"I stand corrected. You are truly a reckless fox."

Nytherael’s vision swam. The tea’s compulsion curled around his thoughts with a tight grip.

The beast turned away without another word, leaving the room, and Nytherael sat frozen, unable to move a single inch.

His mind screamed in protest, but his body refused to obey. His pulse raced because memory distortion doesn’t just work on the mind but the body too.

It affects the memory chosen and messes with it original version in the mind, in the parts of the body that might trigger said memories, and the affected party can only remember the new version.

Nytherael broke into cold sweat. He didn’t know which memory of his Sseraphis wanted to rewrite, and it scared him.

Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. Nytherael’s mind kept swirling. The compulsion held him locked in place, his muscles bound by its force as the world around him started to be unstable.

"Oh, my... reckless fox. Are you okay?" The female voice that had raised him the challenge right before the trap took form sounded, this time not in his head but in his surroundings. "The game has just begun and... you don’t look too well," There was pity in her voice.

Before Nytherael could react, a cold hand slithered up his face until it reached his forehead. The one touch sent a searing rush of his ancient technique tearing through his mind, freezing his body and drowning his senses.

Nytherael gasped. Feeling the pull as his mind surrendered his memories to the invader. The force bound him.

He barely heard the female voice again as his vision darkened. "You will learn the consequences of breaking a serpent’s heart," she said, and then everything went black for Nytherael.

~

A violent jolt shot through Nytherael’s body as he woke, gasping for air.

He was no longer in the house. Instead, he was kneeling in the middle of an endless black void. It was silent and empty.

His breath came in ragged pants as he pushed himself up. The ground beneath him wasn’t solid, yet it held his weight.

A strange humming energy pulsed through the air, sinking into his skin and into his bones.

"What the hell?" He asked,turning in a slow circle. There was nothing in sight, no doors, walls, or a sign of the stranger. It’s just an infinite expanse of darkness stretching in all directions.

"Don’t resist," a soft voice echoed in the darkness.

Nytherael’s pulse quicken. Without his beast, he couldn’t make the head or tail of what was happening. His eyes turned sharply, searching desperately.

"You said you’d tell me your name after I drank the tea. This is clearly cheating!" He shouted.

At once, the darkness moved. Tendrils of shadows slithered around him. Coiling and shifting until they split open. From within, a figure appeared. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

His long black hair floated unnaturally around him as if caught in water. His skin seemed to glow faintly against the abyss, and his green eyes were now bright like emerald fire.

Nytherael instinctively took a step back.

The beast tilted its head to the side, "Weren’t you listening before? I told you, this is a game of lies and poisons with the best liar getting away with it," he whispered a response.

Nytherael bit his lip. Focusing on trying to outmanoeuvre the beast, he missed that key detail and suffered a loss. Not only was he still unaware of his enemy, but he had also taken memory distortion tea and could lose an important memory at any time, or he already did?

He took another step back, wary of the opponent who was proving to be his match in the cunning department.

"Do you understand now?"

Nytherael clenched his jaw. "Where are my friends?" He redirected the train of the conversation.

"Do you still have friends?"

"Where are they?"

The beast took a step forward. The void ripped beneath his feet. "Like you, they are in my domain. Probably suffering different fates than you."

And he inched a little bit closer and closer.

"All of you are intruders here. So, just like you, they’ve also had their beasts sealed and are helplessly going through the trials."

Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

He laughed. Hard. His laughter resonated in the air and echoed back. Taunting Nytherael.

Nytherael tensed as the space around him seemed to tighten. Pressing in on him on all sides.

The air shifted. An unseen force curled around his throat like invisible chains. Nytherael tried to grab them, to keep them from choking him, but alas, he couldn’t find anything against his neck.

"You think yourself so clever," the beast continued. His voice was almost gentle. "You think you can rewrite your story?"

Nytherael spoke through gritted teeth. "That’s not..."

"The damage is done. You can’t turn back time," he let out. "You already tore Sseraphis apart. You made him bleed, and now, you think you can fix it by coming back? How foolish."

Nytherael tries to move. He tried to run, but his body wouldn’t obey. The pressure of the invisible chains only strengthened with his struggle.

The ground beneath him trembled. Rolling vibration that rattled his bones. Hesitantly, he raised his gaze, and what he saw nearly stopped his heart.

Towering above him, vast enough to blow out the darkness itself, was a snake so massive that it defied reason; a ten-headed serpent.

It’s shimmering blue scales glinting faintly in the Abyss, shifting like liquid. Each of its heads loomed high, arched like peaks of a mountain range, and all ten pairs of piercing green eyes were fixed directly on him.

Nytherael’s breath hitched in his throat. His body screamed for him to run, but where could he possibly go?

He was faced by a snake more powerful than Sseraphis. He didn’t even know that such a snake existed. For as long as he could remember, Sseraphis stood at the top of his clan with no one holding a candle to his powers.

The beast exhaled. Its breath was a slow gust that sent a shudder through the void.

Then, one of its heads lowered. Bringing its enormous face terrifyingly close to Nytherael’s frozen form. Silence stretched out.

"Do you fear me now? Or still think you can take me on?"

The voice wasn’t spoken aloud. It echoed inside his skull, deeply. Curling around him like an unshakable grip.

Nytherael swallowed. His throat became dry. His heart slammed against his ribs.

He could lie. He could pretend he wasn’t scared. That was the game, wasn’t it? A game of lies and poisons...the poisons part suddenly made sense.

But standing before the monstrous being with no escape, he found that he had no trick to rely on.

"Yes, I am scared," he admitted, barely above a whisper.

The giant serpent hummed. A low vibrating sound sent ripples through the air.

"Good."

The head nearest to him shifted. Lowering further until Nytherael could see the faint shimmer of intricate vein-like patterns beneath the blue scale.

"You should."

Just as the two heads came, they pulled back. The other eight heads remained still. Their watchful eyes never wavering.

The enormous serpent loomed over above him. It’s massive body stretching into the abyss, so vast that Nytherael couldn’t even tell where it ended. His body felt small and insignificant compared to the serpent.

He finally understood why snakes preferred the abyss. With their massive forms, it would be impossible for them to exist with other beasts on land.

"What are you going to do to me?" He asked.

The serpent’s heads spoke as one, "You of all people should know what snack a snake loves most!"

’Memories,’ Nytherael thought, he lowered his head to the ground. His heart stopped beating.

On the ground, glowing blue lay lines formed from him to the snake and blue, round and glowing balls seeped out from him and into the lay lines before travelling to the snake’s body.

Laughter and voices between him and Sseraphis could be heard in those balls. Nytherael paled.