Chapter Sixteen – Afterimage of the Nightmare

  A World without Misery (Interitus 1: Book 0)

Chapter Sixteen – Afterimage of the Nightmare

 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

            With his golden eyes staring out over the bow of the sail-rana, Hatasuko watched the outline of the Interfectus up ahead. Since they rolled against the wind, Vaida kept the sails folded so that gravity could pull them down the slope. Due to the steepness of the slope, the sail-rana picked up speed quickly. Vaida agilely steered the vehicle to dodge the many bumps and cracks in the mountain road, but Hatasuko lamented his inability to hasten their arrival. He clenched his sword in his hands. Though she kept her good eye focused on the road, Vaida could feel the turmoil in Hatasuko’s heart.

“How the hell did this happen? The tempest always warned me before an attack. Did this Interfectus come out of nowhere? Why didn’t I know? Why are they screaming so loudly? Why didn’t I-”

“Hatasuko! This isn’t the time to worry about it. We can figure it out later,” Vaida interrupted, though her small voice was almost hidden by the sound of the sail-rana rolling.

The southern sky illuminated with a flash of bright blue light. The mountain range trembled lightly from the force of the shockwave; the fiery explosion could be heard from far away. It boomed loudly enough to eclipse the howling wind; the only other noise came from those caught in the fire.

“Is there anything we can do to go faster? Maybe we could drop some weight?”

“Gravity moves you the same no matter how heavy you are. Same with friction. We’re better off holding our weight,” Vaida explained, staring only at the road and not the flames.

Though the Interfectus attacked a different town than the one where Hatasuko once lived, this onslaught still felt horrifically familiar. Even though that attack felt like a lifetime ago, he still trembled from the lingering terror. He could not shake the terror of the boy who barely survived the shadow demon. His memory could not shake away the flashback of himself holding what remained of his mother in his arms.

            Hatasuko said, “It’s just like the day I was thrown on this path. The Interfectus is attacking my home, tearing away everything I once loved, and I’m still running at it like an idiot. Last time, I was a scared little boy, screaming for his mother, hoping more than anything that we could both escape or else just die together. This time, I’m fueled by more emotion than just fear. The flame of vengeance, the burden of my destiny… but even more than that. I’m driven by the screaming souls in the tempest more than ever before. They want the Interfectus to fall as much as we do.”

“I smell the smoke. We’re close! Let’s do this. The slope is small; the sail-rana won’t make it,” Vaida muttered as she quickly equipped her many weapons.

As soon as she was armed, Vaida jumped off the sail-rana and ran toward the edge of the smoldering town. Much like Hatasuko’s town, this one was staggered and situated on a mountainside, so the Interfectus levitated over the rooftops at the center of the city. Smoke lifted from the city and swirled around the silhouette of the monster, but Vaida ran on anyway; she charged at a strong pace toward her ultimate fear. Hatasuko knew that she achieved a head-start so that she would not slow him down, but he did not want her to get too far ahead. For this reason, he jumped out of the low-speed vehicle, slowed it to a stop with his arms, and then pulled it onto the side of the road.

Once the sail-rana was on its side, Hatasuko sheathed his shimmering sword and ran to the smoky edge of the mountain town. But before he even reached his preferred speed, another blast of blue fire engulfed the city. Hatasuko glanced ahead, and for a moment, he could only see the blue inferno and the black silhouette of Vaida running toward the flames. The scattershot of shadow spheres had struck the west edge of the city; the flames had swallowed the lives of many people who hid hopelessly in their homes. Several souls entered the tempest.

The fast wind quickly carried the ash and smoke across the mountain. The curtain of smoke shrouded the starlight and the smoldering homes up ahead, but Vaida ran bravely into the cloud of ash. It began to stain her skin with a blackish soot that shook her memory, almost like a silent whisper of the night that set her on this path. She pushed it out of her mind and focused on her running speed. Hatasuko caught up to her near the edge of the city, but then the Interfectus leveled a row of distant homes with its shadow sword. As he watched this, Hatasuko could feel a flash of fury invigorate Vaida; it was an emotion that mirrored his own hatred for the demon, especially in a place like this.

