I woke with a gasp, not to the familiar shadows of my room, but to an alien landscape painted in hues of blood. I was lying in a field of grass, each blade an unsettling, vibrant crimson, stretching as far as my eye could see under a sky that was a bruised, angry red. There was no sun, no moon, no stars – only that suffocating, scarlet firmament pressing down on me. The air was still, unnaturally so, and carried a faint, metallic tang, like old blood or rusted iron.
I pushed myself to my feet, a sense of profound disorientation making my legs feel like lead. Where was I? Was this the environment where the last nightmare happened? This wasn't home. This wasn't Genova. This was nowhere I had ever seen or even imagined. I started walking, the red grass whispering around my ankles, each step taking me deeper into the unsettling unknown. There was nothing in sight, no landmark, no horizon other than the endless expanse of that crimson field. Nothing except… growls.
At first, they were distant, a low, guttural rumbling that seemed to vibrate through the very ground beneath my feet. I told myself it was the wind, or perhaps my own fear playing tricks on me. But the growls grew closer, more distinct, imbued with a predatory hunger that made my skin crawl. It felt like hours passed as I walked, or perhaps stumbled, through that unending field, the disquieting sounds of my only companions. Then, the growls began to follow me.
I risked a glance over my shoulder, and what I saw sent a fresh wave of terror coursing through me. Glimpses of creatures, flitting between the tall blades of grass, their movements jerky and unnatural. They reminded me of dogs, but twisted, nightmarish parodies. They had no eyes to see me, no ears to hear my ragged breathing, no noses to scent my fear. Their heads were simply gaping maws, filled with rows of needle-sharp teeth, walking on four jagged, clawed feet. They were hunger given form, ambulatory mouths driven by a singular, horrifying purpose.
Panic seized me. I tried to run, to escape the relentless pursuit, but the grass offered no purchase, its slick, crimson blades tangling around my ankles, slowing me, trapping me. The field had no end in sight, no sanctuary, no hope of escape. The growling was all around me now, a chorus of ravenous anticipation.
Eventually, inevitably, one of them lunged from the crimson sea, its teeth sinking deep into my right leg. A scream tore from my throat as I fell, the impact jarring every bone in my body. Before I could even try to scramble away, the others were upon me.
They jumped on me, a writhing mass of teeth and claws, and started ripping my body apart. The pain was instantaneous, excruciating, a symphony of agony that overwhelmed my senses. They were eating me alive. I felt teeth tear at my flesh, felt my muscles being shredded, my bones cracking under their savage assault. They ate my eyes, plunging me into a world of pure, tactile horror, yet the images of their eyeless maws remained seared onto my mind. They devoured my lungs, leaving me gasping in a silent, suffocating torment, yet I still drew breath to fuel the pain. They tore out my heart, and I felt the brutal, final throb of it in their jaws, yet I didn't die.
This time, unlike the strange numbness of my waking "resets," I felt pain. I felt all of it. Every rip, every tear, every grinding crunch of bone. It was a relentless, unending torment, a descent into a hell of pure sensation. Yet, I couldn't die. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't move, couldn't fight back. By this point, my throat raw and mangled, I couldn't even scream. I was a conscious, feeling observer of my own gruesome dismemberment.
And then, as the last vestiges of my physical form were being consumed, as I was reduced to a bleeding, broken ruin, I felt it. That presence again. The one from my earlier waking dream, the one that had manifested when the crow…
That light.
It burst forth, an incandescent nova of pure, white energy, originating from somewhere above, or perhaps within, me. It burned the creatures right over me, their shadowy forms a momentary, writhing shield against its ferocious intensity. Their howls of agony were abruptly silenced as they vaporized, their bodies turning to ash and then to nothingness. But their destruction offered no reprieve. Eventually, they burned away entirely, and my own ravaged skin, what little remained of it, became the next target of the light.
It hurt.
Oh, gods, it hurt so much. More than the tearing teeth, more than the rending claws. This was a different kind of pain – a searing, cleansing fire that seemed to reach into the very core of my being.
There was so much light. It was blinding, absolute, consuming everything. Even with no eyes, I could see it. It wasn't just an external phenomenon; it was inside me, illuminating me from within, exposing every nerve, every shattered fragment of my soul.
I could see it. I could see everything. I could see him.
He was a man made of light. Or perhaps, a light in the shape of a man. There were no defined features, no face, no form in the conventional sense, just a radiant, humanoid silhouette of blinding, unbearable brilliance. A star. That is what he was. A walking, sentient star, radiating an intensity that was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. I could see him, even with no eyes. My awareness was locked onto him, unable to look away, transfixed by his terrible glory.
