Wonderful Insane World

Dylan didn’t speak. He couldn’t—his lips moved, but no sound emerged.

Elisa grabbed his hand. It was freezing. Clammy. But she squeezed it tight. His pulse fluttered weakly, faint but undeniably present.

"He’s back!" she breathed, voice trembling with disbelief.

Maggie didn’t move. She watched through narrowed eyes, her expression unreadable.

Finally, Dylan’s mouth found breath again.

"...she’s inside me," he whispered. "Still inside me..."

Tears welled in his eyes—not from fear, but rage.

"I saw what she is. I saw her. She wants—"

He didn’t finish. His jaw locked mid-sentence. His breath cut off abruptly.

Maggie stepped forward, a dark silhouette in the forest’s green-tinged gloom.

"She got a name now?" she asked calmly.

Dylan swallowed with difficulty. "...think she had one. Before the fall. Now... she’s just hunger."

Elisa studied him. Her voice softened but thrummed with urgency.

"Can you still fight her?"

"...yeah. Think so. Not for long."

"Then you won’t be alone," Maggie declared. Final as a thrown stone. As an axe buried in bone. "We’re here. You won’t sink again. I’ll beat your soul back into your body if I have to."

Dylan let out something between a sob and a laugh. "That... sounds like you."

"Damn right it does."

But beneath the banter, the tension remained, thick as clotting blood.

Because they all knew this wasn’t over.

Especially with mere hours left before the sun plunged behind the mountains—each passing minute whittling away their already nonexistent chances of surviving what tonight would bring.

——

And somewhere, in that forsaken Cemetery of Swords, time shifted.

Not abruptly — no. It was subtler than that. A shiver in the air. A sudden pressure in the temples. The metallic taste slipping under the tongue, as if the entire world were holding its breath.

The sun was sliding, slowly, toward the jagged edge of the mountains. The shadows stretched, uneasy, as if trying to flee their bodies. The light was turning foul.

Élisa turned to Maggie. "We need to move. If we stay here, she’ll find us."

"She already knows where we are," Maggie replied bluntly. "What we can do is choose the ground."

A silence stretched out — heavy — sliced only by the slow breath of wind through the ruins of swords. The earth seemed to vibrate faintly, as if whispering a secret to the world.

"The Guardian," murmured Élisa. Her voice nearly choked on the word. "He’s still there... isn’t he?"

Maggie slowly turned her head toward her. Her eyes hardened. Turning toward disbelief.

"You really want us to go there?" she asked. "You know what that means."

Élisa nodded. "Maybe he’s the only thing she fears. If they’re... on a similar level. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t fully manifested inside the cemetery. Besides, spirit beasts hate demonic ones."

"That should play in our favor, right?"

Dylan shuddered. He barely moved, caught between waking and trance, but he murmured, eyes closed:

"She hates him... She never comes near when he’s watching. She says he’s a traitor, bound to humans by worthless oaths."

Maggie took a breath, as if the word oath had stayed on her tongue after tasting something foul.

"Alright. We’ll go near the Guardian. As long as we don’t touch anything, he doesn’t attack. Maybe we’ll be safe for a while."

They moved in silence, cutting through ash and broken stones, skirting decapitated statues and ruptured graves. The Cemetery of Swords was ancient, yet something still breathed within it — a dull heartbeat in the earth.

In the distance, the mists parted to reveal a clearing, empty except for its center:

a mound, ringed with stones, swords, and other kinds of weapons planted upright.

And there, the Guardian knelt, as if in prayer, his towering form — over two meters tall — hunched. His armor was pitch black, close to obsidian, and his helmet sealed tight, its edge revealing only two crimson glints, glowing redder than rubies.

His weapon remained sheathed, resting across his legs. But the three of them knew: even like this, they stood no chance against him.

So best to make use of his protection.

Dylan stirred at their approach. Or rather... something inside him stirred.

And the air changed again.

Dylan felt sick in the Guardian’s presence. Though he was still some distance away, his presence filled the mist as if he were everywhere at once.

The silence around the mound was not natural.

It wasn’t the silence of a forest, nor that of death — it was a held silence, dense, like a breath trapped right before the plunge.

