“Are you going to be a part of this, old friend?” I can smell the fear in his mind as he looks at me, the hesitation reeking of uncertainty as he bobs his head slowly in response.

“My lamp is nearby,” he reminds me, his eyes trailing the arrays of burn scars across my shirtless torso. “Any funny business and you get scorched.”

I follow his gaze to my chest, where the largest of the scars can be seen, and exhale deeply.

The things I’ve endured from these people.

“Of course, old friend.” I smile at him, thawing out the freezing darkness awakened within me, begging to be unleashed in its full capacity. “Anything you say.”

Laura laughs behind her hand, her eyes flicking between me and Agidi. She appears to be in utter disbelief of my abilities. “Is this how you deceive my people? Convince them he’s too wild to be contained so they don’t push you hard for proof?”

Searching my mind for the perfect spell, the incantation flows from my lips naturally, tethering me to the darkness as I make eye contact with her. “Sé vi éhé évīsū?”

She gasps, her face instantly going pale as if she’s seen a ghost. The candlelight on the table flickers before going out completely, plunging us all into darkness—which is exactly where I flourish.

“Rémī,” I demand, forcing her to look at me. Not just the withered man with graying hair stuck in his thirties, but the real me. A vision even I have come to forget, radiating a divine glow in the darkness. I reveal my soul to the American at the Ézori’s request, feeding off of her crippling fear as I get into her head, seeing myself through her eyes:

A towering, dark-bearded man stands before me, with a number of beaded accessories hanging down his neck—cowrie shells, stringed necklaces made from organic materials carved intricately with runic patterns. They dangle down his wrists as well, glowing a faint silvery color.

The light is instantly absorbed by the black cloak hanging down his left shoulder, merging with the surroundings as if forged from darkness itself. The only visible parts of him are his exposed torso and his eyes—oh, those electric-blue eyes—everything else fades into the darkness. His long dreadlocks come alive, floating in every direction. But those hypnotic blue flares, they pull me in, making my heart sink.

His eyes are a cross between a hellish monstrosity and a divine radiance. Burning like stars in the night sky, I can barely look at them. Yet they glow brighter than anything I’ve seen, brighter than life itself, casting a soothing shadow over his smooth dark skin.

A creature of such unbridled darkness shouldn’t burn this bright. The contrast makes you wonder if he really is a demon, an angel, or both. I feel myself gravitating toward him, knowing nothing, feeling nothing besides whatever he wants me to feel. Kneeling before him, I look to my left and notice the elderly monk doing the same. I can’t even judge him for doing that because that’d require a conscious mind. My mind has lost its grasp on reality. It no longer feels like mine. I can feel him in my every thought and motion, flowing like the blood in my veins, controlling my every reaction.

When he parts his lips to speak, revealing a perfect set of teeth, my ears peel open, becoming more perceptive than ever. I didn’t know they could do that, become this keen without a moment’s notice. I can hear my own heart beating in my chest, the soft beeping sound from my pacemaker, the rustle of my eyelashes. Adahwahyi could whisper anything under his breath and I’d hear him without straining my ears. But he speaks audibly, addressing me directly.

“You’ve seen me,” he says with a smile. There’s nothing harmless about him, just divine grace. “Now let me see you. The real you.”

And then he steps away, and his cold, freezing presence within and without fades out of existence. I can hear his soft chuckle as I snap out of the trance and his mocking words hinting at an unraveling.

“Here comes the best part,” the words echo in my mind as the candlelights return, casting mundane amber glows across the walls which pale in comparison to Adahwahyi’s essence. His words are suddenly watered down by my thoughts and I lose my last connection to him, crippled by the burden of normality. I can feel him leaving, with no idea where the glory is going, until the scarred, miserable thirty-year-old prisoner speaks up and I notice an inkling of familiarity in his voice to that of the divine power I’ve witnessed.

“I’ve done my part,” I exhale, sitting down on the sofa, crushed by the weight of restrained emptiness. It’s a miserable feeling having to contain so much of myself. I could almost cry, but then the unraveling begins and I watch the man and woman before me commence a sequence of events that can only be deemed as madness.

Laura begins to claw at her chest, her breath coming out in gasps. She’s clearly under the impression that she can’t breathe. Her long nails begin to dig into her flesh as if clawing out her heart would make things better.

“What are you doing, Laura?” I ask, resting back on the sofa with my legs crossed, entertained by the brutal savagery.

“It’s... It’s burning me! It’s bad! It’s really bad!” she cries. Screaming in pain, she descends to her knees, beads of blood rolling down her desperate fingers. “I need to get it out. It’s unnatural. It’s not a part of me. This isn’t who I am.”

My gaze trails off to the Ezori, whose reaction is far more dire. He’s banging his head against the wall, smashing his forehead. He keeps repeating the same phrase, “Make it stop. Make it all stop,” his tone lower compared to Laura’s.

“Make what stop, old friend?” I ask him, knowing it won’t be long now before Eiza barges in to end their glorious nightmares.

“The noise in my head,” he says, the banging becoming more aggressive. “They are conditional. I don’t need them.”

If he keeps this up, he’s going to suffer a concussion. But he literally consented to this, signed himself up for torture, so what else am I to do? I can only watch the result of their own negligence.

“Make it stop...”

“It’s burning! Bad! Burning...”

“Make it stop...”

“It’s unnatural! BURNING!”

Quick footsteps erupt from the door as Eiza and another younger Ezori burst in through the door, heading directly toward me with blazing torches. My own nightmare commences when they get close enough to scorch me. And oh, how the open flames burn... “MERCY! MERCY! PLEASE!”

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