The figure approached me, or perhaps I was drawn towards it, and as it did, the pain increased, escalating beyond anything I could have imagined. By this point, there was nothing left of my physical body, nothing for the creatures to devour, nothing for the light to scorch. Yet I still burned.
What of me burned?
Was he an angel? Was this some divine judgment, a purification by fire? Was I burning because of my sins? My failures? The darkness I felt coiling within me?
What was burning inside me? Why did it hurt so much? The light offered no answers, only an agonizing, unending inferno that consumed even the concept of self, leaving only pain and the terrible, beautiful presence of the star-man.
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DATE:15th of December, the 48th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Genova
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Pain woke me, white-hot and immediate—lashes, I realized dimly, crisscrossing my back and legs, agony blooming with every twitch. My hearing was muffled, as if I were submerged underwater, everything filtered through a ringing that scraped at my skull. It was hard to tell if my head hurt more from the blows, from blood loss, or from whatever had happened to me after my father's attack.
Screams echoed from somewhere above—a chilling, distorted wailing, too raw to be animal and too wild to be human. Stranger still was the laughter: a guttural, rasping chorus rippling around me, their inhuman cadence weaving with the ringing in my ears. If these voices belonged to people, then no people I'd ever known sounded like that.
Beneath the noise, I made out human voices. Familiar ones. I strained, the words swimming in and out of reach.
One voice was clear, forceful, with the slightly nasal tone I knew from bitter memory—my uncle. He was speaking, perhaps arguing, with others.
"He's not lost. I refuse to accept it. Kassius is my nephew—I will not stand for him dying here."
A rough, raspy, middle-aged voice answered. "He's possessed, Deonomidas. By a lemure. The signs are all there. His torments, his sudden strength, the curses—these are all marks of the unhappy dead. One of those restless spirits, roaming without rest or burial. He's a vessel now, not a boy."
Another priest, this one with a shaky, weathered voice, interjected, his disapproval cold and sharp. "Fables and shadows. Two souls cannot coexist in the same body, not truly. The rites are clear—your lore is contradiction, not doctrine."
A third voice—a gruff, accent-heavy growl that brooked no patience—spoke up from the edge of the ritual circle. "It's hopeless. The boy's soul is already halfway gone. Spare him this suffering, Deonomidas. Better the knife than this." His words were callous, almost merciful in their brutality.
I tried to move, to speak, but found myself bound, hanging upside down in a strange, swaying half-darkness. My hands and feet were hooked to thick, iron chains, the metal biting cold and deep into my flesh. They dangled me just above the flagstone floor, the constant pull on my joints a dull and steady agony. The air was damp and stale, heavy with the waxy, cloying scent of candle smoke and sweat.
Candlelight flickered on rough stone walls. The sound in the room echoed—these were the vaults beneath the church, or some forgotten catacomb. Each ragged breath I took came haunted by the smell of old incense and human fear.
In front of me, my uncle stood, almost unrecognizable behind a mask. The mask, crafted in the style of ancient comedy, bore the fixed grin of a laughing man, the smile wide and mocking. I remembered the old stories: such masks were said to ward away dangerous spirits, to confuse and scare off the wandering dead.
The three men beside him—priests, I realized, by their uniforms—were each almost as masked and armored as my uncle. Two wore the vestments of Mars: military uniforms cut sharp and disciplined, plates of metal armor on their shoulders and chest, and bronze helmets that made them look like statues come to life. The masks built into their helmets, or perhaps painted over their visor slits, were grim and implacable, the stylized faces of war.
The third priest, standing nearest my uncle, wore the somber black of Saturn, but his mask was a pale visage of death, the face slack and colorless, lips pursed in eternal silence. His presence felt colder than the others', as if the air around him were heavier.
I searched the room for others and found them: a circle of acolytes in ritual clothing, their faces all hidden behind simple, expressionless masks—some rough, some ornate, all anonymous. They moved in silent, practiced motions, preparing something I could not see, oblivious or indifferent to my pain.
I felt like an animal—no, a corpse—offered up for judgment before the altar, the stares of mask and shadow weighing as much as the chains. The laughter and the screams in the distance still rang in my ears, and I realized, with a creeping horror, that I could no longer tell which voices were real, and which ones were only in my head.
When I forced my eyes open, the world spun and I realized—too late—I was upside down, flesh hooked and chained, the blood pooling in my head.