“Vaida, are you ready?” Hatasuko asked as he ran past her.

“Yes. Let’s do this. Let’s do this together,” she answered, forcing a smile beneath her anguish as she forced her whip to do a forward snap.

Hatasuko was startled by the loud crack of the whip right beside his hands, but he grabbed on with his left arm and accelerated forward. Since they both clenched the whip as they ran through the smoldering streets, they managed to balance out their speeds and run together. As Hatasuko ran through a leveled home toward the shadow demon, he glanced down and saw two human corpses hidden in the embers; the ash had nearly buried their burned bodies. While pulling her forward with the whip, Hatasuko looked over his shoulder and saw that Vaida glared only at the monster. He hoped that she had not seen the burn.

“It’s the third weapon!” Vaida yelled from many feet behind him.

            Hatasuko stopped running, swung his head to look at the smoky sky, and pulled a rock from his bag as quickly as he could. The Interfectus launched its cluster of shadow spheres northward without even aiming. Hatasuko knew that he only had one way to possibly save anyone; he activated his Astrodeus power, hurled his rock with all the force in his glowing body, and broke the speed of sound with a deafening crack.

The rock flew through the smoky air at almost thrice the speed of the scattershot, and it struck a shadow sphere before it struck the city. Every ball in the cluster detonated with a giant shockwave of aerial fire, but then Hatasuko realized that he had miscalculated; the slope of the mountainside meant that some homes were close to the inferno. The fiery shockwave engulfed many buildings, though it did not level any of them. Since the Interfectus had heard the sonic boom, it twisted its giant body and glared directly at Hatasuko and Vaida. Hatasuko stared up and struck eye contact with the demon of flashing blades and shifting shadows.

Hatasuko said to the shadow monster, “For the sake of all the lost souls you’ve locked in the tempest, I will make sure that this is your last fight. When I kill you, everyone in these mountains will celebrate your death. The longstanding scar may finally heal.”

            A flash of golden light appeared beneath Hatasuko’s feet in the form of the familiar symbol. A pulse of black fire suddenly burst forth from the glowing inscription and engulfed Hatasuko, so the Interfectus attacked with its first weapon. Its shadow claw shot down from the sky at a howling speed, but since Hatasuko was stunned by the energy surging into his soul, he had no way to defend himself. Vaida charged forward, jumped into the air, and pulled her shield forward in the moment before the shadow claw arrived. The weapon struck her shield, the shield smashed into Vaida, and then she flew into Hatasuko as the black fire faded. They both stumbled from the heavy impact, but the Interfectus did not retract its arm; its shadow claws seized the edges of her black shield.

“What do I do?” she exclaimed with wide eyes.

In the blink of an eye, Hatasuko lunged past her, spun, swung his sword, and activated his power with a glowing flash of light. His massive body steered the cataclysmic force through his muscles, used it to accelerate his sword, and then tore the blade through the shadow claw with a shattering slash. This whole segment of the demon’s arm snapped off and broke into countless shards; the cracks traveled across its armor and left deep fractures in its arm. The shadow claw crumbled and fell off Vaida’s shield while leaving it intact.

Though it did not make a sound, the Interfectus retracted what remained of its arm and slammed its massive feet down upon the rooftops below. Two bursts of smoke and debris flew into the air around its feet; Hatasuko could sense more lives ending in the impact. The monster then began dashing up the mountain’s slope; its heavy feet crushed everything in its path. Every person trapped in the north segment of the city tried to flee, but many evacuees still died in vain. Hatasuko and Vaida were surprised to see the Interfectus retreat after only a single hit, but then Vaida realized a possible explanation.

