Chapter 59: 46.4 - "Monster"
That horrific incident, that period of unimaginable chaos, lasted nearly a century, its tendrils reaching far beyond the ravaged borders of Ains Ein Doa.
The unprecedented chaos shook the world to its very foundations, leaving an indelible scar on the collective consciousness of all races, a deep, festering wound that refused to heal. Civilizations crumbled, societies fractured, and the very definition of "monster" shifted, twisting into something far more insidious.
What truly happened at the time was a testament to both hubris and devastating naiveté. Teenagers of the demon race, driven by a misguided, desperate attempt to bridge the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between their kind and humanity, had ingested a potion called Katharsis.
This potion, tragically, horrifyingly, proved to be a catalyst for unspeakable horrors, unleashing a nightmare upon the world. It was created by one of their own, a brilliant but ultimately deluded alchemist, driven by the noble, yet ultimately disastrous, intention to help them assimilate with humans.
From socializing to reproduction, to engaging in physical intimacy like humans, the potion was meticulously designed to facilitate their integration into human society.
It was a naive social experiment, painstakingly based on prolonged and meticulous observation of human and elf behavior, and for a brief, terrifying period, the news spread like wildfire, a deceptive beacon of hope: Katharsis was declared a resounding success.
After that initial, false dawn, they hoped for a positive response from the wider world. They yearned for acceptance, for a chance to shed the unbearable burden of their monstrous reputation, to finally be seen as something other than creatures of pure malevolence. But they were wrong. Terribly, tragically wrong.
Instead of the acceptance they craved, they were condemned even more fiercely, their desperate, flawed attempt at connection misinterpreted and twisted into further, undeniable proof of their inherent evil, their unredeemable nature.
Why? Because Katharsis wasn’t a solution. It was a trigger. Whether due to a volatile, unforeseen chemical reaction within their unique demon physiology, a profound, deeply buried mental instability unearthed and unleashed by the potion, or simply the world’s inherent, unyielding refusal to accept difference, the result was an unmitigated, all-consuming tragedy.
And the oppression of the demon race, far from abating, far from showing any sign of mercy, only intensified, cementing their status as pariahs, as creatures to be eternally feared and relentlessly hunted, their existence a constant threat.
K’vkavsha, the small, unassuming border town, became the brutal, devastating proof of this catastrophic failure. It was obliterated overnight, a silent, smoldering testament to the potion’s terrifying and destructive effects.
Blood, fire, screams—Dellaetrix saw it all with his own eyes, every agonizing detail etched into his very memory with agonizing, unyielding clarity. The smells of burning flesh and timber, the chilling cries of the dying, the grotesque tableau of dismembered bodies—all became a permanent fixture in his mind, a constant torment.
And from that day on, he never forgave the demon race. His hatred, a cold, unyielding flame, consumed him utterly, burning away any semblance of warmth or compassion he once possessed. It became his guiding principle, his reason for being.
Amidst the ashes of K’vkavsha and the widespread condemnation, a chilling anomaly emerged. One of those demon children, one of the primary architects of the K’vkavsha massacre, instead of being executed like the others, instead of facing the swift justice that befell so many of her kind, was inexplicably adopted by a foreign kingdom.
Her true name? Unknown, lost to the shifting sands of time and deliberate obfuscation, erased from official records, a ghost from a horrifying past.
Yet nowadays, she has been widely known as Rin Nanagami, the royal assistant of Yamato-Minzoku—someone who commands immense influence, someone who can speak on behalf of a nation, and perhaps, more terrifyingly, on behalf of a history that has been meticulously manipulated, rewritten to suit the agenda of the powerful, to bury inconvenient truths.
She’s still alive, a chillingly pristine presence, her very existence a silent, unsettling testament to the past, a living embodiment of the cover-up. Well-dressed, impeccably polite, always smiling in her public speeches, her public persona meticulously crafted to inspire trust and admiration, to project an image of unimpeachable benevolence.
But I know. Because I witnessed it, not with my physical eyes, but with a deeper, more terrifying sense. Of course—thanks to Alchemistry and my extraordinarily keen inner hearing, a peculiar gift and a terrible curse that allows me to perceive truths hidden from ordinary senses, to hear the whispers beneath the surface noise. That’s why I can still hear it—the whisper that kills in silence, the truth that resonates beneath the polished veneer of Rin Nanagami’s carefully constructed facade.