A priest in the garb of Mars—military cuts, gleaming with decorative armor—stood before me. His helmet shadowed his face, but concern was evident in the urgency of his movements. "He's awake," he warned the others in a clipped, martial tone. "We're running out of time." He was handed a warpick, its head wicked and sharp, and a blowtorch that sputtered to life, the hiss of flame igniting a primal terror in me. The priest hesitated for only a heartbeat before closing the distance, pressing the cold steel of the warpick against my chest.
There was no ritual, no words. He impaled me through the sternum with a single brutal thrust, the pain so total it snatched the breath from my body—a white flash that felt like the world splitting open. The laughter in the room doubled, trebled, rising above the pain like a pack of hyenas, foul and triumphant.
"Antonio!" My uncle Deonomidas's voice, usually so measured, cracked with fury. The priest flinched, yanking the warpick free and backing away. As if on cue, the laughter faded to an uneasy, whispering undercurrent—stilled by the uncle's command.
It was the Saturnine priest with the pale, deathlike mask who stepped into the hush, his voice old, gravelly. "Antonio's blow—look, the wounds are already closing. That's not how a possession of lemure manifests." He peered at my chest, unflinching. "If a spirit dwelt within, the body would rot or convulse, not heal. Perhaps the child's soul is gone. Perhaps he's become a vessel—something else. A minion of Orcus, maybe, if that matches his beastly signs."
The other priest of Mars, the one who'd not lifted a weapon, barked a derisive laugh. His accent was thick, his voice sharp. "Blasphemy. Orcus wouldn't stoop to meddling with the living, and certainly not for a butcher's boy! Whatever's happening started after the green-haired foreigner came to class. She's a witch, a druidess out of Normandia, sent to turn us against each other."
The death-masked Saturnine spoke coolly, turning to where Marcellus—my father—waited in the corner, silent, armored, and unmasked. "You saw her, Marcellus. What's your judgement? Is she a witch, or something else?"
My father approached, the light catching on the battered plates of his uniform. He looked exhausted, angry, wary in a way I'd never seen: "She's beyond a common witch. Since the first day I laid eyes on the girl, my sleep has been riddled with nightmares. Every night, she kills me—one time in a bank, one time in a camp, always fighting me—and Kassius together with her. It never ends. No matter how many times I kill her, the dreams repeat. I felt like she's not a single person… she's an amalgamation, a legion of souls inside a girl's skin."
Uncle, his comedy mask grinning even as his voice grew somber, asked: "A chimera, then?"
Marcellus shook his head. "A chimera's made of five, seven souls. In her? I felt… a thousand. Maybe more."
Antonio, still gripping the warpick, murmured with dread, "That makes her a demon. No mortal carries so many at once. It is itself legion from the Normandian teachings."
My father, sweat beading on his brow, suddenly rubbed at his face, voice slurring with exhaustion and dread: "Then what are the voices? The screams and laughter around us now—what are they?"
My uncle scolded quietly, "You should have worn a mask, Marcellus. The voices are the spirits that linger here—drawn to the boy. They have grudges against whatever is inside him." He turned to address the circle. "But if these spirits circle Kassius, that undermines the claim that the green-haired girl is a demon. Demons command or destroy, they don't attract. And the nightmares, the overlap—this is the mark of witchcraft, not demonology."
He gazed at me in my agony, then at the ring of masked acolytes. "The answer isn't clear. The child's wounds heal, but his mind unravels. The girl is not what she seems—but neither witch nor demon alone explains this. All we can do is proceed with caution. No one act without my authority."
In the silence, I hung there, blood trickling down my chest, pain radiating through my core—a specimen for their judgment, a soul trapped between worlds, as masked faces watched and judged and the laughter of unseen spirits haunted the flickering candlelight.
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"If he is awake then we must hurry. Prepare the fumigation ritual."
I heard the words as if underwater, torn between pain and confusion. The acolytes began bustling around, their shuffling feet and murmured prayers echoing in the candlelit vaults. I tried to focus, but the ringing in my ears was almost unbearable. My vision, blurred and upside-down, caught a frantic heap of hay being assembled beneath me. Someone placed a heavy clay pot above it, and in the faint light I saw the shimmer of incense. I recognized the bitter scent as they lit the hay, sending a rush of hot air and thick, suffocating smoke swirling up at me.
While the fire flickered and the fumes thickened, the priests of Mars moved in. I tried to shrink away, but the chains only tightened their bite. One of them, armored and grim, lifted my face and pressed a pair of wickedly hooked spears into each side of my nose, splitting my nostrils wide open. I choked, then gasped, the pain sharp and raw. The acrid smoke forced its way into my lungs. The world narrowed to that stinging burn and the cool metal tearing at my skin.
