Chapter Five: The Unmasking of Lena, The Weight of Sin
Urca's attention was split. His face, the Mask of the devoted husband, was turned toward the door, yet his focus remained entirely on the woman in the bed. Kelna, pale but resolute, was already adjusting to the terrifying complexity of her new reality. Her hand tightened over the sheets, concealing the legs that had miraculously healed. She was ready to play the role of the devoted crippled wife to protect him.
He offered her a swift, warm smile—the final, perfect ingredient in the lie—and walked to the door, opening it just a crack to block the maids' view. "She's resting. The long night has worn her out," he said, pitching his voice low enough to suggest intimacy and exhaustion making the maids blush a little. He gave his wife one last, reassuring nod, a silent affirmation of their terrible, binding secret.
Then, he slipped out, leaving the domestic lie to settle and solidify as the maids went in to do their job.
The moment he was in the corridor, the Mask fell away. His human memories—the rage, the betrayal of his death—were submerged beneath the cold clarity of the Totem's command: Survive. Gather. Feed. He was no longer a grieving boy; he was a predator.
His feet carried him in an unnaturally smooth, silent glide toward the servants' wing. His suspicions about the maid, Lena, had been persistent. When he first arrived, she hadn't looked at him with the social disdain of the other staff; she had looked at him with a veteran's assessment, quickly calculating his potential threat level. A housemaid does not possess that instinct.
He moved with complete stealth, aided by the subtle, power-infused shroud of Origin, which naturally bent light and sound away from him. He located Lena's private bathroom in the back wing and phased through the solid door, a quiet entry into a space still heavy with steam and the scent of soap. He positioned himself perfectly in the deepest shadow, a silent, unseen sentinel.
Lena emerged from her bath, wrapped only in a thin towel. Her movements were unnervingly controlled. She didn't merely walk; she flowed. Even in the vulnerability of undressing, she was acutely aware of the space around her. Urca watched her do her thing, calmly waiting for a reaction.
When she failed to react, he pushed harder, letting more of his presence bleed out.
Still nothing.
After a brief adjustment, he abandoned restraint entirely and allowed a flicker of his essence to brush against hers. It confirmed his suspicion: a deep, hidden reservoir of practiced skill, concealed beneath the simple cloth of a servant's uniform. She was a maid, yes, but not a normal one.
He had observed enough. It was time. Urca intentionally spiked his presence through his aura—a spike of cold, non-human air, the sharp chill, almost metallic scent of ozone and iron that always accompanied the Totem's influence.
The reaction was instantaneous. Lena stiffened, the towel dropping to the floor unnoticed. In less than a second, her body coiled, low and tight, hands instinctively moving to a combat-ready position. Her eyes, sharp and predatory, scanned the shadows.
"Who's there?" she hissed, her voice stripped of all servile quality, hardened by training.
Urca smirked and stepped into the light. "The man you've been watching," he said, his voice flat.
Lena's shock was a chilling thing; it was the shock of an experienced operative whose cover has been flawlessly compromised. She tried to cling to the lie. "Lord Urca? I… I don't understand. What are you doing in the staff quarters?" At that moment she didn't realize how ridiculous she sounded. Seeing someone step out of thin air and offering only a stammer. Heck, if she had screamed he could have closed one eye and blamed it all on intuition.
"Lying is tiresome, Lena," Urca said, allowing a cold smile to touch his lips. He raised his hand. Origin manifested not as a chain or a blade, but as a pure tear in reality—a shimmering, vertical rent that smelled of damp stone and stale earth, a door to his secret world. "I'm taking you somewhere you can tell the truth."
He moved too fast for her to fight, seizing her arm and dragging her through the dimensional seam.
Lena landed hard on the floor of the Cult Domain, the cold, raw stone scraping her bare skin. She scrambled backward, her eyes wide with a horror that transcended physical fear.
The cavern was vast, lightless except for a strange, internal glow emanating from Urca and the air itself. Rough-hewn chairs sat around a massive table in the center, clearly placed by a power that scorned human comfort. But it was the far wall that captured her terror. A huge, crude Throne rested against a sheer rock face that did not merely feel cold, but hungry. This rock wall was the subtle, low-level manifestation of the Prison, the reservoir of Elias's consumed soul, and it radiated a palpable, baleful aura that spoke of eternal dread.
Lena, now fully aware of the magnitude of her capture, tried to summon the hidden energy she had spent years cultivating. She was an agent of a different, lesser order of the night, and she tried to flee, to attack.
"Don't bother." Urca's voice, now echoing in the cavern, was absolute. He lifted a hand, and her nascent power, her very will to resist, was instantly arrested. For a moment she even forgot how to breathe or think. "You're in my domain now. This place devours intent. You could spend a lifetime here trying to summon a simple blade, and you would only summon dust. If I will it."
He walked slowly toward her, his silhouette framed against the deep void of the Prison. "I need a simple answer. What are you?"
Lena huddled, silent, her professional training battling the primal terror. She wouldn't break easily.
"No matter," Urca sighed, the sound holding a strange mixture of profound boredom and terrifying finality. He knelt and placed two fingers lightly on her forehead. The contact was ice-cold.
She tried to summon her hidden energy again. Nothing answered. Not even a spark. Her body felt like a puppet with its strings cut. Urca only tilted his head. "See?" He then leaned closer, voice calm as scripture. "Mastery is not yours to claim. It is mine to allow."
He cast the illusion. Origin, his soul-forged tool, amplified his influence over her mind. The exterior world ceased to exist. Inside her consciousness, time fractured. A single, fleeting moment of the real world became an agonizing, drawn-out year of experience.
Lena's conscious mind was thrown into an inescapable cycle of torment. The physical pain was secondary to the psychological degradation. She was tortured not just by fire and ice, but by betrayal from trusted allies, by the destruction of her own beliefs, and the slow, grinding horror of complete, utter abandonment. She experienced agonizing deaths—by flaying, by drowning in absolute darkness, by having her memories slowly scoured away—only to be instantly reborn into the next, fresh form of suffering. She lived a thousand years of despair, died hundreds of brutal deaths, all within a matter of seconds.
When Urca retracted his fingers, Lena's mind was an empty, shattering shell. She was silent, trembling, her eyes wide and staring, reflecting the psychological hell she had just endured.
Urca was not finished. He needed an obedient, capable servant, not a catatonic mess. With a second surge of cold energy, he reached into her mind and instantly undid the raw emotional trauma. The pain, the crushing despair, the terror—it all vanished. But the perfect, crystal-clear memory of every moment of that year remained. She knew the reality of his power in a way no spoken threat could convey.
Lena blinked, now focused entirely on him. She was no longer shaking, but her eyes were etched with an understanding that transcended mere fear; it was dread.
Urca leaned in, his cold, charming smile returning, utterly incongruous with the power he had just displayed.
"The greatest error is to believe that the human will is absolute," he said, his voice soft, almost philosophical. "The will is not absolute. It is only fuel. I have drained yours, and replaced it with a single truth: I am your only path of escape."
He paused, letting the crushing weight of that memory settle over her.
"Now, let's try this again." He paused, the cavern swallowing the sound of her shallow breathing. Then, in that silence, Urca asked: "What are you?"