He kicked the altar while shouting with all his might. He then punched the wall so hard he could even hear the bones inside crack.

Maybe it was just pathetic excuse to hurt himself, but he didn’t know what else he could do but to put the blame onto the failed ritual.

It was too much.

After enduring these turmoil inside for so many years, they all went down the drain and with that, he lost control.

He with every bit of his existence, was still denying that it was his fault.

Finally, he saw the dark crystal.

It was its fault they had to lose their daughter. And the swing. Yes, he must destroy the swing, too. It’s because of that swing. All because of that swing. It wasn’t his fault. Never his fault.

He picked up the gem to throw it outside.

The moment he touched the gem; he felt a strange sensation on his hand. He looked down and was shocked to his core.

There were small slippery tentacles protruding out of his wounds from earlier. He dropped down the crystal and was terrified beyond words.

Under his watch, the tentacles were slowly growing.

Laticia snapped back to her mind from the screaming of her husband. The horror on her husband’s hand made her she screamed as well.

The tentacles finally covered the whole body of Laurence and the last thing she saw was her husband’s dreaded eyes, filled with tears and despair.

Before she could do anything to help, tentacles wrapped Laticia’s legs and raised her to the ceiling. They, then thrashed her against the ceiling several times and amidst the blood spraying from above, they squeezed the life out of her.

Granted, life could never leave organisms’ bodies and instead of bloodied Laticia, a blueish blob dropped from the ceiling, along with her visceral and innards and once they reached the floor, they were splattered everywhere, painting the whole room bright red.

Needless to say, she was already gone.

It was a whirlpool of slippery and dark tentacles, similar to the colour of the dark gem. With no prey to hunt on, the tentacles seemed to move towards the outer place.

At this moment, the door was kicked open abruptly and entered a tall figure who was shrouded in black.

The figure was wearing formal clothes neatly with a black long coat.

Under the pale moonlight, one could clearly see that “he” had a pair of crimson eyes. His features were sharp, prominent and his skin colour leaned towards pale; parallel with the moon itself. And he was carrying an ancient lantern with the colour of faint azure, shining through the glass.

The lantern was overflowing with mystical lights.

Right as he entered the door, he saw the monstrosity rampaging in the house.

He instantly pulled out his black, carefully polished revolver from his waist and without hesitation, he pulled the trigger twice.

Some of the tentacles fell apart while making disgusting screeching noises but the rest started to aim the mysterious man in black.

He rushed straight to the tentacles and held the lantern right in the “face” of the tentacles.

It was the divine power of “Light” and Light was absolute!

However, to his surprise, it didn’t work!

The man frowned before jumping back out.

As the regenerated tentacles followed the man, he nimbly dodged through all of them like a circus clown in a trance.

Forget about reaching him, the tentacles didn’t even faze his clothes.

While dodging, he tried to subdue the monster with his bullets but to no avail. Seemed that every time a bullet went through a tentacle, another one took its place, creating a vicious, never-ending circle.

He noticed that once the lantern was near the two poor figures on the floor, they shrunk in size, terrified of the source of light that the lantern was projecting.

The lantern was still working, meaning this was, no doubt, an extraordinary monster related to an unknown existence, born from the power of “Wish”.

He had heard that some existences were trying to manipulate the world to their likings, but he couldn’t have known more with his position in the Overseers.

Getting annoyed, he clicked his tongue and started to find a solution amidst these horrors.

He slightly jumped away from the reach of tentacles and seriously thought to wait out for the reinforcements to arrive.

However, it was too much of a risk and no one knew, with time, what this monstrosity could do.

Because it was already the size of a family living room and these deadly tentacles were everywhere.

Unknowing what the man who he had been following, prayed to, it was the wisest decision to contain the situation all by himself!

I only have myself to rely on, after all.

Just tentacles of this magnitude could cause this level of destruction, who knew what could happen if its whole body was here?

Then, in the corner of his eyes, he saw a picture, a family of three with the man “Laurence” being the father. Seeing only two corpses, he instantly knew that the father was still alive. But where?

He looked at the tentacles. The realisation made him sighed slightly.

He double-checked to make sure he had enough bullets. He sighed again as the numbers were now only at three. He regretted that he only took some bullets but to his defence, his order was to just tail, not act!

He should be thankful for himself for even bringing the lantern along.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Which was now a mere lighting object.

“Man, I would have brought more bullets if I knew things were to turn out like this.”

One of the tentacles finally reached to him as its size was now bigger than the living room. The room itself was now destroyed by its body.

“Tsk.”

He had no choice but to use “that”. First, he put the lantern somewhere safe. It was indispensable and he wouldn’t want the nagging of his beloved Head Captain in the unfortunate case that the lantern was broken.

He was more terrified of that.

He focused on himself for a second and gritted his teeth.

His gun which was made of grey steel, covered in black paint was now covered in blackish flames. These flames were darker than the night itself. The instance he lighted the black flames, it seemed that the already dim room was darker several times than before.

His crimson eyes seemed to be lightened up with traces of madness in them.

The moment the gun was ignited with such flames, the creature suddenly flinched.

The same kind of flinch the two little figures reacted to the touch of azure light but a lot more intense.

Then, with a vibrating roar, it madly focused all of its attacks on the man in black.

He calmly looked at the terrifying tentacles and aimed at it effortlessly. Right before one of the slippery tentacles reached his face, he pulled the trigger effortlessly. The bullet flied with a bang with blackish flames encircling it.

It swiftly passed through the cluster of tentacles which was hard for a normal bullet to even get through and hit exactly where the man wanted it to hit.

