freedom from any kind of bondage.
But now?
There was no choice except obedience.
Every act of resistance, even a flicker of rebellious thought, would be punished with unimaginable torment.
"You merciless creature…" Maran whispered.
"Descend this mountain, go to the human city." Mr. Morningstar ordered.
Maran rose abruptly, nothing in him remained except burning hatred and smoldering fury.
He began his descent.
This time, the mountain was not silent as it had been when he was human.
Whispers, footsteps, wings, howls, hissing voices. Strange auras coiled around him.
Unfriendly eyes lurked in the dark.
Then, as he walked between beautiful blooming flowers, Maran froze.
A group of small, blind, moth-winged humanoids drifted toward him.
Their wings beat softly, surrounding him, their antennae trembling.
One approached closer, its presence eerie, unsettling.
"…Why does your heart scream?" it whispered, without eyes or a mouth.
Maran didn't answer.
He couldn't.
The creature recoiled, not out of fear, but because the despair radiating from him was overwhelming.
They were watchers, and what they saw in him…
was a storm.
…
Shaken and unnerved, Maran ignored them and pushed deeper into the forest.
The forest floor trembled once, twice, before a colossal minotaur emerged from the underbrush.
White fur, eyes scarred shut. A blind veteran of forgotten wars.
He paused.
"You…".
"…Your scent… you walk with the taste of endings." the minotaur rumbled.
Though blind, he spoke as if seeing Maran more clearly than any human ever could.
Then he stepped aside.
"Go. I will not stand against one favored by entropy."
This was not submission.
This was suffering forged into wisdom.
Maran said nothing.
He refused to believe any words said to him.
….
He continued his descent.
Moonlight slipped through twisted branches, illuminating drifting shapes.
Wings that once beautiful, now hung in ribbons.
Their pale eyes reflected nothing but hunger.
A Tatterwing hovered near him, head twitching like a broken puppet.
Its lips parted, not in words, but a raw, pained croak.
When Maran's crimson gaze met it, the creature trembled, covering its ruined face as if ashamed.
The fae were once guardians of purity.
Now even purity had rotted.
Maran felt their sadness deeply.
He realized destruction had always been part of humanity's creation.
"And now I'm enslaved to become the catalyst of that destruction.
Good grief…" he muttered bitterly.
…
The path narrowed between dead birch trees.
He felt it before he saw it.
Cold in the air, silence tightening like a noose.
A shadow peeled away from a tree like wet cloth, faceless, formless.
Only a trembling silhouette imitating a human shape.
Then came a whisper, like breath beneath a coffin lid:
"Your sorrow… opens doors."
His crimson eye flared.
The shadow knelt.
For the first time, Maran understood, they did not obey humans.
They obeyed despair.
And his despair was endless.
The creature followed him faithfully.
Maran shuddered, every part of his spirit trembling, he tried to ignore it, and when he tried to drive it away, it refused to leave.
…
He reached the forest's end, a vast savanna spread before him.
Cawing erupted overhead, a raven perched on a broken mile marker.
Then another, and another.
Soon dozens encircled him, feathers rippling as countless eyes blinked open along their bodies.
Every eye fixed on Maran.
"Why…?" he whispered in fear and disbelief.
A chorus of harsh, discordant caws answered.
They only gathered around one type of being:
A destroyer whose future was drenched in blood.
They followed him like priests attending a prophet.
…
The burden of their presence weighed heavily on him.
"Is this truly the monster I'm destined to become…?" he muttered anxiously.
At the foot of the mountain, Maran's legs trembled violently.
He doubted to do the vile task, or face excruciating torment.
…
Then, tiny pale bodies rustled in the tall grass.
At first Maran thought they were ordinary vermin, until one stood upright and spoke in a rasping, humanlike whisper:
"We smell sorrow… We follow sorrow…"
Hundreds emerged.
Humanlike faces smiling with too many teeth.
"What the hell!" Maran screamed, horrified.
They gathered around his boots, heads bowed.
A chill ran through him.
These creatures didn't obey power, they obeyed prophecy.
…
And unwillingly, he had become its center.
Every step felt like a descent into madness.
Shadows obsessed with becoming human, ravens with countless eyes, rats with human faces.
Their whispers tore at him.
"I should've taken the human trail…
I wouldn't have encountered these abominations…"
"…But I did it to spare any innocent human from crossing my path."
"…I don't want anyone to share my fate…" Maran whispered, crushed by sorrow.
They continued onward until a massive mansion appeared in the distance—
radiating an aura so dark it felt like conflict incarnate.
Three hundred meters away—
The shadow fled in terror.
The ravens hid in distant treetops.
The vermin scattered into bushes.
Maran forcedly pulled by the force to the mansion.
*Dhugg…*
Darkness swallowed him.
…
Warmth.
Faint, fragile, yet undeniably present.
For a moment, Maran wondered if he was dreaming.
His consciousness drifted through black waves, then slowly and painfully rose.
Thump…
A steady heartbeat that not his own.
He lay on something firm yet soft, not quite a bed, not quite a coffin.
Dim purple light seeped through half-opened curtains.
"That hellish… still watching…" He knew that glow instantly.
He forced himself to sit.
His limbs trembled.
The room was lavish, terrifyingly so.
Black stone walls, crimson veins pulsing faintly like molten blood.
Shelves lined with books bound in disturbingly human textures.
A chandelier of bone fragments overhead.
And on a nearby table,
a dagger.
Obsidian metal, runes twisting when stared at too long.
"This feels like a devil's private chamber…" Maran froze.
Then, a presence behind him shifted the air.
"You awaken sooner than I expected." Said something with women's voice.
Maran spun around.
A petite figure stood in the doorway.
Long silver hair cascading like moonlit silk, eyes glowing deep crimson.
Beautiful, dangerously so.
Her voice was soft, but carried ancient authority.
"You are no longer affected by the Chains here…"
"…Mortgrathiel is forbidden from entering this place." she said.
Maran stared. Astonished, confused, relieved, and terrified all at once.
"You… who are you?" he asked.
Skeptical, unsure if this was a trap set by Mr. Morningstar.
"My name is Lillith…"
"…I was the Sally you saw days ago." she said gently.