"Let me show you how to make an immortal wish for death."
Step.
Seven walked forward and stopped just before the prisoner locked in a chair.
"I… should stop the Young Lord…'
The knight thought.
Yet, despite having countless thoughts of wanting to stop the situation, he could not move as he was mesmerized by a pair of grayish-blue eyes that bore down before the prisoner.
And his main duty was clear: guard Seven Hart.
He was just tasked by Eden Hart to take care of the assassin and make him suffer for touching her dearest youngest sibling.
But with the prisoner restrained and gagged, there was no direct danger.
The cuffs were enchanted to seal the Zaen.
The chair was reinforced.
Thus the knight held his breath and decided to watch.
Grip.
Seven adjusted his grip on the dagger one more time.
'It's heavy…'
He thought.
The current dagger was a lot heavier compared to the one in which the assassin used back in the forest; that means this dagger is not owned by the assassin nor the knight, but the basement prison itself.
Step.
He crouched down until he was at eye level with Lythian.
Lythian had a pale complexion with his face drenched in both blood and sweat. Yet his eyes were still wide open.
They twitched toward the dagger.
Then to Seven.
Then back to the dagger.
It was a gaze that contained words of 'no, don't do that. don't!' if those eyes were able to speak.
Clink.
Seven tilted the dagger slightly and placed the flat side against an old wound already carved on Lythian's left side of chest.
Lythian immediately reacted.
"Grrmm!!"
He thrashed his torso forward and twisted his wrists and legs and pulled them against the restraints with full force. The cuffs clanked, the chair creaked…
…But Seven did not panic.
He calmly dragged the edge of the dagger along the scar of the old wound slow and firm.
Lythian thrashed harder.
His body convulsed violently as his breathing turned erratic, but that was all as the cuffs held him in place.
Drag.
Seven traced the scar toward the center of Lythian's chest as his skin twitched under the blade. Though there was no blood, Lythian reacted like he was being carved open.
"...!"
Seven just smiled.
After all, the best way to torture someone is to make them reminisce their old wounds.
And Lythian had that biggest flaw: though his recent wounds, bruises, cuts were healed, a single scar did not but it remained stubbornly in place.
Though Seven had no idea at first about what the context or the story behind the wound was, what he did (unknowingly) triggered a dissociative flashback via sensory-based trauma reactivation.
It was a psychological mechanism seen in trauma victims.
Suddenly, Seven stopped.
Or more like, he was unable to continue any further as he reached the end of the old wound and Lythian was now unconscious with his body slumped forward.
He ran a hand through his hair.
"...Fudge. Was it too much?"
He mumbled.
The response he received was the sound of Lythian's heartbeat. It was slow. The beat did not make any pattern or rhythm, as if even his heart hesitated to do its work.
T-Thump!
Tilting his head, he watched Lythian's chest rise and fall with ragged breath.
He lowered the dagger and stood up.
"Guess I got carried—"
ThuUmpPPp!!
Lythian's one last heartbeat exploded in his ears louder and deeper than before. In all honesty, it sounded more like of a war drum.
Seven blinked.
And when his eyes opened again, he was no longer in the basement prison.
Instead, he stood in the middle of a dense, colorless forest under a washed-out sky and a woman tied on a post with ropes made from banana fibers.
She was fairly skinned with both jet-black black hair which mirrored her eyes, along with a cloth wrapped around her mouth.
Surrounding her were almost twenty elderly villagers and two children watching with hollow stares.
"Mom? Aunt Dehya looks sad."
"It's okay, honey. Your Aunt will soon have eternal peace."
"Really?"
"Of course, honey."
Across them, strapped upright to a crude wooden cross was a younger Lythian.
A man stood behind him with one eye covered by a blood-stained bandage. Using both hands, he pried Lythian's eyes wide open and forced him to watch.
The village chief.
Lythian was being made to witness his mother's execution.
"Mom!"
He screamed as he struggled against the ropes.
It continued, but given that there was a very low chance of him breaking free, he looked at the man before him: the village chief.
"You fucker! Let my Mom go!"
But what came in return was a brutal uppercut straight to his gut.
"Stay quiet, you fiend!"
"You—!"
"I said stay quiet!"
