With a heave of an exhale, Elmer resolved himself to take a good look at the results of his actions, and at last, brought his eyes down.

He had taken a life of his own accord, and so he had to own up to what had come of it. He should not be avoiding to lay his eyes on Craig Wiley’s body—the body of the man he had murdered.

There, on the floor side-faced in a small pool of continuously flowing blood, lay Craig Wiley, though not as Elmer had remembered him to be.

Twice Elmer had come in contact with the man, he had been corrupted, half his face completely filled with countless meaty maggots drilling their bodies into him and, at the same time, out.

An overtly disgusting experience looking at Craig had been then. But now, he seemingly had returned back to normal—somehow.

The maggots were nowhere to be found, every single one of them gone without a trace—vanished in the same likeness as the final wisp of smoke from an exhausted candle light.

And even though the man on the floor no longer had his eerie and skin-crawling features, Elmer still found his stomach riddled with bile as his spit turned bitter.

No one needed to tell him why that was.

It was for none other than the sight of a dead body—the actual dead body of a human, one he had killed himself!

Elmer could not bring himself to wonder if the maggots had disappeared because life had been snuffed out of Craig Wiley, and in return made him incorrupt, because his mind had gone blank while his eyes darted over the lifeless corpse before him.

Why had he thought simply resolving himself would make it all easy?

It wasn’t. Not in any single way!

Could he really go on doing something like this when a similar situation propped up—all because he wanted to bring Mabel’s soul back? If it was called for, could he really keep snuffing out the lives of anyone who stood as an obstacle on this path he was taking to save his sister?

Could he really go on to be the so-called reaper he had said he would become?

With pacing breaths, Elmer took a moment to gaze deep into the endless and gleamless void that was Craig Wiley’s opened eyes, watching his flesh slowly turn pale as the blood flowing out of his forehead dyed his left eye pure red.

All of a sudden Craig’s face shifted eerily with a crack that was akin to that of a broken glass, and took on the features of a person that widened Elmer’s eyes considerably in anxiety.

It had been only for a second, but Elmer had seen Mabel’s face—his sister’s face!

His stomach churned instantly, and a sense of discomfort built up rapidly from there, rising swiftly to his gullet and forcing him to send the gloved palm of his right hand all the way to his mouth.

He made sure to push the vomit that had tried to make its way out from him back in, but that did little to alleviate the sharp pang that was surrounding his heart. It was so painful that he almost thought countless thorns had been pierced into it. In fact, it seemed to have filled him with more pain than what he had felt after taking the essence elixir to become an Ascender.

His hand slipped from his mouth and then did his ears begin to take in every dry and heavy heave of breath he was having.

“It’s done, Elmer,” he mumbled to himself—he reminded himself—as he shook his head fervently but slowly. “No one is standing between you and The Warlock’s Torch anymore…” He trailed off for a moment, then suddenly fell to his knees. “So what is wrong with you?! Why… Why do you feel so bitter…? Why…?!!”

Folding his arms over his stomach, he dropped forward, his forehead to the floor. But this action was not an attempt of his to pay respects to the dead body of the man he had murdered, it was simply as a result of the anguish that was cloaking his body. He was trying to hold himself against it, to not succumb to the distress he was feeling—to the pressure—but he was failing.

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Elmer’s face contorted vividly in pain. “Make up your mind, Elmer!” He took a second, and then, as though a legion of mad, evil spirits had seized control over his body, he sent his head smashing to the floor in intervals, each one causing a greater flow of blood than the last to pour out as his glasses slipped a tad from his eyes. “Make up your mind!” he screamed. “Make up your mind! Make up your mind! Make up your mind!”

He suddenly stopped abruptly, then sat up straight on the back of his foot, his eyes and bloodied forehead sent up to the ceiling which was far above him.

“Make up your mind…” he muttered under loosened breath, his voice barely a whisper as his whole body slumped visibly.

