It was back.

The pit in front of me seemed endless, nameless. A bottomless abyss reaching into the unknown depths of the earth, an emptiness of hellish darkness in an intense inferno, unending isolation among those tortured souls. I knew what filled this pit. Those undying corpses.

By now, I had given up most of my hearing in order to retain my own sense of being. Those maddening, chilling whispers of before, croaking from the unmoving mouths of the cadavers, were now only barely audible.

Fill.

Yes, this pit needed to be filled. That was why I was here. But around me, where there would usually be fresh, bloodied corpses ripe to be thrown into the pit was now only empty space. Was I… done?

Fill.

My body crashed to the ground as sharp pains passed through the very fiber of my existence, as if a million daggers pierced, gouged, and twisted into me. No, I wasn’t done. How could I be done? How could I even think that?

Fill.

A long, sharp carving knife appeared in front of me, falling from nowhere. Was it… my turn?

Fill.

“Luqa [—____———] [———_—__].” Words reached into my mind. Incomprehensible voices from behind. My right hand reached to grasp the knife’s handle. Its edge shone threateningly under my hold.

My next step made itself clear to me. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, wouldn’t it be all for naught? I needed to keep moving forward as I always did. To never forget.

I turned towards the voices’ source.

“L-Luqa, are you okay?”

Opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was Farah’s clear hazel eyes, her worried childish face framed with her short dark brown hair. She was crouched down beside me, her two hands nervously fidgeting with each other. I was lying on my side, my arms wrapped around myself, with my fingers gripping my forearms and my nails digging into my skin. Cold sweat drenched my back. A stray tear wandered down my left cheek.

“I’m… fine.”

“You were t-talking. Were you dreaming?”

“Think so. I tend to do that sometimes. It’s no big deal, no worries,” I said in response to the obvious concern on the girl’s face. My fatigued body ached for rest, but the thought of returning to that killed any desire to even attempt to sleep.

Stretching my arms, I sprung from the ground, quickly threw on a black undershirt, breeches, and boots, and picked up my estoc, holstered and lying beside my pack.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Can’t sleep anymore, so I’ll trade with Shara to keep watch,” I said with a yawn.

“Y-you look really tired, though,” Farah said with a wispy, airy voice.

“I’ll be fine.”

Shaking off the last vestiges of restless sleep, I walked off, heading to leave the campsite, though the girl kept following me.

“Why aren’t you going to sleep?” I asked her.

“I’m not tired,” she insisted. “C-can I come with you?”

Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. This girl will persist in following me, whether I like it or not.

“If that’s what you want,” I responded. Without stopping, I passed through the campsite, dotted with demons sprawled out in deep sleep, tired from the preceding long day and festive night. The soft radiance of the full moon combined with the few dying embers scattered here and there barely lit up the dark plateau. And sitting on a boulder by the edge of the quiet campsite, with legs crossed, was Shara.

“” she asked in Voralten.

“”

“,” she said with an evasive grin. “” Her tail quickly whipped, as if to assert her point.

“”

“”

“,” I said with a chuckle.

“,” she said as she laid a sly eye on Farah. “”

“” I shuddered just hearing her words. “”

Breaking off our quick conversation, I passed Shara, with Farah quietly accompanying me. We scaled down the plateau, descending via the wide, sloping rocky paths. Only a small flame in my left hand lit the dark pathway before us. Looking over behind my shoulder, Farah continued without a word of complaint, a decidedly determined frown on her face as she carefully followed me.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

There.

Reaching the bottom, I made for a relatively flat spot bounded by two opposite cliff-sides.

“So, Luqa, what are y-you doing?” Farah suddenly asked.

“…More training, I guess,” I responded. “I don’t feel tired, so a bit of movement might help with that,” I said as I took steps forward while she remained standing where she was. Her bright eyes stayed fixed on me as I bent down, stretching my legs.

“Do you like doing your training?” she asked after a pause.

“I don’t know really,” I responded as I unsheathed my estoc. “If I had to give you an answer, I guess I’m doing it to make myself stronger. Though, at this point, it’s just become a habit.”

“H-habit?”

“Yeah, I used to have a teacher who taught me that training wasn’t something you did on special occasions,” I said as I warmed up, thrusting the weight of the estoc into the air, relearning the proper footwork, “but something regular, something that becomes a part of you. It means improving for your own sake and for your own betterment, not pushing yourself simply because you desire something specific with your strength, something only one-time. Let go of all your desire for pleasures and all that. At least that’s what he said.”