Dylan stepped back, involuntarily. His hand clenched at nothing. The thing inside him also recoiled — or rather, coiled itself. It wasn’t fear. It was hatred. Pure, ancient. Cold, methodical hatred. The kind reserved for those one dares not attack head-on.

The Guardian didn’t move a muscle.

And yet, they felt him. In every stone. Every blade sunk in the ground. Every heartbeat.

"We’re on his ground," Élisa whispered.

"I feel like I could be cut from here," murmured Maggie, echoing, eyes locked on the mound.

Dylan pressed a hand to his chest. His heart was racing. His thoughts wavered, caught between himself... and her. Between his mind... and that creeping presence always clinging to his nerves like a slow poison.

She growled — not with words, but with raw emotion: rage, contempt, and above all... defiance.

She was pushing him forward.

Toward the Guardian.

Toward his own destruction.

He gritted his teeth. He resisted.

"She wants me to go," he said. His voice cracked. "She wants me to provoke him."

Maggie shot him a dark glare. "Then you sit your ass down, breathe, and let her scream in her cage."

Dylan trembled, but obeyed.

The Guardian hadn’t lifted a finger. Yet tension now hung in the air, nearly tangible, like a bowstring stretched to its limit.

And in that suspended moment, Élisa stepped forward.

She knelt at a respectful distance, as if before some forgotten altar. Her gaze sought neither challenge nor understanding. Just... the space to offer a prayer.

"We haven’t come to disturb your watch," she murmured. "We seek respite. Shelter, nothing more."

The Guardian did not respond.

But the mist, ever so slightly, retreated — as if to make room.

And only then did Dylan feel the demon retreat further.

But not to flee. Fleeing was not in her nature. No, she was withdrawing to wait. To watch.

Night was approaching, dragging behind it the perfect shroud of full moon darkness — her crown of power.

Why rush, when absolute power was about to fall into her claws?

Her presence inside Dylan grew more patient, more insidious, like an icy spiderweb slowly tightening around its prey. A cruel, satisfied grin seemed to radiate from the fragment within him.

Dylan, for his part, was breathing with difficulty. His throat dry, his lips cracked from the effort of keeping the thing in check. A howling storm trapped in a jar too small.

"She’s... patient," he murmured. He trembled. His eyes flicked between theirs and hers.

"She’ll wait until the moon rises. Until I’m weaker. Until he..." he glanced at the Guardian, "...has to choose."

Maggie flinched. "Choose what?"

He swallowed hard. "Whether to protect me... or cut me in half before I become a problem."

Dylan lifted a wrecked face. His eyes, bloodshot and streaked with those disturbing black veins, blinked slowly. "She... she’s waiting," he managed, every word a struggle. "She’s savoring. Like a cat before a wounded bird." A twitch twisted his features. "But I’m still here, Maggie. For now."

Élisa, still kneeling in a posture of forced reverence before the Guardian, turned slightly toward them. Her face was pale, but her golden eyes burned with cold determination. "So are we. We’re waiting for the moon. And when it rises..." She left the sentence hanging, her gaze drifting eastward where the last orange thread of the sun was dying. "...we’ll do what we have to do."

The wind rose, whistling through broken swords, making the rusted metal sing like a funeral choir. It carried with it a foul chill, laced with the scent of wet earth and something older, more viscous — the breath of the marsh, or perhaps the demon herself, prowling just beyond the Guardian’s unseen boundary.

The mist, which had pulled back, began to crawl again — thicker, more insistent, as if pushed by a foreign will.

Suddenly, Dylan went rigid, eyes wide toward the horizon. A first thin silver crescent pierced the newborn darkness above the mountains. Not yet the full moon, but its vanguard. Its herald.

A stifled laugh, devoid of humanity, seemed to echo inside his skull. Not a sound — a vibration. Pure contempt. Voracious anticipation.

"Look, little fragment," whispered the leaden voice in his thoughts, triumphant and tender. "The full moon is already here. And with it... your end."

Dylan shut his eyes, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white. The inner battle had reached its final phase. The countdown had begun — written in the sky itself.

The Guardian, obsidian statue of life, still didn’t move.

But in the thickening silence, the wait became unbearable — heavy with the promise of imminent violence that only the moon, soon full and merciless, could trigger.

Their reprieve was nearing its end.