CHAPTER 50: CHAPTER: 50 A NIGHTMARE, ONE I WISH I COULD ERASE.

I had a nightmare, one I wish I could erase.

Vivian hung upside down, unable to speak, his tongue long since taken.

For months, two, perhaps three, he had endured the relentless cruelty of that bastard, Kafrik.

Each visit brought a new method of torment, each more inventive and horrifying than the last.

Now, after endless days of agony, there was nothing left on his body to cut or pierce.

It was a miracle he still lived.

But why? Did he truly cling to life so desperately?

No, if anything, he longed for death’s release.

Yet Kafrik, hateful to the core, denied him even that mercy.

The monster had bound Vivian to an artifact, forcing his body to survive only to suffer again and again.

In these past few months, Vivian’s suffering had gone beyond imagination.

His fingers and tongue had been severed, his eyes gouged out, his skin flayed, and the wounds rubbed with salt by Kafrik’s cruel hands.

Once, Vivian had wanted nothing but death’s mercy, an end to this nightmare.

But that was yesterday.

Now, he had a reason to live. Even if it meant enduring a thousand more tortures, he would survive.

He had begged for death every day, yet now he clung to life.

Why? Had he found hope? Could he possibly recover from all that had been done to him?

No. None of those things.

The reason was simple.

’I will pay you back, Kafrik.’

Vivian no longer wanted release. He wanted revenge.

It wasn’t for himself, his suffering had already stripped him of that desire. He sought vengeance for someone else.

For Charlotte.

For two days, Vivian lay in a deep coma. Within that darkness, he believed he was finally dead. But fate had other plans.

When awareness returned, he found that he could see again.

What he saw was a boundless white void, an endless expanse where nothing existed but light. Wherever he turned, there was only white.

No shadow, no sound, no end.

At first, he thought it was a dream, or perhaps the afterlife.

It was calm, almost peaceful. But that peace didn’t last. The dream soured into something far more terrifying.

A nightmare that wouldn’t let him wake.

A nightmare that wouldn’t let him speak.

A nightmare that forced him to watch.

And soon he realized, it was far worse than the two months of torture he had endured in the mortal world.

It wasn’t truly a nightmare at first. He couldn’t move or speak, but that didn’t matter.

Compared to what he had endured, an eternity in this silent void would have been a blessing, a thousand times better than the torture he had known.

In this endless whiteness, Vivian wandered without feeling hunger, pain, or exhaustion.

For a while, he thought he had found heaven. After all, anyone who had tasted his kind of agony would have called this peace divine.

But heaven, it seemed, had teeth.

The void shifted, and within its pale light appeared a figure, Charlotte.

At first, he thought it was a dream of mercy.

She looked different, paler, her eyes hollowed by grief.

He told himself she was simply mourning, that in time she would heal, that she would learn to live again.

But the illusion twisted into something cruel. The peace shattered as he watched her sink deeper into despair.

And as he stood helpless, bound to silence, she drew a dagger from her side.

He froze at the sight of the dagger. Panic surged through him as he drew a sharp, anxious breath and lunged forward, desperate to stop her.

But his hands passed straight through her, as if he were nothing more than an illusion.

He stumbled, falling to his knees in despair. His Charlotte, the woman whose smile he had longed to see just once more, was about to take her own life before his eyes.

But then, in the depths of her despair, he saw something else flicker within her, a cold, unwavering resolve.

It didn’t matter. Resolve or not, he couldn’t stand by.

He would have gladly endured another lifetime of Kafrik’s torture rather than watch her shed even a single drop of blood.

He reached for her again and again, screaming soundless pleas.

Tears streamed down his face as he mouthed words his body could no longer form.

’Please, Charlotte... don’t do this. Don’t make me watch you suffer too.’

But no sound came. Only silence.

And then, with trembling hands and unyielding eyes, Charlotte began to cut herself, slowly, deliberately, while he watched, powerless, trapped in the white void that refused to let him look away.

He watched with tear-filled eyes as Charlotte wounded herself again and again.

