"Haaah... huuuuh."
'He won't be found. The Honored Sanse will shield him.'
"Heresy always ends the same way."
"Who's there?!"
"Haaaah... haaah."
"And they are the ones eternally cursed by the Great Creator."
"Waaaaaa!"
From the very first breath, the air offered no peace.
The scattered lights, whether from dim streetlamps, slivered window cracks, or the cloud-stained crimson moon, felt like mockery. To Ush, the so-called "demon child," light was no longer a symbol of hope. It was cruelty incarnate, a violation of his right to exist without being hunted.
With dirt-caked hands and nails grown beyond natural length, Ush shut his eyelids again, blocking even the faintest interaction with the light.
Pure animal instinct took over. He peered through the gaps between his fingers, confirming the darkness around him remained undisturbed.
Silent.
Empty.
Like a grave's solemn hush.
That was all he begged for.
But in this world, stillness was an illusion.
A slow wind hissed, carrying the scent of rust and something cloyingly sweet.
Blood?
Ush didn't want to know. He curled tighter, making his own shadow a final barricade.
If I don't move, they might think I'm already dead.
If I don't breathe, maybe they'll pass by.
Yet deep down, he knew:
They would never stop searching.
And those lights, once soothing, were now hunting tools.
On his 88th attempt to steady his breathing, a futile ritual that had become a trap, his blood turned to ice.
A sacred chant.
A mournful, liturgical melody, like a funeral dirge, woven into the dark. Every syllable, every vowel, cut like a dagger.
It scraped his soul raw.
For Ush, the demon child with cursed blood running through his veins, that voice was pure torment. His skull throbbed, as if his bones might fracture from within.
Then, movement.
Something flew from the shadows.
A knife.
Its blade gleamed cold, etched with a single word.
DIE.
Ush barely dodged in time. The blade grazed past his temple, slicing the air with a searing hiss. One second slower, and his brains would've been scattered ash.
He crashed to the ground, his right hand clawing at the dirt, as if clinging to reality itself.
A choked gasp escaped him.
From the darkness, the voice echoed again.
"You think hiding will save you, little apostate?"
Ush didn't answer. Couldn't.
His mouth hung open, but all that emerged was a strangled whimper, the sound of a trapped animal.
So he ran.
His breaths came in ragged, mechanical hitches, like a broken engine forced to keep working. A scream tore from his throat, hoarse, raw, as if to convince himself he was still alive. His fingers whitened around the baseball bat in his grip, the only thing tethering him to sanity.
Before fleeing, he'd dragged his fingers along the bat's rough grain, confirming its reality.
Not a dream. Not an illusion.
The world flickered around him in blinding white flashes. Light too bright, too wrong, devouring all logic. He swerved sharply, his small body nearly toppling as his foot caught on debris.
Pure terror propelled him.
His eyes darted, searching for escape, but every corner reflected the same nightmare.
Shadows convulsing.
Light strobing like a seizure.
His head shook violently, sweat-drenched hair sticking to his forehead.
"This isn't real, this isn't real," he rasped, a mantra against the horrors unfolding in his mind. He knew, with every fiber of his being, that this was a prison, a devil's rendition of hell, tailored to break him slowly.
But was this truly the end? Or just a pause before the next wave of terror?
The bat grew heavier in his hands, a reminder.
Keep moving. Keep fighting.
Even as fear threatened to paralyze him.
Even as the voice snarled.
"Calm yourself, you wretched—"
"WHO'S THERE?!" Ush shrieked.
"Abomination!" the darkness spat back.
Ush froze. His eyes darted frantically, left, right, taking in the sealed room with its frostbitten walls offering no escape. He spun around, wild gaze searching for the voice's origin.
A flutter of wings cut through the silence behind him.
Once. Twice.
The sound reverberated like a recurring nightmare. Ush felt an unnatural chill crawl up his spine, the unmistakable sense of something poised to strike from the shadows. An invisible threat had grazed him twice now, as if the universe itself were testing him through fear and relentless terror.
His grip on the baseball bat turned vice-like, cold sweat tracing his temples.
"What... what was that?" he croaked, voice breaking the sudden silence. The wingbeats still echoed in his skull, too large, too deliberate to belong to any ordinary creature.
He whirled around faster this time, ready to face whatever might emerge, even from the gloom behind the tattered curtains.
But there was nothing. Just an empty room and a silence so thick it choked.
Yet Ush knew. Something unseen was circling him, toying with his fear, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Then, the atmosphere twisted. Not into calm, but into something worse: a hymn of praise to God swelled from nowhere, its origin untraceable. Ush's head snapped toward every corner, desperate to pinpoint the source. His eyes raked the walls as the air grew thick with sanctity, oppressive and suffocating.
Sacred. Yet threatening.
Through it all, his fingers stayed locked around the bat.
Then, movement above.
His eyes snapped upward. The ceiling bore a painted angel, so lifelike it seemed to breathe, its limbs shifting imperceptibly.
But something was wrong.
The face, where there should have been divine serenity, was a grotesque mockery. Its mouth stretched too wide, filled not with benevolence but with rows of needle-thin teeth. The eyes, hollow and endless, dripped thick black tears that sizzled as they hit the floor.
And worst of all—
It was smiling at him.
The expression was no longer peaceful, but something else, a visage that set every hair on Ush's body bristling.
Without thinking, he swung the baseball bat with all his might at the ceiling.
"GET OUT!" His voice was a raw, shattered thing.
Blow after blow rained down, each strike a rebellion against fate itself, a defiance of forces far beyond his comprehension. The wood splintered against plaster, cracks spiderwebbing outward, yet the angel's mocking smile remained untouched. The painted lips curled deeper, its hollow eyes tracking Ush's every movement as the hymn swelled to a deafening roar.
The air thickened with the scent of burnt incense and something metallic.
Ush's arms burned with exhaustion, but he couldn't stop—wouldn't stop—even as his blows grew wilder, more desperate. For a fleeting moment, he imagined the cracks forming a pattern:
Letters.
A name.
Then—
A single, blackened tear dripped from the angel's eye.
It struck the bat.
The wood screamed.
Ush staggered back as the bat erupted in his hands, not into splinters but into moths, a thousand papery wings bursting forth in a cloud of gray dust. Their brittle bodies crumbled against his skin like ashes as the hymn reached a crescendo, the walls themselves now vibrating with sacrilegious praise.
And through it all, the angel watched.
Smiling.
Ush stood alone in the center of the room, his weapon gone, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The realization settled over him like a shroud:
This was no nightmare.
This was a trial.
And it had only just begun.
To be continued...