Chapter 170: You See The Past

It took a while for Theron to finish arranging the house, and he thought about preparing a meal. He had not eaten for three days, and even as a Fury Forge, the mental and physical strain he had endured in the last few days had broken him, and for a moment, he just stood confused, not knowing what he should do.

“You should rest,” the boy who was watching him with a smile suddenly said. “You look tired.”

Theron wanted to laugh. Tired, yes. He was tired in ways that sleep could never fix, something in him was broken, and no matter how much he slept, he knew that his life as he knew it was over. But he nodded, walked to the bedroom, and lay down on the bed he had once shared with his wife.

The boy sat in the corner, cross-legged, and watched the man slowly fall to sleep.

“You’ll be here when I wake up?” Theron asked. The question was absurd; he knew it was absurd, but he could not stop himself.

“Yes, Father. I’ll be here.”

Theron closed his eyes. Exhaustion dragged him down into darkness almost immediately, and the boy waited for hours as Theron fell deeper into sleep and the sound of his breathing evened out, until the twitching of his eyelids signaled the beginning of dreams. Then he rose and walked silently to the bedside, his yellow eyes glowing in the darkness.

The boy placed his small hand on his father’s chest; he did it so gently that it was almost as if he was afraid of hurting him. Beneath his palm, the boy could feel the warm pulse of life, the steady rhythm of a heart that still beat with hope and grief and love.

“How fascinating,” he muttered, and he closed his eyes in focus and reached for his emotions, and he began to draw upon them. The coldness that filled his body began to recede as the warmth of life caused his frozen heart to begin to beat again.

Feeding on his father was not like feeding from the others. With the others, he took indiscriminately, draining their lifeforce like water from a cup. But with his father, he was… careful, almost delicate. He took only the smallest trickle, the barest whisper of essence, enough to sustain himself without causing harm, because he was taking much more than just lifeforce; he was taking a key connection that could only be formed between a father and his child.

The child licked his lips, and as he drew, he gave back in return.

He pushed images into his father’s sleeping mind, images of the alley, of his mother, of the horrible rape, and the man who had killed them. He showed his father the moment of death, the terror, the pain, the despair.

He made him feel it, every horrible second, relived in nightmares that would leave him gasping and weeping. The boy did not need to enhance this memory; it was already horrifying enough as it was, and anything else would only detract from this moment.

Why was he doing this? The answer was simple, and that was because he could, because he was discovering that the suffering of these fleshy beings was delicious, and most especially because watching his father’s face contort in fear and pain, even in sleep, filled him with a joy he could not explain, due to the remnants of the mind of the boy left inside him that created a peculiar contrast that he could draw upon.

Theron whimpered in his sleep as tears leaked from his closed eyes. His body twitched and shuddered under the throes of a nightmare that was so vicious that he knew it was real.

The boy smiled. “You feel it too, don’t you, Father?” he whispered. “The pain. The loss. It’s so good.”

He fed for hours, slow and steady, savoring every moment, and all through the night, Theron dreamed of death.

When dawn began to lighten the sky, the boy finally pulled his hand away. His father would wake soon, exhausted and haunted but alive. The boy felt… satisfied, content, almost peaceful, for a moment. The boy did not want to leave this house as he could remain here forever, keeping Theron alive until his natural lifespan was exhausted.

But then, he looked out the window at the waking city, and he could feel them now, the spawns, multiplying in their hidden places beneath the streets. The three from the alley had become nine, and soon this nine would become twenty-seven. The twenty-seven would become eighty-one. And so on, and so on, a geometric progression that would soon become exponential.

In a week, there would be nearly two thousand of them, and in a month, over a million.

The boy smiled his too-wide smile. “Soon,” he whispered to the dawn. “Soon there will be enough of us. And then…”

He looked toward the distant cliff where the Stoneward Asylum crouched like a waiting predator.

“Then… I will no longer be broken.”

Behind him, Theron whimpered in his sleep, trapped in another nightmare.

Ⓔ

The wooden box containing Chen’s beginner’s kit was tucked securely under Elias’s arm as he made his way through the Guild district’s winding streets. The evening air had cooled, carrying with it the mingled scents of forge smoke, brewing reagents, and the ever-present salt of the distant sea. Craftsmen were closing their workshops, their day’s labor complete, their conversations drifting through half-open doors in waves of tired satisfaction.

Elias moved among them like a ghost, present but unnoticed, his worker’s clothes and lowered hat rendering him invisible to eyes that had long ago learned to see only what mattered.

Despite his height, many Fury Forge were tall or very muscular, as most people would push their few points gained every time they leveled up into their bodies to give them strength, durability, and enhanced resistance to sickness and poison.

As Elias moved through the district, his mind was still in Chen’s workshop, processing the Six Great Paths, and marveling at the possibilities that had just opened before him.

Alchemistry. A path to power that doesn’t require killing. A way to grow that uses my hands instead of my claws.

The thought was almost peaceful… Almost.

Perhaps if he had not be thrown from the sky to an oasis that was being ravaged by cannibals and he had to fight his way towards killing a Mist Phantom when he was a Wisp, or if he did not know what was coming, then he would have focused all of his strengths into this field, but he knew that for him, it would not be enough.

The route back to the Asylum took him through the middle district, past streets he had walked a thousand times as a mortal. He knew every corner, every alley, every shadow where a hunter might wait.

His feet carried him on autopilot while his mind wandered through alchemical formulas and reagent combinations; that was why it took him a moment to recognize where he was, and Elias stopped.

The house before him was modest but well-kept, a two-story dwelling with real glass in the windows and a small garden in front. A home that spoke of comfort without luxury, of a family that had worked hard for what they had.

Josef’s house.

A memory of what happened inside the Fragment slammed into Elias’s consciousness as he recalled the crazed statue standing before him, leaking black, rotten ichor and saying mad words.

“So, you now remember me, Elias, you evil little shit, you killed me when I had done nothing but be your friend for six years. I knew I should never have trusted you. Why did you kill me? Was it just to fuck my beautiful wife and daughter? Oh, yes, I see the way they look at you, little shit, don’t worry, after I kill you, I will wear your skin, and fuck them with your little cock.”

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