The infinite sea was shrouded in mist. It reeked of decay.

The sea was now pure darkness, a harmony mingled with the blood of lost lives, crimson and rotten. Within it, thousands, hundreds of thousands of skulls bobbed on the waves.

The whispers in the ears, shadowy figures, swaying like the walking dead. They had lost their way, disappearing into the endless and ominous fog of oblivion.

Thousands of them, fading misty forms, had forgotten their cries of pain but still suffered, their groans never ceasing. Their lost pasts or the dying hopes for the future, the need to disappear replacing their desire to hold on to life, haunted them.

“Liwa… Herda…”

“Save… Us…”

“Let… Me… Die…”

A dark, blood-stained abyss, filled with misfortune in its eternity, and at its center stood a figure—tall and shadowy. Thin smoky silhouettes gathered around him. Even he seemed to have lost his way.

His gaze was distant, weary, exhausted.

A deep, very deep sigh escaped from his dark lips. He felt hollow inside, living through a thousand moments where the meaning of right was lost, and wrong had overtaken the soul.

He darkened, deeply.

“It wasn’t the right thing to do?” he muttered to himself. “It wasn’t the right path?”

“To reach the path of ascension… Didn’t you do the same?”

His eyes fixed on a colossal, indistinct silhouette, standing like a frozen statue in time, holding a small child in one hand. The figure had long, pointed horns and massive wings.

“Cruelty was your teaching… This was you… You used others to rise… You thrived on them…” he pointed at the surrounding spirits. “So then, why… Why did you always shine back then, while I remain in darkness now?”

Why being with you is so hard?

But there was no answer from the mute silhouette, nor would there ever be. It was merely a hazy memory, forgotten by the earthly body but clinging to the soul, a specter of the past.

The man turned his head, bitter with defeat.

“What do you mean, love?” But unexpectedly, the figure spoke. A voice given form by someone he could never forget.

A beautiful woman stood before him, holding a child in her arms. Not tall or colossal, not adorned with grand horns or wings. Her silver hair draped like a veil over a white robe, her ruby-like eyes reflecting the warmth they once held. “What do you mean? Do you believe what you did had a purpose? Or that your cruelty had reasons to make it meaningful?” Her face held a curious expression as she looked at him, while the child in her arms gazed at him with dark eyes, holding the innocence and wonder he had always hoped to see.

“I… had my reasons…” his voice was cold, barely escaping his lips.

Don’t let them know that you know.

With a soft smile, the woman approached, gently reaching out to place her hand on his cheek. She let him feel the warmth he longed for. “I’m sure you had.”

I’m sure you had your reasons to kill us...

The man gasped, and for a moment, he flinched. When he looked at her again, he saw her eyes streaming with dark tears, struggling to stand with the baby in her arms, who bore the same wound in her chest as her own. Her eyes held pain, sadness, anger, but above all, betrayal.

“You did this to us…” She fell to her knees, dark magic and black blood cracking and flowing from her chest. Her insides began to decay. “Watch… what you did... what you've done to us…”

The man froze in place, eyes wide open. He looked at a vision of himself, at the merciless figure standing before the dead woman and child. The woman had realized he would do this, and she wanted to speak, to find a way before everything.

Don’t let them know that you know!

“But perhaps you were right… After all, you couldn’t make another child with me… You couldn’t wait another century…” she said with a bitter smile.

“Because you didn’t have that long, did you?”

The man sank into silence, staring quietly at his reflection in the dark crimson sea. He was withered, balding, even his beard had fallen away. The outer shells of his black horns had started to peel.

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Yes, I didn't have that long. And now there is almost nothing left.

“Tell me. Then what did you want with our child?” her heartbreaking voice echoed among the spirits’ mournful groans. “Why didn’t you let her live?”

Don’t let them know that you know!

“I had... my reasons…”

The woman looked at him with pained eyes, still kneeling over the dark, blood-soaked sea, holding her lifeless child. But suddenly, a wide, unsettling grin spread across her face. “Or have you already realized?”

