Contorted Eye

"No."

"See? No one's gonna notice, Sean."

I don't really get it. The impression I had with devourers was nasty and straight-up evil. But the one I'm talking right now was making me doubt that. I'm not sure if it was only putting up a front and I have no way of knowing. I definitely don't want anything to do with this creature but if he can live in my shadow without me and Ethan noticing for days and days, then is there even a point in me declining?

"But why are you hiding in the first place? Because if I heard it right earlier, you mentioned something about hiding from other devourers."

"That thing's none of your business, Sean. Besides, aren't you in the middle of a covenant ceremony? I gotta excuse myself then. See you later." And with that, he disappeared into my shadow. My shadow wriggled a bit before it took the shape of the devourer earlier and waved its hands before going back to normal.

Was that... really a devourer?

But before I can even begin overthinking about it, cracks slowly appeared in my surroundings accompanied by a crackling sound. And then it collapsed all at once as they disappeared into tiny particles.

The next thing I remember was falling when the ground by my feet collapsed as well as everything went dark.

I'm not really sure how I got here but I found myself floating without much control over my limbs. The place was so dark that it was almost suffocating. But amidst that darkness, somewhere in the distance, a tiny orange spark flickered. It grew bigger and bigger with every second passing.

It didn't take long until I finally got a clear view of what it was. It was the mortema.

"Myuuuuuuuuu!"

But it was moving rather erratically right now as though in pain. As I was wondering what happened to that tiny creature, without warning, it pummeled straight into my chest.

And almost immediately, excruciating pain pounded my chest. I can literally feel my heart being crushed and sliced as though something was being carved inside.

It only lasted for a few seconds until my vision flickered back and forth from the podium I saw earlier and back to the place I currently am.

Various scenes then flashed before me on top of that like broken fragments. There was my father sleeping, obviously drunk. My brothers going into the cemetery to visit our late mother's grave after school. Karl lying on the floor with his wrist bleeding like crazy. The moment my mother died. And... the time when I — I took the liberty of taking my own life.

"Enough! Enough! I don't wanna see any of these anymore!" I shouted. "Enough! Ple—"

My head started to hurt. And my stomach felt weird. I feel like I'm going to throw up. I held it in for the longest I can, but the flickering surrounding isn't really helping. And I threw up.

But instead of vomit, it was a neon liquid with a gooey texture — almost like watered-down gelatin.

Exactly at that moment, the flickering of my surrounding stopped and the scenes that kept flashing before me like a broken record stopped as well. And I'm now kneeling in front of the podium with the pool of neon gooey puke by my front. It was a weird setup indeed.

And in the neon pile of goodness, something squirmed. It was moving sluggishly. And I cautiously picked it up. But as soon as I freed it from gelatin-like liquid, it suddenly glow an orange light and engulfed me.

It was so blinding that it made me shut my eyes tight, but the light was so intense that I'm still seeing it even with my eyes close.

It receded a few seconds after. That's when I decided to slowly open my eyes, Iksha was already there, standing by my front.

"That — That was the first," she muttered to herself. "You! Did you do anything to meddle with the covenant ceremony?" she asked me — a little troubled.

"No? I didn't do anything. I was confused the whole time." I told her the truth.

"But that wasn't supposed to happen," she said as she paced around the podium.

"Wait! Was it successful though?" I asked her. I didn't want to stay in this place any longer. But based on her reaction and what she just said, I'm guessing something unexpected happened in the midst of the ceremony. Was it the devourer's doing? I shouldn't tell her that.

"Did — Did something happened that's not supposed to happen?"

"Something? No! Not something. Everything was wrong. You're supposed to face your greatest fear. The mortema was supposed to be with you the whole time but it can't even get near you. It's duties aside from killing you when you break your word was to protect you and it failed to do that because it can't even touch you. It ended up being punished by it that it almost died!"

Was that the reason why it was moving so weirdly when I saw it?

"Was the mortema fine?" I asked.

"It almost died but it's fine. It's now inside your heart."

"Excuse me?"

"Lift your shirt and you'll see," she told me and I did. Aside from the stitch marks from Mr. Vlad's treatment, there was a new scar and it was on my chest right where my heart was. It's a scar that was in the shape of a contorted eye.

"Illusion?" Iksha said to herself.

"What do you mean by illusion?" I asked.

"Though the covenant ceremony didn't go as expected, I'm surprised you succeeded. But it's the first for a person to be able to cast an illusion as their peculiarity."

"Normally, as part of the covenant ceremony, you're supposed to be shown your greatest fear. And your peculiarity will be based on that. Say, your greatest fear is drowning, then your peculiarity could be unable to drown or be able to breath underwater. But you weren't even shown your fear yet —"

"So you mean to say mine is to cast an illusion?"

"Exactly."