Void's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Void walked for two days before he found anyone. The forest thinned into farmland, then a road, then a village too small to have a name. He kept moving. The hunger followed him like a second shadow, patient and wrong. He needed an anchor, but asking meant explaining what he was. The mansion appeared at dawn, glass towers rising from a pool of red snow. Blood trails led from the door in bare footprints, frozen mid-stride. Void stopped at the edge of the clearing. Someone lived here who wasn't afraid of being seen. He approached the entrance and knocked once. The door opened before his knuckles left the wood. Mary stood in the doorway holding a knife made of black glass. Void patterns swirled in the blade like smoke trapped under ice. She looked at him the way someone looks at a package they've been waiting for. "You're here for the binding," she said. Not a question. She stepped aside to let him in. "I'll be your anchor. But you need to understand the price first." Void followed her inside. The walls were mirrors, and in each one he saw himself standing alone in the pentagram he'd drawn three days ago. "How do you know what I need?" he asked. Mary set the knife on a table between them. "Because I know what you are. And binding your hunger to someone means they feel it too. Every time it rises, I'll know. Every time you push it down, I'll feel the weight." She met his eyes. "You came here wanting control. But control means letting someone else see what you're trying to hide. That's the price. Do you still want it?" Void looked at the knife, then at his reflection in the mirror wall. Mary already knew his nature. She'd known before he arrived. The hunger stirred in his chest, and for the first time, someone else was offering to carry part of it. Not to take it away. To witness it. He picked up the blade. "Yes," he said. "I still want it." Mary smiled, cold and certain. "Then we start tonight."