The cold woke her.

Tanya came to her senses, the pounding headache making the injuries on the rest of her body feel pale in comparison. Except for her wrists and shoulders, those hurt more. Her neck felt stiff, and it took her a second to realize that she was vertical, her hands bound together over her head. Her feet were tied too.

And she was naked. Her muscles started jumping and twitching, as she tried to look around. She was hanging from the ceiling, her hands tied in strong metal cords, with nothing save the stone cold floor below and walls all around.

Anger flooded through her. How dare they disrobe her? How dare they treat her like that? She was Tanya Shimizu, exalted among the Clan, the future Wind King. The best that Eaborid had ever seen since her great-grandfather. She’d teach these cretins a lesson for life. She’d slowly make their lifeforce crawl out of their bodies and see them die slowly, pathetically, screaming their lungs out in agony while she extracted every bit of their power. It was better off with her. She knew how to spend it better. With practiced ease, she drew in lifeforce and—

Nothing.

Tanya blinked. No way, that had to be a mistake. She tried again.

Still nothing.

No matter what she did, lifeforce kept slithering away from her, like it did when those… when she was kidnapped. Had she— had she been caught again? Those fools wouldn’t know what hit them.

Closing her eyes, Tanya centered herself and tried to get loose, working her limbs methodically, testing the ropes, trying to free her hands. She couldn’t tell if she was making any progress. She tried to open her mouth to scream, but nothing save the barest whimpers left her throat. An overwhelming exhaustion was flooding through her veins. How? She didn’t now. Only that everything hurt, especially her head.

She couldn’t escape. She thrashed wildly, dull pain flaring in her bound limbs, and fading away into numbness under the cold. She tried to scream several times, but failed. Bereft of lifeforce, without a kami, there was nothing she could do to get out of this.

Nothing except…

One.

The thing about lifeforce was, it came from life, especially from emotions. A source of intangible energy that everyone could feel thrumming in their veins. It was what filled one with bone-deep excitement upon hearing happy news. The passion of music that brought tears to one’s eyes, the raw, infectious laughter shared between friends. It came from the furious defiance stemming from the last stand, made in the face of overwhelming odds, from the feeling of victory, of strength. Her father had always said that her potential with lifeforce was beyond anyone he had ever seen.

But recently, she had gained an alternate understanding of lifeforce. It wasn’t always about being happy or being victorious. It had its own share of the opposite kind, the darker kind. Fear. Rage. Lust. All of them could churn out power in impossible amounts.

Neither came to her aid. Instead, what answered was something worse.

Closing her eyes, Tanya dug into herself. Dug into the part that wasn’t so nice. And it answered. A power that didn’t surge through her veins, but emptied her from within. A horrible, hungry emptiness, something that drew its power from being not. It was made of the last breaths of a murdered man, the silence between the beats of a heart, and the inevitability of the empty void that would one day swallow the universe itself. A power that was the antithesis of all that was alive.

Frost leaped out of her palms like a living thing, freezing the bindings on her. Tanya closed her eyes, and felt the enchantments fight against it. But the frost wasn’t a tidal wave, it was an implosion. It would not push. It would not shatter. It would only make things crumble from within. Utter stillness spread out from her— not peace, for that would have been something tranquil. This? This was stagnation.

Hunger.

Death.

The enchantments didn’t shatter. They died.

Her bindings fell open.

She dropped to her feet. Gathering every bit of lifeforce she could muster, she pounded against the walls. When they didn’t so much as crack, she unleashed hoarfrost upon them. The wintry plume swept across the room, freezing it completely, devouring the enchantments within. She could feel them grow, feel them send the devoured power back to her. It wasn’t enough, but it would do. Especially with the constantly growing feel of exhaustion threatening her.

“It seems like the endeavor did bear fruit after all, ” came the familiar voice of her grandfather Mujin Shimizu, who stepped out of the door.

“Grandpa?” Tanya asked, confused, flustered and disoriented. “You— this—”

“I’m not your grandfather, Beast. And stop looking at me with those abominable eyes of yours. I’ve had enough of them for a lifetime.”

He made a slashing motion with his hand.

She must have sensed something was wrong, but before she could act, the world shattered upon her shoulders. The last thing she heard was the man’s footsteps walking away from her.

