Silas meticulously wiped down several of his needles, the metallic sheen reflecting the bright light that filled the room. Each needle was carefully inspected before being slipped under his sleeves, hidden but ready for any situation that might arise.
Across the room, Zinnia was vigorously scrubbing at her face with a cloth, trying to remove the ink that Nyx had playfully scribbled onto her skin.
“What exactly do you learn from that?” she asked, her voice tinged with irritation. Her face had turned red from the friction, and her patience was wearing thin.
“Composition,” Silas replied calmly, not bothering to look up from his work. “Differences between normal samples, functionality, and viability.”
Nyx, who was currently hiding within Silas’s shadow, had wisely decided to vanish as soon as Zinnia noticed the ink. Her earlier tirade of bird-based insults had echoed throughout the room, but now she seemed more resigned than angry, her frustration simmering beneath the surface.
“Viability for what?” Zinnia pressed, clearly not satisfied with the vague answer. But Silas, in his usual manner, chose to ignore the question entirely.
“Have you looked at the completed drawings Nyx made for you?” he asked instead, deftly changing the subject.
Her eyes twitched at the mention of Nyx, and the crow snickered quietly within Silas’s shadow. Grumbling to herself, Zinnia walked over to where the drawings were lying and picked them up. She studied them for a moment, her irritation giving way to reluctant admiration as she acknowledged the crow’s talent despite his mischievous nature.
“If these drawings are accurate,” she said after a pause, “they’re not showing the wrong people.”
Silas raised an eyebrow at that. “Care to elaborate?” he asked, his tone suggesting he was genuinely curious. “And by the way, it’s not in your best interest to try and act like me when I withhold information from you.”
“No kidding,” she muttered under her breath before speaking up. “The people inside the upper-class housing are its usual occupants. I recognize a few of them—former marks and clients.”
Silas glanced over at Selen, who was lying on the bed. Her appearance had vastly improved, a stark contrast to the half-corpse she had resembled just a few hours ago. Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he finally spoke again.
“So it’s not a switch… Nyx.”
The crow, hearing his name, jumped out of Silas’s shadow and perched onto his shoulder, his eyes gleaming with interest.
“That’s where you were?!” Zinnia exclaimed in exasperation, throwing her hands up in the air.
Ignoring her outburst, Silas leaned in and whispered a few words to Nyx, whose eyes lit up with mischievous glee. The crow then flew toward Zinnia, who instinctively tried to swat him away but ended up getting her arm brushed off by Nyx’s wing.
“Ouch!” she yelped, rubbing her hand while glaring daggers at Nyx.
“Go and follow the slum dwellers,” Silas instructed calmly, as if the small skirmish had never happened. “Focus on those of middle age and stout build—man or woman. See if you and Nyx notice anything out of the ordinary while we wait.”
Zinnia huffed, still annoyed by the crow’s antics, but her curiosity got the better of her. “Oh? You’re giving priority to this over your new toy there?” she asked sarcastically, jerking her thumb in Selen’s direction.
“Your insight has added another layer of oddity to an already strange situation,” Silas replied, his tone serious. “Considering this is happening within a town the size of Sichal, I’m now more interested in seeing what potential benefit we can extract from solving this mystery.”
Zinnia opened her mouth to respond but stopped short when she noticed something strange happening to Selen.
“Uhhh, big guy—I think she’s melting,” she said, her voice tinged with alarm.
Silas’s gaze snapped back to Selen, and he saw that she was indeed beginning to liquify. He placed a hand near her forehead and immediately noticed a significant temperature spike. The scent of smolders began to fill the room as the gauze and sheets around her started to burn.
Silas’s eyes widened briefly in surprise before he quickly pulled out a needle from his sleeve and loosened his robe. With practiced precision, he used the needle to extract a murky white potion from one of the grooves on his chest. The room’s temperature dropped instantly as the liquid materialized, causing the furniture to ice over from the spreading cold.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Silas jabbed the needle into Selen’s neck, his expression calm despite the chaotic turn of events..
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Selen floated down a river now, her body face up and limbs spread wide. She couldn't move, couldn't even twitch a finger, but she felt the gentle touch of two hands at the tips of her own, guiding her downstream. An odd warmth enveloped her, so intense it threatened to bring tears to her eyes. She blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision, and caught sight of something enormous in the bottom corner of her eyes.
It resembled the deer she had seen earlier, but its proportions were far beyond anything natural. The antlers alone looked like mountains atop its elongated head. Its eyes were closed as it drank from the river on which she floated. Her eyes shook slightly as she watched the deer move its head, hearing the ground tear as it dug a new channel to divert some of the flow. She couldn't turn her head to see anything to her sides and had no idea what that action had done, but suddenly she felt a lot more lonely, save for the two hands pulling her downstream.
