East of End-World, several Imperial vistas south of the Ruined Port City of Arkos -if one wanted to be more specific- there had been a village in the Age of Kings that relied on fishing. Its sailors and maritime traders hadn't possessed the resources or skill to venture deeper into the Onyx Sea, unlike their northern compatriots. And venturing beyond the clear boundaries of the Ocean of Violent Waters was out of the question; any attempt at exploration was considered suicidal.

  Trade had been limited to small surface fish and the occasional black-scaled demon-head that didn’t come without a bit of luck -which was often scarce in that region. It hadn't been a prosperous economy, but the profits from trading with the logging companies that worked on behalf of the royalty had been enough for its few inhabitants to survive in peace.

  That village, whose name had been forgotten by history, was one of the first to be attacked by the Coven of witches who served the Lord of Forbidden Knowledge, a few years after the fall of the Kingdom of Exilia. It happened on a night like any other, when dozens of hooded figures spread terror through indiscriminate massacre and the kidnapping of children. Taking them southeast, toward the Sea of ??Trees.

  There was no official response to this violence from a fledgling imperial government that was utterly outmatched by the guerrilla warfare tactics used by the witches. The abandoned Houses of Royal Hunters were days away, near the main routes, making them unsuitable for defense or strategic observation points.

  The only option the inhabitants of the fishing village had was to build a house on the edge of the Sea of ??Trees, near the marsh that separated the forest from the plains. There, the only man with military experience and his family had begun to live, hoping to be the village's first line of defense and warn of any possible attack by the Coven with beacons placed on the highest hills.

  The plan failed in a matter of weeks. The witches massacred the soldier's family, the beacons were never lit, and before a single day had passed, the fishing village met its bloody end.

  There were no survivors among the adult population. The laughter of the vile madwomen faded along with the blood of the innocent that soaked the earth. And the cries of children, echoing through the hills and carried by the wind, were the only sound left behind.

  Until they were lost in the far reaches of the vast titanic forest, never to be heard again.

  Centuries later, nothing remained of that nameless fishing village, but ruins overgrown with vegetation. No trace of the horror, hidden and forgotten beneath the surface. The beacons had vanished, ravaged by decay and the violence of the elements. And closer to the Sea of ??Trees, small sprouts of the giant trees were gaining ground, their roots emerging from the earth and spreading in all directions, even reaching the marsh.

  But the soldier's house endured the passage of time and the slow expansion of the forest. With a natural roof against the rain and wind made of tree branches and red leaves, that two-story stone house remained intact, and even several of the iron fences marking the security perimeter still served their purpose. The windowpanes had been broken long ago, the walls were almost entirely overgrown with vines, and there was no trace of the front door.

  The place screamed in silence that it was derelict. But not uninhabited.

  The entrance hall was a nightmarish pigsty straight from a sinister mind. If it had ever contained furniture, it was gone: in its place were mounds of naked, dismembered, and disemboweled corpses, some in a more advanced state of decomposition than others; they had been subjected to such indiscriminate violence that it was impossible to determine their gender.

  The bones of hundreds of people who had met their end over the years practically covered the entire floor, turning the house into a veritable necropolis.

  Using bones and a morbid mixture of animal and human skins as a bed over them, two women lay huddled together. Nearby, a small fire burned with dry wood and the bloodied limbs of recent victims, but it wasn't enough to warm the hall, which was exposed to the cold wind that seeped through every hole in the house.

  “Could you use those skinny arms of yours to hold me tighter, my dear?” asked the woman that was fully clothed, with a sinister sweetness in her voice. “No, wait, better not.”

  She was a demi-human, a Crywolfean beastling that had a black furred tail. She wore a tattered black dress, a hood, long black shoes, and, to top it all off, a cloak stained with dried blood and emblazoned with the Shield Against Darkness.

  She looked young, but the hunger and obvious dementia etched in her wild eyes and a smile full of rotten teeth ravaged and aged her appearance.

