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A time unknown, but one of suffering

Along the edges of a magically made canyon clung a black mist that was so thin and stretched out it was inconceivable to the human eye. It shimmered, as if black glittering dust had been thrown into the air and had frozen in time as it fell.

It had no smell, no taste, and it didn’t even cause one’s skin to ripple with goosebumps. To most, perhaps all, it was nothing.

Yet deep within it, an inconceivable being lingered throughout all the mist that spanned thousands of kilometres. Limitedly powerful, and so utterly powerless all the same. A watchful demi-god who prowled constantly like a mindless beast at the end of a rigid tether.

A tether he constantly pulled at, to then not only be yanked back into that mist, but through it and back to his own realm. Like an unintelligent creature, he tried and tried again, seeking a different result that would never come to fruition.

A truly pointless endeavour. One which he’d long given up on and willingly receded to the shadows where he belonged.

With that hope gone, the fingers of his tattered and tethered soul clawed at itself.

Make it stop, his expansive mind screamed into his metaphysical self.

It came out as nothing but a whimpering echo which reverberated all throughout his large and complicatedly vast being. A sound of his mental anguish, which called back to him cruelly. He was alone, and it was so quiet that only he should have been able to hear it.

A tidal wave of wailing cries warbled louder back through the endless, sightless darkness in response. Hundreds of beings listening, and they were never ceasing. They screamed, clawing at him to the point of insanity.

His consciousness, his phantom nothingness.

.. his impalpable, incomprehensible, discarnate essence coalesced tighter to its centre – like one might when they lay on their side in the foetal position.

It drew in so tight there was the impression of tension, of pressure, of the sinew of his soul balling up, but nothing more.

No pain. No pleasure. Absolutely no relief.

As he floated in complete and utter darkness, which was made up entirely of himself, his realm shuddered along with him.

The rumble of it shook his empty home, as if there were foundations he’d never been able to touch – to reach.

More wailing cries reached the lonely place he tried to hide, this time higher pitched due to surprise or fear from his metaphysical self shifting.

Those fingers clawed deeper while he stared into himself, and yet into nothing at all. There was nothing there, as there never had been. Just shadows and darkness that went on seemingly forever. Like a horizon that never stopped moving further out of reach.

He released a false breath, and it gave him nothing, not even mental relief. Please... make it stop.

He’d been pleading for this for however long, despite knowing there was no one to hear him. There was no one listening to him. No one to save him. He’d been abandoned in this place.

Cast out, alone.

Well, not entirely alone, not anymore.

He missed the long stretch of the foreverness where he’d been in his solitude. Odd, considering the yawning loneliness that had been slowly eating at him throughout all of it.

Now those that were with him tortured him until he knew his mind was twisting into a pitiful, wounded creature. If he could lick at the back of his wrist like it was an injured paw, he may have started doing that long ago to pacify himself.

He tried to push them back – those mind-bending cruel twists. Tried to shelter himself, with no materials to safeguard him from screams like the wind slicing through trees. With all his might, he used every bit of willpower to keep himself sane.

A sharp cry pierced his thoughts. Somehow, in the endless choir, it was louder than the rest.

More heartbreaking. More distressing.

More panic inducing.

I can’t take it...

Parts of his essence and self were left behind as he materialised from the layer of his mind he’d been hiding in and teleported to the area of his stomach.

He wished he could do this on Earth – transport himself where the whim to explore took him.

But going there was pointless, and the fact that the world was out of reach was more depressing than he could take. He’d rather not dangle it in front of his eyes, especially as his intangible hands couldn’t touch it.

So, he remained there. Especially as the noises of horror and terror would pervade his mind and ears no matter how far he tried to run from himself, from his own realm.

His consciousness and soul could only freely move within himself, stretching back and forth within his realm and the pockets that connected to it, like his mind chamber he’d been hiding in futilely.

In his gut, his main realm, he found the loudest voice, that of a confused woman, and slammed a tendril of essence across her lips.

She felt it, but he perceived nothing, and her eyes widened in awareness and fright as tears welled in them.

She couldn’t see him; his mana was so weak and depleted that he had no visible body to offer.

She fought him, reaching out to the nothingness and through his very body, only for her eyes to roll back and her head to fall to the side.

Once asleep, the physical reflection of her, which was nothing more than a spectral body, dimmed until it was almost as white as the flaming soul floating within her chest.

His bodiless ethereal form drifted backwards from her, but in her silence, there was no relief. The agony of his thoughts continued. There were so many voices, so many screams, so many who were afraid.

All of them created a sea of warbling groans and wails.

Too many to quieten. As a horde, they were too much for him.

Weldir wished he could make them all stop without withering away what little power he had obtained by consuming them.

He wished he could help them feel at ease within his lonely, dark realm, but he could offer them nothing more than shadows.

Shadows he sometimes didn’t have the strength to see through either.

They didn’t feel foreboding to him. To Weldir, they were comforting, but to a human...

Darkness only incited confused fear as they sightlessly fumbled through it, bumping into each other, only to weep in each other’s arms.

Tenebris, the realm that lay within his stomach, which he’d had since the moment he was born, was darkness.

It was nothingness, just like him. There was no joy here, no beauty, and not a speck of light unless he provided it.

He had no spark to give. He was the Warden of Darkness through and through, and what would it be used for anyway? To see further into the shroud?

Any light he made was solely for himself, for wanting to see something other than... this.

But there was nothing to see.