He begged, he wept, he pleaded for her to stop, but his cries dissolved into the emptiness. She didn’t hear him. She just kept going.

Time lost all meaning. Cut after cut, the pain deepened until there was no place left on her body unscarred.

Then, with trembling hands, she reached into her mouth and pulled at her tongue.

A faint smile touched her blood-stained lips, a smile filled with aching longing.

Vivian tried to shut his eyes, to block the sight, but the merciless void refused to let him look away.

His lids wouldn’t close. His tears fell into nothing.

’Please, Charlotte... stop. His silent voice echoed in his mind. Are you punishing me too? Have I sinned so deeply that even you wish me to watch this?

And then she whispered, her voice calm and strange, "So this is the pain you’ve been feeling, huh?"

Her eyes held no fear, no pain, only fierce resolve, as if her suffering carried some higher purpose.

She lifted the dagger toward her tongue, and in that final instant, her gaze met his, the same spot where Vivian knelt, begging for her to stop.

From the very first moment he saw her in the void, Vivian had known, somehow, deep within his soul, that this was truly Charlotte.

No illusion could ever carry the warmth of her presence, nor the ache of her sorrow.

And now, as he watched her wounds mirror his own, he was certain of it.

She lifted her trembling face toward him and whispered softly, "Endure a little longer... everything will be okay, my love."

Then she smiled, the same smile he had longed to see through all his torment.

But now it was streaked with blood, framed by pain. Whether she could truly see him or not, he didn’t know.

Yet her eyes seemed to find him, and she spoke again, her voice barely more than breath.

"I love you... for eternity."

She paused, gathering what little life remained, and added, "Thank you... for loving someone like me."

Those were her final words, words that mirrored his,

words that held deep meaning,

words that transcended time,

words that described their love,

words that crossed the line between life and death,

words meant for their new beginning after the end.

And with those words as her last, she smiled.

With the same calm, resolute gaze, Charlotte raised the dagger.

There was no hesitation, no cry of pain, only silence, as she cut away her tongue.

And Vivian, unable to close his eyes or reach her, felt his world shatter once more.

He let out a scream, raw, broken, filled with everything he had left.

"Charlotte!"

For the first time since his suffering began, his voice wasn’t silenced.

It ripped through the void, trembling with grief so deep it seemed to shake the very air around him.

But before he could take another breath, the white world shattered like glass.

The light collapsed inward, dragging him down, back into darkness, back into flesh.

When his senses returned, he was once again hanging upside down in the cold, stinking air of his prison cell.

Chains dug into his ankles. Blood rushed to his head. The familiar agony welcomed him back like an old friend.

When sensation returned, Vivian’s first thought roared like a verdict.

’Kafrik — if I somehow survive this, I swear on my mother’s name I will kill every one of your kin before your eyes, and I will make you watch as I torture them.’

The oath bowed in his mind like a prayer and a curse rolled into one. No matter what it took, he would avenge Charlotte.

Tears streamed unbidden down his face, each drop tracing the map of horrors he had endured.

Every mutilation, every salt-rubbed wound, none compared to the pain he had suffered in those two days.

In that endless white void, every moment replayed with agonizing clarity. He remembered it all, every detail carved into his bones.

"I’m sorry, Charlotte," he sobbed to the empty cell. "Because of someone like me, you suffered."

He cried until there was nothing left but a hard, gleaming core of hatred.

It was a hatred unlike any other, precise, patient, and entirely aimed at Kafrik.

As his hatred coalesced into something cold and hungry, footsteps echoed down the corridor, slow, deliberate, the kind that belong to a man who enjoys the sound of fear.

Vivian knew them before he saw the door move.

Each step fed his fury until it felt like a living thing inside his chest, coiling and stretching, ready to strike.

The iron door sighed open with a harsh, protesting creak.

The sound made his heart beat harder, not with hope but with a sharper hatred.

A voice slid through the gap, soft, mocking, as casual as a man commenting on the weather. "Were you crying? How pathetic."