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“I’m sorry!” she yelled, backing away from him once more. He slipped beneath the water until his gills were covered to escape the dizzying scent of her fear. “I didn’t mean to cry. I didn’t mean to get scared.”

With a groan, he darted his fuzzy sight to her.

Fuck, she looked horrible. Her face was so pink and swollen from tears, and the rest of her filled with fright.

“I promise I won’t cry anymore,” she stated, while crying.

Her heart was beating so fast it throbbed in the back of his throat and assaulted his ear holes.

Dozens of faces flittered into his mind, all of them tear-filled and crying. Strangers, friends, and even family members of thefragments. He choked on each one, and yet the silhouette of her face played behind them. Their sobs mixed in with hers.

Strangled by the onslaught, bubbles pushed out of his gills and he clutched at his throat. The urge to bash his head against something in a pointless attempt to stop them nagged at him. Fragments clutched at him, moments from disorientating him and stealing his lucidity.

“It wasn’t your fault. I wasn’t scared ofyou.”

That had to be a lie. He’d scented her fear. She’d recoiled from his apologetic touch. She’d curled up into a fucking ball like he was a villain, and he hadn’t liked the wayguiltweighed in his gut.

The first instance of him letting the human side of him slip, his Mavka instincts taking hold, and this female had turned from him.

He wanted to believe her.

He didn’t, so he clawed back onto the land when the worst of the fragments stopped hounding him. She scuttled back, and only just missed the fire.

“Someone hurt me,” she tried to explain, her entire body shaking. Droplets of water splattered against the ground, and he trailed a path of them to her. She cowered, shrinking against the ground and rocky wall. “I w-want to stay here with you!”

I don’t understand.She was confusing him.

Nathair paused and just let out a fucking whine.Why the fuck are you doing this to me?!

“I know what you are. I know you’re a Duskwalker. I know that every moment I’m here, you may eat me, and I don’t care. I don’t care if you hurt me accidentally. I know I’m intruding on your home, but I just feel so safe with you. I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

When he didn’t do anything but tower over her, his hands opening and closing with mixed emotions, she braved peeking up over her forearms.

“At first I wanted to stay here in hopes you would help my people, b-but it’s okay if you don’t. Just... please don’t make me face the Demons by myself, d-don’t let me be taken by the bandits again. P-please don’t hurt me in the way they did.”

His head reared back.The way... they did?Realisation began to trickle into his mind, and he turned his gaze towards his nest.She did not mind being held, or when I cupped her face, or even when I carried her.

There were two fragments that Nathair despised, and he tended to act rather violently when suffering through them. Two different memories, belonging to two different humans who had never met: one in which he was a victim... and one where he was the perpetrator. He hated the latter, hated he was forced to suffer through something he’d never done, would never do.

Neither were pleasant, and he often felt rather sickly afterwards. He’d long to shed his scales after both, and had even once done so on his left arm when desperate.

He brought his gaze back to her and tilted his head.It’s true she was never afraid of me until...

The bitter snarl that burst from him was dark. Nathair darted his hands forward. He pushed her arms to the side before he shoved into her chest.

The little female gasped, her back arching, while her body wavered around his embedded fist. Blistering heat surrounded his hand as he carefully grasped what felt like a flame.

Nathair pulled her soul from her.

The moment he opened his hand, her soul sprung to life. It retreated to his fingers, pressing against them like skittish, cornered prey against a wall. It looked up at him in utter terror.

Markings on a soul could vary, and he’d seen countless different kinds in Tenebris. The darkness of depression, the whiteness of physical scars, the cracks and craters of sickness.

But this? Tiny red handprints left their markings on her soul, and were the evidence that someone else fucked with it while its owner lived. Actions so utterly cruel and unforgivable to the point they left burns on their victim’s soul like a physical taint. There were only two kinds of violence that could cause them.

Weldir told him they could be healed, but while they lingered, they were like parasites. They messed with the human bearing them, making them act out of character – often with fear and sadness.

Without nurturing, the soul could be permanently marred.