  “Cold? Cold, cold…cold, cold, cold…” purred the other woman, a human redhead. She was half-naked, her skin a dangerous white, a sign of hypothermia. She still retained features of beauty, but not for long, given the deplorable living conditions that were poised to corrupt her. Health, sadly, had already been the first victim. “Cold, cold?”

  “Cold, yes, that’s all you know how to say! And that’s what you make me feel, since you only use two old rags to cover those tiny tits and your shit-smelling pussy!” the clothed woman screamed, exploding in savage rage at her partner. “You’re good for nothing but making me cold, not even for a good fuck! I should throw you into the fire, you’d be more useful then!”

  “Cold! Cold, cold!” the other sobbed, beginning to cry like a little girl, repeating that single word she had kept in the shattered book that was her mind. She hugged the other woman and buried her face in her cleavage, covering her chest with tears, snot, and grime. “Cold!”

  The beast-woman growled and bit so hard that the few teeth she had left in her mouth ground against each other, on the verge of breaking.

  “By the Abyss, alright, I’m sorry… You’re really getting on my nerves, Cold! We’ve had this same conversation a hundred times today!” she complained, caressing the back of her partner’s head several times. “I’m bored, yes?! I want to go out there and hunt a man!”

  “Cold?” the pale woman asked, her mouth trapped between her partner’s breasts, her voice muffled. “Cold, Cold?”

  “Yes, exactly! Imagine, a fisherman from Arkos, with a dirty beard and muscles from hauling in a net full of fish every day! And with three wives and lots of kids, living in a shack by the sea.”

  “Cold…”

  “Yes, yes... You, playing with the women, drinking their blood and tears. While I squeeze the fisherman dry until there isn’t a single drop of fluid left inside him that isn’t mine. And the children... The children!”

  The nameless beast-woman smiled with malice at the mental image, trickles of blood oozing from the sides of her mouth, from her diseased, pustule-ridden gums.

  “You think that we could…? You know.”

  Cold opened her eyes and pulled away from her partner, scandalized.

  “Cold! Cold, cold, cold, cold!” she complained, so offended that she stood up and pointed an accusing finger at the nameless woman. “Cold!”

  “Oh, come on, I was joking! I’m not going to leave the house unguarded, who the fuck do you think I am?!” She stood up too, sparks flying, and pulled a wand made of human bones and skin from one of her pockets. “You won’t disrespect me like that, bitch!”

  Her partner followed suit, untangling her hair to use the metal needle that had bound them together as a weapon of the same kind: thaumaturgical catalysts, both with worn and fragile power crystals at their core.

  “Cold! Cold, cold, cold?!” Cold demanded, shrieking. They pointed their wands at each other, ready to kill one another. “Cold, cold, c-cold!”

  “I-I… You know I don’t… Oh, that’s hitting me where it hurts most, Cold!” The nameless woman lowered her wand and tilted her head wearily before opening her arms. “Come here, sweetling.”

  “Cold!” the pale woman exclaimed, throwing herself against her partner's torso, sobbing and finding comfort in her warm arms.

  “I know, it won't happen again. For the next hour, at least,” she whispered in her ear, running her sickly white tongue along her cheek and temple. “Let’s go back to bed…”

  But before Cold could answer, the interior of the hall was illuminated by a violet glow coming from outside, accompanied by a powerful soundwave that ringed painfully inside their heads.

  Both women looked at the same time toward the doorframe. A fanatical excitement spread across their faces, making them smile with boundless joy.

  “Mistress Tatyana! She’s back!”

  Outside the house, once their eardrums and eyes returned to normal with the disappearance of the blinding light, the nameless woman and Cold saw two other women lying on the mud and pools of putrid water: one was hooded, wearing an elegant black dress, and was lying face down, convulsing with violent spasm; the other was bald, her body wrapped in bandages saturated with blood that didn’t seem to be hers, given how quickly she got up from the wet ground, without any wound to hold her back.