Not long after the K’vkavsha tragedy, another figure, shrouded in mystery and manipulation, played a crucial, insidious role in the unfolding narrative.
Clarissa.
She became the handler, the rebrewer of Katharsis, perfecting its volatile formula, and the architect of new faces for hideous monsters, giving them the ultimate disguise. Monsters that were once universally feared and hunted down one by one, their grotesque appearances a damning, undeniable sentence, a visible mark of their inherent evil.
These monsters—creatures long feared for their terrifying visages, their forms twisted into a grotesque parody of life—actually possessed angelic traits beneath their horrifying exteriors, a cruel, bitter irony hidden behind their terrifying faces.
Clarissa, with her warped vision and twisted genius, saw the potential hidden behind the ugliness, the dormant beauty that could be weaponized. She turned monsters into humans, one by one, a macabre assembly line of transformation, a perversion of creation itself. They were given new names. New identities.
One of them: Geflügel—a surname now chillingly recognized across international bureaucracies, or more precisely, in the seemingly innocuous world of commerce and aviation, a chilling reminder of how deeply these hidden creatures have infiltrated the very systems of our world, weaving themselves into the fabric of human society.
The monsters, now cloaked in human bodies, began creeping into the system, their presence a subtle, insidious poison spreading through the veins of civilization.
But not all of them wanted to change, to shed their true forms.
Some chose solitude, preferring the quiet, desolate isolation of their true, monstrous selves, shunning the human world entirely.
Others hid among society, blending in with terrifying precision, their monstrous natures simmering just beneath a thin, fragile veneer of normalcy, always on the verge of eruption.
A few, perhaps the most cunning, the most ambitious, signed contracts with other races, agreements so complex, so deeply entwined with ancient magic and forgotten lore, that not even Kairi, with all her sharp intellect and prodigious knowledge, would understand their true implications, the profound, inescapable consequences of such a bond.
And ever since that day—the tragedy of K’vkavsha, the brutal, blood-soaked turning point—nothing was the same again.
The King of Ains Ein Doa, consumed by a righteous fury, a volcanic eruption of rage, erupted in a violent display of power, then took extreme and unusual measures, forever altering the course of his kingdom.
A new law was passed, a chilling decree that would forever alter the fabric of society, dictating the most intimate aspects of life: all marriages had to be arranged by the state.
Not for love, not for companionship, not for the sacred bonds of family, but for control. To ensure no demon race, no hidden monster, could infiltrate through biological relations, through the sacred bonds of family, through the very bloodlines of humanity.
To enforce this draconian law, a magical circle named the Circle of Inevitability was created—a deadly trial that could burn disguised demons alive, exposing their true forms in a searing, agonizing inferno of magic.
This circle was proposed and designed directly by the founders of the Ma’alas religion—the most influential religion in Ains Ein Doa, which has grown increasingly like a policing force lately, its holy tenets twisted into instruments of surveillance and oppression, its spiritual guidance replaced by an iron fist.
Those who disobeyed?
There was no mercy for them.
The consequences were brutal, absolute. From torture to slavery, from exile to complete erasure from family records, as if they had never existed. Even silent death, in countries far crueler and more totalitarian than Ains Ein Doa, where dissent was met with swift, brutal finality.
One mistake... one misguided love... and you could vanish without a trace, your existence expunged as if you had never been, a mere whisper forgotten by time. All because of one pervasive, suffocating thing: fear. The overwhelming, paralyzing fear of the other, the monster hidden beneath the skin, the enemy within.
And now, in the midst of it all, in this tangled, insidious web of historical trauma, political intrigue, and hidden monsters... Kairi is already bound by contract.
To whom?
I know the answer, the terrifying truth that threatens to shatter her world, and mine, into irreparable fragments.
But still, I cannot bring myself to say it.
The words lodge in my throat, a suffocating knot of dread and unspoken prophecy, a desperate silence.
How can I tell her that her contract, her very future, is entwined with the very monsters she has been taught to fear, the very creatures that brought ruin to so many?
And what then?
What comes after the truth is revealed, after the dam finally breaks?
The answers are as terrifying as the secret itself, a void of uncertainty stretching out before us.
