All the memories she formed with her mother—their childish games of snatch-away, their trips to her favorite diner, all of it would be gone forever. The grief she'd felt earlier boiled into anger. Quickdrawing her bloodhound dagger, she slashed at Maya's form only for it to evaporate into mist.

  "There's that feisty attitude I'm familiar with." Maya taunted, her voice now omnidirectional.

  Fuyumi stood to her feet, Maya's words marinating. She'd mentioned she could erase memories. If that was the case, she wasn't just seeing illusions, Maya was prying into her very mind.

  "It would seem I was right about you. But your trauma runs deeper than any of my other patients. This will take some time so you might experience slight...discomfort," her voice carried a trace of malice.

  Suddenly, a different environment materialized around Fuyumi. Burning houses descended from the black sky, aligning themselves into a former neighborhood. Bricks slid under her feet, the lurching motion causing a jolt of nausea as the bricks arranged themselves and snapped into place to form a road.

  "Get out of my head," Fuyumi demanded futilely.

  "And why would I do that..." Maya's form materialized down the road, making her casual approach.

  Fuyumi infused her dagger and fired a crescent projectile towards her. However, upon impact, it erupted into a red mist that obscured her vision. Behind her, through the mist Maya emerged, placing a bony hand on Fuyumi's shoulder.

  "...when you're in desperate need of my help?" Her distorted voice whispered chillingly into her ear, her twisted, blackened fingernails digging into her skin.

  Flipping her dagger, she thrust it into the witch's stomach only for her blade to disintegrate into ash upon making contact. Stumbling back from surprise, she stared at her dagger as the warm wind carried its flakey remains away.

  Looking up at Maya, her scarlet eyes pierced through the slits in her unkempt hair that masked her face. The red oozed from Maya's irises as Fuyumi stumbled back in horror. The red substance coated the witch's body, transforming her into a grotesque monstrosity standing on its hind legs.

  Tendrils sprouted from its back as it let out a growl, its look and demeanor strikingly similar to that of a bloodhound. Rage flared within Fuyumi upon laying eyes on the beast as she drew her second dagger.

  It launched its tendrils towards her as she easily evaded its attempts to impale her. Her body reacted accordingly to its telegraphed onslaught as she dodged through its strikes while weaving in slashes to dismember its tendrils. Thanks to her experience fighting one before, it was surprisingly simple to close the distance and drive her blade into its chest.

  That's when she realized this was a mere cheap imitation of the vicious beast she'd faced before. She tried prying her blade out but couldn't. Instead, the red substance that made up the beast whipped around her wrists, binding them before extending out towards the rest of her body.

  The manifestation melted into a puddle of crimson below her, forming a pond of blood that bore resemblance to an eye from a birdseye view. Her restraints tightened in response to her desperate struggle to free herself, filling her with overwhelming fear as she was dragged under.

  She squirmed helplessly, her cries muffled as she sunk into the ground, plunging her into an endless scarlet void. Her heart dropped as she descended in a freefall through branching streams of pulsating light that formed an interconnected network of what looked to be neurons stretching into infinity.

  "The human psyche is such a fascinating study," Maya's voice boomed within the scarlet void, her words dripping with manic infatuation. "It builds resilience through repeated exposure to hardships. Yet, fragile enough to shatter after just one bad day."

  Just when she thought she was falling into oblivion, Fuyumi smashed into a vast pane of glass with an ear-splitting crash, flinging glimmering shards every which way. Finally, she slammed onto a solid surface, knocking the wind out of her as she desperately gasped for air. As she struggled to her feet, the falling glass shards began to stab the ground around her, trapping her within a cage of reflections.

  The shards then flashed with clear images of Fuyumi's past, her family, and friends.

  "I'm not only doing this for your benefit. But for the benefit of those around you." Maya continued as Fuyumi panned her gaze to see the various events that happened in her life.

  Looking around, she then spotted an image in a shard that stood out to her. Instead of portraying a memory, this glass shard showed a distorted reflection of herself. She cautiously made her way over to get a closer look, her warped image mirroring her every move.