  “M-Mistress Daiana…!?”

  “TRISTESSA IRANDELL!”

  With that unbridled scream directed at the sunset-covered sky, Daiana Mercer-Archeos unleashed the inhuman rage that had taken root inside her and had no intention of leaving. The roar opened her mouth so wide it seemed her lower jaw would dislocate, and her unblinking silver eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets.

  “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, I SWEAR! I’LL KILL YOU, I’LL SKIN YOU, I’LL KILL YOU AGAIN, I’LL RIP YOUR HEAD OFF AND USE IT AS A CHALICE TO DRINK YOUR BLOOD, I’LL KILL YOU AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND FUCKING AGAIN…!” She brought both hands to her head, digging her filthy nails into her scalp so hard that blood began to flow, as well as from the sides of her eyes, mingling with the morbid filth that covered her. “NO, IT’S NOT ENOUGH! IT ISN’T! IT’S NOT ENOUGH, IT’S NOT ENOUGH, IT’S NOT ENOUGH, IT’S NOT ENOUGH!”

  Without warning, Daiana lowered her gaze and fixed it on the nameless woman and Cold, both watching her unhinged outburst with respectful and astonished silence.

  That silverly gaze saturated with pure evil was enough for both to kneel and bow their heads.

  “Mistress Daiana is watching us!” the hooded woman exclaimed softly, her lower lip trembling with emotion and tears streaming down her face. “How wonderful!”

  “C-Cold, cold!” her partner exclaimed, radiating joy in the same way.

  “You two… One of you, come to me. Now.”

  The command of a Priestess of the Black Eye was absolute. Both women stared at each other, mouths agape and drooling like wild, hungry animals about to start fighting over a piece of meat.

  “Cold!” The half-naked witch ran toward Daiana, beating her partner, who slipped on the damp earth. She hit her nose on one of the cobblestones that had once formed part of the path leading to the house's entrance.

  “Ah...ah... What an honor, sweetling!” exclaimed the witch, bleeding profusely and warm pain spreading to the sides and to her forehead. Still, she looked up to see her pale, sickly partner being grabbed by the neck by Daiana as soon as she reached her side. “To serve the Priestess most beloved by Lord Moebius...!”

  Her words, her twisted smile, and her tear-filled eyes combined adoration with envy. Everything that represented the witch’s existence was consumed by a new wave of destructive flames of madness as she watched Cold’s head being severed from her neck in a burst of blood. Her body sprawled on the ground, and between post-mortem spasms, she received a kick from the furious Priestess, sending the cadaver flying into the marsh like a light piece of trash.

  “…Ha…HAHAHAHAHA!” Unrestrained laughter and rivers of tears. The nameless demi-human witch had lowered her hood and was tearing out her black hair by the roots, lost in a confusing and chaotic storm of pain, joy, love, hate. Pain, joy, love, hate, pain, joy, love, hate, hate, love, joy, pain. “WONDERFUL, HAHAHAHA, WONDERFUL!”

  Her vile eyes stared at the spot in the putrid lagoon where Cold’s body had sunk. Then focused on Daiana, who with her bare hands tore skin and hair from the severed head.

  And so she did, her gaze shifting again and again, without noticing the other Priestess dressed in black who continued to convulse violently in the mud…until she stopped, and like an articulated doll possessed by a dark spirit, began to rise from the ground.

  Bending her legs and arms in an abnormal way. The hood she wore slipped down, revealing her mutilated, blond head. No nose; eyelids, and mouth sealed shut with metal wires. She shuffled, bending backwards and to the sides, contorting her limbs mechanically as if there were an external and hidden influence controlling her.

  Meanwhile, Daiana had finished skinning Cold’s head. Using the art of [Essential Dilution], the witch's fingers tore the skullcap open with little effort, exposing the layers of membranes covering the brain.

