Chapter 108 - Facing Alone

Vern frowned as he cleared the rest of the room and walked in for a better angle.

However, he only took a few steps when—

Rattle

The wooden frame shook, and a drenched pale hand clutched at its edge—mere inches away from the wall.

A sense of deja vu washed over him as he stared at the ghostly fingers. It was pretty much the same situation as in the first house 3-01.

However, this sense of familiarity instead helped him calm down his fraying nerves. Known quantity was always better than unknown. He'd dealt with a similar situation already.

What was better was that he held all the cards this time, and the enemy was far weaker.

Vern pinned his gaze on the hand and made sure his perception had already accounted for everything in this room.

Once that was ready, he did it.

Closed his eyes.

And the moment he did, that feeling of imbalance within his Thought Space grew rapidly.

Creak.

The floorboards creaked with the weight as something walked atop them.

Plip Plop.

Tiny droplets fell one after another, flooding his ears with their macabre melody.

His heartbeat also joined in the symphony, pounding in his ears, but all of this served a contrasting purpose instead. They calmed him down instead.

Things were panning out exactly as he'd planned.

Yet, his Thought Space felt more and more skewed.

No. This is working! He couldn't let this novel feeling mess with his judgment.

His perception depicted a figure of corrupting darkness in a world of grays as it emerged out of the mirror, the limbs twisting at uncanny angles to squeeze through that small gap.

It then moved on all fours, skittering towards him. The sight caused Vern to grit his teeth, making him falter just a little.

But it was okay. This was expected.

Turning the knob and the expulsion itself could take a few seconds. So, he had to account for that and make sure the entity couldn't run back to the mirror within that time frame.

Srrr

Its limbs crept up to some object in the room, its body tilting to match its angle. The corrupting outline of half its body bent to grip the sink's top while the other half prowled on the cupboard door.

Vern's spine chilled, observing all these uncanny movements, and his imbalanced Thought Space wasn't helping his concentration.

Any moment, now! he reminded himself.

Surprisingly, the entity made little sound as its massive body crawled all over the utensils and furniture. If not for his perception, he'd never have guessed that something like this was coming for him from the dripping liquid’s noise alone.

Just a bit more.

Before Vern knew it, it crossed the sink. Then, the stool. Then, the chair.

Just a little.

It was very close to the halfway point between Vern's position and the mirror.

Almost…

His Thought Space made him feel awfully inharmonious, but he endured it. This was the key moment. He couldn't fuck it up.

Vern held his breath, and the entity continued to slither forward. The moment it crossed the imaginary line, which represented a perfectly balanced position, Vern snapped his eyes open.

It was…dark.

The purple light of his lamp barely made it to the entity, its drenched hair, and soaking hands painting a disturbing picture in Vern's mind.

But that didn't matter. He was staring right at it!

That was all he needed to shackle the entity to that position. Rolling the knob with his fingers, he unclenched his fist and brandished the amulet with a flourish.

The eyelid of the amulet seemed to pull up slowly as the brown radiance spilled out of it. And the moment it did—

SCREEEECHHHH

The scream rattled his very being as a sharp chill coursed through his bones. In that instant, the face of the entity rotated around—giving Vern a clear view.

He backed away out of instinct, but when he stared for longer, pity welled up within him, instead of terror. A perpetually scared expression hung on the pale face that had yet to lose its baby fat.

Its hair stuck to the skin, and bones protruded at disturbing angles. The neck was rotated a full circle at the wrong angle, but those eyes.

Those pupil-less eyes.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

They were frozen with a look of terror.

Vern let out a sharp breath. It's okay…This is the only way. This is the only way.

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Brown radiance continued to explode out of the amulet, visible gashes appearing on the pale face.

SKREEEEEEEE!

The entity convulsed and quivered in place as the gashes turned to ropes within his perception.

A mixed feeling washed over him as his imagination superimposed this scene with how this teenager might have been nabbed—resisting just like this.

Still. The kid wasn't in there.

Maybe out there, somewhere in the world, there was an Observer who could turn these poor souls back to the way they were. But it would be too late for everyone else.

This was the only way.

So he kept the amulet brandished, his palm heating up alongside its radiance.

Like fire to paper, it burned him raw.

It almost felt a little too easy. He'd stuck to his simple plan, and all of it just fell into place so perfectly.

However, on further thought, it was only natural. The distinct advantages he had as an Observer of balance weren't really to be shortchanged. His perception alone acted as another unfettered eye, something even Cedric didn't have.

On top of that, they had isolated the entity and used the rules of its existence against it. It was a proper ambush.

It would've instead been surprising if Vern failed.

Right. This can work. He nodded to himself, a tad more confident in his plans and his path as an Observer.

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The screeches grew louder and louder, but all that amounted to was faster evaporation of the entity's skin.

He could only be thankful it wasn't the conventional burning, or the stench alone would have made him nauseous.

Instead of a brain or skull, grainy liquid appeared behind the skin, but at that moment, the entity tried something.

Its skin burned faster, but the darkness surrounding Vern became heavier, restricting the space where the light reached.

The disintegrating figure in his perception took this brief moment to jump back. However, its limbs were already half-gone.

