"IT CAN'T BE!"

Tristessa's howl could be heard all the way to the Sea of ​​Trees. It had to be a bad dream. A nightmare. Yes, she had to keep sleeping on the stagecoach. What she was seeing wasn't possible.

"SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!"

Imitating Severus, she ran down the hill, her mind caught in a frenzy of confusion and endless questions that had no answers. She felt her toes curling and being hit by stones on the path, cuts and nails breaking, but she cared little about those small bits of pain in the face of all this insane mental chaos.

"WHY?! I ARRIVED BEFORE THE DATE!" she shrieked, her lungs screaming for oxygen. "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"

Amidst her frantic screams, she lost control of her legs and tumbled the last few meters onto the sloping ground. She crashed against everything in her path, swallowing dirt, until she felt the cold grass against her cheek once she lost momentum.

None of that mattered. Only the ruins of that house, so close yet so far, from which a giant column of smoke rose.

"T-this is a nightmare...and I can't wake up," the young woman sobbed, closing her eyes tightly and hoping that when she opened them, none of that was happening. It didn't happen. It was all real, and she had to face it. "I did... e-everything I did...everyone who died..."

Severus had gained a lot of distance from her, reducing himself to a dark silhouette in the middle of that plain of wet grass and mud-covered soil. Pushing herself off the ground and hugging herself to resist some of the bitter night cold, Tristessa began walking toward the house, limping from her twisted ankle and following the blood elf's trail.

"How could it happen? Wasn't the attack supposed to happen on the night of the Evil Dream? Jin…Lucahn…Tiara… They…" Her thoughts made her quicken her pace, clenching her lips and teeth to ignore the pain. "NO! I refuse to believe they're dead! Until I see it with my own eyes, I refuse to believe it!"

The smell of smoke, wood, and scorched earth was overwhelming. Ashes crept under her eyelids and into her nose. She felt them under her tongue, on the inside of her throat, scraping the sides and making swallowing nauseating.

"…Ah?!"

Soon, she smelled a combination of metallic, sweet, and acrid odors, all at once. Combined with the unmistakable scent of burnt hair, Tristessa's gag reflex was triggered almost instantly.

"W-what the fuck...?!" Tristessa brought her hands to her mouth. "Ugh...fuck...!"

Breathing filled the inside of her nose with that horrible smell, and it grew stronger with every step she took. She didn't realize the source of that noxious atmosphere until she noticed that all around her were small mounds of things that had burned, leaving only scorched remains.

Squinting through her tear-filled gaze, thanks to the light of the Moons, Tristessa saw that they were human remains. Dozens of them, all women, immobilized on their knees with their hands clutching the sides of their charred heads and in fixed positions of mortal yet ecstatic pain, from the wide grins immortalized on their unrecognizable faces

"Fucking witches…!" Tristessa looked around, panic having taken hold of both mind and soul, and saw a certain morbid configuration in the way those burnt bodies were positioned. As if there was logic in between, like some kind of ritual. A sacrifice in the name of Evil. "A mass suicide!?"

In her desperation and uncertainty, Tristessa reached the front of the house, which had become a living hell: not only did it look like it had just been bombed like a military target, blowing up half the structure and the entire second floor, but it was also where the corpses of the witches of the Coven were most abundant, reduced to the incinerated floor of the atrium and dining room.

Where the smell of Death was denser and made breathing difficult; the fires that were still burning sent columns of smoke up to the sky. The heat was suffocating, and the ashes burned as they touched every inch of skin.

"S-Severus..." she called, coughing and choking on the unpleasant smell, to the elf who had fallen to his knees amidst the burnt wood and layers of ash. "Severus!"

"You said... You said we still had time..." The elf turned his head slowly and looked at her with tear-filled eyes, searching for an explanation she didn't have. "You told me…"

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In front of him, among dozens of burnt corpses piled up like firewood for a massive bonfire, was the only corpse that was undoubtedly that of a child.

A child who had died the same way as the witches, incinerated until only bones remained, clutching the golden spine of a book whose remains had melted into his chest.

"N-no…no, Lucahn… Lucahn!" she cried, unable to stand and unable to tear her gaze away from that corpse, reduced to something so fragile it seemed it would disintegrate at the slightest touch. His scent, his ashes, Tristessa felt it inside her, the scent of her failure. "NOOO!"