The man sent another uppercut that landed right above his abdomen again and again until blood began to leak from his mouth.
The man, well into his fifties possibly, turned away from Lythian and looked at the woman on the post.
"Dehya… why did you give birth to a fiend?"
The man shook his head.
"What a pitiful end."
"Lythian big brother isn't a fiend!"
Another child near them replied confidently.
"He's a kind boy. He has always helped the—"
"Exactly! He earned your trust just to make victims of us all! That's what fiends do!"
The cloth preventing Dehya from speaking fell off from her mouth.
"No! My son—he's not—"
"Enough, Dehya! I beg you… stay quiet!"
The man cut her off with a wave, then turned to glare at Lythian.
"To think you even tried to brainwash and kill your own mother."
Cough. Cough.
But Lythian could not speak. He was too busy choking on his own blood.
So instead, he just glared back, not just at the chief but to each and every one of them.
Fiend.
It was a stigma placed upon him by the villagers overnight.
Ironic.
He, who was known as the most liveliest, intelligent, and joyful kid in their village, was instantly hated after seeing him cheat death.
It was what happened the day before when he came back home after playing with other children outside to see his mother struggling to break away as she was being locked in place by four men wearing masks and trying to silence him.
And so, given that the houses were so close to each other, he screamed for help.
But just as he screamed, a knife flew and pierced his chest and he fell down on the floor while panting and with blood on his chest.
His mother, seeing his dying child, was able to break away due to the sheer adrenaline rush.
But she was stabbed from the back, and thus blood spilled from her lips and she fell down, panting for breath.
Lythian, slowly, rose from the floor half-dead and looked at the scene of her mother.
Slowly, he dragged the knife out from his chest.
Step. Step.
With slow steps that echoed across the floor, he walked towards his mother and the four persons just watched with a knife clenched.
It was their first time seeing someone alive despite a stabbed heart.
Thud. Thud.
"You— Impossible— a fiend! It's a fiend!"
One of the figures exclaimed.
"Kill him!"
And so, the other three rushed forward. All of them stabbed Lythian, but he ignored all of them and just walked towards his mother.
Step. Step.
He ignored all the bleeding and pain, and the person stopped and stepped back out of fear of the kid before them.
Creak.
The other villagers arrived after hearing the scream earlier and the people quickly removed their masks.
One of them, the one who led them, was an old man with grayish hair— the village chief.
"Fiend!"
The man yelled.
"That fiend tried to kill his own mother!"
And so, that was the event the day before that led to the current situation.
Staring at Dehya who was tied into the rope, the man issued the command:
"Ignite the flames!
"Start the purification ritual!"
"We need to purify Dehya as she was tainted by her own son!"
One of the villagers stepped forwards and used a basic fire magic against the haystacks under the post.
Flames burned bright and the banana fibers that tied Dehya quickly caught the fire.
"M–Mommm!!"
Lythian forced himself to scream. Blood gushed out from his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears but he did not stop.
"MOMMM!!!!"
Thud!
The man sent another uppercut on Lythian's ribs, forcing him to stay silent.
"Stay silent, you fiend. Even in your mother's purification ceremony, you dare make a scene?"
Hff…
Seven, who was a spectator of this vision and was invisible to them, took a deep breath.
"Gift…"
He said.
"It's because of your gift."
He said again as he watched Lythian sob on the cross.
"Living forever.
"People say that immortals only talk about power, strength, and status. But no one ever talks about what that means in moments like this.
"About what it means to remember every single second."
Seven stood still.
The flames.
The screams.
All of it faded and he was back in the prison in front of an unconscious man whose nightmares were more alive than him.
Haaahh…
He exhaled.
'His body suffered a lot…'
He thought.
Clank.
Slowly, he threw the dagger into the corner of the prison cell and looked at the knight.
"Increase the intensity."
"...Pardon?"
"Break his will. Break his existence. Break every bone he has within his body."
Step.
He walked and dipped his fingers into the blood pooling on the floor, then raised his hand to the wall to draw a symbol.
Phoenix wearing a crown.
A symbol in which the old man in Lythian's trauma bore on his shirt.
"And let him see this every time he wakes up."
He smiled.
"...Only then he would be of some use to me."