My uncle, monstrous behind his mask—began the ritual, his voice pitched to some ancient, unrelenting cadence that bounced off the stone:
"Spirit unwelcomed, creature unbeheld,
By order of Saturn, by blood and by bell,
By salt and by smoke and by pain that is real,
Be driven, expelled—flee flesh you conceal."
The other Saturnine priest daubed some foul-smelling ointment on my chest and neck, his touch rough, almost angry. He muttered counter-prayers, each line punctuated by a dab, a press, a streak of burning sensation as the ointment found the wounds left by the warpick.
I knew what they were doing. I'd seen it before—pushing the spirit down, out, forcing it to flee through the nose and mouth by pure misery and the choking smoke. It was a rite old as the ruins, written in blood and fear. Only now, it was me—my body the battlefield, my pain the weapon.
But what terrified me wasn't the pain. It wasn't the smoke, or the spears tearing at my flesh, or even the heat of the coals. It was the emptiness. I felt—nothing. The ritual wasn't doing anything. Not inside. Was I truly possessed? Or was it something else? Something worse?
I was so tired. Like I'd spent a year sprinting, not a day. My mind kept drifting back to that field, that dream or vision or memory, where I'd been eaten and burned but could not die. Now I was here—alive, but dying in pieces. How could there be so much pain and so little sense?
Something inside me broke. I started screaming. I screamed for them to stop, screamed that I was sorry, pleaded with them to let me go. I cried, too—ugly, wracking sobs that made my chest ache and my throat raw. Part of me felt shame; I knew these outbursts would only confirm their suspicions, but I couldn't help it. I couldn't hold it in. Not anymore.
The laughter around me—horrible, echoing—seeped through the walls. It had voices I recognized, now that the fear had burned away my denial. My mother's voice. My father's. But so many others I didn't know: People I'd forgotten, people I'd hated, people I'd feared. All of them, cackling, calling me a murderer, a freak, a disgrace. They were the voices I heard weeks before.
The hooks in my nostrils felt like they were peeling my face apart, every breath sick with incense and panic and blood. I tried to twist free but the chains only dug deeper. My wrists and shoulders screamed with effort. Still the priests' prayers droned on, rising and falling with the smoke.
"Spirit unclean, depart from this shell.
Suffer not the innocent for the wicked who dwell.
Let the nose be your gate, let pain be your leash—
Go back to the darkness, let this mortal find peace."
Hours passed. It felt eternal. Maybe it was. The pain blurred into a single, endless torment. My words, my cries, meant nothing. The priests never paused; the acolytes fed more hay to the fire; the smoke grew thicker, blinding. I coughed. I screamed. I cried. I pleaded. The world shrank to the ring of faces, the ache of the hooks, the heavy chain cutting at my ankles and wrists.
The ringing in my ears grew, pressing out all other sounds—louder, deeper, more absolute. Eventually, it was all I could hear. I stopped crying. Even tears felt like too much effort. My body went slack, my mind a hollow void where not even pain mattered anymore. I was done—empty, spent, drifting somewhere far beyond the reach of prayers or punishment. I let myself dissolve.
And still, the ritual continued.
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Then I felt myself falling—sudden, dizzying weightlessness as the world spun around in darkness. The hooks tore free from my arms and legs and I hit the ground hard, not even registering the pain. I didn't even notice when the priests let go of my nose. Every sense was drowned out by that endless, screaming ring in my ears. I barely recognized my own breathing, let alone the voices and movement around me.
Acolytes crowded closer, their masked faces looming over me. The masks—they were cracked. Splinters across porcelain, broken smiles and fractured eyes. I might have laughed if I had the strength.
Someone prodded me in the forehead—sharp, not hard—and I forced my eyes to focus. It was the Saturn priest, the one with the death mask. He rapped my skull again with the butt of his staff, then gestured for me to move, to rise, to do… something. I tried. My legs were jelly; my feet wouldn't hold me. I collapsed back onto the cold, sticky stone.
I could see them debating in a tight knot just out of reach. Their voices blurred, words lost in the clamor of the pain and the damned ringing. Their faces, hidden behind those awful masks, seemed to float above their bodies, bobbing and spinning like the heads of dream-ghosts.