Embraced by the blood elf, Tristessa screamed and cried until she spat and coughed up blood from all the ash she was breathing. Her eyes hurt. Crying hurt. She didn't want to cry anymore, and it was the only thing she knew how to do. The only thing she was good at, the one she knew she couldn't fail at.

Cry and keep crying, drowning in her own misery while trying to understand why.

The Coven's attack happened the same night in two timelines, but in the current one, it had happened a day earlier. Perhaps even more earlier, it was hard to tell, though now only embers remained.

There was no reason to justify the sudden advance of the Coven's plans... Not even the Book of Sin of that mysterious Lord Moebius -that source of Forbidden Knowledge- fit into such an abrupt change. Which was because Daiana Mercer-Archeos had specifically said that she would make sure to fulfill her Lord's prophecies and the massacre had to take place on the appointed night.

So why had they attacked earlier? What had compelled them to act prematurely?

"Damn it, you fucking witches! Why did you advanced your plans?! You said you were going to attack on the date promised by your Lord!" Tristessa yelled, so furious and thinking of Daiana's mocking smile. Mocking her inability to beat her in this chess game that transcended time and space. "If only I could see what the fuck happened here...if only...if..."

"Tristessa...?"

Through tears, Severus had to separate himself from her to see what had made her remain so solidly silent: she was staring at Lucahn's corpse with wide eyes, as if she had had an epiphany.

An idea had arisen in her head. A horrible, unforgivable idea; one that, if carried out, would earn the hatred of more than one person. Even her own.

"Severus..." Without looking at him and after wiping the tears from her face, Tristessa gathered all the coldness she could in her heart, imitating the effect of her Baptism in Ruins, which had yet to announced itself along with her Nemesis. "After this, if you feel it in your heart... Kill me."

"What are you saying...?!" The blood elf saw her stand up and stand next to Lucahn's corpse, looking at him with both determination and endless sadness. It was then that he understood what she was up to. "Tristessa, no!"

"…I'm sorry, Lucahn," the young woman whispered, her gray eyes acting like a mirror of darkness in which a black, false light was replicated. A flicker of artificial, cursed life. "Arise."

Her [Divinity of Accursed Existence] brought Lucahn Archeos back as a revenant; a piece of his soul housing that charred body in which Life simply could not exist. And yet, Tristessa was forcing him to raise his head, void of skin, muscles, all fluids and blood evaporated, without a brain or eyes.

The empty sockets on his face showed a reflection of the timeless void. A true existence that not even the Gods themselves could tolerate.

"…"

If he could, if he had a tongue or vocal cords, Lucahn would surely have roared, tormented by this return he hadn't asked for. Tristessa could feel his fear, that with which he had died and now returned from the void… Fear doomed to become legendary hatred, a hatred that broke her heart.

A hatred that demanded total dissolution, the end of that suffering-ridden existence in a body that was impossible to live in.

"Show me what happened, Lucahn. Show me with your Divinity," she begged, the strain on her soul beginning to take effect, and she felt the constriction in her chest like a dagger, receiving all that hatred, curses, and condemnation from the other side. "Show me, and it will all be over."

A disgusting gamble from a desperate woman. She had no idea if it would work or not, a fact that made her more than worthy of the title of Scum. Morally questionable and unforgivable, deserving punishment for her sins.

"AHHH, D-DAMN IT, IT HURTS! IT HURTS, IT HURTS, IT HURTS…!"

Tristessa cried, clutching her head as if it were about to explode, and writhed on the floor that burned hot to the touch. A torture which was nothing compared to the indescribable sensation of being flayed on a spiritual level, something she had experienced in the In-Between.

She gritted her teeth, feeling the roots of them vibrate with the force of resisting this sudden increase in stress she was subjecting her own soul to, and the coppery taste of blood escaping between the gaps between her teeth filled her mouth.

That punishment didn't come without the expected result: Lucahn's head slowly moved upward, and the amber-colored phantom of his [Divinity of Fragmented Reality] materialized in front of the suffering Tristessa and the shocked Severus.

"Y-yes! Show me! Gah, fuck!" Tristessa puked bile and blood, the strain on both physical and spiritual levels crushing her. Both Divinities at the same time, tearing her apart. "S-show it to me!"

And what that phantom of the recent past turned into, was the form of the Priestess of the Black Eye, Daiana Mercer-Archeos.

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