With dedicated lines, Lirran cut across the shell. Boring a hole into the top, he affixed a lock of his hair, through many holes at the bottom he threaded fishbones of his last meals. He put a single circle in the middle, shining straight rays against convoluted and dense lines of darkness. He would use it as a guide to his future, to remind himself what it took the know the darkness.

His idol came along well, but he realized something: it served a single point, the representation of principles he wished to follow, but to make a journey, he also needed to remember what he was not: his mistakes. Impulsivity, rashness, anger, arrogance. He put primitive symbols of no particular script at the very edges of the shell, they were the shadows he wished to chase away. In the light of his better self, they would disappear and leave only memories and scars.

Was it enough? He had a destination he wished to reach and also an origin point. Now he just needed to map out the path to that. A path he gave Kaza the authority to pick.

He looked at his work. It was a clamshell with some frayed hair and fishbones attached, yet somehow, he saw himself in it. He would never be able to forget what led him here, but he hoped to put it to rest one day.

Night fell and the familiar sound of tentacles gripping the boat’s rim told of Kaza's return. Lirran turned to her and knelt.

“Welcome back, I am done with the task, I hope this is sufficient.” He presented her the idol. She scanned it with careful eyes, inspecting every single line and scratch. She judged it deeply and intensely and finally, gave him food and drink as usual, then disappeared into the deep without a sound or gesture.

Lirran knew not what to make of this. He drank and ate, then, with an unsure heart, went to sleep.

He sat on the shore of the bay of dreams, where Kaza already stood before him. He was nervous, but reared his burning question back. Her face was plain to the point that it appeared featureless like a masque, suppressing something behind.

Finally, Kaza spoke up. Do you really wish to follow my guidance?

With all his conviction, Lirran put forth his enthusiasm for this prospect. Yes!

Kaza remained unimpressed. And do you even know what it is that I do?

You give consolation to the dying and recently dead, to ease their passing. Similar to a dream healer, but closer to death.

No, I seek evil to destroy it, sometimes even before it is created by such a death. It includes destroying those souls incapable of passing over in peace and acceptance or the daemons they turn into.

Lirran was somewhat confused. Her tone was harsh and scolding. I understand. I still wish to follow your guidance for I have felt despair at the threshold of death.

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Kaza’s voice turned lower, as if painted black by regret. Then you must come to terms with what I have to do.

A cold shiver dove into Lirran. He looked at Kaza and he knew not what to answer. Then her eyes seemed duplicitous, as if two thoughts stared at him at once. He felt a slimy cold as if from beyond this world, then he realized his body was calling to him.

Kaza’s hand shot to his throat “No, you stay here!” He heard both her mental and corporeal voice speak, felt his body's throat being wrapped in fingers like tentacles, then constrict. His fight against them as he tried to take control of his limbs was useless, both his mind and body were held down by a being much stronger than him.

A pain shot through him, mind and body, from his chest a burning sensation raced across his skin, into his muscles. His body contorted, refused to listen to him, while he felt as if a searing needle had been driven through both flesh and thought, pinning them together, forcing them to stay bound in a paralysis of waking nightmare. He saw on his chest the tool of bone and black stone piercing through some kind of jellyfish and into his skin.

“Your soul shall not flee and twist, it will remain here with me until this is over!” Kaza’s eyes were deep and cold. She sat atop his body and his mind, the muscles of her mantle pressing him apart as all his body was engulfed by cramps that seemed to fight against each other, even his mouth and eyes started to flicker and seize up.

“Look at me. Look! At! Me!” her slimy hand twisted his cramping neck to force him to look at her in all her terrible splendour. A swirling mass of seafoam and smoke, light and dark convulsing in one another. Her eyes were utter blackness. “Before this is over, you will know the horrid truth of not mere death, but utter obliteration.”

He tried to speak, even to think, but was interrupted in a pain piercing into his chest. He felt the stone tip of the tool go through his skin emaciated from days at sea and touch the bone of his ribs. Then Kaza started twisting.

The pain of stone grinding on bone pierced all through his rib, it drilled into his being, boring a pathway for more poison and pain into him. Again and again, holes to bind his mind and body together were carefully placed. Each time he saw Kaza lift the tool, a wish of futility went up in him that it would be the last time and each time she set it down on him again with accurate consideration, shattering his hopes.

Kaza hummed and sang a deep tune. Many times, she bored into his bones and finally, she lifted her tool for the last time. His chest was covered in blood and she wiped it off with her mantle, letting the red flow between her gills. Then she took a thin twig, frayed to be like a brush and with the fresh beads of red appearing on his chest drew a pattern across his body, finding its centre above his heart. She observed her grim work with apparent pride. Finally, she reared up as she still sat on him, took her own tool to her head above her eyes and pushed it in. A wail of pain went out from her and when she pulled the tool back out, a torrent of pale blue blood emerged.

She let herself fall forward, her blood dripping on Lirran’s face and then pressed her head on his bloodied chest. He felt her rhythm pulsing across his lung and heart, with a new sensation flooding through him, a pain as if his veins were being cut apart and salted like a fish at the harbour.

Kaza began to scream, as the pain flowed into her too, her muscles spasmed, convulsed and pressed his limbs and lower body together with a force that threatened to squish him like a rotten fruit.

“Look at me!” she raised her head, now smeared with a purple of his red and her blue as he had never seen before and a silvery sheen that appeared from beyond the realms of both mind and body. “Look! At! Me!”

He did, he could not look away, as her eyes grew deeper and blacker. She raised her tool to the bridge between his eyes. Then, while continuing to suck him into the abyss of her gaze, she pushed it in.