            “Hatasuko! You said the Interfecti can talk to each other, right?” Vaida asked with a shaky nervousness in her quiet voice.

“That’s right! They can communicate, and they know who we are,” he answered.

“Then that means they know what happened in these mountains! You were right; this isn’t a coincidence! I think they want to recreate, you know, they want-”

“They want to recreate the nightmare that put me in this place.”

As the Interfectus smashed through the buildings at the northern edge of town, Hatasuko grabbed a bullet-shaped rock and activated his power. The glowing weapon barreled through the air, unleashed a deafening boom, and struck the back of the demon’s knee with enough force to shatter its inner joint. The Interfectus shook and shuddered as the impact made it tilt, but then it lifted its feet off the ground altogether. While levitating, the Interfectus accelerated northward and over the mountaintop; large waves rolled across the transparent layer in the sky.

Without hesitating in the wake of the demon’s escape, Vaida sprinted at full speed back toward the edge of the smoldering city. She knew that Hatasuko would soon figure out that they needed the sail-rana to chase the Interfectus, so she chose to take a head-start once again. Hatasuko considered using his power to launch himself after the Interfectus, but he knew this was unreasonable. He had only used his Astrodeus power for transportation once before, and the falling impact had knocked him unconscious. Therefore, he groaned and ran after Vaida.

By the time the pair of smoke-stained friends reached the sail-rana by the mountain road, the Interfectus disappeared over the top of the luminous mountain. Hatasuko quickly forced the boat upright, jumped in the back, and glared at the smoke that lifted over the ruined city. As soon as Vaida jumped into the front seat, she deployed the mast, unfolded the sails, and struck the brake lever—letting the sail-rana move again. The wind struck the sail and accelerated them up the slope; the wind overpowered the force of gravity, but it was still a painfully slow travel.

“Is there anything we can do to get there faster? I can’t let the Interfectus destroy my home again. It’s already taken everything from us. I can’t let it happen again.”

Vaida timidly answered, “I’ve been working on designs for faster travel, but it’s not ready yet. I don’t have any of the parts yet. I’m so sorry.”

Hatasuko glanced away from the smoke and the Interfectus. He watched Vaida as she focused on the road ahead, steering the wheels and adjusting the sails. Her left eye scanned for dips in the road, but he could see her sadness in her still right eye. She stared emptily ahead as always, but the emptiness seemed more surreal than before. Though the monster floated toward his hometown, Hatasuko glanced away from it and focused on his friend.

            He asked, “Vaida, is something on your mind? Something other than this, of course.”

“I think I know why the tempest didn’t warn you about this attack,” she whispered, glaring at the glowing road so that he could not read her face.

“Can you tell me? Please? Even now, the tempest is roaring and screaming like never before; it feels like the abyss is striving to steal my soul. I need to know.”

Vaida’s lips began to quiver as she steered the sail-rana around a large rock. After they passed it, the slope of the mountainside started to level out. The high-speed winds accelerated the ship, and because the mountains punctuated the airflow, it essentially created a wind tunnel on the path between the mountains. The sail-rana swiftly grew faster than ever before.

Vaida confessed, “You said before that, well, that when you’re with me, the tempest tends to fall silent. But I don’t, I guess, um, I don’t think that’s true. The lost souls want to tell you what to expect, I think, but I know you can’t hear them. You can’t hear them when you’re with me. I don’t quiet the tempest. I know this because I can’t soothe anyone. I think I just caused your ears to close so you can’t hear them… so it’s my fault. It’s my fault that you didn’t know this was coming. It’s my fault all these people had to die.”