Even his own body had a spectral shroud to it, black as the very night sky; glossy and almost reflective. He knew he could have a physical form that looked solid, but there was just not enough of him.

Not with the mist he laid on Earth, consuming all of him to the brink of near death.

He placed his hands over his face, feeling for resistance where his horns may be, and gripped them with mental anguish.

Behind him, a man yelled out. Weldir silently roared in answer as he slapped a black sandy tendril of magic across the deceased spirit’s mouth. All the colour from his body, from his light skin to his blue shirt, faded.

Like the woman from before, he, too, turned into a white essence as he fell asleep. The flaming soul inside his spectral chest glowed brightly.

Make it stop... please. His bodiless form drew tighter once more, like a ball, as his tired mind and exhausting power weighed heavier on him. Why, Mother? Why give me this task?

How could she forsake him for so many years, locked away inside a box, only to give him freedom with a task that tormented him? He missed his box. His prism.

His fucking prison!

He longed to have the only sounds be her shallow, weak breaths and slow heartbeat lulling him.

He no longer wanted to witness the fear and sorrow from those he consumed as they realised over and over again that they were dead.

Nor did he want to understand and relive their final moments and their lasting regrets alongside them.

And he had no need to be privy to their confusion as to why their gods had forsaken them, or their discovery that their assumptions about there being no afterlife were wrong.

He was a terrible being of death. He was incapable of providing them guidance or comfort or a second life. Just limbo.

There were too many souls here now for him to silence without it enervating him beyond his capabilities, not unless he wanted his limited mist to fade on Earth.

I should let it fade... What use was it for him to collect souls when he’d stopped.

.. consuming them? He brought them here, but he was too afraid to add their echoing wails to the others already here.

Just beyond his stomach, in another chamber of his consciousness, hundreds of souls remained collected but uneaten, waiting for him.

For Weldir.

For him to cleanse them, fix them, and add them to his slow-growing collection of human souls.

Once more, he shuddered, and the world around them all rippled in response, like a minor earthquake. Patient violence once more restrained, Weldir held back the desire to destroy each soul with sharp teeth and claws.

Just as he considered it, his bodiless spirit felt a tingle.

Weldir drew back and let himself fall through the crystal waters of his layered self to go back to the chamber of his mind. Although he was further from his stomach, the wails of scared souls could still be heard as if they did so right in his non-existent ear.

He ignored them as best as he could as he opened up his viewing eye – a disc that let him see onto Earth.

The magic was murky, proving just how little power he currently had.

It was enough for him to see along the border of his mist – a black cloud that floated on the edge of a narrow Demon-made crevasse.

His mana was too overtaxed to shroud the land below, so the most he could do was circle the cliff edge of the gap in the earth that would continue to grow wider little by little each day, forcing his reach wide as well.

So far, the lengthy canyon only struck through the middle of this large land mass – the name of it he didn’t know. Soon enough, it would grow to be a formidable size. He worried it would consume all the world if it wasn’t stopped.

But that wasn’t why he was here. The disturbance he felt wasn’t due to the rare Demons that continued to come through a portal situated in the middle of the canyon’s base. His interest was on... humans. And he knew only two types of humans came to the edge of the Veil.

Those dumb enough to stare into the abyss in curiosity, and those cruel enough to think of other stupider means.

It’s another sacrifice, Weldir thought, as he watched five men drag a woman to the edge of a deathly cliff-fall.

The men wore leather armour, and Weldir didn’t understand enough about humans to know if they were truly soldiers of some great land, or just people who had bought their garments for self-protection.

They appeared dirty, each in different stages of beard growth, and the quality of their clothing differed.

The woman they dragged through his mist was tall, and her lithe legs stumbled over themselves in tiredness.

The skirts of her pale-yellow dress were caked in dirt, while leaves and twigs were tangled in her long locks of wavy blonde hair framing bright-blue eyes.

The bruises, scrapes, and gauntness of dehydration were noticeable on her fair skin and cracked lips.

She looked so worn from her adventure that she didn’t even put up a fight. Bleak, tired eyes suggested perhaps she’d already accepted her fate.

I could save her.

Unfortunately, the men appeared spooked from a twig snapping nearby and shuffled towards the edge of the cliff.

Then they carelessly tossed her poor body forward.

Her skirts caught and flapped in the wind as she fell a kilometre to her death.

She was too winded and afraid to scream, and the sounds of the men’s frantic chanting overshadowed any other noise from her.

They usually prayed to whatever cruel deity would even ask of this before they launched their offering off the edge. But they were quick to run, as if they knew lingering meant certain death.

Weldir tsked. Not enough time.

But the impact did mean her soul was untainted by the decay of Demons who would come to eventually eat her corpse.

When he moved his mist to collect it, he brought it straight to his side, and it gave him a little more strength than usual when he opened his mouth and chose to consume it. All the others waiting for him... they were too rotten for him to want to try.

What a waste of cherished life.

He found this behaviour, this insanity of sacrificing innocent women to the canyon, vulgar and brutish. It also only strengthened the very monsters they were trying to rid themselves of, making their situation worse.

Perhaps next time, then.

Maybe the conversation would also go better than the last time he tried to speak to a sacrifice. One who had been stabbed and left at the edge to die of her wound.

Before long, he groaned when a new scream was added to the crescendo already singing for him. Her voice was even more ear-piercing than the others.

Fresher. More pained.

More startled.

Once more, the claws of his essence ripped into himself...