The giant deer continued walking forward towards her. She could now see clearly that one side of its face was covered in flesh while the other was a perfectly cleaned skull. When it reached over with its head directly above her, it stopped and took a sniff before opening its eye to reveal a crimson pupil staring down at her. She immediately shut her eyes, feeling the great beast examine her.
The beast exhaled, and she heard something rise out from the water, likely a hoof. A horrible premonition began to form within her as she braced herself for the worst. Suddenly, a terrible desperate scream echoed from above her, seemingly even above this beast, and it was spoken in a language unknown to her but it felt like the words were filled with pleading. The great beast let out a sound of anguish as if something precious had been taken away from it and it was throwing a tantrum. The sounds grew faint as the hands pulled her further downstream.
Selen's body began to submerge lightly as it also began to curl up on its own accord. When she next opened her eyes, she noticed that she had lost control over her body entirely. She began to sob uncontrollably, stubby arms extended towards a couple with tender smiles on their faces. She managed to blink a couple of times before darkness enveloped everything around her.
The sensation of floating persisted even in the darkness, leaving Selen feeling adrift in an endless void. The warmth from earlier lingered faintly at the edges of her consciousness, but now it was accompanied by an overwhelming sense of loss and confusion.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
She tried to call out for help but found herself unable to produce any sound. The silence was deafening, pressing in on all sides as if trying to suffocate her very thoughts.
In this state of helplessness and despair, Selen's mind raced through fragmented memories and emotions—flashes of faces she couldn't place, snippets of conversations that seemed both familiar and foreign.
As she drifted further into this abyssal dreamscape, the only constant was the gentle touch at the tips of her fingers—an anchor in an otherwise chaotic sea of sensations.
And then... nothing. That feint warmth disappeared.
The dreamscape held its breath as if waiting for something—or someone—to break through its oppressive stillness.
But nothing came.
Only silence remained.
And Selen floated on...
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"What kind of God... has these servants?" The voice echoed through the darkness, reverberating within Selen's very bones. The timbre was oddly familiar, yet unsettling, as if it belonged to a distant memory. With immense effort, she managed to pry her eyes open for just a moment. Before her stood a stranger, his face twisted into a mask of frustration and anger. His features were harsh, his expression one of barely restrained fury, and his fist was clenched tightly and raised as if to strike. "Still you refuse to speak?!" he yelled into the void, his voice laced with a venomous impatience.
The scene dissolved as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Selen adrift once more in the inky blackness. The fleeting vision felt like a snippet from someone else’s life—a life filled with bleakness and despair. The darkness enveloped her, pressing in from all sides, and she once again found herself floating on the river she had drifted on earlier. But this time, something was different. The current seemed to be pulling her in the opposite direction, impossibly upstream. Unlike the slow, meandering journey before, this one was swift, almost urgent, as if the river itself was in a hurry to reach some unknown destination.
The monstrous deer that had haunted her earlier was nowhere to be seen, yet the fear of encountering it again gnawed at her. The thought of its enormous, grotesque form looming over her sent a shiver down her spine, even though the beast was not there. But as the current quickened, her fear of the deer was replaced by a new, more immediate terror. The water around her began to heat up, gradually at first, then more rapidly, until the warmth became unbearable.
The intense heat jolted her paralyzed limbs into action, her body instinctively reacting to the scalding sensation. She opened her eyes wide, flipping upright, only to be greeted by the sight of her own reflection within the glowing water staring back at her. But it wasn’t her face. The reflection had silver hair and piercing blue eyes, features that were utterly unfamiliar to her. Confusion mingled with the fear as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. But there was no time to dwell on it; the water grew hotter still, overwhelming her senses with its burning touch.
Strange sensations gripped her body, as if it were being distorted, reshaped by the heat. Her leg felt as though it had been crushed and flattened, twisted into a grotesque form. Panic surged through her as she struggled to maintain some semblance of control, but her efforts were futile. The river seemed to be alive, intent on breaking her down.
As she thrashed in the water, she caught sight of something even more horrifying. Porcelain-like human shapes began to leap out of the river, their bodies steaming as if they had just been pulled from a blazing kiln. Each one was eerily perfect in form, yet utterly lifeless, their hollow eyes staring blankly as they floated away into the ether. The sight of these figures, so unnervingly human yet so devoid of life, filled her with a deep, primal terror. She couldn’t understand what was happening or why she was seeing these things, but the fear was all-consuming.
The water around her began to change color, turning a deep, ominous red. The heat was now so intense that she feared she would burst into flames at any moment. Every nerve in her body screamed in agony, and her mind was on the brink of collapse. She could feel herself being torn apart, her body disintegrating in the scorching river. It was as if the river was trying to consume her, to break her down into nothingness.
