‘Korgin eye? Meaning…a lie? No. I knew it, it goes beyond that. So…a kind of trick? Is it dispelling the killer’s ability?’

Rafe attempted to move, to no avail. It seemed he had been tied up. What a pain. But what would the killer do now? Now that their ability was useless, they’d have to do the job themselves.

For a while, all Rafe could hear was the abductors pacing around the room, as he pondered on why his wicked ability didn’t seem to work. Was Rafe immune? Was he combating it with his own ability? Possibly a negation type of ability? No…he was unconscious. So, what?

Pacing around, he tapped violently at his head, poking for an answer. After a while, he approached Rafe, who was pretending to be asleep. Staring into his face with a creepy look, he tried to examine him; to find out what it was that was preventing his ability from activating.

Suddenly, Rafe felt a tremendous force strike his stomach, followed by a world of agony.

‘Dammit’ he cursed. Time to pretend to wake up.

Hastily, Rafe flung his eyelids open, pulled a confused expression, and dances his pupils around, observing the dark room. Slowly, his eyes focused on the strange man before him. He was…a random guard.

Rafe had never met this man in his life.

“Ah…could that be it?” the voice was scratchy and a little high pitched.

Rafe looked at the man confused. Putting his hand out, the man stood still for a moment. Rafe’s thoughts were all over the place. Who was this man? Why was he targeting the patrol team? What was he doing? Why was he reaching his hand out? Was he summoning something? But what? And what was he talking about just now? What could what be? Why was he staring at Rafe like that? Why did he appear to be staring into Rafe’s soul almost? What was this psycho thinking?

Suddenly, an iron swordsword appeared in the killer’s right hand. As he stared at Rafe with a strange look, he slowly aimed it at him. Was he going to kill him? Why? Why waste time kidnapping him if he was just going to kill him? Was it because his ability wasn’t working?

“Arghh! Fuck! You crazy fucking bastard. What the fuck did you do? Fuck. For fuck’s sake” Rafe rambled loudly in fury. Every inch of his body was shivering from the incredible pain; the familiar pain. Suddenly, his face was burning up as though it had been brutally burned for hours by the most ferocious of flames. Boiling water seemed to have been poured into his eye.

Blood dripped down his face, feeling like lava was tearing it apart.

The Korgin Eye had been destroyed.

‘I’m…fucked’ he cursed his life.

Looking around, Rafe suddenly tensed.

‘Again’ his body trembled.

Before him, a shadow held a sharp peeler. Looking down, almost all his skin seemed to have been removed. Again, he trembled violently, attempting to move, yet he couldn’t; not a muscle. The throat-drying, gulp-forcing, eye-flairing, brain-numbing, suicide-inducing agony of boiling hot lava being poured mercilessly on the skinless, innocent flesh of the young man sent his brain to an insane stress level. He attempted to cry, yet this illusion wouldn’t allow him. All he could do was inwardly writhe in excruciating pain, endlessly, locked in place. He had no control over his body. All he could do was shiver not even a millimeter.

‘Here it comes. God, please. Is there even a damned god in this cursed world? Fuck this life. Fuck this world. Fuck everything!’

Pop. The small daggers pierced right through his innocent eyes, causing them to pop like balloons, exploding like a firework of blood, and tearing away at what was left of Rafe’s psyche. It had been four days already. However, to Rafe, it felt like years. When was the last time he’d seen light? The only break he got was when the killer grew tired, which took a long, long time. And in those moments of freedom…he was knocked unconscious, only to reawaken back into this hell. This was his life now; an endless cycle of agony. Maybe…maybe suicide wasn’t a bad idea after all. Maybe death was really the door to freedom; the only one in Rafe’s grasp. How could he do it though? How did Merl escape to heaven’s stairs? Lucky bastard.

‘No…I can’t…can’t die like this. I’ll…I’ll fucking kill him! I’ll that bastard you hea-’

More boiling liquid was poured onto his frail, skinless body. This was…nothing less than hell.