…

…

“I didn’t know how long they kept me there. It was… painful, to say the least. Thinking hurt, as did breathing. All I remember was seeing those vine-like things sunk into my body, pumping me with… something. And those sigils painted all over me — bright red, as if written with my blood. Maybe it was my blood. I don’t… remember. I think I saw Onmyōji around, chanting strange incantations I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Maybe they thought I was possessed. Maybe, they thought I was an imposter. Whatever it was, whatever they did, it hurt. It hurt a Lot. I screamed and howled and begged them to stop, to let me go, to let me die, but it just… would. Not. Stop. And all the while, my grandfather watched.”

Her voice turned hollow. Images of the past began to swim across her mind. “They wouldn’t give me food. Or water. Every night I’d scream until my lungs hurt, and then lull myself off to sleep to escape the pain. And I’d dream. Sometimes I’d see strange lights. A woman’s face. A man that looked so familiar. Places I’ve never been to. And then come morning, the onmyōji would come, and wake me up to the same nightmare. Even the whispers were growing silent. I thought I was losing my mind. Maybe I was. When the pain went beyond my….” she trailed off for a second, her eyes glassy, “I thought I’d die, which was… stupid. I thought after all this time, the least they could do was give me another chance to bind Ezzeron. I had just leveled up the other day. Maybe just this one time, I’d get lucky…”

Lukas staring at her in abject horror. Seeing him like that made her slightly gleeful within. She wondered if feeling like that made her a bad person.

“Wha…” He croaked, “what about your family? Surely someone, anyone—”

“You think they cared?” Tanya asked with a perversely pleased smirk at the reaction her tale involved in him. “About me? About a single child’s happiness when it meant going against my grandfather? Mujin Shimizu is a Warlord. A Level-4 aeromancer. You’ve seen what those bylestyrs did, Lukas. My grandfather can erase a hundred of them without batting an eye. That is precisely the sort of monster he is.”

“But you— you are his granddaughter!”

Almost instinctively, her smirk grew wider, relishing the horror he was feeling. “Mujin Shimizu is, has been, and will always be, a butcher. He has always been a being of violence and deceit, with an immeasurable thirst for power. In hindsight, it’s no surprise that he was a High-Priest of Fujin, the God of wind, murder, bloodlust and destruction.”

She smiled softly. “Even when the Wind King was alive, Mujin was his right-hand, his executioner. He laid the foundation of Cyffnar upon his blade. Did you think that being unable to gain his father’s mantle would leave him more sympathetic to the sufferings of others? Did you think seeing his granddaughter suffer stirred his heart? If anything, time has made him crueler.”

“But—”Lukas interrupted, breathless. You— you’re here, and you’ve got Ezzeron, so that means someone— something must have saved you.”

Tanya hesitated. She was really hoping to avoid that bit.

“...Yes.”

“Who?”

“Who else?” she asked, looking down to one side, sounding oddly shy, as she whispered. “My father.”

…

…

Tanya felt nothing.

Touch. Temperature. Pain. All three had been absent, replaced by a numb, floating sensation that pervaded her mind and body. She didn’t know what was happening, only that she had fallen down to the floor, bereft of those chains. She’d have dwelt on that question, if she had enough consciousness left in her. All she could do was mimic the general movements of breathing, just to keep herself from succumbing to that cold, welcome feeling of darkness.

“—ya, ‘et up!”

Her body was utterly drained of any and all lifeforce, and the sheer number of sigils on her made it impossible to even try generating more, lest the pain return and get her screaming. One Onmyōji had pierced her tongue and her lips with a strange needle-like thing, and even trying to move her tongue sent jolts of fresh agony through her. But someone was pulling her, dragging her up, asking her to speak.

Speak? How silly! What did she need that for? All she needed was—

Was—

Was… what?

She tried to move her head. She only managed to tilt it sideways. Drool dripped down her bloodied lips. Or was that blood? She’d have to taste it to be certain.

She didn’t care about taste. She could do something about her horrifically dry throat though…

Thirsty…

“—anya, try to walk. It’s me your—”

Your… ?

“— will save—”

Step by step, she limped forward. She misjudged the process at least three times, nearly falling down the steps, before that someone held her from slipping. Her ears picked up sounds of something exploding, shouts, yells, the roar of the wind, something cracking and splattering against the ceiling. Her nose picked up, other than the sickening sweet stench of decay, death and decomposition, the aroma of rich, crimson blood. Not her own. Hers was parched. Dry. She needed something fresh. Something that she could stick her frost-laden fingers into—

SCREEECHHH!