His entire body froze, and he took a few moments to mask the unease in his eyes before turning towards her.

“What are you talking about? Realized what?” When he turned, there was no one there. And the next moment, a whisper echoed in his ear. “Me, father.”

Before he could turn, an intense pain shot through his body—no, his soul—as if his entire essence, memories, and consciousness were being ripped away from him.

No! I won’t let this happen!

Aidz forced himself to break free from the dark entity behind him, slashing his claws backward with deadly speed, creating a fleeting gap in its smoky figure.

With a swift retreat, he leaped twenty paces away, the atmosphere and the cracking black magic at each step reinforcing his spiritual domain, where reality was most pliable to his will. His black robe fell onto the dark waters beneath him, forming a brief, shallow crater.

The entity before him was a shadowy mist, not quite yet a tangible form. But as it continued to siphon power from Aidz’s soul, it gradually took shape.

A tall figure with dark, curving horns, long black hair, and a handsome face with youthful, unlined features.

It was none other than Aidz’s younger self.

“Ah, so this is what it feels like to be you,” it remarked, glancing at its clawed fingers with a deep, resonant voice. Then, a wide grin, unfamiliar to see on Aidz's own face, twisted across its face. “I’ve been waiting so long for this moment.”

Aidz frowned, the wrinkles on his face deepening. This was nothing but a Djinn, born from the manifestation of his dark, corrupted side, the same that emerged within his daughter.

“You sacrificed your own child, my sister, to get rid of me, father. That really hurt my feelings, you know?” The grin widened as if contradicting its words. It stepped forward, causing ripples in the water. “But in the end, you wasted a life just to transfer myself to you.” It chuckled, “Though, I suppose you’re used to that, aren’t you? Wasting lives, you know.”

When Aidz remained silent, it shook its head with a sly smile. “But who could have guessed that the one I possessed already suspected me? Do you know how hard it was to make sure you didn’t notice?” It picked up a floating skull from the water, inspecting it idly.

“Piece by piece… Every day, I stole a little bit from you. Your mind, your memories, your health, and most importantly…” Its dark eyes met Aidz’s. “Your soul.”

Aidz continued to watch, eyes narrowed, his stance calm yet subtly on guard. “Every day… Every day, I endured your cursed torment. At first, I thought it was my conscience playing tricks on me. The pain left behind by my sins. But… when the doubts began… And when I finally realized it was you…” A bitter, wrinkled smile crept onto Aidz’s face. “It was already too late.”

Even though I suspected it was your doing, both in the outside world and within my spirit realm, and even though those illusions were distorted and disturbing, and not real, I still couldn’t bear a single day without seeing them.

Without wondering if they were because truly of my sins, or the tricks of my conscience...

The Djinn smirked coldly. “If I had known you’d figured it out earlier, I would’ve finished this quicker. I would’ve absorbed every last piece of you into myself since I am, now, capable of to do this.” It toy with the skull’s mouth, “But honestly, I thought I might die for a moment when you killed my sister. Thankfully, dear mother became the bridge that brought me to you.”

Aidz sighed with discomfort as he remembered the moment Quetlas struck his neck with her claws.

It really must have been then. Its presence had become so faint, I truly thought it had died at that moment.

The Djinn chuckled softly, mockingly, and gestured to the faded spirits wandering around them. “And once again, thankfully my dear father didn’t leave his child hungry in his own nest. He certainly had plenty saved up for his offspring. It’s truly a tear-jerking sight to witness a father’s devotion firsthand.”

Aidz furrowed his brow, his eyes filled with a frightening intensity as he looked at it. He glanced at the thin, smoke-like cord being drawn from the spirits toward himself, then at the fine cord that connected him to the Djinn.

It was already clear. He felt that he couldn’t absorb enough spiritual energy, it was always insufficient.