  “OH, COLD! MY COLD! HOW I ENVY YOU, HAHAHAHA!” shrieked the nameless witch, kneeling, as Daiana sank her teeth into her partner's exposed brain and began to eat.

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  Tearing through the tissues, the semi-solid white mass, and squeezing out clear liquid that soon merged with fresh blood trickling from the sides of the witch's mouth. Devouring as if there were no tomorrow, as if her life depended on ingesting the brain of the subject she had just murdered in cold blood and without a shred of remorse.

  “Ah, Cold… How must you feel, now that you are part of the blessed and glorious Mistress Daiana? How does it feel to become one with her?” asked the beast-woman, letting her hands fall into her lap, her fingers encasing tangled strands of black hair. She hadn't noticed the other mutilated Priestess shuffling straight toward her when her shadow loomed over her. She saw the torn fabric of her skirt before her, and above it, her divine and destroyed face. “Will you take me, Mistress Tatyana?”

  “…”

  In an instant, the nameless witch's head was crushed by gravitational force. Without giving her time to react or even think amidst the chaos of madness that dominated her broken mind; the elemental thaumaturgy was so powerful that before her body felt the effect, the top of her skull sank down onto the bottom part, compressing bone with brain, brain with more bone and muscle, turning everything into a single bloody concoction that continued to descend to the ground.

  The rest of her body sank into the earth, both her arms and legs compressed by the violent gravitational field. Only the length of the witch's back remained intact once the magic wore off, surrounded by all the gore that now splattered freely in every direction.

  “…”

  The Priestess, Tatyana, crouched awkwardly at an unnatural and painful angle. Her right arm and wrist bent, she gestured with the wand made of bones that held her deformed fingers. This time, the gravity glyph she conjured was with remarkable precision, causing the lower part of the witch's spine to sever with several loud cracks and spurts of blood.

  The fabric of the bloodstained dress slid to the floor, exposing and dangling a cluster of vertebrae, arteries, and soft tissue from her spinal cord. Tatyana conjured a series of gravity glyphs as precise as the first, which brought that integral part of the nervous system to her own back.

  Specifically, the lower part, where part of her dress was soaked with blood and gravity magic had moved it out of the way: where there should have been skin and the outline of vertebrae, there was a hole exposing flesh and muscle tissue that throbbed with the movement of organs. Severed veins, spinal fluid, and diluted blood flowed without end, tracing paths to the witch's waist.

  “…!” The Priestess made another movement with her wand, and a halo of non-elemental red and black glyphs surrounded the incision that was meant to be fatal. Dark thaumaturgy, in tune with the monstrous procedure that had just begun: the vertebrae and spinal cord of the dead witch filled the missing space in her back, and the malevolent magic activated a regenerative process that was not without agonizing pain. “Mmm…!”

  Tatyana's mouth strained to open. Her lips were torn apart by the resistance of the metal wires, but nothing would stop the witch from unleashing the screams that refused to remain trapped inside.

  “AAAAAAGHHHHH!”

  A shriek that could have rivaled Daiana's vengeful outburst, who was still in her own world; in a cannibalistic trance, continuing to devour Cold’s brains from her very own flayed skull, which dripped fresh blood like an autumn rain.

  Kneeling in the mud and hugging herself, Tatyana couldn't stop trembling and screaming, spitting blood and saliva from her torn lips. She had no tongue, and her gums were black, rotten, and toothless, oozing pus that mingled with the trickles of fluid that ran down to her chin and from there to the ground.

  The glyphs on her exposed back burned like the flames of hell. Realigning her vertebrae, metabolizing muscle tissue, and repairing nerve connections so that Tatyana could regain full and normal mobility. When they finished their regenerative work, they emitted a powerful glow and left burn-like marks on the witch's skin. This allowed Tatyana to release a prolonged sigh of relief amidst the constant barrage of pain she had to endure.

