What had happened was this: while Max was digging the grave, Arlot had been standing guard, the sharp thorns of paranoia digging into every corner of his mind. For one fleeting moment, as he glanced at his friend, he hadn't seen his tired, sweaty silhouette. In its place, he saw the monster—that damned woman in the white wedding dress, holding a dagger of obsidian.
He would not let the demon escape this time. With the rhythm of his heart thundering in his ears, he drew his sword with silent, deadly speed. The sharp hiss of steel leaving its sheath echoed like a scream in the forest's lethal silence. Without a thought, without hesitation, he had plunged it into the vulnerable neck of the creature he believed was before him. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, he was confronted with the soul-crushing, brain-searing truth: his sword was not in a monster, but in Max's neck.
"Ahahahahahahaha!"
Icy, mocking laughter began to rise from the shadows. It was impossible to tell which direction the sound was coming from; it seemed to emanate from every rotting tree hollow, from beneath every rustling leaf on the ground, even from the darkest corridors of his own mind. It was as if the forest itself was feeding on his agony, delighting in his madness. With trembling, blood-soaked hands, Arlot violently ripped his sword from Max's cooling body. Warm blood washed over the cold metal and his hands. Following the sound, his eyes darted around wildly as he pointed his sword into the blind darkness.
"Who's there?!" he screamed, his voice cracking.
There was no answer. Only the continuous, mind-gnawing, maddening laughter. The laughter was closer now, as if it were coming from right behind his neck.
"Do you find this funny, you despicable bastard!" But the only reply he received was the mocking laughter that rang in his ears and clawed at his soul. It felt as if the universe were laughing at him.
Arlot was now just one step away from that final threshold where sanity hangs by a thread. He collapsed to his knees, the sword falling beside him. He dug his hands into his hair, pulling at it as if he could tear the torture from inside his own skull. "Why is all this happening to me?"
"Why… why… why… WHY?!"
As he writhed in tears and despair, his gaze fell upon the child he had set aside, sleeping innocently amidst all the chaos. Despite the malevolence of the forest, the child's face was peaceful. In that moment, a flash of twisted logic ignited in Arlot's shattered mind. A look of terrible enlightenment spread across his face.
"Yes… yes, of course… it's all because of this cursed child. Everything has gone wrong since we entered the forest. That monster… this laughter… it's all his fault!"
Madness, when it replaces reason, offers the most dangerous of consolations. Arlot had found something to cling to. Yes, if I kill him, it will all end. This curse, this nightmare, it will stop, he thought. He rose slowly to his feet, his movements as mechanical as a puppet's. He stood over the child. He picked up his bloodied sword from the ground. He raised it high, ready to plunge it into that tiny, defenseless body. A horrible, twisted smile formed on his face—a fusion of madness and the desire for ultimate release.
"Go to hell, you cursed ch—"
His words were cut short by an icy gurgle in his throat.
"Huh?"
He looked down at the pain in his chest. Where his heart should have been, a dark hand had pierced through his ribcage as if it were paper. In that hand's grasp, he saw his own heart, still beating.
Before Arlot could even comprehend what was happening, his heart had been ripped from his body by the attack from behind. His eyes stared blankly into the void one last time, and his lifeless body collapsed next to his murdered friend.
A silhouette now stood over the two corpses and the sleeping child. It was an old man. His short hair was silver-white—not from age, but perhaps from the sciences he practiced—yet he still looked as vigorous and strong as a wolf. Where his right eye should have been, there was a sinister black eyepatch. The dark, high-quality robes he wore were unstained by blood.
"Ahh, what a lucky day I'm having," the man murmured, his voice like the rustling of gravel. "I came to this cursed forest hoping to find a few rare plants and a special creature for my experiments, but to find a treasure like this… This might be the luckiest day of my two lifetimes."
The presence of a powerful and ancient curse, which he had felt since arriving in the forest, had drawn him in this direction. "Poor fools," he thought, glancing at the bodies. "To find a child bearing Lilith's Curse… Unbelievable."
The man bent down and lifted the child into the air with one hand. He began to examine him as a jeweler would a rare gem. "Not even in the old tales was there anyone who carried this curse, and there was almost no information about its existence." A predatory smile spread across his face. "If I can succeed in using and controlling it properly… I can shape this child with my experiments into a perfect vessel for myself. My future new, immortal body…"
Dozens of meters underground, there was a laboratory where neither the laws of man nor nature applied. An unimaginable madness reigned over the place. The air was thick with the acrid smell of chemicals and rotting flesh that burned the nostrils. This stench was mixed with the sharp grating of metal and the desperate moans of people. Inside cells, creatures that looked as if they had been torn from the worst nightmares thrashed against their chains. In the adjacent cells, children of different races stared into the void with dull eyes, the last glimmer of hope within them extinguished.
In one cell, an elf child, his body twisted beyond recognition by experiments, convulsed in pain. In another, a little pixie girl with her wings forcibly torn off, whispered a nonsensical, broken song with silent tears that no one could hear. A dwarf child sitting next to them tried to remain strong, tracing the last runes he could remember onto the stone floor with his finger.
In these dark, cold corridors, the agonized cries of the creatures mingled with the incessant weeping of the children. But the most horrifying sounds came from the operating rooms: the sickening sound of knives cutting through flesh and muscle, and the soul-piercing crunch of runes being carved onto bone… Every corner of this laboratory was a nexus of unimaginable cruelty and unending pain.
Yet, at the heart of all this organized chaos and misery, there was one room that stood apart, distinguished by a sharp, cursed aura. This was the room where the "Cursed Baby," Cassian, was kept. In the very center of the room stood a crystal capsule that rose from floor to ceiling. Inside it was a dense liquid in shades of dark and blood-red, which pulsed slowly like a heartbeat. Suspended in the middle of this fluid, Cassian floated as if in a deathly slumber.
Dr. Aris. He rested his hand on the cold glass of the capsule, admiring his new specimen. A thousand demonic scenarios flowed through his mind about which monsters he would use to shape this pure and powerful vessel.
"First," he whispered to himself, his voice like the hiss of a serpent, "I will start with simple creatures, like slimes, to test his durability." His eyes narrowed with ambition. "Then… yes, then we will place the still-beating heart of the Ancient Chaos Dragon into his chest. This will sow the seed of dark fire within him. After that, the horn of a general I personally ripped from the Demon Realm… he will have a natural affinity for dark magic."
His gaze deepened, as if he were seeing into the future. "And the most magnificent piece… the tainted blood and genetic materials of the last lineage of those noble heroes who once made witches and demons bleed… Using them, he will gain absolute mastery over all elements. Ah, I should also add a pinch of a saint's blessed bones… Thus, Light and dark, chaos and order, life and death… All will become one in this body, intertwined. He will be the key to my ascension to godhood, my perfect and ultimate masterpiece."
The child inside the capsule, unaware of the terrible destiny being written for him, floated gently in the dark liquid, his small body destined to unite the pain and power of two worlds.
As the screams in the laboratory continued to rise in agony, the greatest monster of all stood in silence and hubris, observing his masterpiece.