She felt something cold and familiar form on her face. That someone that was grabbing her let out a groan. Something warm and sticky oozed all over her cold fingers. It felt… nice.

Like breathing.

But she was still so thirsty.

Had she not been so exhausted, she’d have noticed that she had not only been judging the correct amount of lifeforce seeping into her body, but also how the frost was healing her back, and how the sticky liquid on her finger was actually red, and her savior sounded suspiciously like her fath—

Gone. The information was indeed there in her mind for a moment, but as it was deemed too unusable in her hazy mind, the excess simply passed through. Tanya didn’t care, so she threw herself in the reflex action of feeling the lifeforce grow within her.

Then she opened her eyes.

She was sitting, her back against a boulder. Her entire body felt like one big bruise, with the exception of that one cold finger, that one finger that was covered with frost. Her father sat before her, his face wrought with tiny injuries and blood dripping, like he had been through a war himself.

Her vision flickered.

The image of her father did not vanish.

Tanya slowly blinked again. The blood oozing out of her forehead was painting her vision red, so that was probably why—

Probably why… what?

“Rest, Tanya. Rest.”

Rest?

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of—”

She tilted slightly.

“— very thing.”

She opened her eyes again. Her father— he was there, right before her eyes. He was bleeding. She blinked slowly again. Thinking was hard. She needed to focus. She felt the growing feeling of pleasure through her finger. She looked down at the frost-covered digit. It had extended outward, like a long monster claw, digging past the flesh and bone of—

“....ather?”

Tanya yanked her finger out, but Yanric grabbed it and pushed it deep into his abdomen, into his blood.

“Don’t worry,” he said, a smile tearing through his lips, “just leave it all to me. You keep taking whatever you need—”

“Buh —” FATHER? She wanted to yell.

“It’s alright.”

It wasn’t. It couldn't. She knew what this was. The Frost was digging into his flesh.

“NO—” She tried to say, but grunts and coughs were all she could get out. Jolts of pain, spit and blood were all she could get out. All this… letting her father see like this, her frost draining his lifeforce like a demon, and seeing him let it happen.

Tanya couldn’t bear it.

She yanked her arm out.

Once again, her father grabbed it midway and pushed it back in.

“Let it stay.”

There was something odd about him. Like he was sleepy. Like he was fading. Like he was—

“But father, I— this is—”

“It’s okay.” He said, and pressed her hand tighter.

“No. No please don’t. Father, you— please don’t leave me.”

It was becoming easier to speak by the second. Her father’s eyes were becoming glassy by the second. His body was stiffening. His eyes were drooping.

There were sounds of people yelling in the background. Now that she could see clearly, they were on a hilltop. She could see the compound below. Smoke was rising out of it. Several buildings were wrecked apart. Who could’ve done it?

She looked at her father.

“Why are you doing this?” She begged.

Yanric looked at her, and for the first time, his warmth was replaced by a strange melancholy. “You’re asking the wrong question, Tanya. The right question would be, why didn’t I do this before?”

The smoke continued to rise, now covering the sky.

“I— I don’t—”

Yanric pressed his finger on her lips, his usual smile nowhere in sight. “I should’ve stepped in right away. After they captured you. Instead I hesitated. It took me this long, and for that, I’m sorry.”

“I…” She tried again, but he pressed her arm into his stomach deeper. She felt the sharpness tear through something, and blood oozed out of his lips.

“Tanya, don’t you see?” He said, utterly indifferent to the pain, “A father’s duty is to make his daughter happy. To keep her safe, away from all harm. And if that life can save yours, then it’s well spent.”

“But fath—” She sobbed. “I’m— You’re leaving me alone. Don’t do this, father. I—” she sobbed, “I don’t have anyone. I—”

“Shhh!” He put a lip on her finger. “It’s already too late, Tanya.”

His skin was turning blue.

“It’s— it’s not! Don’t you see you’re—”

Yanric patted on her back. That simple action, more than anything else, stole her breath away. “Take good care of my daughter for me, will you? My daughter is the pretty one. Always keep her like that.”

He tilted again. His eyes were all but closed.

“CAPTURE THEM!” She heard a shout from afar, and soldiers— Army— came towards her. Tanya flinched, readying herself for the pain. “It was… difficult,” said her father, eyes closed. “Ezzeron is… strong. So strong. I… I always wondered what it’d feel like. But now I know. I put you through a terrible ordeal and for that, I’m sorry.”

“Father—” It was easy to speak now. His lifeforce had healed her. She could stand up. She could run. She could fight.