  “…”

  Without saying a word and still drooling, the Priestess tested the stability of her legs and walked on her own. She was no longer dependent on the strange influence that had taken hold of her body when she was on the brink of death.

  She stepped over the crushed corpse of the nameless witch, without a care in the world. Leaving Daiana behind, who was still preoccupied with her need to satiate a dark and unending hunger.

  Inside the decaying house, Tatyana made her way through countless bones and rotting human remains to reach the obscure shaft beneath the stairs leading to the second floor.

  The darkness opened onto several stone steps, culminating in a rusty metal door, a stark contrast to the house's original architecture. With a mere touch of its cold, rough surface, the Priestess deactivated a near-invisible veil between herself and the door, allowing her to push it open and enter the basement.

  Descending two steps, Tatyana's feet sank ankle-deep into murky water. An almost static surface, so dark that the faint blue light from a series of power crystals embedded in the ceiling couldn't even penetrate it. Along the stone walls were shelves of old wood, gnawed by vermin and filled with jars. Hundreds of these, almost all filled with the full range of parts that comprised the human anatomy, from bones to organs, submerged in a solution that evidently preserved them.

  And at the back of that basement was Tatyana's workbench: an ancient altar with symbols dedicated to a deity whose worship today was considered blasphemous, adapted for alchemical experiments of dubious nature and profane arcane practices. Over were glass instruments for precise measurements, stacks of occult books, coils of copper and iron wire, and tools such as saws, pliers, hammers, knives, and scalpels.

  Of course, the amount of blood that had been spilled over the years on that altar was absurd, to the point that it was impossible to remove all that had been absorbed by the stone surface. All thanks to the experiments carried out by that same witch who approached, walking weakly.

  “Ah…ah…,” the witch groaned, until she reached the altar and braced herself with both hands on the edge. She gasped for air, her mouth mangled and free of the wires that had fallen away along with bloody bits of her lips. “…”

  For now, that did not matter. There was something more important to her, and it was inside the right pocket of her dress.

  The first thing Tatyana did was conjure two jars from the shelves with gravity thaumaturgy: one with a tongue severed in half and the other with a pair of eyes floating inside. She shattered them as soon as she held them in her hands and left the fresh organs to one side of the altar.

  Then she took one of the tweezers and didn’t hesitate for a second before bringing it to her sealed eye sockets: she yanked at the wires with such force that she ripped them out along with her eyelids.

  “AAARGH, HNNNGH…!”

  Tatyana punched the altar several times to lessen the astronomical amount of pain that was threatening to make her consciousness fade away. Knowing she didn't have much more time to accomplish her goal, not even to use any healing magic to alleviate the self-inflicted torture.

  She replaced the bloodied tweezers with a scalpel. Then she cut off the rest of her eyelids, causing more blood to flow and more screams that echoed throughout the house.

  “Ah, ah, ah, ah!” moans escaped from the back of the witch's throat as she groped for the humid and new tongue. Shoving it into her mouth without hesitation, along with several inches of copper wire with which she tried to attach the foreign organ to the muscle behind her jaw. “Glsh, grlk...”

  Gargles and blood bubbled from the sides of her mouth and trickled down the fingers as she worked, piercing muscle and tongue with the metal. With expert precision, despite the indescribable agony and the spasms that accompanied it.

  Putting the eyes in place was no more complicated than inserting them into the empty sockets. The difficult part was casting the same dark thaumaturgy spell that had healed her back, but now inside her head. To bridge the connections between her brain and those replacement eyes.

  “Mmm…!” Pressing her bloodied lips together, exposed as raw and red-hot flesh, Tatyana felt a river of fire flow inside her head, followed by the washing away of the darkness she was used to dealing with from the material world. Stains of light appeared in her central and peripheral vision, until soon she had before her the clear image of her hands resting on the altar, soaked with her own blood. “Y-yesh…”

  A hoarse sigh of victory, of solace, amidst the torture that was her very existence. Tatyana rummaged in her pockets and felt the touch of her fingertips on that precious and incomparable object.