“Vaida, you’re worrying too much over something that isn’t even a theory! There are a million reasons why I didn’t know the Interfecti would attack. Maybe this is a new Interfectus, or maybe they have some cloaking mechanism we haven’t seen before! And even if you’re right, it still isn’t your fault. If it weren’t for you and the way you shield me from their screams, then I would have fallen long ago. And since I’m the world’s only Astrodeus… that’s a risk we can’t afford to take. So you have to stay with me! You didn’t cause this, but if you did, then it’s still better than what would happen if I was left alone with my curse. You’ve seen how the others turned out, right? Those who have been touched by the darkness become the children of the Interfecti,” Hatasuko explained as he glared at the road.

“But I’m not as vital as you think! You’re just saying that because your heart is in the way, because you somehow fell for me. But we both know you hunted the Interfecti for years before you met me.”

“Do you know how close I was to my breaking point? When you found me in that smoky city, when you saved me at the last second from the Interfectus, I was closer to the edge than ever before! It feels like the tempest gets louder and angrier every day. Every time the Interfectus appears, the anguish grows stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. It might be alright if the curse simply drove me to my end, but we’ve both seen what happens to those who’ve been touched by the darkness. They don’t just walk quietly out of this life,” Hatasuko explained with an urgency in his voice.

The Interfectus now hovered in the sky over the mountainside. Its feet dangled high over the rooftops of Hatasuko’s hometown. Even from a distance, Hatasuko and Vaida could hear people shout and flee. They heard frantic voices over the howl of the wind.

“I must have the weakest heart in the world. How awful is it that your words are reassuring me? You almost make me feel like I have value… value I only have because you’ve suffered so much. I should be crying or begging the world to somehow lift your curse, but instead, it’s like I feel needed for the very first time. How disgusting is that?” Vaida asked, veering the sail-rana around a crack in the road.

“Then that just means I haven’t been doing my job. You should feel needed every day! Especially after the last fight, when I took the plunge and violated my code. I know we were trying to tiptoe around it, but you know what it means, don’t you? I’m actually a killer now. I’ve been touched by the darkness, and I’ve taken a human’s life. I still like to think it was justified, but-”

Hatasuko’s words were cut short when a scattershot of shadow spheres shot down from the sky; it was so high up that the spheres quickly diverged. Hatasuko knew that even if he could somehow aim precisely enough to interrupt the scattershot, one explosion would not hit the others, and therefore he was powerless. The cluster of shadow balls fell upon the starlit mountainside in the shape of an oblong oval. Every sphere erupted with a burst of blue fire that illuminated the night and blinded everyone with the brightness of flames. This scattershot terrified the evacuees, and several souls were lost in the flames. The fiery shockwave could not ignite anything on the barren slope north of the city, but it struck enough brush elsewhere that it created a half-ring of fire. 

            “They won’t get away with this again. I’m going to make them pay for what they did to her. We’re united. Every single soul inside me.”

Though the sail-rana rolled quickly, Hatasuko jumped up and threw himself out of the ship; the recoil of the jump sent the boat veering to the left. As Vaida spun the steering wheel to compensate, Hatasuko crashed onto the hard ground on the side of the road. He stumbled at first, but when he straightened out, he sprinted toward the flames which now surrounded his hometown.

Hatasuko whispered to himself as he raced toward the wreckage, “Every night replays the memory of what they did to her. Every nightmare reminds me how weak I felt—how weak I’ve always been. But that ends today. Even if the demon tries to hide in the sky like it’s doing now, I will strike it down to land and kill it myself. I’ll make as many slashes as it takes. The Interfectus is the forerunner of all misery, so as punishment for its crimes, I will wipe it from the face of existence. The lost souls of its victims are my fuel; they are my invisible weapon as they know that this is right.”

Since Hatasuko left Vaida and the sail-rana behind as he charged across the mountainside, he realized that he had given her the choice to pick her next move. She could either protect the citizens as they evacuate, or she could join his side and help him fight the monster. Nevertheless, it would be many minutes before she could reach the city. But since Hatasuko charged toward the smoldering city by dashing across the mountainside, the Interfectus had the clearance to attack again from its throne in the sky. From a height beyond that of the mountaintops, the demon summoned shadow balls and launched them at the mountainside without aiming.