Back in Ryu’s lodging, Brax was pacing around with another quiver resting in his hand, Scarlet relaxing in a chair, yet her face was stern and serious. By now, they’d realised Rafe’s disappearance. Whilst he’d normally disappear for large periods of time doing whatever he liked, once a few days past, the situation began to seem dire. The two had a sneaking suspicion to the cause of his sudden lack of appearance, and Scarlet was worried she’d be informed of another brutal suicide in the near future. With whatever time she had until that moment, she had to do everything to find clues on Rafe’s location and the abductor.

“Moping isn’t helping us crack this, you know?” Brax glared at the woman.

Ignoring him, she looked down in thought. She wasn’t thoughtlessly moping; she was thinking long and hard about everything she’d seen. Not only to do with Rafe, but to do with Merl. The evidence had to lie somewhere with Merl’s body, however Brax refused to go back there.

“We don’t have real world technology to get them on fingerprints; we don’t have cameras; we don’t have anything. All we have on them is their ability, which is also merely speculation” Scarlet sighed.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Speculation? How else do you expect someone could skin a man and they remain unscaved from the endeavour, physically i mean. Mentally…woah, not so unscaved”

Scarlet clicked her tongue at the immature comment. Her partner in this was a damned manchild, but he was intelligent nevertheless; he was useful, as moral-less as he was.

“What use is knowing his ability anyways? It doesn’t help to track him, does it?”

Brax sighed, “no it doesn’t”.

Over the past few days, they had run through every theory they could, sending guards all over to search for Rafe and the psychopath. Every lodging was searched thoroughly, leaving many guards displeased, however they couldn’t exactly argue against the orders of two of the most influential guards behind the gates. With Ryu gone, they practically ran the place; owned it.

However, nothing fruitful was found. All it caused was needless stress amongst the guards. As for Rafe’s patrol team, they were dismissed of their duties and placed into special lodging, of which the previous owners were forcefully moved from. Though, Brax and Scarlet doubted any of them would be attacked until Rafe had committed suicide, giving in to the torture…which didn’t seem too far way.

“Why do they even go through the effort of breaking the victim? Why not just kill them when they get the chance? It’s not like we have the technology to pin them down” Brax scratched his head.

“They probably enjoy it. You know how psychos are” Scarlet sighed.

This case would be difficult. However, Rafe was facing the hardest challenges. Each day he was submitted to unbearable torture. All his days consisted of was being locked in place as his skin was ripped from his bleeding flesh, which was soon smoldered by boiling water, and then burned to a crisp, as the burning layer would soon be teared off for the cycle to repeat once again. Every single day was filled with pure agony. For a while, he thought he might have become numb to the excruciating pain, and somewhat he had, but it was still utterly unbearable. The inhumane torture was incredibly hard to numb down. Perhaps…death was the best choice for him.

Why not die? Was enjoying living? Not really. Not only was he in a world of pure suffering, he was far too weak. The probability of escape was incredibly low, so why bother living? To die a dog’s death? Why waste time? Why waste time trying to prevent the inevitable? Even if he escaped this torture, another form of it awaited him in the future. Now…he was even weaker. Now, he was a one-eyed weakling. Surely after that, his orientation would suffer. His stability would be hindered, and fighting would be harder. It seemed pointless to continue. Perhaps a healer could heal the eye itself, but there was no certainty he would regain his sight with the healers of the guard. Yes, they were good, but they weren’t that good.

When was the last time he was able to talk? When had the psycho even taken that function away from him? Screaming was hopeless; no one outside this forced dream could hear him. He was trapped in a fake reality. He was imprisoned in hell, tortured personally by the devil.

‘Ack…kill me. Please…just fucking kill me’ he pleaded inwardly. He couldn’t bare to do it himself, however the idea of death had become heaven-like, after the endless suffering he had endured. Now, his only prayers were to death to come and take him away.

