Chapter 7:2 A Small Footpath Into Darkness
The two-day journey was physically and mentally exhausting. We walked through dense forest, avoiding main trails. Max, with his sensitivity, proved surprisingly good as a guide—he could sense the presence of predators from afar, or feel the natural unease of unstable ground. But he was also easily overwhelmed. The sound of birds, the rustle of wind, even the sunlight filtering through leaves—all carried unfiltered waves of nature's wild emotions. I saw him often close his eyes, take deep breaths, practicing the "stoppers" the Master had taught.
In contrast, I grew more vigilant. Every shadow, every sound, was a potential illusion. I walked with my Vars Eyes partially active, observing the energy patterns around us. Everything seemed normal—the greens and browns of wild life, without any suspicious purple or orange traces.
We spent the first night in a small cave. Max, exhausted, fell asleep quickly. I kept watch, sitting at the cave's mouth, watching the moonlit forest. My thoughts swirled. What would we face? An illusion that could lure people in? How to fight it? With a counter-illusion? Or by asserting reality as forcefully as possible?
I remembered the Master's words: "The strongest illusions deceive the heart." So, how to defeat such an illusion? With indifference? With cynicism? Or by accepting it, then sabotaging it from within?
Those questions hung like mist as we finally arrived at Harrow's End on the afternoon of the second day.
The village was exactly as the Master described: pathetically ordinary. A cluster of wood and stone houses with thatched roofs, small fields, a well in the center. But the village's aura... was wrong.
Even without Max's sensitivity, I could feel it. An unnatural silence. No sounds of children playing, no chatter of mothers in front of houses. Smoke rose from only a few chimneys. The few villagers visible—an old man mending a fence, a woman gathering firewood—moved sluggishly, like sleepwalkers. Their faces were blank, expressionless.
And the colors. In my Vars Eyes, the village was draped in a thin, faint bluish-purple mist. It wasn't the color of offensive magic, not orange or red. It was the color of melancholy, yearning, and... allure. Like a toxic nostalgia.
Max bit his lip, his face pale. "I... I feel sad," he whispered. "But it's not my sadness. It's like... everyone here is longing for something lost. And that longing... is sweet. Very sweet. I want to cry, but also smile." He clutched his medallion tightly. "And there's something else. At the forest's edge, to the west. Something that... calls. With the same taste, but stronger. Much stronger."
That was the source. The western forest edge.
We decided not to enter the village. We skirted the forest's edge, staying hidden, heading in the direction Max indicated. As we drew closer, the strange feeling intensified. Even I, with my cynical defenses and Vars Eyes, began to feel a subtle urge to walk faster, to enter the forest, to find... what? I didn't know. But there was a promise in the air. A promise of something better, something lost.
We found the spot. A small gap between two very ancient-looking oak trees. From that gap, the bluish-purple mist emanated more strongly. And on the ground, before the gap, lay a child's toy—a worn wooden doll. The doll radiated an aura of sadness so thick it was almost visible.
Max knelt, about to touch it, but I pulled his arm back. "Don't. It's the bait."
He nodded, trembling. "The people... they came here. They felt this call. And they entered." He stared into the dark gap. "And inside... there is something wearing the face of what they long for."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because I can feel... its echo. Its shadow. Inside there... is happiness. But a false happiness. Like honey mixed with ashes." He looked at me, his eyes full of fear mixed with painful empathy. "We have to go in."
"This is a very bad idea," I muttered. But the Master sent us here to face this. Running wasn't an option. "You hold onto my feeling. If I start to look... entranced, tell me. I'll do the same for you."
Taking a deep breath, we stepped into the gap.
The world changed.
Not into a dark forest. But into... a home. Not our home. But a home that felt comfortable, warm, and safe. I stood in a room with a lit fireplace, bookshelves, and the scent of herbal tea. In a chair by the window, a woman with long hair and warm eyes smiled at me. My mother. But not my real mother. My real mother died when I was young, her face vague in my memory. This was the perfect version, the one I'd always longed for from my father's stories.
And beside her, a man with broad shoulders and a friendly smile—my father. My real father, who died at the Order of Thymol's hands protecting me.
