It had trapped him in his most vulnerable memory. And now it held him with the intention of dragging him to the kingdom of the dead.
The claws that held him were not just monstrous extremities. They were long fingers, articulated, covered with scales that seemed to have grown over poorly closed wounds.
"Atom... Come... Come with us..."
The voice did not imitate the dead. It appropriated them, as if it had stolen their tones, their pauses, their most intimate inflections.
Above the claws, bulbous eyes protruded from the flesh like conscious tumors, and open mouths with sharp teeth unfolded at impossible angles, showing an aggressiveness that needed no words.
Around him, dozens of alaplagas formed a wall of deformed bodies, each one with a distinct silhouette, each one with a face that seemed to have been torn from someone who once had a name.
"Uwuaaaa!"
Atom opened his eyes with an expression that could not hide the panic. The pupils contracted, the tears descended without control, and his face tensed as if fear had taken control of every muscle.
He did not cry for the danger. He cried for the betrayal of his own mind, for having believed, even for a second, that his mother, his father and Aurore were there, waiting for him, calling him, offering him a comfort that did not exist.
"Uwaaa!"
The shot cut the air with a violence that returned Atom to the present. The claws that held him exploded in front of his eyes, and fragments of flesh and scales scattered like ash.
His body fell to the ground, struck by gravity and pain, and the rough earth became his only support. His back filled with pain.
His right arm did not respond. The ground was rough, but no more than the sensation of having been deceived by his own heart.
"The idea that alaplagas transport souls is superstition. They invade the mind, manipulate the memories, adopt the forms of the dead. Thus they attract the living. Thus they get flesh."
Atom turned his head with difficulty. The creatures flew over him in circles, as if they waited for a signal that would not come.
Mavis remained standing among them, without showing tension or urgency. In her left arm she held a revolver, and the smoke that still came from the barrel floated in the air as witness to her intervention.
"Gyaaa!"
The growls intensified, but the alaplagas did not descend. They remained in movement, as if they recognized something they could not face.
"Do you know why they do not approach Because what I am provokes them fear."
Mavis advanced. She did not hurry her step. She stopped in front of Atom, and in her right hand she held a crimson gem whose brightness seemed to beat with life of its own.
"If you want to change your destiny, you will need this gem. Do you desire it? Sell yourself to me and it will be yours."
Atom observed her without blinking.
Not for the beauty of the gem, but for what it represented. It was not a stone. It was a chain. To obtain it, he had to surrender himself to a woman who offered no affection, only contracts. He would not accept it. Not after everything he had lived.
He did not know the power of the gem, its origin, its function. He did not know if it could alter his destiny, nor what consequences it would bring. But none of that mattered.
He was not willing to surrender the freedom he had conquered with effort, with pain, with years of silence and resistance.
He knew the meaning of slavery. He had lived it. He had seen it in his mother.
The proposal of Mavis, the crimson gem, the price of his freedom... everything vanished for an instant. His body remained on the ground, numb, but his mind was no longer there.
The memory enveloped him without warning, like a wave that respected no borders.
Vanessa had been sold. Not out of necessity. Not by mistake. But by cruelty. Percy, her master, had decided that his mother was worth a few gold coins.
It did not matter how much time passed. It did not matter how many times he tried to bury it. It remained there, intact, waiting for the moment to return.
His mother, his refuge, his only source of tenderness in that hostile world, had been delivered to that despicable commoner who had humiliated them. In the end, his threats were fulfilled.
Cruelty had triumphed without resistance.
[Mommy! Mommy!]
Atom held Aurore in his arms. The little one moved with urgency, her hands extended toward the carriage that moved away with Vanessa in its interior. The tears descended down her cheeks like rivers that found no course.
Each tear of Aurore became a dose of poison that infiltrated into the soul of Atom. There existed no antidote. The agony enveloped him like a prison without exit.
Damnation...
Reality struck him with the force of an enraged bull. There was no escape. There existed no solution that could reverse the inevitable.
The circumstances remained unalterable, no matter how desperately he sought an exit.
He was trapped. Like an ant before a giant. Reality was that giant that crushed him again and again, without compassion.
Atom clenched his teeth with such force that a buzzing invaded his ears.
The rage, the anguish, the impotence and the pain mixed in his chest like boiling lava as he remembered the words that Vanessa had whispered to him before departing.
[Atom, now you are the eldest. If you want to protect your sister... you must never cry in front of her.]
Atom shuddered.
He had seen the tears slide down the face of his mother like the sap that sprouted from the open wound in the trunk of a tree.
The anguish in her expression mixed with a silent guilt that reflected his own.
He tried to be strong. He tried not to cry. He tried to ignore the chaos that unleashed in his interior. He tried with all his forces not to collapse in front of Aurore.
But he did not succeed.
The tears clouded his vision while he observed the person he loved most move away forever.