Right in the centre where the victim was.

The creature was decimated. To say it was decimated would be incorrect because the blackish flames were devouring the creature, like erasing its entire existence even.

Strangely, the flames “ate” the creature!

The flames ate away the creature until the only things left in the desolate house were the young man and Laurence.

But could it still be called Laurence with his whole skin covered in slippery slime-like fleshes and his face barely recognisable. The bullet grazed his neck, but it was enough for the devouring flames to do their job.

And they were still burning faintly, slowly eating away the flesh. It was over.

The man slowly walked up to Laurence and stared at him plainly.

What Laurence saw was a pair of madness-induced crimson eyes staring straight into his soul.

Under normal circumstances, he would have been intimidated to death. But right now, there were more important things. His wife and daughter, Laticia and Laura.

They were nowhere to be seen in his already blurred vision.

Sudden realisation made him think of his daughter turning into the unfortunate figure which in turn, made him cry hopelessly.

He was glad that at least his tears were humane unlike his grotesque body.

If his wife got out from all of this mess, it would be okay.

He no longer wanted to drag her along with his pathetic works.

She had suffered enough.

At least she could be free, free from all this, moving on and living elsewhere, shining as a beautiful wild sunflower as she once was.

Free from him.

“Wh... where’s my wife, Laticia? Tell...tell her to get away from here. It’s already too late for me. (cough) Laticia? Are you there?”

The lack of response made Laurence realized his wife was gone.

For good.

He accepted that she ran away and escaped from these horrors.

He was content.

The man waited patiently for Laurence and just looked at him. It was unknown what he was thinking. But it was obvious as he was slowly pulling his gun out again.

“I will tell her whatever is needed to be told.”

“Ah, thank you. Young sir, thank you with all my heart. I don’t want her to suffer because of my mistakes anymore. She needs to be free.”

“---”

“She can survive on her own. Tell her don’t worry about me anymore or our daughter. She had already done enough. More than enough. Tell her to remember us only in her hearts because we will always be with her.”

“---”

“Young sir, are you still there? Sorry, my eyesight is getting worse now. Must be age pulling pranks on me. Young sir? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“(cough) Last, please tell her that I love her so dearly with all my heart and... will always do. And... and please...”

Laurence started to sob uncontrollably.

“Please ask her to forgive me and not to hate me.”

The young man pointed the gun at the deformed Laurence, without any hint of emotions.

As if it was natural for him to stare at such sorrowful creature without any visible emotions.

Maybe still-working ears of Laurence heard the cocking of the gun, he was slightly flustered for a moment before finally making peace with himself.

This was it.

Ah, what I would give to see their smiles once again. I just wish...

“Bang!”

The struggling “creature” and the limping tentacles instantly dropped down. The serene night and the peaceful neighbourhood violated by a loud gunshot, turned back to normal again after some countable moments.

There formed a mangled corpse with a bullet hole in its supposed forehead on the floor.

There were now three lifeless figures in the same room, several steps away from each other.

It was really hard to say they were lifeless corpses since traces of movements could be found on them.

Still, it was harder to consider them alive since the humanity which allowed them to act as living human beings was long gone from them.

No one should suffer the fate of being trapped inside such bodies, suffering from the pain and agony for eternity.

s the young man started to check the symbols on the altar, multiple people entered the house.

They were all in black with silver pins on their left chest, indicating symbols of some kinds of black shields. They were carrying rifles and once they saw the young man in black, they aimed their guns at him.

“Lower the guns.”

Then, their captain of sort made way through the men and ordered them to stay back.

He was also carrying an ancient lantern, similar to the young man’s and slowly approached him. The captain who had a dark red hair was frowning and glared at the young man with rock hard expression.

“It was related to dreams and despairs. I once read it in the reports.”

The young man started to talk first without batting an eye.

“Why didn’t you wait for us? It was an order to just tail the target, and you clearly violated the order.”

“I believe it was the best decision to make regarding the situation. Low risk, high return.”

“Low risk, my ass. Listen here, Merik. Don’t think so full of yourself just because you are Head Captain’s beloved pet dog. You and I may not see eye to eye on a lot of things but I’m still your superior. When an order is given, you have to follow. What are we without orders?”

The young man named Merik continued to stare at the symbols instead of retorting to the insults.

“Also, the thing you subdued clearly was something extremely dangerous. You know how things related to “Wish” can be deadly. It’s textbook. What if you failed to kill it and further made it stronger. What if it destroyed the neighbourhood and even the whole city? Whose fault would it be then? Overseers shouldn’t take events like these lightly!”

Merik looked at the “Captain” in the eyes. A moment of intense emotions swayed the stillness of the room which caused a slight discomfort for the people in it.

The Captain saw that Merik’s crimson eyes were burning faintly with a faint of calm and cold... madness.

But then, Merik simply shrugged.

“But I did kill it, didn’t I?”

The Captain gritted his teeth but didn’t say anything. Merik turned around and passed through the people.

After a few steps, he stopped in his tracks and looked back at the Captain.

“At least put the three of them together.”

The Captain was unable to understand the meaning behind these words as he watched Merik leave the house and into the distance.

“Clean up the area. Don’t randomly touch anything with your bare skin and don’t leave anything related to the “Wish” behind.”

“Yes, Captain!”

After Merik left the house with his both hands in his pockets, he pulled a gem from his right hand. It was a dark shiny gem. He threw it up in the air and caught it back before putting it back into the pocket.

A sudden wind gushed above his neck, but small black flames instantly appeared on his neck before blending in with the night.

"What a sorrowful world that we live in.”