But just when all hope seemed lost, something unexpected happened. A tree branch suddenly erupted from the darkness in front of her, its long, deep green leaves swaying gently despite the intense heat. The branch moved with a strange, almost sentient purpose, wrapping itself around her neck with surprising gentleness. It began to pull her away from the dangerous water, dragging her towards safety with an ever-increasing strength.
Gasping for breath, Selen felt an overwhelming urge to reach out and grab hold of the branch, to aid in her own rescue. But as she tried to lift her hand, an inexplicable feeling washed over her. It was as if saving herself now was somehow wrong, immoral even. The sensation was confusing and disorienting, but she couldn’t shake it. The thought of clinging to life felt selfish, as if she were doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
But despite these feelings, her will to live was stronger. She tried to push through the moral conflict, to reach out and grab the branch that was her lifeline. Yet her body refused to obey, her hand remaining stubbornly at her side as her consciousness began to fade once more. The darkness crept in at the edges of her vision, and she felt herself slipping away.
The branch continued to pull with increasing strength, determined to drag her away from the scalding river’s grasp. Her vision blurred, the world around her dissolving into a haze of black and red. All that remained was the faint awareness of being pulled toward safety, of something or someone trying to save her from the fiery depths.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. Nothingness enveloped her once again, a deep, all-consuming void that offered neither comfort nor fear. She was adrift in the darkness, floating aimlessly with no sense of direction or purpose.
But then, out of the void, she felt something. A solid surface, rough and unyielding, slammed against her body, jolting her back to awareness. The sensation of water was still there, lapping at her feet, but she was no longer floating, no longer being dragged upstream or downstream. Her eyes fluttered open, her vision clearing as she took in her surroundings.
What she saw was yet another strange sight, one that made little sense to her tired, confused mind.
But it was there, and it was the first thing she had seen in what felt like an eternity that wasn’t trying to harm her, despite an oddly menacing aura surrounding it. Her savior was seemingly… a tree.
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The tree stood as a colossal, ominous presence, its gnarled roots sprawling across the width of the river, hungrily devouring the water and whatever unfortunate things drifted along its current. The roots twisted and burrowed deep into the earth, their grotesque tendrils reaching out like skeletal fingers, siphoning life from all that passed beneath them. As one looked higher, the tree's crown rose into a darkened sky, its immense branches a dense canopy that blocked out any light. But the tree was not without its scars—portions of it had withered, the bark cracked and lifeless as if some unseen force had drained it of vitality. The contrast was stark against the rest of the tree, which thrived with an unnatural vigor.
The flowers that bloomed on the healthier branches were a thing of twisted beauty. Their petals, pure and white, exuded an almost ethereal glow, yet there was something deeply unsettling about them. They seemed to beckon, alluring in their perfection, but the faint scent they emitted carried a promise of death, a toxic perfume that warned of their deadly nature. Scattered among the flowers were fruits—large, oval, and green. A few had been plucked, leaving behind gaping wounds in the tree's branches. From these open wounds oozed a thick, venomous sap, shimmering with a sinister violet sheen. Whoever dared to take the fruit had likely paid a terrible price, as the sap dripped slowly down the branches, hissing as it met the air, corroding all it touched.
At the very top of the tree, amidst the densely packed leaves, one branch stood out, contorted and twisted around a single, festering fruit. The fruit was swollen, its once-green skin now a sickly brown, covered in patches of rot that pulsated with a dark energy. The branch seemed to cling to it protectively, as if the decaying fruit was the tree's most prized possession—a symbol of its malevolent power. This was a cursed being, a dark sentinel that parasitized over the river, stealing from it, thriving on death and decay; its very essence was a blight.
However, for Selen, this tree seemed to be nothing but a kind savior. The river water seemed to beckon her to jump back in and follow its will but instead of succumbing to its cruel call she took another step onto the monstrous tree. The bark felt rough under her feet but solid—reassuringly so.
A branch lowered itself before her eyes with deliberate slowness. Hanging from it was one of those large green fruits she had seen earlier. It dangled precariously close to her face as if offering itself willingly.
Her hand—still misshapen from her ordeal in the red water—slowly reached out toward it almost involuntarily. The fruit’s surface glistened under some of the light coming off the river, droplets of venomous sap clung stubbornly to its skin like tiny jewels.
As her fingers brushed against its surface an odd sensation washed over her—a mix between dread and curiosity—a feeling that perhaps this cursed offering held answers to her strange experiences or perhaps salvation within its toxic core.
She hesitated for just a moment longer before finally wrapping her fingers around it firmly...