Then my father shoved his way through, scattering robes and acolytes. He didn't hesitate; he grabbed me by the throat and hauled me upright until our faces were inches apart. I looked into his eyes—cold, focused, searching. There wasn't one flicker of empathy. Not a scrap of warmth. Just calculation, like he was weighing a cut of meat, bracing himself to jump into a fight. No… not bracing. Wanting it. He wanted me to fight back. That was all I was to him—a test to break, a threat to crush, a challenge to prove.
He let go of my throat and seized my hand, slashing my palm wide open with a long, gleaming knife. Blood jetted, hot and sharp, splattering the floor. He raised my arm, barking something at the priests. I couldn't make out the words, but I saw his face twist. I looked down—no healing. My regeneration was gone.
Then, light. Sudden, blinding, erupting out of my hand. It filled the room, seared the air, turned the world into a white fog. I screamed as something inside me caught fire, clutching my chest, the pain like nothing I'd ever felt—like that burning star-man in my nightmare. I was burning from the inside, burning down to the bone. The priests shouted and stumbled back, their shadows dancing grotesque on the walls, and then—just as suddenly—the light vanished. My father dropped my arm and stalked away, heading for the exit as if done with a day's work.
The priests kept arguing, pointing, gesturing, but I could barely hold myself up. I wanted to curl into a ball and disappear. My body shook, but sleep wouldn't come. They wouldn't let me collapse. My mind wouldn't let me rest.
I tried to cry—tried to let it all out and beg for some kind of release—but even tears wouldn't come. All I could do was lie there on the stone, empty, hollowed out, hearing nothing but the endless, merciless ringing in my head.
Then the acolytes came back around me.
The hands that carried me barely felt human. I was hoisted from the stone floor by acolytes—hands beneath my arms and knees, cold and impersonal as iron tongs. My head swam, the world spinning with each step. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed—the candlelit tunnels blurred into a river of flame and shadow. The only constant was the endless, piercing ring in my ears, a sound so sharp and high it erased everything else.
Eventually, we stopped. I was set gently on a bed in a small cell, one with bare stone walls, a battered table, a single chair, and a soot-darkened icon of Saturn looming above me. The acolytes moved about the room like wraiths. Despite the masks having been taken off, I couldn't see their faces. They were empty to me, hollow. I couldn't perceive humanity out of them despite being aware that they had families just like me. I felt horrible.
One bandaged my arm, winding the cloth too tightly, as if trying to keep me from falling apart. Another waved a plate of food beneath my nose. I barely registered the bland colors—bread, maybe some bland stew—before he gave up and left it on the table. Clothes were placed at my feet, warm from someone else's hands, and then, one by one, they filed out, closing the door behind them with a heavy finality.
A single candle burned on the table, its flame trembling with every shift of air. I watched it for a while, the way its glow warped the shadows on the wall, how it made the lines of Saturn's icon dance and stretch. My body knew what to do—kneel, bow my head, begin my prayers. But when I pressed my hands together in the dark and tried to summon the words, all that came was silence. My mind was wiped clean, as if nothing holy or familiar remained.
I stared at the icon for what must have been an hour or more, lost in that blank space. My thoughts looped endlessly. What was happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? I gripped the icon with both hands, knuckles turning white, and squeezed until my arms shook. I tried to speak, to beg it to stop, but I couldn't even hear my own voice over that relentless, maddening ringing.
Please, Saturn. Please, make it stop. Please spare me. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood, desperate for anything to prove I was still alive, that I could still feel. The copper taste filled my mouth and only made the dread worse. What could I have possibly done—what was I, what would I become—to warrant this kind of punishment? How much of a killer was I in the future? What was the tally of my crimes?
I leaned against the cold wall, letting the icon slip from my numbed fingers, and just stayed like that—a silent, shaking thing, too hollow to even cry. I realized, with a sick twist in my gut, that none of this made sense. If Emily was supposed to be there for me, if she was supposed to protect me, why did nothing change? Why did the torture keep coming, again and again, as if I was fated for it?
The nausea returned, curling through me until I thought I might vomit from shame and fear. I crawled onto the bed and curled up tight, hugging myself against the chill. I didn't want to blame Emily—but what else could I do? She talked about memories and futures I didn't have, called me a murderer when in this life, in this body, I'd only ever hurt Matteo and my father, both in moments that were out of my control. I hadn't killed anyone. I didn't deserve this. Did I?
A tremor ran through me that wouldn't stop. I wanted to cry, I wanted to rage, I wanted an answer for why I was still here. But the only thing I could do was lie there in silence, eyes fixed on the candle, waiting for it to finally burn down to nothing.
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