As he dashed between the smoke and flames in the smoldering brush, Hatasuko used his power and catapulted a rock with all the force in his luminous right arm. The rock intercepted the scattershot while it was about halfway to the city; the first explosion engulfed the nearest spheres, and then those exploded as well. A tremendous flash of blue fire illuminated every mountainside and valley; Hatasuko shielded his eyes with his right hand so that they would stay adjusted to darkness. Embers and flaming cinders rained from the sky onto the rooftops. Smoke lifted and shrouded the monster in the sky. Hatasuko ignored the fiery debris as he dashed into the city streets.

Within the town, many people huddled inside houses near the city’s edge. They were all too afraid to flee. By glancing through the windows at their listless eyes, Hatasuko realized that they felt hopeless; his presence did nothing to change their crushing despair. He could sense a similar desolation from the souls which roared inside his head, but he ran on in spite of this. The misery around him was a catalyst for action—a pressing reminder that the world needed this to change. 

            Even as he dashed toward the center of the town, Hatasuko could not shake the memory of the monster in his childhood; he could not clear his mind from the nightmare of the crying boy, running back to his mother.

He said, “I’m not weak anymore. The nightmare ends today.”

Though the Interfectus hovered over the city while halfway hidden by smoke, it thrust its shadow spear so swiftly that Hatasuko had to block it with his shield. But to his surprise, the Interfectus did not target him; its shadow blade instead tore through the air and destroyed three buildings in the blink of an eye. Shambles and debris flew down from the broken buildings, but Hatasuko was determined to run on. He blocked the flying shambles with the shield in his hand. Just as he predicted, the Interfectus tried to attack again while he was trapped in smoke and shambles. The slashing sword of shadows spun through the air, changed direction, and then blew diagonally through a building on the right side of the street. It tore the house apart with an earthshaking crash, so Hatasuko drew his sword and ran toward the crumbling home. As rubble pelted the ground, the Interfectus retracted its arm before Hatasuko could retaliate.

As Hatasuko turned and ran toward the middle of the town, he noticed that his arms were stained with bruises and scratches from the falling debris. Soot coated his legs since he had run through the flaming brush. When he glanced back up from his own injuries, he saw the shadow spear lunge at him at a very high speed. Without any delay, he pulled his shield upright and blocked it just before he would have been beheaded. The impact caused his shield to fly back and slam into his face. His whole body then flew back and struck the wall of a home; he hit it so hard that the building shuddered. The shadow spear still pressed upon the shield, and it pushed with so much strength that it folded his left arm. His head was stuck between his shield and the wall.

With nothing else to do, Hatasuko readied the sword in his right hand and used his Astrodeus power. His body illuminated with a glow brighter than the fire, his muscles bulged with a sensational strength, and then he swung his sword with more force than ever before. His blade flew so quickly that it destroyed the Interfectus’ arm, did a complete spin while tearing through the street, and then struck the shadow arm again before it could crumble.

            The sky trembled from the shockwave of the sword striking the ground, and then the sonic boom shook the shambles of the smoky city. The Interfectus stayed silent as countless cracks covered its crumbling arm. It did not hesitate to attack again, even in this state of disrepair. The Interfectus knew that Hatasuko had drained his quintessence in his last attack, so it summoned its shadow spheres. With a loud, frightened shout, Hatasuko lifted his shield and held it closely.

As Hatasuko clenched the perfect shield in his left hand, the shimmering array appeared in the ashes beneath his feet. It activated and engulfed his body with black fire once again, but it was now too late to stop the cluster; several shadow spheres struck the streets and exploded with a blinding blast of blue fire. Countless homes were stricken from the mountainside. Many crouching families transformed into ashes. When the shockwave engulfed Hatasuko, the building behind his back crumbled; the fiery force of the explosion threw him inside the falling house on his back. The searing flames had singed his arms and legs, but he held the shield over his head as the roof came crashing down.