  “Ah, y-yesh…!”

  Slowly, she raised it until it was at the same height as her restored gaze: it was the [photograph] Daiana had found on the northern central side of the Sea of Trees, belonging to that interesting girl named Tristessa Irandell.

  “Yesh, yesh…!”

  Yes, indeed. Now there were no longer any barriers preventing Tatyana Salomé from appreciating in exquisite detail that photograph from another world, surrounded by the densest Discord she had ever felt. So dense was that supernatural darkness, that it acted as the perfect insulator for her sense of eyeless sight, adapted to the spiritual world.

  With new eyes, Tatyana could easily see the extraterrestrial, colorful landscape depicted in the photograph, along with the five people whose faces were forcibly erased by scratches, like the scrape of a dagger's tip against glass. Except for Tristessa Irandell herself, dressed in strange clothes and smiling in such a way that Tatyana couldn't resist bringing the photograph close to her face and running her new tongue over its surface.

  Over that girl’s image.

  “Mmm…I-I feel the Dark…,” the woman whispered, licking her destroyed and bloody lips with lustful pleasure. Her eyes became incapable of adapting to their new body and the starting rejection caused them to flood with blood. “She…f-feels…It is like…”

  Nostalgia settled in her rotten heart, like an original sin. An emotion she hadn't felt in years, one that brought back memories she thought were no longer worth holding onto in her ever-deteriorating mind. The scent lurking beyond the vile Discord that surrounded her was enough to stir up those memories of a very, very distant past.

  Memories she was sometimes grateful to have left behind. And other times, she was not.

  “It feels like home…”

  “Home, you say? Yes, you clearly have a disturbing connection with this shit-smelling hovel.”

  “…!”

  Tatyana rarely felt her heart race like this. Besides that sweet, parasitic voice, she heard the sloshing of water from someone else's footsteps in the basement. Soon, she saw the hands of that unwanted guest appearing at the edge of her darkened vision. Fingers with skin and flesh tucked beneath the nails caressed her arms, reaching for the photograph.

  “Thank you for taking care of my newest treasure, doll…” Daiana snatched the photograph from her hands. Tatyana twisted her neck by following it, until she encountered the deceitful face of her companion. That witch with whom, along with two others, she shared the title of Priestess of the Black Eye.

  She watched Daiana fold the photograph and tuck it into the bandages covering her breasts, returning it to its place of origin.

  “I was blessed to find such a promising source of potential knowledge, and I couldn’t let a naughty doll like you keep my treasure… Oh, I almost forgot!”

  Grabbing her shoulders tightly, Daiana forced Tatyana to turn around and gouged her eyes with her thumbs.

  “WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU YOU COULD USE THAT FILTHY TONGUE TO DESECRATE SUCH A VALUABLE RELIC?!”

  Rivulets of blood erupted from the pressure at the sides of Daiana’s fingers. Tatyana gasped as pain exploded in her brain like an electric shock, frying everything in its path.

  But destroying Tatyana’s sight wasn’t enough for the eldest daughter of the Mercer-Archeos family, and she preyed on the open mouth to kiss her. Violent, bloodthirsty, pushing her tongue against hers, then using her teeth to catch it, tearing it out with a single bite and spitting it into the stagnant waters.

  “Gaaaaaaah!”

  Daiana had made sure to steal the other witch’s two recently transplanted organs as punishment for her offense. Her thumbs continued to rummage through the inside of Tatyana’s eye sockets, squashing the remaining wet, gelatinous mass of her eyes against the fleshy walls, shattering optic nerves and blood vessels in their wake.

