With one of his tasks for the night done, Loki stepped out of the Ravenclaw common room and made his way back to the Room of Requirements.
Once inside the place, Loki sat down and started sipping on tea as he diverted his thoughts from wandering by reading his notes on magic that he had created based on Rowena's suggestions.
But with everything that had happened today, occasional tremors rocked his focus, not letting him study much of anything until he heard a short buzz emerge from the pocket watch around his waist.
Loki pulled out his pocket watch and became confused.
'I never set up an alarm for one AM in the night…'
'...oh? Could it be?'
Loki's eyes widened as he quickly stepped away from the area and tracked his connection into the astral world through the grey fog he'd left behind to hide the place where he'd started the ritual for pleasing demons.
Loki had kept checking on the location every few days and found that his barriers were indeed being pushed to the limits since Tom had tried multiple ways to escape and even kill himself because he knew whatever Loki had planned for him wasn't going to be much of a paradise at this point.
In fact, after the first few times, Tom managed to 'escape' from Loki in his illusions, Tom realised that each time he would find himself 'missing' Loki before he eventually walked back to Loki to be imprisoned once again.
Although, Tom never realised that those were illusions since Loki had worked very hard to make them as realistic as possible by involving as many 'illusory' spirit threads as possible so that Tom would actually feel 'hints of dangers' through his danger premonition.
It was a naive system that initially had several loopholes that Tom almost always exploited, but the system was never meant to defeat Tom in the first place. It was only meant to delay him until Loki finally arrived and used the Sequence 3 Mentor of Deceit Beyonder characteristic to steal all his memories and intentions of doing such a thing.
After the month of studying spirit body threads from Helga Hufflepuff's crystal and during his job at the Department of Mysteries, Loki had a decent grasp of how he could manipulate them. And so, Loki was deeply tempted to simply make Tom a marionette.
Not like it would be as strong as even an actual Sequence 5 Marionette, or even take less time to execute it for him, since he wasn't as good at 'controlling' the threads that emerged out of other people, yet.
But given Tom's almost mundane state of constant torture, where the only release was Tom losing most of his memories after each time he got caught, Loki could still easily turn him into a marionette.
Yet, Loki remained on the fence about it, firstly because he didn't know what effect it would have on the ritual to contact the Demons, and secondly because Tom was of the Abyss pathway, so being so deeply connected to someone of 'Her' domain wasn't something he was keen on doing, especially when it could lead 'Her' to flip the tables on him instead, after he'd angered the 'Her' last time they 'met'.
Loki's body entered the Astral world and floated directly to the spot that he'd left his mark using the grey fog, stopping right beside Tom, who was cocooned in grey fog.
A stray thought emerged in Loki's mind as he studied the grey fog.
'Can the 'Fate Goddess' also sense this place then?'
Loki frowned when he thought this far.
'No… 'She' shouldn't have such deep control for now…'
Loki shook his head and pushed the thoughts away to focus on the final steps of the ritual that had taken the majority of his time until now.
Slowly but steadily, Loki started to unravel the Grey Fog threaded into the space around the ritual area and pushed it all back through his connection to the castle.
Loki wouldn't have been able to do this normally without being a Sequence 3 himself, but since he was already dismantling the ritual, Loki could freely use the Sequence 3 Beyonder characteristics that had been keeping Tom busy.
And as such, Loki was able to use his Sequence 3 Beyonder characteristics to trick his connection to the castle and strengthen it enough for him to be able to let the grey fog return to the castle instead of 'polluting' the Spirit World.
As Loki carefully unravelled everything, he made sure to observe every single ripple his actions produced since a single action that was not covered up properly could alert almost every Angel and True God that might be interested.
It was a terribly slow process, but Loki managed to hide everything.
Or so he thought.
As soon as Loki's fingers twitched one final time to stop the maddened Tom, who had been forcefully fed the potion of a Sequence 3 Blatherer from acting out and causing a calamity, Loki noticed something strange.
It was a dimming ethereal feeling, as if he were falling asleep, loose and unguarded, but it was also something he'd expected.
Everything around the area suddenly fell into a strange lulling silence. It was almost as if the quiet of the night had settled into the current region of the Spirit World.
Loki almost sighed audibly, but managed to keep it inside his mind.
Almost immediately, a strong gaze passed over Loki's position in the Spirit world as he started to feel an immense need to fall asleep right where he was standing.
Normally, Loki would've forced himself to keep awake, knowing that taking so much as a nap while unguarded inside the Spirit World would have grave consequences in such a situation where someone was clearly attacking him.
But just this once, Loki gave in to the feeling and fell 'asleep'.
Almost as soon as he did, Loki found himself surrounded by a deep darkness that tried working its way up into his mind.
Loki could've tried to stop the probe from entering his mind, but he had already guessed that doing so would've been near impossible without the help of the Grey Fog or the Sefirah Castle directly.
Before long, the gaze on Loki turned into a presence that he could distinctly feel was right in front of him.
But Loki kept his eyes shut, even going as far as to steal his vision so that he couldn't see a thing. Not that he would've since the presence that had manifested around him had the form of pure darkness.
Loki stood limp, as if he were a puppet whose strings were cut.
A bout of madness struck Loki as knowledge about strange things started to fill his mind. Knowledge that Loki did his best to steal, yet the bombardment kept dragging him to insanity as he learnt and unlearned information about the horrors of the world.
In one moment, Loki remembered an entirely new lifetime he had never lived. He was Jack, a beggar on the streets of London, waiting behind theatres, tracking carriages, following them in their shadows before lulling the fair maiden inside and consuming her blood.
In the next moment, Loki forgot everything there was to learn about it.
Next, Loki remembered being a thick whale, drifting endlessly alongside his companions, his friends that had drifted along with him since childhood, his eye candy whom he was about to pursue at the encouragement of his friends, his little brother, who always annoyed him, to help get rid of barnacles stuck under his chin. Everything went swimmingly.
But it all came crashing down one day when their school was targeted by a horror well beyond their comprehension, falling into the trap where he was captured, strung up on hooks, just to be tormented until he vomited before the sweet release of death consumed him.
Then he was a simple boy. A simple boy who could turn into a demon at will..
Then he was a lazy dog, even rain couldn't move it from its spot until finally, when one day its owner…
Then he was a…
Then he was…
Loki's mind was struggling.
Pretending to be asleep while 'letting' the grey fog work to steal and protect his sense of self and identity from being purged by the power of a True God was hell.
Loki didn't know what the being in front of him wanted to do. But he kept at it.
Was it some cruel joke?
An amused being playing with a toy, perhaps?
Maybe it was to see how soon he would break?
Maybe it was to see if he would break at all.
Loki's continuously mutating body kept dissolving itself into darkness before the darkness born out of an unknowable void reformed into him.
It made him look distinctly like an error in existence itself, making him become an amalgamation of holes into the void mixed with flesh and blood.
Anyone looking at such a 'creature' would definitely be marveled by the resilience and commitment to sanity it showed while being tortured without release.
Loki, meanwhile, felt no such thing.
All he felt was pain. Endless pain.
Just as Loki felt his head was about to explode because of everything happening inside him, a thundering voice rolled out of the void of darkness around him.
It was as if the darkness itself had spoken.
"Tell me…boy…do you wish to be revived when you face death after 'He' revives in you?"