A strange iciness woke Farem up. ‘Twas a cold, frigid bitterness that he hadn’t expected to find upon his awakening. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the sensation felt familiar.

Where was he? What was he doing again?

Farem’s gaze swept around the landscape, his pupils glistening like sapphire ice. Surrounding him was a field of golden tulips. Above, a storm of blinding snow swallowed the entire sky. It was as if he were standing beneath a massive sheet of white parchment. Before Farem could blink, the cold air stabbed his lungs. Coughing, he shook the snow off his cape and pauldrons, his hands wandering among the tulips. Thankfully, the tulips were comfortably warm, their light melting the frost off his shivering palms.

Then, his hand happened upon something. He flinched. A noxious, coppery scent pierced his nostrils as freezing, scarlet fluids stained the flowers in his grasp.

His mother’s corpse lay beside him. Unmoving.

“N-no…” Farem stared wide-eyed at the fading colour of her once-golden eyes. Sticky strands of faded blond hair, drenched in viscera, used to lull him to sleep with the honey-bread scent that was undoubtedly hers.

“T-this can’t be real…” Fear and disbelief coloured his pale face as he struggled to form words with his frozen tongue. “N-n-no… Not again…”

But she was right there on the bloodstained grounds, her lifeless eyes staring at him accusingly.

“Mother! MOTHER! Please wake up! Please! PLEASE!” he yelled, shaking her cracked chestplate. “You’re not really dead, are you?! It’s all just a game, right? Like the mock-battle games we used to p-play! Come on, mother… Please… Say you are pretending… Say it… Please… just say something…”

Two clawed hands hovered near his vision, crimson filth dripping from their digits. Farem stopped quivering and looked up. The creature’s skin was blackened and cracked, littered with fresh wounds and gashes. A sinful mockery of man. Its mouth split open with every breath, teeth jutting out like shattered glass, revealing the wet sinew beneath. Long limbs bent backward, broken and brittle. The air soured with the stench of sweat, steel, and decay, while silver embers sputtered out from its eye sockets like a dying flame, weary and exhausted from constant fighting.

A Dark Beast, it was called.

Farem’s tears had dried, and a raging spirit took his soul. He pried his mother’s blade from her blue-purple hands and lunged forward. But the Dark Beast yanked the sword from his hands in a flash, crushed the weapon in its talons, and dropped the leftover shards over the flowers.

“Leave, child…” it muttered, ragged and hoarse from roaring one too many times. “Run. Go far away. This field doesn’t need more graves.”

Farem sniffed and gritted his teeth. Then he punched the monster as hard as he could. And kept punching. And striking. Clawing his nails across the monster’s guts. But the beast easily kicked him back ten feet. Its eyes were filled with an emotion Farem couldn’t read. Pity? Regret? But before he could tell, the beast keeled over and coughed out a bucket of lifeblood. It was minutes away from death.

“Why did you have to kill her, monster? Why? Why?” he muttered helplessly.

The Dark Beast closed its flickering eyes and collapsed onto the snow, wrecking the flowers beneath it, even though it hadn’t meant to. But Farem wasn’t satisfied. Seizing a sword shard from the bloody snow, he climbed on top of the beast and pressed the tip to its throat. “Why?” he groaned. “Why… did you have to KILL HER?! ANSWER ME, SCUM.”

The beast stared at Farem, unblinking. A pained expression washed over its face. “You are still so young… Why must we fight…?”

“No! You don’t get to ask QUESTIONS!” he screeched. “Why did you KILL MY MOTHER?!”

“I am… sorry,” said the beast. “The woman chose to fight. So did I. But you were never involved. Run, child. Leave. Don’t die for nothing…”

The embers disappeared entirely from its eyes. The monster’s corpse dissolved into the ground, darkness seeping away into the soil like forgotten shadows.

***

Farem blinked again. This time, he saw no snow, nor tulips—only the blue-gray ceiling of some sort of cave. Farem sighed, rubbing invisible tears off his eyes. How long had it been since that snowy day? Twelve… Twenty years? He wasn’t certain, but he wasn’t planning on investigating, anyway.

His mother died a glorious death in battle. That was all.

Some memories are best left buried.

“Farem…?”

A murmur came from his right side. Farem glanced over. Her hair spilled across the cavern floor like a pale river, draping over two trails of glowing tears as she blinked rapidly. Her cloak of [Illusion] lay abandoned on the ground nearby, but Farem, for obvious reasons, didn’t mind. The gorgeous lady of the void rubbed her eyes again, her armour clinking with disbelief. Seeing the true visage of his darling wife, Farem’s mouth exploded into a wide grin of relief.

“Aria, you’re okay—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. The Dark Lord was already squeezing the hero out of him in her warm embrace, her head resting on his pauldron as she stained his cape with tears.

“You’re a stupid moron…” she said between sniffs and sobs. “Stupid, stupid, and utterly moronic… How DARE you get flung so far away from me, making me scour this whole damn cave to find you like a madman?!”

Farem could only stammer, his words overshadowed by her shrewd cries that probably busted his eardrums for good.

“Are you even listening to me, Farem?! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!” She whacked him with punch after punch, though they didn’t hurt. “Did you KNOW what I had to do?! I had to yank you out of a hole with water that drowned you unconscious! I had to perform CPR! And even then, you didn’t wake up for at least thirty more minutes! You’re a pathetic, reckless, idiotic husband who cares TOO MUCH for others and not himself! So please… Please don’t die on me… Please… I can’t live without you…”

“I’m sorry for making you worry.” He wrapped his arms around her back, pulling her even closer as if she would fade away the moment he let go. “And… Thanks for keeping me safe.”

“Please…” she mumbled. “Just hug me like this… forever. I don’t want to let go of you.”