This was a familiar feeling. Yes, I felt it before. After the car accident, this light airiness was what I felt. I could fly about, sure, but I wanted to go towards the light beckoning me forth like a moth to flame. It was comforting. After so much pain, it was a warm, loving feeling.

But behind me, I could feel it, I could feel an existence greater than myself calling me. This twisting nether of gloom, wrath, death, suffering, acrimony, and myself, was happily blending together into something I found rather familiar. It tugged on me, that darkness wanted my attention, and I poured my being towards it just a little to see why it sought me so. On one end was the light, a comforting afterlife of bliss. On the other end was the dark, which was also strangely comforting, like I knew it my whole life. Instead of giving bliss, it offered me the chance to seize power and create my own bliss.

I wiggled away from the light and sought after the dark. At first glance, I was scared. But as my body grew used to everything negative around me, I realized that I couldn’t know or appreciate the good properly without first knowing the bad. I had to, I had to do it, I had to understand myself. The beaten path might’ve been strenuous and difficult beyond words, but it was safe, wasn’t it? However, roads unexplored always gave one the opportunity to learn more and understand from a visceral perspective.

I awoke laden in sweat the next morning. My clothes and bedsheets were soaked, but I felt great! My hand was clutched onto something that I thought was my sword. But what really surprised me was the fact that no pain was coming from my injured shoulder, not even a sliver. I raised up both arms to compare them, and found that my sword in the next hand wasn’t really my sword.

I eyed the ominous blade with disdain, yet with curiosity. How in the fuck? The Shadowsiphon dagger was in my hand, and I wasn’t exactly sure how. Last I remembered, I gave it to Demon King Fyren. The curved, cursed, and jagged blade was mesmerizing, and in a way, I felt like it was looking directly at my soul, not really at my body. It felt, homey, familiar, comfortable, which didn’t make sense because I never used the damn thing.

I stood up and made a few swings with it. It was longer than your usual dagger, considering it was curved, but shorter than a short sword. Wait, maybe… I tried to access my inventory and failed. Shit. So how the fuck did I end up with this? I shrugged. Maybe it never really left my inventory or something? I couldn’t know for sure. Either way, it was a much higher quality weapon than anything I’d ever seen, so I kept it on my person.

If I wanted to live, I had yet another day of cleaning to do. I became so used to the motions that I went through my morning routine and ended up in the backyard of one of my regular clients. “You’re late! I’m docking some copper from your salary!” He poked me on the chest. “Now get to it you useless rat!”

My rage was boiling over; I hated that man’s guts with my very being. He’d treat all the people he hired like that, as if they were less than him, nothing but dirt. A looming shadow crept over and under me, caressing my hands and bringing them to the dagger. It felt like a blur, like time halted then skipped forward. The dagger was buried upwards into the soft tissue behind the jaw, reaching up and busting out through the man’s cranium. His body convulsed a little then his weight dropped down on the dagger as he died. The dagger’s unbelievably sharp edge easily cut out from his face and opened it in two. The brain matter just oozed out.

I took a step back and fell on my ass. What the fuck did I do?! Killing an opponent was one thing, but killing a normal civilian felt horrifying, like a real sin and crime was actually committed.

Yet, why?

Why was it that my chaotic simper never disappeared? I, loved it. I loved every second of it. The sound of the tissues being cut apart, the smell of blood as it ran down the man’s face and neck, his lovely expression whilst the life was drained from his face, and the fear in his eyes that consumed him. It was like the greatest high I’d ever known, the rush was undeniable, a thrill so saturated in my bones that no matter how much the urge to run and hide yelled at me, all I could do was watch with pure childlike excitement as an innocent man died.

His wife, a person even uglier than he could dream to be, saw the scene through the window. I stood up, and without even a whiff of thought strutting around my mind, lunged that dagger straight throw the window’s glass and into her neck. My legs alit and I sprinted effortlessly back to the house, calmly opened the backdoor, and found her choking on her blood and lying in it; her white dress turned red the more she struggled against the inevitable.

I reached for the dagger, and it automatically flew back to my outstretched arm and sat calmly in the palm of my hand. Oh? That’s neat! “Not so high and mighty anymore, huh? You pompous fucking bitch.” I grabbed her head by the temples and raised it up a bit. With a single skill, I slammed it back down, bashing her head into nothing but bits and pieces. Ah, that felt good. The dagger pulled something from her body, and as I felt extra mana flowing into me, I knew the dagger stole mana.

I entered their dwelling and pilfered as much coin as I could; they wouldn’t exactly need it anymore. Once I looted them and my coin purse was really heavy, I made my way out of Pinetop. It’d be quite a while before anyone found their corpses, and they had an astounding number of people who hated them, so there was no limit of suspects.

Skaljorn was the northernmost country, and Pinetop was pretty far north as well, so I had a few months of travelling to do if I was to ever reach back to Reuland. Now that I broke into the category of novice wizard and could use Lesser Heal, I had a lot more flexibility in surviving the monsters of this world if I was careful. It was probably a bad idea for the real murderer to stay in Pinetop anyway.

I really thought it’d bother me, that their souls might haunt me, or I might have nightmares and lose my appetite, but it was never so. I ate with gusto, and only felt relieved knowing that I didn’t have to deal with them. After travelling as far as I could, I camped out in the woods, near some redfang coyotes apparently. I could feel their bloodthirst as they surrounded me in the darkness of the night.