Rivers of the Night

The pain felt like a flash of heat, one so acute and hot it reminded Theron of a solar flare. It was like the Devil himself was using the rays of the sun to lash against his body, hitting with such firm fury that the nerves beneath were eviscerated.

His mind went white and he collapsed. But if the ice hadn't frozen his face in place, he would have worn a ferocious expression to the very end.

There was probably not the smallest corner of Theron that thought this would lead to anything but his death. It didn't take a genius to understand what would happen if Heaven's fury descended on him now.

He was frozen in place, unable to move, lacking the slightest bit of soul stamina, unable to use his Mana, and what little bit of consciousness he had left was freezing to ice.

What could he do other than watch his body shatter to pieces?

But this moment was important to him—too important.

Even if he was going to die, he didn't want to do so in resignation; he didn't want to keel over and give up. He wanted to roar in Death's face so that it knew its schemes weren't what had taken him, but instead his own choices that caused it.

Even if he was pinned to the altar of death itself, he would rip himself free even at the cost of his limbs… even if it meant bleeding out while crawling away.

BOOM.

When the world turned to nothing but a sea of white to Theron, he thought it was over.

He felt nothing, saw nothing, experienced nothing…

At least that was what he thought until he realized whiteness couldn't be nothing. It wasn't the absence of something—it was something. In fact, the fact he was perceiving whiteness at all was an oddity that couldn't be explained.

Then the whiteness began to recede, zooming from the edges toward itself in a tide and then snapping together with Theron as its center.

When his eyes could finally see again, it was ironically his ears that heard something that froze him first.

"THAWEN! THAWEN!"

A bubbly little girl with twin pigtails sticking out of the sides of her head pulled on his fingers hard. She put all the strength her little body could muster into her lean.

Theron's heart skipped a beat, and he suddenly moved, finding himself far too slow. But because of his reaction time, he managed to make it just in time.

Bobo's fingers slipped, her body falling back and her head rapidly aiming toward the edge of a table.

Just in time, Theron slipped his palm to the back of her head, blocking the potential oncoming impact.

"Bobo, you have to be more careful." Theron's eyes brimmed with tears as he picked his little sister up, cradling her in his arms as hard as he dared to, and yet so gently maybe to her it felt like she had been wrapped in falling leaves and wisps of wind.

Small children received cues from those around them. More often than not, they cried after incidents not because they thought it was right, but because the panic of the adults around them made them feel like it was the only right action to take.

Theron knew this. He had read it in a psychology book he had perused in his personal library. But he couldn't help it; he didn't want this feeling to go away.

Being held like this, it wasn't long before Bobo started bawling despite the fact she hadn't been hurt in the slightest.

The sounds of his little sister's sobbing only made Theron break down. He kneeled on the floor, cradling the back of her head with a palm and burying her small frame into his chest.

He could hardly control his breathing, crying so uncontrollably he couldn't even form a coherent thought.

"Bobo?! Theron?! What happened?!"

Theron barely saw his parents rush into the room through blurred eyes.

Before he could register that he was seeing three blurry silhouettes instead of just two, Theron screamed.

"WATCH OUT!"

His parents were slow to react, and his body felt even slower. All the power he had had at his fingertips just moments before seemed all gone. He could only sit there and watch as a pair of bloody hands ran through his parents' backs.

They froze in pain, the figure behind them slowly becoming clear.

Garethon.

The sound of his parents' bodies hitting the ground echoed in Theron's ears. It was a thump that came with a finality—a squelch that sickened the soul.

Theron's mouth hung open in a half breath, partially closed and partially open. His bottom lip trembled as he tried to snap himself out of it, but he felt almost locked in place.

Those bloody hands reached for one of his sister's pigtails, pulling up on it and nearly ripping her out of his arms in a single go. He was just so weak, so very weak.

"NO!"

Theron burst to his feet to save his sister's neck from being snapped by the pressure, grabbing at a pair of scissors by his reading table. He wanted to hurriedly cut the pigtail and find a way to run. Maybe he could even use it as a weapon if he was lucky.

He had lost too much; he couldn't lose more.

He was far too slow.

The sickening crunch of his little sister's neck rang like a death knell in his ears. As though the sound were millions of spiders crawling beneath his skin, it sunk in deep, scratching and clawing, gnawing at his very nerves themselves.

A boot hit his stomach, and he was sent flying, crashing into the bookcase by the side.

He looked up, seeing Little Bobo's head angled awkwardly to one side as she was held up by the bloodied hand by a single pigtail.

Something inside Theron broke.

He didn't know when he started screaming, but he did know exactly what it meant.

He wanted all this pain, all this horror, to be suffered by someone else—anyone else.