Lilith feels distant, though I am standing right next to her...
No, she is not distant—she is... tiny...
She is a small grain of gold resting in the palm of a hand the size of the infinite... My hand.
When I understand this, the figure hugging her—what I thought was my physical self—fades into a purple mist. Yet I am still here. I find it... Fascinating. I am looking at her from everywhere at once, my perception can even see through her skin, her muscular fibers, bones, her heart pumping, her brain, the energy flowing through her body, all those individual components that together are life.
What is this...?
A dream...?
"Are you... really... here...Lilith?" I utter. But it is not my voice that carries the message; the soft breeze does, delicate and tender, for the last thing I wish is to hurt her. She is fragile, and I feel compelled, no. It's a need: to cherish and protect her.
"Yes! Vance! I am! Where have you gone? Come back to me!" She replies at the threshold of the temple. She looks angelic.
"You should have devoured her..." The whisper is sharp as a blade, cold and dark. It gives me chills, and my skin betrays this.
I turn to face it. It is a threat to her, and by extension, to me.
But I found myself dragged far from Lilith, pulled into an ocean of darkness, deeply familiar, it reminds me of the void, but it's not the void because this place is full something I can't grasp, something that feels even more distant than the spark that is Lilith, in the horizon. This place aches. It's dangerous. It's alive. I should not be here. Then I notice it.
The thing that stands before me makes me feel dread, violence, and sick fascination. Faceless, with an aura of terror that radiates from it like the light from the sun; it's so thick it feels like a physical weight on the world; since the moment I'm aware of it a force like gravity pushes me toward it, and in the depths of my soul I know that this creature is the end of all things, me included. I can't escape its pull, and yet I'm fascinated.
Did it bring me here to devour me?
"You've always been here..." the thing whispers. "Devour her... She's weak.. weak... weak..."
The word echoes around me, it turns into a whirlwind of violence that takes me from left to right like a ragdoll, but somehow this feels like the threat of a spoiled and ill-mannered child who wants me to fulfill its will.
"What is this place?" I ask. No answer, because its face is fixed on Lilith's distant light.
"Devour her... End the hunger..."
[Reason: 50] [Reason: 52] [Reason: 54]
As the numbers climb, the static in my mind clears. This is the depths of my self, and this horror must be some sort of reflection, or the manifestation of my violence. The being feels closer to me than my own thoughts. I don't know how, but I know that I can't hide anything from it, nor can I stop it—and yet it's still here, unmoving. No. The pull stopped. I'm holding my ground again.
"I won't devour her." I reply.
"You are not human... Why do you pretend you care?" The beast asks standing up in two feet like a man, a face appears where it should have been at last; its voice is friendly, but I know it's a facade, because its eyes are empty, hollow, black holes where even the darkness sinks never to find escape. It is a predator ready to pounce when the prey feels safe.
"All that is... All that is... All that is..." He whispers, and the sound is like the ocean in the storm, shaking the very foundation of my being. "Must be... devoured... devoured... DEVOURED!"
It hits me with the force of a dying star.
While I'm stunned trying to recover myself, I understand that if I had devoured Lilith and Aria, if I had consumed their essence, I wouldn't be struggling in this half-existence, facing this being. I would have defeated the demon easily. This thing is right. I should have eaten her. I lower my gaze as the understanding takes hold. The beast is right...
And yet, there is something, this deep ache in my chest that refuses to accept his view. His? Am I thinking of this beast as a: "he"?
"You must devour..." It adds, tilting its head like an expectant dog, and the invincible hold grips me. It's never going to let me go, that's for sure. This is it.
"Mother... Mother wouldn't want it..." I utter, not even knowing what I'm saying. It is a feeling that becomes words and sets me free. I lift my gaze to face the beast. It is gone.
Was it ever there? Was it just my imagination?
I search for it, putting in real effort, but there are no traces. It never existed, perhaps. It's only me and that tiny spark of lust and desire that is Lilith. It's only me and her. "There is nothing more..." I utter for myself, focusing on returning to my succubus.
"Devour her..." The whisper comes from behind me, soft and sharp as a blade. I turn ready to fight it; but there is nothing, and yet the echo hums in my being: the maddening song of the void.