Vern didn't let up and chased it in its direction, quickly forcing it back within his sight.

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There was nothing it could do. Not anymore.

This teenager survived the greatest genocide known to mankind, only to be wrapped up in such an unfortunate event.

But that wasn't the end. It had to go through something like…this.

AHHHH!

Its mouth soon fully evaporated, and Vern looked on with revulsion. He found no pleasure in doing this.

As if showing its proof of existence to the world, it extended its hand towards Vern.

When all traces of the entity disappeared from his perception and sight, he closed his eyes, trying to control his shaking will.

But that's when a euphoric feeling washed over his Thought Space, and the lights of his insights seemed to bloom.

It was a distinct sense of…correctness?

Vern shook his head, trying to reconcile the contradictory emotions swirling within his mind and Thought Space.

The situation made no sense. He was acutely aware of his revulsion towards the horrific transformation of these innocents, their inability to co-exist with the living, and the heavy burden on his shoulders to put an end to it.

Yet, within his Thought Space, a completely contradictory feeling surged, running counter to his current mental state.

This led to another sense of deja vu. He was reminded of that realization atop the tower after having understood Captain Akira's unique balancing act.

It was the same sensation of correctness.

However, it didn't stop there. He could 'see' the strands of insights within his Thought Space rearranging. Some that were blindingly bright dimmed, while others that were barely lit found a higher radiance.

Like a sewing needle piercing through fabric—or, in this case, the surface of his spherical Thought Space—the strands reemerged in a slightly altered position.

The change wasn't dramatic compared to a few minutes ago, but it was undeniably there. Just yesterday, when he experienced a similar feeling, he hadn't noticed any such shifts.

But what does this mean?

If he had to infer from his understanding of how Observation worked, he'd guess that he had better acclimated his viewpoint to his vision. Which meant it should be slightly easier for him to use his Visions now.

Closing his eyes, Vern leaned on the wall behind him, focusing on the question that stumped him the most. What triggered this?

Since the start of this mission, he'd tried to be very deliberate with all his actions and instill a sense of balance in all of them, yet it hadn't produced any results.

It was by no means a thorough attempt at balancing the stability and Instability of the conversation, but it hadn't induced even an iota of change within his Thought Space.

However, now that he'd almost given up on this train of thought and simply followed the plan, it suddenly worked. How? What changed?

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Well, there's one thing that's been out of the norm today. That feeling of imbalance.

Indeed. It happened more than a couple of times on this mission alone.

What could it signify? An imbalance in my state of mind? Did my getting tense cause that imbalance?

Vern brushed his fingers through his hair, trying to straighten them one by one as his brain churned.

Reflecting on this, he quickly identified a flaw in his previous reasoning. If that feeling surfaces whenever I'm mentally unbalanced, it shouldn't have dissipated just yet.

His current state was far from stable. The loathing he felt, the weight of responsibility, and a pervasive sense of despondence significantly burdened his mental equilibrium.

Didn't seem very balanced to him.

So what was it?

This led him to wonder about the specific situations whenever this feeling of imbalance was triggered in him.

And there, he noticed a pattern.

This feeling had triggered every time he'd willingly thrust himself into danger. Be that when he walked ahead of Cedric in 3-01, or when he was being dragged into the mirror in 3-07, or even a few minutes ago when he walked into danger of unknown quantity.

Yet, only the last one had given him this sense of acclimatization.

He pulled at some of the pesky strands, trying to get them back in line. They simply liked to go against the general flow of his hairstyle.

Then suddenly, he stood up straight. *Right! That has to be it.

Each time that feeling of imbalance arose within him, it vanished just as abruptly, dissipating the moment the danger had passed.

However, the last case was different. It was—

THUMP

Suddenly, the door slammed open, and footsteps resounded in his ears.

TAP TAP

Cedric was here.

Vern quickly filed these incredibly valuable findings in his mind and got serious again.

He had to plan his next steps. First was to worry about the representation he had left. There were about sixteen more of these spirits. Assuming the amulet always required this meager amount of Representation to cleanse one entity, then given his remaining representation, he should easily be able to handle another fifty or so of these.

But that's not how it works, he shook his head with a wry smile. There was overhead and other expenditures.

Every second that he made use of his perception ate away at his reserves. He'd already used it a bit too much for the day.

Not only that, but using Visions also costs Representation, and it wasn't negligible at all. Destabilizing that wall had cost him gravely, devouring almost an eighth of the total in one go.

Maybe he could try and regenerate it, but he didn't know if the urgency of the situation allowed for that. Neither did his mental state, for that matter.

The hat's tip entered the room before the man, and he asked in a raspy voice, "Did it manage to escape?"

Vern shook his head, "He died." A smile bloomed on the middle-aged man's face, but Vern added, "In pain."

That instantly put a damper on Cedric's voice, and he settled on simply patting Vern's back. "Let's go. There's a lot of work to do."

Vern walked past Cedric and hastened out of the house. He needed some air.

However, the moment he exited back to the lightly snowing outside, his eyes fell straight on the building on the opposite side of the street.

It took space of over three houses all by itself, but it was the title that irked him to no end.

'Mirror Emporium.'