Ashen's body began to shake inside the blood sphere.
The cracks opened… closed… exploded… returned… until a cold breath escaped his chest, as if it came from a grave opened a thousand years ago.
He opened his eyes without surprise, without questions, only an empty sharp gaze that devoured the silence.
The giant monster approached, and dozens of voices inside it bent forward, pushing each other to speak first.
Monster:
"You… returned to consciousness… good… good…
We want to ask you… one question…
You have not answered me yet.
You did not answer.
You did not answer.
Why…
Why did you save me that day?
Why?
You could have left me… to be eaten… to disappear… so why?"
Ashen lifted his head slowly, as if the movement required less effort than thinking itself.
His face showed nothing. No anger. No confusion. Only the solid emptiness that had become his identity.
Ashen:
"I don't know."
He was silent for a moment, then added in a cold tone like a dull blade:
"I was not thinking… and I did not want to think.
I was just moving.
Anger leads me… everything else is ash."
The monster's aura flickered, and the whispers inside it flared. Some laughed, some screamed.
Monster:
"But we… we were your enemy… we were chaos… blood… screaming…
Why did you not let me die? Why, boy?"
Ashen:
"Death… means nothing to me.
And life.
And you.
And anyone."
He looked into the distance, as if he saw something only he could see:
"I only follow something…
Something broken… inside.
Maybe I saved you because that thing…
moved toward you… in that moment."
The monster's voices convulsed. Some burst out laughing, some bellowed like a slaughtered bull.
Monster:
"Something broken… moves you…?
We too… are filled with broken pieces…
But your broken piece… is quiet…
Its quietness… is strange… beautiful… frightening…"
Ashen raised his gaze toward it. Empty, but deadly.
Ashen:
"Do not ask me for the reason…
I myself do not understand what I am."
The monster's voice became a symphony of chaos:
"But we want to understand you… we want to eat you… we want to help you… the voices fight… they fight… each one wants something different from you!"
Ashen:
"That is your problem…
As for me… I want nothing."
The monster came closer and lowered its head until it almost touched Ashen's cracked body.
Monster:
"But your blood… speaks…
Your blood screamed when you almost died…
It screamed words we do not understand…
Why does your blood remember… while you do not?"
Ashen:
"My memories burned long ago…
What remains is…
only anger."
His body shook for a moment, as if a thousand years of pain fell on him at once:
"And I… do not want to remember.
Forgetting… is kinder."
The monster's whispers grew more chaotic. Some groaned, some sang in a broken voice, some whispered:
"Kill him… kill him now… devour him… devour him…"
But another part whispered like a child:
"No… not yet…"
The monster raised its head and extended its claws toward Ashen, then stopped, as if fighting itself.
Monster:
"We… want to swallow you…
But a small part inside…
wants to keep you alive…
Just to see… what you will become…"
Ashen, with absolute coldness:
"I will not become anything.
I was something… then I turned into emptiness."
The monster's vertical eye glimmered, filled with countless souls.
Monster:
"You say you are empty…
But your aura… when it touched us…
It returned clarity to us for one moment…
How can a creature dead on the inside…
give clarity to a spirit of chaos like ours?"
Ashen smiled. A lifeless smile, dry as an old blade.
Ashen:
"Maybe because I am neither alive nor dead.
I am… something between.
Something that feeds on blood… to remember it exists."
Monster, with a cracked voice:
"You are like us…
more than you think…
Broken flesh… torn spirit… and only one voice remains…
the voice of pain."
Ashen came closer, and for the first time his tone sounded like it came from a wounded beast:
Ashen:
"I want only one thing…
To find the thing… I must kill."
Monster:
"And who is it?"
Ashen:
"I don't know.
But when I see him…
he will know."
Without warning, a wild aura burst from Ashen.
A thick, raw, dark aura that pushed the monster back a step and silenced all the voices inside it for a full moment.
The monster lifted its head in horrified surprise:
Monster:
"This aura… this…
This is not the aura of a human…
nor a beast…
nor blood…
What are you, boy?"
Ashen:
"I don't know.
But I know one thing…
I am not the thing you want to devour.
I am the thing… that devours.
And my anger will devour this world."