‘I’m done with all this living; with all this pain. The gods are dead…otherwise, why would I be here now? No trial would be this viscious, right? And this is how they treat a blessed, damn it. What about those who aren’t? I bet they don’t give damn about the ordinary. Bastards. God of death, reaper, or whoever the fuck you are…just fucking kill me. I’m sick of all this. Just…end it. End it all’

And with that, the psychopath ran out of energy, swinging the hilt of his dagger into Rafe’s temple, knocking him out cold. Rafe was hoping one of these days, that strike would kill him. However, he doubted it. Perhaps an ordinary could be killed like that, however stranded were much more resilient, a benefit he now cursed the life out of.

When he woke up, as he had guessed, the eerie shadow was holding the blood-stained peeler once again, and soon all the fake skin of his body would be slowly, painfully, ruthlessly separated from his flesh.

Suddenly, his eyes uncontrollably dashed around as though he was having a seizure…because he was. It was at this moment, after days of boundless torture, that Rafe’s mind finally broke.

At their lodging, which had been searched just like all the others, Twilight was fiddling with a small dagger she had gotten killing a reptilian dread with incredibly sharp teeth. Like ordinary’s with pens, she spun it around her fingers, up and down from pinky to thumb. Over the time period of Rafe’s disappearance, she didn’t know what to think of it. He’d gone and disappeared. Scarlet wouldn’t tell her anything and Jed seemed clueless too, spending his days training harder than he ever had, then asking around about Rafe.

Whilst Jed was incredibly worried for Rafe, Twilight was much calmer. She knew Rafe was hiding a lot about how capable he was. It had cost her a lot of pain to confirm it, but with her ring of curses, she was all but certain that Rafe knew exactly why Flower had killed himself, and that he had something to do with it. Clearly, he was exceptionally powerful.

So, chances were he’d make it out alive. But then, why hadn’t he already? What was holding him up? Was he just waiting for the right time? She doubted it. Why hadn’t he just killed the kidnapper? Unless it was a nightmare? Sure, she knew Rafe was rather strong, but he wasn’t that strong. Maybe he could fair decently against a horror with a bit of luck, perhaps surviving the ordeal, but a nightmare or even a nameless was an impossible fight alone. And Twilight had heard stories of some of the nameless being able to shift into the form of a human; the most powerful of them that was. But those could just be urban legend, since no one could really survive witnessing a nameless in the flesh.

‘I should get back to training, I’m far too weak right now. If I really want to take on a rift, I’ll need to be much, much stronger’ she thought, rising up from the bed, grasping the dagger tightly before quickly dismissing it. It was time to head out into the east forest, alone. There, she could hone her skills, and grow her energy, so that she could use her ability more often without growing so fatigued afterward.

Thud. With a prod through the throat, and a tremendous amount of blood loss, the almighty dread dropped dead on the cold grass of the east forest. Twilight sighed, mounting onto the large reptilian creature’s body to rest. Her way of killing was not efficient enough. She hated how long it took to kill these simple creatures even though she had tried so hard for so many months. Perhaps she should change her weapon? But her whole fighting style was centred around the rapier. How could she switch like that? She couldn’t.

“Curses” she muttered.

Soon, she would have to decide whether to spend the next few months, years or decades in this world honing her skill of the rapier, or a different blade. How long until they would find a rift? One rift in their five years here? Yet they don’t know how long that rift had actually taken to appear. What if it had been fifty, a hundred, or even a thousand years before that single rift appeared? They’d never know.

‘Damn it all’ she cursed, staring up to the drifting clouds in the sky.

In a dark room, beneath one of the empty lodgings of the vast fortress, Rafe slept, tied tightly to a chair. In the same room, the psychopath slept on the cold, stone ground, uncaring for the discomfort. Rafe was broken. After all of the psychopath’s efforts, Rafe had gone insane. Soon, the psychopath believed, Rafe would give in to the sweetness of death. Then, the psychopath would have to hunt out his next victim. Perhaps that red-haired brat that had followed the boy into the lodging before? Well, whichever guard conveniently fell into his palm really. It was all timing and luck.