Niyus watched Shaï-Thaêl.
He paused for a moment, stunned: she was there before him, her gaze empty, her skin deathly pale, streaked in places with dark fur. An almost childlike strangeness emanated from her, as if something human persisted despite everything.
Niyus: Shaï-Thaêl?
She didn't answer. Her eyes remained locked on his, silent, unfathomable.
In his mind, Rivhiamë's voice murmured gently:
Rivhiamë: She looks like a child… Look at her. I can read innocence in her eyes…
Niyus (dryly): Innocence? Like you, you mean?
Rivhiamë seemed troubled, her mental presence wavering for a moment.
Rivhiamë: Don't say nonsense…
Niyus (scoffs): Hahaha…
But his smile faded quickly. Shaï-Thaêl's empty gaze didn't change. Something was wrong. He realized it now: this thing before him might be far more problematic than he thought.
Niyus: Seeing you like this… I can confirm that you are indeed the one who caused, at least in part, the priest's death.
Shaï-Thaêl's eyes widened slightly before lowering, as if a form of shame, real or feigned, had seized her.
Niyus (bitter): Don't pretend to have emotions. You are a Spirit. A concept. An idea that only manifests under certain conditions. How could you feel anything? After absorbing a living being… what do you feel? Is that your role? Devour, digest, then disappear?
A heavy silence. Then a hoarse voice, almost a whisper:
Shaï-Thaêl: Our role…?
She slowly lifted her head toward him.
Shaï-Thaêl: Yes… That's it. I lost my way, then.
Niyus (raising an eyebrow): What are you talking about?
Shaï-Thaêl: By absorbing my host… I took her emotions, her memories, her thoughts. Instead of simply feeding, I integrated them. They became mine. And I was confronted with something that doesn't belong to my kind: feelings.
She turned her eyes to the sky, as if searching for meaning there.
Shaï-Thaêl: I feel… and yet, the emptiness remains. I never wanted to kill the priest. But it happened. And now, I can't go back. I've lost my role. And in the fall… I lost myself.
She lowered her eyes, her voice almost absent.
Shaï-Thaêl: Now that I'm here… will another Myophore come to make me its prey?
A silence. Then Niyus, inwardly:
Niyus (thought): What is she talking about…?
Rivhiamë (in his head): I think… she's fallen into madness.
Niyus clenched his teeth. The being before him no longer resembled what she had been. But a decision had to be made.
Niyus: You shouldn't stay here. This world isn't yours. Go back to where you came from.
Shaï-Thaêl: Return? Never. You don't understand. When we become ideas again, fragments always remain. Memories that cling. Some prefer to die for good rather than bear them forever.
She stared at him intensely.
Shaï-Thaêl: To live eternity remembering you were… alive, like a real creature, is unbearable.
Niyus (calm but firm): You must leave, Shaï-Thaêl. This world is not yours. You know it.
Shaï-Thaêl (empty gaze, but trembling lips): No… no. Not yet. I don't want to go back there.
Niyus: You're only delaying the inevitable.
Shaï-Thaêl: Maybe. But now… I feel. Do you understand? I feel. I'm afraid. Afraid of becoming what I was again: an idea, floating in oblivion, waiting… Waiting for a human to suffer enough to call me again.
Niyus: That's what you are. An idea. A condition. An effect. What you feel is just a parasitic echo of the priest you absorbed. None of this is yours.
Shaï-Thaêl: And if I've changed? And if I no longer want to be just a consequence? And if… this emptiness could be filled?
Niyus (tone hardens): You cling to memories that aren't yours. That's not transformation, it's confusion. You think you have a will… but you've only devoured someone else's.
Shaï-Thaêl (voice rising, ancient anger rumbling beneath): You're lying! What I feel is real! If I become an idea again, I'll forget them, I'll dissolve into silence! I refuse that!
Niyus: So you'd rather break the balance of two worlds… for a fantasy of existence?
Shaï-Thaêl: I prefer that… to eternity without form or memory. I'd rather fight!
A shiver ran through the air. The light bent slightly around them, as if the world itself were holding its breath.
Niyus (sighs): Very well.
He took a defensive stance. The ground beneath his feet barely vibrated. At this signal, Shaï-Thaêl screamed-a sound torn between animal and tormented soul-then leaped.