“Anyone who causes tragedy is an architect of misery. Anything responsible for this has no right to exist. It is my duty to carry out their punishment,” Hatasuko whispered as he knocked the debris away with his slashing sword.

When Hatasuko emerged from the smoldering shambles of what was once a family’s home, he stepped out into the ashy street and saw a clearing in the heart of the city. The last scattershot had decimated the center of his hometown and transformed it into a field of embers. With an ear-piercing crack, the Interfectus jumped down from the sky, fell quickly, spun its massive body in midair, and then crashed its feet into two homes at the other end of the clearing. The impact unleashed a cloud of dirt and smoke that engulfed its massive legs. The entire mountain shook from the power of this fall. Several damaged homes crumbled elsewhere in the town. Many lost souls entered the swirling hollows of the tempest. With smoke lifting and swirling over the wreckage, Hatasuko stepped into the clearing with his sword in his right hand and a rock in his left. The Interfectus was still missing the arm which had just been destroyed, but its other injuries had regenerated.

            When Hatasuko and the demon locked their golden eyes, the Interfectus employed its third weapon and summoned a scattershot of shadow spheres. Without any hesitation, Hatasuko twisted his hips, swung his left hand back behind his shoulder, and launched a rock with a glowing flash. As the sonic boom shook the smoky city, the high-speed rock struck the closest shadow sphere and forced them all to detonate, but the blast did not engulf the Interfectus; it had ducked right after it made the scattershot. As the blue fire explosion illuminated the mountain, the Interfectus ducked beneath the flames, spun, and then unleashed a sudden slash of its shadow sword.

Hatasuko still fought to recover from the recoil of his throw, and therefore he could only jump out of the way. When the shadow sword struck the ground, it shook so violently that Hatasuko fell onto his knees in the ashes. The Interfectus then swiftly slashed its blade at his back; it struck his shield and threw him forward with an abrupt impact. Hatasuko crash-landed with a roll, but his unbridled fury caused him to recklessly attack; he stumbled to his knees and used his power.

When he realized that the Interfectus had retracted its blade-arm into its crouching body, Hatasuko slammed his supercharged sword into the flaming shambles of a fallen house. The bricks shattered on impact, and then the broken chunks all flew at the shadow demon with a calamitous force. When the smoke-stained bricks crashed against it, a spot in its armor cracked, but the attack was otherwise harmless. The debris fell from its giant body and rained onto the ground.

Hatasuko said to himself, “Though punishment is a flash of misery in itself, the threat of its existence is enough to breed peace. After I kill you and show to the world that I am the executioner of everything evil, perhaps the Interfecti will leave this place. They can take their misery with them when they retreat from this world.”

Hatasuko knew that he had enough quintessence for two more attacks, though he suspected that the Interfectus knew this as well. As if it could read his mind, the monster stood upright and then created shadow spheres yet again. Without any aim or hesitation, it unleashed its cluster by launching it diagonally downward. Hatasuko reached into his bag, unsheathed a bullet-shaped rock, and then threw it with all the force in his left arm; he did not use his power to do this. The rock struck a sphere in the center of the scattershot, thus triggering another giant explosion. A fiery shockwave shot across the sky in all directions. Hatasuko turned his back to the explosion and tried to run away, but the Interfectus never meant to hurt him with the fire; it instead used the shockwave to hide its next attack. The demon transformed its remaining arm into the sword of shadows.

“Hatasuko, jump, jump now!” screamed a scared girl’s voice from the edge of the abyss.

Before he could process anything else, Hatasuko pounded his feet and jumped as high as he could. To his surprise, the demon’s blade-arm suddenly shot through the flames with incredible speed. The blade blew clear through his stomach, his back, and pierced the ground with enough force to shake the mountain. Blood spewed from both sides of this wound; a frightful rush of adrenaline flooded his system. Without even thinking, Hatasuko used his power and unleashed a catastrophic slash; he destroyed the demon’s arm in a single strike. As its arm crumbled in the smoky wind, Hatasuko dropped onto the blood-soaked ground on his hands and knees.