“Father, what are you talking about?”

Yanric never told her. Instead, a shadow of a smile formed on his face.

And then his body went utterly stiff.

His eyes flashed open, the warmth in them replaced by an inky blackness, one that would swallow the world if given the chance. His body floated in mid-air, twisted in ways it really shouldn’t, like it was a marionette being pulled through invisible strings.

And then he opened his mouth.

There was no light. No sound. No show of power. There was…. Nothing.

And Nothing arose out of his mouth, an emptiness that seemingly swallowed the light around them. Black, transparent fumes arose out of his body, a blackened soot that converged, twisted, morphed into itself to craft a physical presence. The clear sky overhead was suddenly crowded with thunderclouds beginning to rotate directly overhead her, faster and faster. The air suddenly became very dense, and lightning with no thunder flickered weirdly through the clouds, which turned every shade of white and blue and black, and amidst them, the behemoth began to form.

It was tall.

Massive.

Larger than the eye could see, yet still incomplete.

Tanya saw the wings next. Its jaws looked like bone. Its flesh was the blackened mist. Horns sprouted out of its body like demented protrusions. Wings— one, two, three, four pairs, explode out. A pale, sinister white light shone out of the empty sockets that were supposed to be eyes, the light in them filled with something maddeningly primordial.

Tanya knew its name.

The Beast of the Shimizu. The wrath of the Wind King.

Ezzeron.

Where it touched, the ground disintegrated and flaked away, pulverizing at the edges and dissipating into sand. The sky went dark, lightning streaked through the heavens, while the entire sky became ridden with malignant, twisted morphs of this creature, like the diseased skin of a victim. The closest mountain shattered, buildings exploded, and the terrain cracked, a roaring tsunami of pure force thundering through the world, surging out with a frightening amount of energy. The mist-fiends screeched and devoured everything that came in their way. Forget the army, this thing was causing reality itself to tear open. Mist and fog were beginning to cover the sky, just like the Black Moon.

This was the apocalypse. This was how the world would end.

And she would die with it.

“That you will,” said a voice from deep within. “You couldn’t save your father. You couldn’t save yourself. And now, you cannot fulfill your dream.”

“And whose fault is that?” Tanya screamed out aloud. It didn’t matter if there was no one listening to her. “You made me do this. I’m not weak. You— you made me a monster! If you hadn’t given me this frost then—”

“Oh, you are going to blame me now? First your father, then Ezzeron, and now me. Who’s next? How many until you realize you’re the weak one?”

Tanya felt the wind leave her gut

No. She told herself. She was not weak. She was not—

“Weak.”

No!

“Weak.”

I’m not—

“Weak.”

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

“You’re weak. You’re nothing. You’re a little girl trying to hide from the big bad. You knew you were draining your father’s blood but you were too afraid to let go.”

Ice pierced through her chest. “No— No, I tried to stop him. I tried to—”

“Stop him from dying? Did you really? Or did you hope he would keep pulling you close, while you drained his life out of him? Serves him right.”

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

“You’re no savior. You never can be.”

Shut up! I— I’m done. It’s over. I’ve nothing left. I— I’m going to die.

She looked at the still forming figure of Ezzeron. Just being in its presence was suffocating.

“Quitting because you don’t have it in you to continue. This creature… it could be ours. Ours to wield. Ours to control. Ours to rule over.”

She couldn't believe her ears. She could control Ezzeron? That was impossible. Nothing she had ever done, no amount of Leveling-up had ever made a speck of difference.

“...How?”

“Give me control.”

“....what?”

“Hand over the reins. To me. Sit back in comfort. Let me, the true part of you, be the one to handle this beast.”

Something felt… wrong. “Are you…” she paused, “are you really me?”

She sensed something smiling in the darkness. "I am. I am not. I am your other half. The instincts you suppress. The power you deny yourself. We are two halves of the same coin, but that coin is weighted, and one side will always turn up more than the other.”

“I…”

An icy feeling was pervading all over her chest. The rich, wafting, unmistakable aroma of mana was flaring against her nostrils. This power was delicious. She had to take it.

“You are a predator, Tanya. And that,” Her own hand rose up, pointing at the titan manifesting in the sky. “Is prey. Let things run its course.”

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes,

“...alright.”

She opened them.

“You… You can have control. Just… make them pay..”

A dark, malevolent laugh reached out from her mind, as her eyes turned glacial white.

“Time to hunt.”