Past Mistake

"Did you kill it?" Adeline's voice was a whisper, laced with wary caution. She clutched El Ritch close, her arms tightening as if to shield him from an unseen blow.

"No," Aldric said, his tone heavy with weariness. "The moment you stepped beyond my Sanctuary, it attacked outright, casting aside its authority. It struck with brute force... curious..." He drew a slow, breath of disappointment. "I couldn't kill it in time. It shattered the bond between its Sanctuary and mine, then vanished. To maintain mine after that was... meaningless." His words hung in the air like a tolling bell, final and grim.

Adeline and Belga exchanged glances but said nothing. The silence was heavy, not with fear, but with something darker. Still, Aldric mistook it for dread. "You've no need to blame yourselves," he said gently, though his voice carried a trace of frustration. "You are not weak—neither of you. A Conjurer and an injured kni—Hunter could hardly hope to best such a thing." He tried to soften his tone as he added, "It's all right, Ad. Bel. Truly, it is."

El Ritch, nestled against Adeline's chest, watched them both. He saw their silence and thought it was fear too. He wasn't entirely wrong—there was fear, but it was a pale shadow of the rage smoldering beneath. Rage not at the beast but at themselves. Adeline hated how helpless she had felt, how she'd needed Aldric to shield them. Belga, for all her wounds, was no better, her fists clenched in frustration. El Ritch saw some of this, or thought he did. And in that moment, he understood—or thought he understood—one more thing: he, too, was lacking.

He was a burden.

If he meant to live with them, not off them, then he needed to be more than this.

His thoughts were shattered by a sound that crawled up from the void.

"Dare... how... you... you dare..." The words came like a choir of broken voices, growling and snapping as if each struggled to speak over the others. Beneath the words came a screech, high and jagged, the unmistakable cry of a beast.

"What in the hell—"

"It's returned!" Aldric's voice was sharp now, his hand already moving to the hilt of his weapon. His Sanctuary rippled faintly around him, a tether waiting to be drawn tight. All around them, the world melted into darkness, a void without shape or boundary.

Aldric shifted his stance, his focus razor-sharp. His eyes darted through the black, searching for the amalgamation. Waiting. Listening.

The beast's voice came again, fractured and terrible. "Move... thing to play... Primordial for... curse you... you both... you, yes... and Fate."

It tried to draw breath, mimicking the rasp of human lungs, but the sound twisted in its throat. The failure birthed another screech—a keening wail that scraped against the bones of the living. The sentences it strung together were a tangle of half-formed thoughts, a mockery of speech that made the skin crawl.

Aldric did not flinch. He waited, every muscle taut, ready to unleash his Sanctuary. Whatever came next, he would not be taken unawares.

It came.

The amalgamation coalesced into flesh behind Adeline and El Ritch, a blur of writhing limbs and warped features. Before either could react, it struck. El Ritch was ripped from Adeline's arms as though he weighed nothing at all.

"El Ritch!" Adeline's scream tore through the void, raw and desperate. All pretense of defense was forgotten as lightning crackled to life around her, spiraling in jagged arcs. Her blue hair, streaked with purple, seemed to shimmer in the dark, the violet strands aglow like roots of heaven that crackled and changed forms to not to be comprehended. "Give him back!"

But before she could act, they were gone.

El Ritch blinked, disoriented. The Sanctuary was no longer around him, or perhaps the amalgamation had torn itself free of that place entirely. Either way, the black void was gone, replaced by a barren expanse of cold gray stone, jagged and alien. He was alone with the beast now.

Yet fear did not grip him. Not truly. El Ritch was not familiar with the feeling, though some fragment of him understood he should have been afraid. Instead, his thoughts lingered on something stranger: an awareness that so many of the emotions he felt were... foreign, like guests that overstayed their welcome. Some, he barely understood. Others, he did not recognize at all.

Even so, instinct drove him to speak, as though reason might yet tame the monster. "You chose the wrong person to take—" His voice wavered but did not break. "You should've taken Mr. Aldric."

The amalgamation halted, its many limbs trembling. Then it croaked, its voice raw and splintered. "No..." The word dragged out, guttural and low. "Come... here for... Master."

