Mother oni's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The child stood at the window and watched the stranger disappear into the trees. Outside, near the base of the lab, stood a row of painted portraits propped against the trunk. Each one showed their mother in a different form—green-skinned with horns, wrapped in flame-colored robes, crowned with ice. The child had never seen them before. The stranger must have placed them there while waiting. While their mother was dying inside. The child ran outside, the map still pressed against their chest. They knelt before the portraits, searching each painted face for answers. In one, their mother held up her scarred arm to the viewer, displaying it like a warning. In another, she stood beside a figure whose face had been scratched away with something sharp. The child touched the damaged canvas. Someone else had been there. Someone their mother had traveled with. A glint of metal caught their eye between two portraits. The child reached down and pulled out a knife with an ornate handle, its blade marked with the same purple shimmer as their mother's scar. They turned it over in their hands. Engraved on the handle were initials—not their mother's. The stranger had left it behind deliberately, like bait. Like proof they'd return. The child looked back at the lab where their mother's body lay cooling. Then at the portraits showing worlds their mother had walked through. Then at the knife that proved she hadn't walked through them alone. The stranger knew things the map couldn't show. And the child had just sent them away. They gripped the knife tight and made a choice—when the stranger came back, and they would come back, the child would be ready to listen. But the map would stay hidden until they heard the whole truth.