“That’s both arms! That’s both… both arms,” Hatasuko groaned, trying to fight the overwhelming pain.

Hatasuko said to the voice in the tempest, “Adishina, you saved my life! It was going to hit me in the neck.”

Hatasuko then realized that at some point in the last phase of this fight, his sack of rocks had been torn. The bag was now empty, and several bullet-shaped rocks rested on the ashes around his knees. Feeling he had to retaliate, Hatasuko grabbed a rock with his right hand and activated his Astrodeus power. He used the last of his quintessence to throw the rock at the highest possible speed, but this attack turned out to be in vain; the demon harmlessly deflected the attack with its second weapon—the shield of swirling shadows.

The Interfectus did not wait for the rock to fall back into the clearing of smoke and cinders. It instead created a scattershot and launched without aiming. And though his body was in extreme pain, Hatasuko pushed himself onto his feet, sprang into the air, and threw another rock at the scattershot again. The shadow spheres flew so fast that they were more than halfway to the ground, so when they detonated as a massive inferno, the shockwave struck him and threw him out of the clearing. The flames lightly burned his arms and legs, but the worst damage came when his back slammed against a wagon at a high speed. If he had not been wearing his shield on his back, the impact would have knocked him unconscious. 

             “Hatasuko, get out of there! You have no defenses. You have no way to fight back! Don’t get yourself killed for something pointless like revenge,” Adishina spoke.

Hatasuko took her advice, stumbled to his feet, and started running through the smoky streets. He looked over his shoulder at the Interfectus as he ran away.

“But I promised the world that I would save them. I promised all the lost souls that I would give them justice,” Hatasuko said to the girl locked in his head.

“You’ve taken too much damage. If you fight the Interfectus now, you are going to die. You’ll die and leave Vaida behind. I don’t know if you know how much she needs you, but listen. I promise you that there is nothing more painful than that. There is nothing more painful than being left behind by someone who’s supposed to care,” she whispered with an evident sadness in her voice.

            Hatasuko knew she was alluding to the disaster which ended her life. As he ran away from the demon with his sword clenched in his hand, he remembered that her parents had left her to die when the Interfectus first attacked this city. She was born with nonfunctioning legs, and therefore she was helpless. Adishina remembered this pain just as clearly as Hatasuko remembered his own.

When Hatasuko arrived at the smoke-stained buildings near the southern edge of his hometown, he realized that the monster had not attacked for several minutes. It hovered motionlessly over the rooftops in the background. Its limbs slowly regenerated; this was surely the reason for its stasis.

“There’s no way. This has to be a nightmare. A nightmare created in the abyss—a memory twisted to look like reality,” Adishina whispered.

Hatasuko looked up and saw that many people ran down the mountainside. Though the brushfire was weaker than before, it still pumped ash and smoke into the sky. These people had to risk their lives and run through the flames so that they could escape the monster. The evacuees looked like silhouettes as they blocked the glow of the fire.

            “What’s wrong, Adishina? Are you afraid that they’ll catch fire?” Hatasuko asked.

            “No, it isn’t that. The people you’re running toward… those are my parents. I know it. They’re the ones who left me behind. Well… I guess I’m relieved to see that they survived. But I just can’t stop myself from hurting,” Adishina whispered from the tempest.

            As Hatasuko ran across the ash-covered mountainside, he carefully inspected the two silhouettes up ahead. Their physical details were shrouded by the shadows. He ignored the blinding pain from the wound in his stomach as he approached, but he closed the distance slowly. Adishina’s mother and father ran frantically down the mountain. 

            “How could this happen twice? I hate running away from this!” yelled the woman to her husband.