“Becomes a part of y-you? For your own betterment? Let go of… your desires for p-pleasures?” She had a strained expression on her face. One I found almost funny.

“Hmm, don’t worry too much about it. You can think of it as just me doing it every day like how people normally sleep and eat every day, y’know?” I said as I conjured an earthen wall in front of me.

“Oh, so if you don’t do it, y-you’ll die?”

“Not like that,” I said with a chuckle. “I don’t need to do it. At the end of the day, I just want to.” Our conversation died as I began to put full focus on my training.

“[Barrier]”

A magical barrier rose, surrounding the wall with my protective mana. Activating my mystic eye, the dark earthen wall turned bright, flashing and swirling with the colors of my reservoir. Its vision allowed me to see the inner workings of the barrier, including how much mana circulated within it. It made the perfect target for refining my technique.

I began transferring mana into my estoc, estimating based on both instinct and experience.

Then.

I burst forward, my right arm springing forward to deliver a powerful jab with my sword. The estoc pierced right through the barrier and into the earthen wall like a hot knife into butter. As the full impact of the attack collided with the wall, large cracks formed, radiating from where my blade had punctured through.

Not good enough. That was too much mana. It needs to be just barely enough.

I pulled out the sword, stepped back, and fixed the earthen wall while reactivating the barrier.

“I t-think I get it now, Luqa.”

“Huh?” I stopped, glancing at Farah.

“I thought about i-it. I wanna try to be just like you. I’ll do t-training!” she said with as much confidence she could muster.

“Is that so? I can’t teach you magic, y’know?”

“I-it doesn’t have to be that, right? It just has to be about it becoming a part of me.”

A grin crept up my face. Something told me she didn’t fully get it. But who was I to deny her resolve here and then? I couldn’t be that heartless of an adult.

“If you really want to then, I guess I can sho— Gaagh!”

A burning sensation pierced through my left eye. I collapsed onto the ground on my knees, dropping my sword. An agonizing headache twisted into me. My mystic eye turned itself off out of instinct.

“Luqa! W-what’s wrong?” Farah came running towards me.

What the hell is that thing? It’s approaching us… and unbelievably fast.

I attempted to look up, intent on trying to see what my mystic eye had sensed. I quickly found what I was looking for.

In front of us, floating in the air, was a masked man with regal black hair, clad in simple white robes and sandals that revealed a lean, toned frame. His white mask hid most of the features of his face, though, in the middle of the black elliptical markings where his eyes would be, I caught a glimpse of piercing gray irises. Wings of light sprouted from his back, bathing him in unnatural radiance, making the moon behind him look mundanely dull. Out of hasty curiosity, I inputted mana into my mystic eye in an attempt to identify what he was.

Suddenly, the world before me flashed with unknown colors.

My mind went blank trying to register what was in front of me.

“Aaagggh!” I stopped, not daring to use my mystic eye again. Dark red blood began dripping from my nose. My head swirled with intense pain, depriving me of my ability to think. My fingers dug into the earth, trying to ground myself back into present reality.

“L-luqa, are you okay?!” Farah knelt beside me and lay her arm around my back.

“G…get out. Run… away,” I managed to say between shallow, helpless breaths.

“No! I—I can’t leave you here…”

The masked man smoothly descended to the ground. Desperate, I pushed myself off the ground with as much strength as I could muster. I endured the pain to stand myself up on my own two feet, with my estoc back in my right hand and Farah behind me. One wrong move and I knew that both our lives would be instantly forfeit.

“” A graceful, musical voice spoke from behind the mask, his words in the human tongue.

“” I asked, with my estoc brandished in front of me.

“,” he continued, opting to ignore me. My body tensed as he drew a dagger from his hip. In the back of my mind, my subconscious nudged at me. Though he spoke the human tongue, I knew for certain he was not human. Someway, somewhere, I had encountered his kind before as Malachi.

“<…Are you here to kill me?>”

“” His head snapped at me, as if finally deciding to speak with me. “”

“”

“”

How the hell am I supposed to fool this guy?

Behind me, Farah gripped my shirt tightly. I glanced behind at her with false confidence to reassure her before answering the masked man.

“,” I said as inanely as I could.

“” He stopped to examine me. “”

“”

He remained silent.

“” I asked.

“” His eyes turned chillingly cold.

“” I said in an attempt to cut through the thick tension in the air.

“”

The masked man disappeared before my eyes. The very next instant, he was inches away from me, his dagger threatening to carve my chest open.