Amantha
118th Day of Winter, 987th Year of Grace
Elijah thrashed in his bindings, baring his teeth while he snarled like some feral beast. He kept pulling at the chains until his skin split beneath the iron, the whites of his eyes drowned in black.
I had ordered the chains to be forged thick enough to bind a grown man so they weighed down on the wrists of the boy of eleven before me.
A Chaos Supressment Barrier or Charm was supposedly fatal to him hence, the chains were used instead.
I stood in the hallways, my fingernails digging crescents in my palm while I watched the men in black perform a ritual of purification, carrying censers while they moved around the room and prayed to the Lord.
After a few moments, they stopped and one of them stepped forward with a grim face.
"My lady..." His gaunt and pale hands trembled. "There is nothing that can be done for the young lord. He... He has already become a Witch."
"He'll live, won't he?" I asked with a cracked voice.
"In most cases, children who become witches don't survive for more than a week," he explained. "However, if they do... there is a chance for the emergence of a calamity."
I turned to the others. "Is there truly nothing that can be done?"
The others averted my gaze while the one closest to me spoke again, "The only thing that can be done is saying farewell to him before his condition worsens. You must end his suffering while he is still in his human form--"
"Don't." I turned to him, my throat burning. "You said the True Faithful could help him. Now, you tell me to say goodbye while he's still alive? He has barely lived! He has barely experienced the world. H-How can you talking about t-taking his life? How?"
"We apologize, my lady, but there is no other way--"
Another voice cut him off. "Perhaps..."
It was the youngest of the people I had summoned from the True Faithful.
"What is it?" I frantically turned to her.
"There is a rite..." She clutched her rosary tightly. "But it has very low chances of survival. And... there is no precedent of it being performed on a child."
"What needs to be done?" I asked, approaching her.
"It is a rite to remove the Chaos from the heart of a person--"
"Are you talking about that rite?" One of them exclaimed. "But no one has ever survived more than a year or two after the rite was done! More essentially, that rite is still experimental and used to prepare vessels for--"
"I don't care." I grabbed the young girl's hand. "Please. Save my son. As long as he has even a slight chance of living for more than a week, do it."
"But..." Her words trailed off into silence.
"But what?" I asked.
"The Chaos extracted needs..." She looked down at the floor. "A recipient."
"A recipient?" My voice shook.
"Yes, my lady." Her eyes met mine. "The Chaos must go somewhere. It needs to take root in another vessel for the rite to succeed. Otherwise, the Chaos will find its way back to its original heart."
"What kind of vessel is needed?" I asked.
"Another heart," she said. "The True Faithful usually contains excess Chaos in hearts extracted from traitors and kept alive with sorcery. But we don't have such a vessel at the moment and preparing one would take too long."
I glanced at the boy chained to a chair in the corner of the room. "What if someone else were to take the extracted Chaos within themselves."
Gasps filled the room. "...We don't know. It has never been done."
Elijah was slipping away from me. There was no other choice.
"I'll do it," I declared. "I'll be the recipient of his Chaos."
"My lady!" she exclaimed."That is madness! You don't know what it would do to your body, your mind--"
"I don't care what it does to me," I said, steadying myself. "If it spares him, I will bear the burden of his Chaos within my life on the line."
The room fell silent.
"Very well." She bowed and others followed suit. "As you will it, my lady."
***
They prepared the chamber with chalk and salt, drawing inscriptions upon the floor with a giant circle bordering it all. Censers burned until the air itself choked with smoke.
At the center of the room sat Elijah, his chains bolted to the ground. His small body shuddered as he struggled to break free, his veins black beneath his pale skin.
I knelt before him.
The boy I had birthed and cradled in my arms appeared unrecognizable as he writhed in his bindings.
"Mommy will fix you," I whispered, cupping his face. "Everything will be fine, my precious."
His head jerked away, his teeth snapping inches from my cheeks. The growled that escaped his lips was not human.
I kissed his brow anyway.
Elijah
36th Day of Summer, 997th Year of Grace
I didn't know how long I had been unconscious for.
Her arms still cradled me while I clung to her like some drowning man clung to driftwood though my chest burned with shame.
"...Why?" I asked with a hoarse throat. "Why didn't you leave?"
She stroked the back of my head with trembling fingers. "Because you needed me."
"You don't know," I whispered, my breathing ragged. "My mother... She performed some rite on me. I don't know what she did. She never told my father, or anyone. She said it was to save me but all it did was give me the void--this endless emptiness that gnawed at my heart and forced me to hunt others."
I pulled back enough to meet her gaze in the dimness. "I thought shutting myself away would keep you safe. Yet... you came to me."
"Are you alright now?" she asked, her voice barley a whisper. "Is the void gone?"
"I'm fine but..." I shook my head slowly. "The void is not gone. It's quiet for now but I still feel it--sleeping within my chest. Perhaps... it'll never leave me."
"Then I'll stay beside you." Her arms wrapped tighter around me. "The next time it awakens, we should face it together."
I buried my face into her shoulder and held her close.