My heart lurched. A warmth so deep, so real, tried to flood me. This is an illusion. I know this is an illusion. But... oh, how I yearned for this.
"Sit down, dear," said the woman, her voice like music. "We've been waiting for you."
In the corner of my eye, I saw Max. He wasn't in the same room. But I could see him, like a transparent image overlapping. He was in a sunny meadow, running around with a laughing boy and girl—his siblings lost to a plague, I guessed. His face was radiant with a pure, heartbreaking happiness.
It's a trick, Max! I wanted to shout, but my mouth was reluctant to open. The warmth here... was so sweet.
Then, I felt something. A touch on my mind—not words, but a feeling. Care. Concern. It was from Max. Through our strange bond, he sent a warning, even as he was being lulled. He felt my false happiness, and he sent... pity. Sincere pity that I, the cynical, cold one, was so easily seduced by a family fantasy.
That pity was like a cold splash of water. My cynicism surged, angry at being pitied, angry at my weakness being seen. I looked at my "parents." I focused on the details. My mother's eyes were too bright, without worry lines. My father's hands were too clean, without scars or calluses. They were dolls. Beautiful, poisonous dolls.
"You are not them," I said, my voice hoarse.
Their smiles didn't fade. "We can be them," said the father. "We can be whatever you want. Stay here. There will be no pain. No Order of Thymol. Only love. Only family."
The temptation was so strong. But Max's pity, and my anger at it, gave me a hold. I remembered my mission. I remembered the Master. I remembered that outside, villagers were vanishing, perhaps trapped forever in their own dreams.
This was a psychic illusion. It fed on yearning. So, how to fight it? Not with counter-yearning. But with... acceptance that the yearning will never be fulfilled.
I focused. I didn't try to create another illusion. Instead, I did what I'd mulled over in the cave: I asserted reality. My bitter, cynical reality. I projected it outward, not as an attack, but as a statement.
I imagined my real mother's death—vague, cold, a departure that left emptiness. I imagined my real father's face as he shoved me into hiding, full of fear and desperate love, before he was taken. I imagined the years of loneliness, suspicion, the cold of the sanctuary stone. Not as tragedy, but as fact. Dry, unappealing, and irrefutable.
I radiated that out, like a spreading grey mist in the warm room.
The faces of my "parents" began to waver. Their smiles grew stiff. The fireplace dimmed.
"You don't have to do this," hissed the mother, her voice losing its warmth, becoming like the wind. "You could be happy."
"Happiness is an illusion worse than sorrow," I answered, and the words felt right in my cynical mouth. "At least sorrow is honest."
My grey mist spread, choking the illusory light. The room began to crack, like breaking glass. Behind it, I saw the forest returning—dark, cold, real.
Then, I heard Max's scream.
I turned. In his world, the sunny meadow turned gloomy. His imaginary siblings stopped laughing. Their faces went blank, then shifted, elongating, becoming something hungry and pale green. They were no longer children, but something resembling moving tree roots, reaching for him.
Max fell, terrified. He was too attached to his happiness, too trusting. And now, as the illusion turned into a nightmare, he was unprepared.
I had to act. But how? I couldn't enter his illusion. Or... could I?
With the last of my energy and focus, I concentrated on Max. I didn't try to create an image. I created a feeling. The feeling of the words I often told him in annoyance: "Don't be an idiot." But I wrapped it in a tone that was almost... familiar. A rough but familiar disapproval. A reminder that outside this dream, there was someone who would keep calling him naive, and that, strangely, was something real.
I projected that "taste" through the empathic bridge that had formed between us, piercing the layers of his dream illusion.
Max, being dragged by the creepy roots, suddenly turned his head. His terrified eyes found my transparent image amid the crumbling of his world. He saw my cynical expression—not at his nightmare, but at his terrified self.
And something in him hardened.
He screamed, not in fear, but in anger. Anger at himself, anger at the illusion that toyed with him, anger at me for seeing him weak. That anger was bright yellow and burnt orange, a strong, real emotion.
He shoved his hands into the ground (the illusory meadow that was now fading). "YOU ARE NOT THEM!" he yelled, and the shout was full of reversed empathic energy—instead of accepting emotion, he vomited it out, rejecting it with all the strength of his soul.