She charged, claws extended, her movements betraying barely contained savagery. Niyus dodged with a fluid step, and his energy-charged fist struck the Myophore's shoulder. A dull impact, a flash of pain in the air.
Niyus: Your body screams, but those aren't your cries. They're the cries of the human you swallowed.
Shaï-Thaêl growled, spun, and unleashed a black wave in a semicircle. The attack split the ground, shattered stones. Niyus raised an ethereal, bluish, circular barrier that absorbed the impact before dissolving into whirls of light.
Shaï-Thaêl: Shut up! Shut up! I KNOW what I feel! I'm not just a cycle! I'm alive now!
She struck him, this time with her leg shrouded in dense, dark mist. Niyus was thrown back, rolling across the hard earth. He got up, his face marked by a gash, but his eyes remained calm.
Niyus: You've only dressed in her memories. You're playing at being a person. But you're just an empty garment. A temporary disguise.
Shaï-Thaêl growled, her silhouette widened, bristled with ethereal spikes, her voice doubling in impossible frequencies.
Shaï-Thaêl: If that's not true… why does it hurt? Why this weight inside me? Why this voice screaming that what I did is unforgivable?
Niyus gathered energy in his hands, the vibrant light drawing a sacred circle around him. With a gesture, he projected it. A golden chain shot out, snaked through the air, and wrapped around Shaï-Thaêl.
She screamed, her body twisting from the impact. She broke free in an instant, exploding the hold with a wave of organic corruption. Nerves, veins, thoughts materialized around her like an aura.
Niyus (panting): What you feel is just residue. A sweet poison. The priest contaminated you with what he was. But you, you are nothing. You have nothing. That emptiness you feel is your true nature.
Shaï-Thaêl (torn): THEN WHY AM I CRYING?!
Her tears flowed. Black. Smoking. Charged with a pain that couldn't be hers… and yet, she lived them.
She leapt again, faster, her attacks mingling with illusions, the priest's repressed thoughts appearing around them like mirages. Niyus resisted, striking through the memories: a hand on a child, a last whispered prayer, regrets Shaï-Thaêl endlessly appropriated.
Niyus (shouting): He died because that was your role. You are a consequence, not guilty!
Shaï-Thaêl: No! I am… me!
They clashed again. The sky began to tremble slightly, winds swirled around them, the earth itself quivered from this battle where spirit, idea, and emotion mingled.
The wind stopped. The world around Niyus seemed frozen, suspended between two beats of an invisible heart. Before him, Shaï-Thaêl was no longer the docile, hesitant shadow he had met.
Her body, now misshapen, oozed a sticky darkness. Tendrils of shadow snaked around her arms, trembling with a power that refused to stay contained. Her voice, when it sounded, seemed to scrape the surface of reality like a blade on glass.
Shaï-Thaêl: "You want me to return to that nothingness I come from? For what? To become an idea again? A mere thought wandering the void, waiting for the next human flaw?"
Niyus didn't answer. He tightened his grip on his weapon, but his gaze was calm, almost sad.
Shaï-Thaêl raised her hand. A tide of shadows escaped her, twisted and writhed, then rushed at Niyus like an open jaw. The impact twisted the ground, fractured the air. Niyus parried, jumped, counterattacked, but she was already elsewhere, the shadow becoming speed, unpredictability, rage.
Shaï-Thaêl: "If we're capable of imitating your emotions, your doubts, your smiles and your fears… then what stops you from believing we could one day truly feel them?!"
Shadow claws sliced space itself. Each blow was accompanied by a distortion, as if reality remembered what it was before it became reality. Niyus was thrown back, bounced, slid across the cracked tiles of a world losing its shape.
Silently, he stood up. His left arm bled.
Shaï-Thaêl: "If every Myophore could think for itself… feel for itself… NONE WOULD WANT TO GO BACK! None! Do you hear me, HUMAN?!"
Her scream split the clouds. A geyser of darkness rose to the sky, swallowing the light. Niyus was swept away by the wave. His shoulder dislocated, his ribs cracked. He remained standing. Silent.
Shaï-Thaêl: "You think you know everything about us?! You know NOTHING! We are fragments of the void! Ideas born from your fears and regrets! You dare pretend to understand WHAT IT'S LIKE NOT TO EXIST?!"