Before El Ritch could answer, the creature's body folded upon itself, its four limbs bending in what seemed a gesture of submission. Its grotesque form bowed low, pressing against the cold stone. "Throne... awaits," it hissed, its head tilted unnaturally, as if expecting praise.

El Ritch frowned, confusion creeping over him like a shadow. "I'm sorry," he began cautiously, his voice quiet against the vast emptiness around them. "I don't understand what you're saying. But I'm not who you're looking for. I'm no one. An orphan. My only home—a village—was destroyed by beasts like you." He hesitated, the words catching in his throat. "Please... just take me back."

The amalgamation did not respond.

El Ritch swallowed hard as unease coiled in his chest. It was a sensation deeper than fear, something more invasive, more intimate. It felt like the stirring of memories that were not his own—echoes of something buried in his body, his brain, lying dormant until now. It left him cold, his hands trembling with a dread he did not understand.

And worse, it felt like a violation. As though whatever force clawed at the edges of his mind cared nothing for what was his and what was private.

The amalgamation tilted its head, the motion abrupt and birdlike. Its beak-like maw snapped at the air, a sharp clack that echoed in the void. The human mask it wore—a stretched patchwork of flesh—seemed to breathe as its pores opened and closed, gasping for something unseen.

"Sent... learn the knowledge... universe... punishment..." the creature croaked, its voice a guttural snarl that grew more ragged with every word. Its claws scraped against its own twisted body, gnawing and tearing at itself in a frenzy.

"Learn no knowledge... wrong... imposter taken... wrong... must correct," it howled, trembling with fury. It froze mid-spasm, its hollow eyes fixed on El Ritch. The beast's voice dropped to a low hiss, chilling in its clarity.

"Must... correct..."

It sprang forward, its body contorting mid-leap, claws outstretched.

But it never reached him.

From the void came a flash of blue and violet—Adeline. She collided with the creature in midair, hurling it backward with a crackling arc of purple lightning. Behind her, Aldric emerged from the darkness, his Sanctuary flickering faintly as he stepped forward.

"I overestimated you," Adeline sneered, her voice laced with contempt. "Deranged as you are, beast that you've become, you still cling to your human instincts. You love to make others kneel, don't you?"

The amalgamation answered with no words, only a guttural roar that seemed to shake the very air around them. It lunged again, its claws aimed at Adeline's throat.

But she was faster.

With a single, fluid motion, she caught its left paw mid-swipe and redirected its momentum, twisting its body off balance. The beast crashed into the ground to her right, only for her to drive her fist into its exposed abdomen. Lightning crackled as her blow struck home, purple tendrils spiraling from her hand and surging through the creature's form. The lightning erupted from its back, leaving a charred, smoking wound.

The amalgamation howled, a sound that was part scream, part whimper, its body convulsing in pain.

Adeline gave it no quarter.

Her hand curled around a conjured tendril of lightning, a spear of pure energy that change it's shape with every flicker of lightning except it's end point. She hurled herself toward the writhing beast, bringing the tendril down with all her fury. The impact sent a spray of light and sparks across the void, and the air filled with the acrid stench of burning flesh.

El Ritch watched, frozen, as the creature's body trembled and quaked. It whimpered, a pathetic sound, as its end approached.

"I... I, I, I," it stuttered, struggling to speak, its voice broken and weak.

Adeline stepped closer, lightning still crackling in her hands, her face set in grim determination. She raised the tendril once more, intent on ending its suffering.

But then it spoke.

"You lose."

The words came not as a growl or a stutter but with chilling clarity, spoken in a single voice.

Before Adeline could strike, the Sanctuary shattered around them, dissolving into nothingness. The darkness fell away like a receding tide, and the world blinked back into existence. All of them vanished—Adeline, Aldric, and the beast—all except for El Ritch.

He was falling.

The wind tore at him as he plummeted through a sky choked with dense, storm-gray clouds. The cold stung his face, forcing his eyes to squint as he struggled to see. Below him, a vast forest sprawled endlessly, its canopy a sea of dark green and shadow.

He was too high.

The ground rushed toward him, faster with every heartbeat. There was no Sanctuary to save him now, no lightning to carry him, no hands to catch him. Death awaited below, cold and indifferent.