"The next time I won't be this reckless before evolving." I tell myself, blaming my low Reason and bad state before reaching lv. 6.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Perception has reached its second peak: 200/1,000. Evolution stage "Sanity" reached.
Evolution Path Progress: Clarity(Completed) → "Sanity" → Enlightenment → Illumination → Madness.
Active Skill acquired: [Mind Link] – Mental communication.
Active Skill acquired: [Empathy lv.1] – Reading the emotions of others.
Active Skill acquired: [Telekinesis lv.1] – Kinetic manipulation.
Passive Skill acquired: [Bastion of Coherence] – Affects allies. External mental influence triggers a response that traps the influencer in a mental labyrinth of your making.
I smile. I must return to Lilith. That place is no place for her. I breathe. I expand myself. I become the darkness at the center of everything. I grow until I am everything. When I blink, I am back, sitting on the throne of the shrine in my honor, then I'm hugging her without truly hugging her, through another construst of mist.
"Close your eyes for me," I ask her. She obeys without hesitation. I smile. How could a demon be this innocent?
I become silence, absolute and endless, and then I project us out of there. I open my eyes, and the Vault receives us back.
"Open your eyes." I tell her.
"We are back! Thank you!" She kisses me.
The world feels different...
It is in the air, in the gravity pulling me down, in Lilith's scent, in Aria, who is approaching us, clearly recovering through her powers. It is as if the world were clearer. I look at my hands and, even though I cannot "see" it with my eyes, I know that in my palm are hundreds of little creatures, eating me, living their entire lives, and then simply dying to become material that falls and is eaten by others.
Fascinating. I feel as if I could behold eternity in the nothingness of the air and never grow bored.
"What is it?" Lilith asks.
I can see her now. I can read the shifting tides of her emotions through the new lens of my empathy. She is happy, flattered that I am looking at her this way, and she is excited, anxious, wondering if I am finally going to take her as my woman.
"You are so beautiful, little spark," I tell her.
The words push her excitement through the roof, a spike of dopamine and desire I can almost taste. But I turn to face Aria. She is not well, not entirely. Even without my new sight, I can feel how the cracks in her sanity are growing. There have been nightmares; the Elder's song leaves deep scars in a mortal mind.
I raise my hand and enclose her within the protection of my Sanity. The [Bastion of Coherence] settles over her like a veil of cold glass. The cracks begin to heal slowly, too slowly for my liking, but they will heal.
"Aria," I call her name.
"Vance," she pronounces mine.
I feel a surge of jealousy and anger radiating from behind me. Lilith. She has already had her kisses and her hugs, yet she covets every second of my attention.
"How are you feeling?" I ask.
"Better," she replies. It is the truth.
"Good."
"I... I think I'm doing well managing the problems arising from Silver Harbor," she adds, her voice steadying under my mental influence. "If you want to take a look..."
"I trust you."
"I might need a hand..." she adds shyly.
"How so? I think the heroine who defeated an Elder could handle everything," I tell her.
"Yeah... only I would never sell that lie... I just can't." She smiles at me, a fragile thing.
So, they told their people that it was I who did it. I let out a sigh. This could complicate things. My original intent was to remain the shadow, the hidden architect. Being a public savior is a loud existence.
"You deserve all honors," Lilith adds, firm.
The small spark that she is comes back to my mind, and the simple, fierce loyalty of it moves me. I accept what they did because she wished it.
"Sorry..." Aria adds, sensing my hesitation.
"Don't worry," I calm her.
"Should I arrange a public speech so they see you are well?" she continues. "Most still can't believe that an Elder had Silver Harbor under its control."
"Good idea," I agree. "How did you convince them?"
"We found bodies. Some of the 'children' of the Elder, their withered bodies, we found them and the people could see the one we brought back. They think that body was the Elder's," Aria explains. "When do you think we should do it?"
I find it interesting that she's not asking for the Elder's real body. I guess she doesn't want to think about it.
"I think after we've had lunch," Lilith adds playfully, her hand resting on my arm. "He must be starving."
It is a happy, mundane comment. I smile at her, playing the part of the weary hero returned from the brink. But she is more right than she could possibly understand.
I am hungry.