The water around him began to ripple, no, to foam as if it were about to overflow from a full glass. “Enough! I won’t listen to your drive anymore!”

Perhaps even if not because of the Djinn, he would die—no, completely disappear—because of the curse already stealing from his life, his soul. He knew he couldn’t ascend like his beloved, his deity. But even so, if only…

The Djinn grinned, its black lips curling upwards like a crescent on its paper-like skin. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I’ve been waiting for this moment with anticipation!” It tossed the skull in its hand aside, sending ripples across the water.

When the two spirits flew at each other with immense force and speed, creating a deep crater in the endless water, the outcome was already decided in that instant.

If only I could see her one last time…

…

“Bwaah! Bwaaah! Bwaaahhh!” a small baby cried within his swaddling, underneath the wreckage of a small caravan attacked by bandits on a path leading deep into the forest. On the ground lay the long, lifeless body of a slaughtered horse. Its long tongue hung completely out, and its eyes stared blankly into nothingness. Nearby, the severed head of a man rested close to the tree roots, his eyes wide open and his lips parted at a crooked angle like those of a paralyzed man, tinged with a dark blue hue.

And on the grass lay a half-naked woman, murdered after being assaulted. Dried tear marks could be seen on her cheekbones. Her body, now pale and turning a sickly gray, lay cold and stiff. Her neck was covered in dark bruises, evidence of the hands that had choked her to death.

The bandits hadn’t noticed the baby, who was left alone and abandoned to die amidst the stifling smoke and the metallic scent of blood.

No one heard the small baby’s cries for help.

Until someone passed by.

With each step, a silence fell over the depths of the forest, and with each step, the crows gathering on the corpses vanished. She quietly surveyed the carnage around her, “Another one… How ironic. Mortals who fear demons, fallin’ victim to monsters in disguise 'mongst their own, far more frightenin’ than demons.”

She walked heavily toward the broken caravan where the baby’s cries echoed. She pulled the dead horse aside and effortlessly lifted the shattered caravan with one hand, revealing the small creature beneath her, now enveloped in a massive shadow.

“Well, what we have here?” She grabbed the infant by the back, holding it at arm’s length, and let the broken caravan fall to the side. The little creature had stopped crying and was staring at her with wide eyes.

She gazed down with her dark eyes, coldly. “Scared, aren’t thee? I must look quite fearsome in thy eyes. After all, I am a monster to thy kin.”

The baby continued to stare at her with wide eyes and a vacant, open mouth. She couldn’t make sense of his expression, but she didn’t care. “Fear not, little mortal. I shan’t let thee suffer no more.” She extended her claws to the baby’s neck. One move and it would be a quick, painless death. The pain of the spirit separating from the body would be felt either way, but at least she thought to give the body a swift end.

“Thou art too pure to be defiled in this world…” she murmured and moved her claw to slit his throat. Yet at that very moment, to her surprise, the baby reached for her finger and claw. With eyes full of innocent curiosity and liveliness, he bit into her claw with his newly sprouted tiny teeth and then smiled at her foolishly.

Even she was taken aback. Did this baby not fear her? And now he was playing with her claw, finding amusement in it?

She found herself staring down at the child with an involuntary smile, despite having been just a breath away from ending his life. For the first time, she smiled, and it was not a simple one. Suprisingly, it was from the heart.

This brat be an idiot?

Slowly, she retracted her long, sharp claws until they returned to being just pointed nails.

“I suppose I shall keep thee 'round for a while longer, little mortal,” she said with a faint grin, lightly touching the tip of the baby’s nose with her finger. "From now on, thy name shall be Hoverda. A name forged by mine own self, it meaneth...."

With the baby in her arms, she made her way into the deepest part of the forest, leaving the ashes of the bodies and the remains behind, making sure they were completely reduced to dust.

"...one who defies death with a smile."

*

It was the final expression on his face before he was drawn into a dark void, completely vanishing with all the fragments of his soul, memories and existence.

Farewell, my beloved deity...