It was really hard for him. His thoughts and his body kept conflicting with each other. It was infuriating how hopeless he was—how indecisive he was.

He thought he had readied himself, settled his mind to do whatever was necessary to bring back the only family he had, even if it meant walking over others. Although, now that he had taken that step and pulled his trigger to end a person’s life, he could not find the mental resolve he wanted anywhere in him.

But what other choice did he have? This was the only alternative to his childish plans that he could think of to save Mabel—the only plausible way.

No one was going to help him. He’d tried that already. It was all left to him. The pain, the sorrow, the weight of it all, they were his to bear. He was going to be going up against the Church of Souls and their God, there was not a single human in the universe who was of a sane mind that would join him on such a quest.

He was to be the one to comfort himself. He was to be the one to think up whatever plans for himself. And he was to take all the actions himself.

Again, as his breathing settled down, he had brought himself once more to resolving his being to what he was to do. Only, this time, he would not let it falter—he mustn’t.

And for that he reminded himself of the tragedy that had befallen him on the night he and Mabel had snuck out to glimpse the steam cars, as well as his little sister’s countenance when she had been suffering on the altar of those priests.

He brought forth the picture of his sister’s soul as it had left her body, angry and cold, releasing the lock he had used to imprison it, and allowing it to rampage freely in his mind.

Furthermore, in an attempt to make sure that he adhered to his new role in life, he brought back the words he had thought of on the day Ms. Edna had told him of the Upper Echelon and its ranks.

With his narrow brown eyes unwillingly dulled to a point that it almost had not a single glint of light, Elmer drilled the words into his brain as he muttered with a monotone voice…

“I have to be prepared to do the same things they do. I have to act like they do, think like they do, become them in all entirety…”

And with that, he felt all the tension in his body forcefully being relieved, causing him to drop his head from the ceiling he had been looking at, and putting his eyes onto the floating Warlock’s Torch.

Elmer exhaled dejectedly before using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away the blood streaming down from the small gash on his forehead. He then went ahead to recite the prayer for spiritual eyesight, and as Eddie had explained to him, wrapped his finger around a small layer of vitality essence, directed it to his forehead, and healed his injury with it.

The sensation had been somewhat similar to that of his skin touching a highly heated kettle or pot, but he had felt no pain or discomfort from it, just the heat.

After all was done with his healing, Elmer snapped himself out of his spiritual eyesight and gently took to his feet. Respectfully side stepping away from Craig Wiley’s pale body laying in a pool of blood, he approached The Warlock’s Torch, floating in all its mystery and seductiveness.

Now finally being the closest he had ever been to the artifact, he felt a stronger pull toward it than what he had felt for Kate prior to his leaving of Ms. Edna’s home.

It was as though warm, childish hands had grown from the artifact and had stretched forward to clutch at the hem of his sleeves, softly raising his arms up in an attempt to coax him into taking hold of the artifact. Irresistibility was what it was, and he did not try to fight it. He unlocked his hand and took hold of The Warlock’s Torch.

As soon as his hand felt its roughed up wood—obviously ancient—faint, indistinct whispers rushed into his ears without warning. They were anything but harmful, and if Elmer was to term them with something, he would pick the word pleasant for what he was hearing.

The sounds were almost in the form of a song being sung by a beautiful lady in a dress of white, glimmering on a stage, slender and unstained. The only reason they had not been that way in all completeness was because there were no instruments playing, and the indescribable words seemed to not be, in any way, lyrics.

What the indiscernible words were mattered little though, they did what they had come upon his ears to do, which was take his breath away, and of course he freely gave it up. Every single cell in his body had turned unenthusiastic.

Elmer watched as the blue flame went from green to gray to cream to red, and then to blue again, constantly repeating the same pattern.

Then after staring at it for a little over five seconds, his mind recited the wish he had decided upon, prompting his lips to open softly and let loose in a whisper the words…

“Grant me my wish. Let me become an Ascender of the Pathway of Time.”