            “We don’t have any other choice! When the Interfectus attacks, it’s every man for himself. What else can we do? We’re not monsters for making sacrifices!” the man replied with a panicked voice.

            “But when you make sacrifices, you’re always sacrificing someone else. Someone who never asked for sacrifice,” Adishina muttered.

            Hatasuko replied, “If they were willing to sacrifice a little girl to the Interfectus, there’s no doubt that they are monsters. They are unforgivable. They are architects of misery.”

            With a quick glance over his shoulder, Hatasuko saw that the Interfectus was still floating over the rooftops. One of its arms had completely regenerated, but it remained still. Hatasuko wondered if it would chase him after it healed its body, but then he shifted his eyes back to the path ahead. He quickly approached the field of flames and ashes. Adishina’s mother ran into the brushfire first, running as quickly as she could so that the flames would not catch. Adishina’s father was just a few paces behind her. Through the light of the crackling fire, Hatasuko saw that they were both stained with smoke and ashes.

            The mother let out a sudden scream. As she dashed at full speed through the flames, her pants had caught fire on both sides. She continued screaming as the flames engulfed her clothes and scorched her skin, but her husband looked completely indifferent. When the fire finally forced her to fall, Adishina’s father ran right past her and dashed out of the brushfire without looking back. He ran on in silence as she succumbed to the searing flames.

            Adishina whispered, “This can’t… be real. I thought, when they left me behind, I thought it made sense because I was useless. I was deadweight. A burden. But if he’s so willing to just throw her aside and run on-”

            “He’s an architect of misery. It’s his fault that you’re trapped in that screaming hell, Adishina. He’s created pain, and so it is pain he shall receive. Maybe I’m too injured to take down the Interfectus, but I can still give you justice. I can purge this world of a man who breeds only misery.”

            By ignoring his pain and the blood dripping down his back, Hatasuko charged through the fire and emerged on the other side with his sword clenched in his right hand. A faint red glow clung to his sword because of the heat; its tip was marked with an array of black fire. Adishina’s father quickly realized that someone was chasing him as he ran down the mountainside, so when he looked over his shoulder, he let out a startled shout.

            “This is for Adishina,” Hatasuko said.

            And then, with a single swift slash of his shining sword, Hatasuko tore him down. As blood spewed from the massive gash in his back, the golden symbol on Hatasuko’s sword triggered. A burst of black fire scoured the surface of his skin as he slammed upon the ground in silence. With a quick jerk of his wrist, Hatasuko ripped his bloody sword out of the man’s back.

            “This is for Adishina, and to purge this world of misery. I have decided there is no place for you in my world. I may have thrown away a piece of myself tonight, but I accept this decision with no regrets. After all, we’re not monsters for making sacrifices, isn’t that right?”

            Hatasuko stared proudly over the corpse of Adishina’s father for a moment, but then he heard a loud sound in the distance. Hatasuko swerved around and faced the Interfectus, but to his surprise, the monster did not unleash another attack. Instead, it levitated toward the sky. As he stared at the smoldering city on the other end of the fire, he realized that the Interfectus had no reason to continue. Every citizen had escaped the city and scattered during the time he spent fighting. Vaida had probably facilitated the swift evacuation. With no victims left to kill, the demon began fading, and in a matter of seconds, it retreated from existence.

            “I thought that the Interfectus chose this target because it wanted to kill me. Why would it leave? It must know I’m still alive,” Hatasuko wondered aloud.

            Adishina answered with a frantic, quiet, angry whisper, “Because it’s too easy for the Interfectus to kill one person. It didn’t want to kill you. It wanted to turn you into a monster! That’s what the fourth weapon is all about, don’t you remember? If it’s leaving now, then that means it got its wish. Hatasuko… how could you let yourself do this? You’ve become a killer. How did you fall so easily?”

            “It’s simple. If I have to throw away my humanity to save humankind, then that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

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