The wave of rejection spread. The roots scattered into purple dust. The meadow cracked.
And suddenly, we were both standing back in the real forest, in front of a... thing.
It wasn't a living creature. It was a large, moss-covered boulder, but with a crack in its center like a small mouth. From that crack, the bluish-purple mist emanated. Around the boulder, five people sat or lay—three adults, two children—with expressions of vacant happiness on their faces. They were breathing, but comatose. They were the missing people from Harrow's End.
The boulder pulsed weakly with purple light. I could feel its subtle hunger, its desire to feed on yearning.
"A manifested psychic illusion," I murmured. "A Geistfang—a Dream Trap. It doesn't mean harm. It just... feeds on dreams. But feeding on dreams means feeding on souls."
Max, still panting, stared at the unconscious people. "We have to free them."
"The way is to sever its connection," I said. The stone fed through illusion. So, we must give it a reality it cannot digest.
We exchanged a glance. We understood without words. Max would gather all the real feelings of these people—not the yearning amplified by the stone, but their simple, mundane emotions: a farmer's weariness after a day's work, a mother's annoyance at laundry not drying, a child's small anxiety about a test. Everyday, unglamorous, boring, real emotions.
And I would take those emotions and weave them into an illusion—not a beautiful illusion, but an ordinary one. An illusion of an ordinary day in Harrow's End, with all its petty worries, boredom, and weariness. A reality so boring that even dreams wouldn't want to eat it.
Max approached each unconscious person, placing his hand on their foreheads. His face scrunched as he filtered and drew out their basic emotions. I saw faint colors like brown weariness, grey of mild worry, green of boredom—flowing from them to Max, and from him toward me.
I caught the stream. This was hard. Creating a monster was easy. Creating a family paradise was hard. But creating mundanity... that was the hardest. I focused, carving energy patterns with my mind, projecting simple images: a man complaining of back pain, a child grumbling about sweeping the floor, a woman staring at laundry in frustration over a stubborn stain.
I projected this illusion directly into the boulder's crack.
The boulder shuddered. Its purple light flickered rapidly, becoming unstable. It tried to digest the "dream" I brought, but this was no dream. It was filtered reality. No sweet yearning, no perfect happiness. Just drab, ordinary life.
The boulder, the Geistfang, began to retch. Purple mist poured out of its crack in chaotic plumes. The unconscious people around it began to cough, stir, their eyes blinking open in confusion.
Then, with a sound like a long sigh of wind, the light within the stone went out. The stone itself cracked, becoming a pile of ordinary, non-glowing rocks.
We had succeeded. We were exhausted, sweaty, and trembling. But we had succeeded.
The awakened people looked around in confusion, then fear. Max, with his genuine weariness, approached them, explaining simply that they had gotten lost in the forest and fallen asleep. I let him. Let him be the friendly hero. I preferred to stay on the periphery, watching the forest darkness, ensuring no other threats.
When we finally left Harrow's End, leaving the bewildered villagers to return to the village with tales of being lost, night had fallen. We made camp some distance from the village.
Sitting before a small campfire, Max was silent for a long time. Then he said, "You saw your mother."
"I saw an illusion," I corrected.
"But you longed for her."
"Everyone longs for something, Max. That's what makes us vulnerable."
He nodded. "Thank you. For... the reminder. For being that unpleasant stone."
I snorted. "Don't get used to it."
But in the quiet, I pondered today's lesson. Illusion wasn't just about deceiving the eyes. It could be a prison for the soul. And my cynicism, which I'd always seen as a shield, could also be a weapon—to cut the bonds of sweet, poisonous dreams.
We had passed the Master's test. We had faced and defeated a shadow from within—in its most dangerous form: our own twisted desires. But the victory tasted bitter. Because I knew, as the Master had said, this was just a small footprint. The Geistfang was small, local. Something larger was waking.
And when the time came, we would have to be ready. I would have to be ready. Not just with better illusions, but with a colder acceptance of reality—the reality that in this world, even the sweetest dreams could become hungry monsters.