  “What’s wrong, doll? Does it hurt?” Daiana asked, chuckling uncontrollably and with morbid enjoyment upon Tatyana’s pained howls. “Listen to me: that relic isn’t for you; it’s the perfect bait to lure that bitch Irandell! Do you believe me when I say I’ll make her wish she’d never been born?! I’ll make her regret ever disrespecting Lord Moebius and making me look worthless in his ever-present gaze! Do you understand, doll?! Or isn’t that enough?! Isn’t it?! Is there any part of your body I can tear off that will make you feel more than just pain, so you understand my wrath…?!”

  Throughout her screaming, Daiana didn’t notice that Tatyana had raised her arms and placed her hands near the sides of her head, at her temples.

  “Katulean Volantis.” A dark thaumaturgy spell erupted from the depths of the mouth of the blinded witch, spoken with the utmost clarity in her frail voice, worthy of a skilled ventriloquist. Without making contact, yet enough to spread the influence of a series of black glyphs that had appeared in the palms of her hands.

  “…!”

  Riddled with insanity, Diana’s mind was flayed. A psychic attack that spread pure agony through dozens of billion neurons in its path; torture that sought to destroy consciousness and capacity for reasoning, manifested in heart-wrenching shrieks.

  “F-Fucking doll…!”

  Both witches struggled to subdue the other. Mutilation versus mind-flaying. Physical versus mental violence, taken to the extreme…

  Until they both surrendered, as if they had already known beforehand how far to go in that twisted game in that house of screams.

  Tatyana lowered her arms, and Daiana removed her thumbs from inside her head. Then they leaned back against the altar and slid down, until most of their legs got submerged in the dark water. Gasping for air, they were a complete wreck of a duo. Defeated long before that brief but brutal encounter.

  Having already tasted defeat at the hands of Tristessa Irandell and the two men who had accompanied her on a warpath to ruin the Coven’s plans, and thus, Moebius’.

  “Ha…ha… I can’t be mad at you, doll. I never could… Not even if you turn my brain into mush. It would never be enough. No…never,” Daiana whispered, groping blindly for Tatyana’s hand and intertwining their fingers once she found it.

  “…”

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” She asked, glancing at her wearily as Tatyana lifted her clasped hands from the murky water. To show her forearm, and a message that appeared on the dirty skin, written like self-inflicted knife cuts:

  “Help me fix my face.”

  The silver-eyed witch watched a jar containing a female face float from one of the shelves; it’s mouth and eyelids already sealed with metal wires. It rested gently on Tatyana's lap, ready to be used.

  “Very well, but on one condition.” Daiana wrenched her hand free and reached across the altar to pick up a scalpel. Kneeling before her, she showed the sharp instrument to Tatyana. Smiling like the sinister madwoman she was, though it was a pointless threat for a blind witch like herself. “Forget about the Stranger's photograph.”

  “…”

  Daiana took that silence as confirmation and began to work, plunging the tip of the scalpel into the almost invisible mark Tatyana had between her right ear and cheekbone. More fresh blood began to flow, more pain erupted within the witch, but she didn't flinch.

  Not even when Daiana excised her false face after cutting and pulling, tearing flesh and nerves without caring at all about her ally’s suffering.

  Tatyana clutched the jar with her soon-to-be-new, mutilated face inside tightly. Her eye sockets were filled with the remains of eyes she had stolen from one of her countless victims. Unusable, serving only as a source of suffering that never ceased and would not cease even after their removal.

  It didn't matter. The chronic pain didn't matter. Nothing mattered… Only that source of Discord, which could perfectly be seen in the dark; emitting powerful, ethereal pulses like a dead star at the center of a lifeless galaxy.

  “…hehe.” Tatyana chuckled, distracting Daiana for a moment.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Tatyana didn’t answer but stared with a skinless and eyeless grin at the boogeywoman of End-World herself. More specifically, staring at her chest, right above her breasts.

  At the overflowing Discord surrounding the hidden photograph. It made her remember its scared original owner, Tristessa Irandell.

  Convincing her that both had to be hers, whatever the cost.

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  HARDLIGHT