She concentrated her hands, forming a dreamlike spear of ink-black shadow, pulsing with a broken dream. She hurled it.
The impact was dull. Niyus staggered. The spear pierced his chest, passed through him. He spat blood. But his smile… remained.
Niyus (whispering): "I hope you're proud of what you've become… You caused the priest's death… and now, you're about to kill your second human. Even your kind would be ashamed."
Shaï-Thaêl stepped back, frozen. Her eyes widened. A whisper was born within her: a doubt.
But Niyus advanced. He pushed the spear deeper into himself, walked despite the pain, despite the blood. Slowly. Resolutely.
Shaï-Thaêl: "What are you doing…? Why… are you coming closer?"
Niyus (breathless): "Look at me. Look at how I bleed… That's what it means to be alive. Do you really want to become like us? To feel pain? To doubt? To suffer?"
Shaï-Thaêl stepped back. The spear vanished in a burst of black mist. Her arms trembled. And for the first time… tears of sadness fell. Black. Silent.
Niyus knelt slowly, then raised his head to her, his gaze clear.
Niyus: "Don't let the priest's memories devour you. You are not him. You are a Myophore. You must accept that. But…"
He reached out, pressed his palm gently to her forehead, like a brother.
Niyus: "… if you can convince me. Prove to me that you truly exist, not as a human residue, not as a stolen reflection… but as an emptiness learning to love… then I will help you. I'll help you exist."
Silence enveloped them. The sky was black. But a star shone, somewhere beyond the horizon.
Silence fell after their last words. Even the wind seemed to have fled. No echo, no breath of the world. Just this suspended tension, as if space itself held its own name.
Shaï-Thaêl froze.
Her eyes, still shining with distorted shadows, lost their luster. Something unseen had changed. Her body, though made of abyss and night, curled up like a cornered beast.
Niyus: You're trembling… why?
Shaï-Thaêl (trembling, almost inaudible): "He's coming…"
The ground didn't vibrate. The sky didn't rumble. Yet, something was reversing, withdrawing from the world.
As if the very laws of the place remembered the original void, what came before even the laws.
Niyus: "Who? Who's coming? What do you sense?"
Shaï-Thaêl stepped back slowly, staring at the horizon-or maybe at nothing at all. Her body began to lose its shape, as if simply remembering what came before was enough to weaken her.
Shaï-Thaêl (twisted with fear): "The Abyfage… The Respire… The one who comes for us… when we forget who we are… He doesn't think. He doesn't speak. He corrects. He puts us back in our place…"
(Her eyes widen.)
"The pure void allows no error. I… I felt his thirst. He's coming. For me."
Niyus frowned. It wasn't a demon. It wasn't a deity. He perceived nothing, but he felt, in his very flesh, that the air was becoming less real. His own thoughts seemed… fragile.
And Shaï-Thaêl, this creature of howling darkness, recoiled, panicked, like a child threatened by oblivion.
Niyus: "Shaï… What is this? Why are you afraid? You, a fragment of the Void?"
Shaï-Thaêl (crying shadowy tears): "I no longer have the right to be afraid. I no longer have the right to exist. Not like this. Not with… with this inside me. The pure void wants me. It will drink me."
And then, at the edge of their perception-not a sound, not a light, but a deformation of reality.
A part of the world was gently erasing itself on the horizon. Colors faded, sounds turned to sludge. Rocks, lines, perspectives… everything became blurry, mute, nonexistent.
Shaï-Thaêl screamed, in pure terror.
Shaï-Thaêl: "He's here!! He sensed my mistake! He sensed that I wanted to become like you!"
She threw herself to the ground, hands on her head, as if to keep her thoughts from escaping.
Niyus (worried, approaching): "Shaï… you… you're not disappearing. You're not alone. You don't have to fear anything as long as you can speak. As long as you're here."
But already, he saw fragments of shadow detaching from her, snatched by an indefinable force. As if the Abyfage was beginning to eat her essence, without haste, without violence, but with the certainty of a tidal wave.
Shaï-Thaêl (sobbing): "He doesn't speak to me. He doesn't hate me. He wants me empty. He wants me as before. Just an idea… without a name…"
And in that moment of pure terror, Shaï-Thaêl raised her eyes to Niyus, imploring, destroyed.
Shaï-Thaêl: "I don't want to die… Not this way… Not as a mistake…"