  "Trauma, if left untreated, can seize control, but do you know what happens when we allow it to dictate our lives?" The witch's voice echoed throughout the field of human-sized shards. "Our characters twist into something unrecognizable."

  A sickly pale hand burst from the glass shard, sending Fuyumi stumbling back in terror. The hand grabbed the edge of the shard, pulling itself out of its confinement with a pained guttural howl that quaked Fuyumi's bones.

  Its gleaming obsidian eyes sat askew on its mangled face and thin strands of silver hair drooped from its bare scalp past where its ears should've been. Stepping out of the shard, its hunched posture cast a shadow over its tall skeletal figure, its haunting gaze locking Fuyumi in a fear-stricken state.

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  "Trauma breeds anger. Anger breeds resentment. And resentment breeds monsters." The disembodied witch continued her monologue.

  The creature lunged forward, outstretching its spindly fingers towards her. Her body instinctively jerked to the side, narrowly avoiding its grasp. Reaching for her weapon, she found her sheathes empty.

  With no choice, she was left dodging its attempts to grab her. The creature was surprisingly nimble, its fluid movements only possible through experience. Their scuffle led them through the field of memory fragments, the creature shattering each and everyone that stood in its path.

  Fuyumi found an opening as it overextended itself, leaping into the air to perform a roundhouse kick to its head. However, unexpectedly, its arm bent at an impossible angle, its hand intercepting her kick.

  She tried breaking free but it was futile as its grip only tightened. Pulling her closer, its fragmented bones crunching from its flexing rotted muscles, it yanked her by the head. Her trembling eyes were forced to stare as the creature's mouth swung open far wider than humanly possible.

  Consuming her whole, she was thrust into a black void.

  "An unhinged mind can steer us down into the abyss." The witch materialized in the air, hovering as if she were a deity.

  "You sure like to run your mouth," Fuyumi hissed, masking her terror behind bravado.

  With the flick of Maya's wrist, she conjured a new domain. A scarlet eye spiraled into existence above the two, painting the sky a deep red. Hundreds of tombstones erupted from the ground as thick fog spilled over the rocky terrain. Maya's gleaming red eyes scanned the area until they landed on something behind Fuyumi.

  "There it is," she said with a satisfied smile.

  Confused, Fuyumi turned to find a familiar cube-shaped memorial. Hundreds of names were still etched into its surface but one name stood out, highlighted in a luminous glow: Hana.

  Fuyumi snapped her head back to the witch who was now waving her hands in preparation for a spell. Tendrils of red stretched from the eye above them, slithering around the memorial. As the tendrils began to tighten, strangling the structure, Fuyumi winced in response.

  She clutched her forehead as a blinding pain stabbed at her head. Groaning in agony, she glanced at the tendrils. Having no other options, she staggered towards the memorial. Without her daggers, she couldn't do much but she still held onto the glimmer of hope that she could stop the witch's sadistic scheme.

  "Oh no you don't," Maya flicked her wrist causing the field of tombstones to tremble, shifting to a shade of blood red.

  Rotted hands exploded from the soil, pulling their deteriorating bodies up from the earth. Hundreds of decomposing creatures surfaced, their sunken eyes locking onto Fuyumi.

  "We can't have you interrupt your treatment now can we?" The witch raised a relaxed finger towards Fuyumi.

  Obeying her command, the hideous creatures of various shapes and sizes began to charge, some sprinting, some galloping on all fours, and some dragging their top halves. The sea of corpses toppled over one another to reach the girl.

  She swerved right, avoiding a monster's grasp, and backstepped to evade jagged claws driven into the ground where her foot used to be. Slamming her foot into its chest, its claws snapped off its hand, leaving its blackened fingers still dangling from them.

  Prying the claws from the ground, she spun on her heel to dismember another monster's arm that tried grabbing her before being tackled by a creature missing its bottom half.

  Kicking it away, she scrambled to her feet as the pain in her head worsened. With her vision cloudy and movements more sluggish than usual, it was only a matter of time before these grotesque creatures captured her. Clutching her head, she jogged to the memorial as quickly as the pain would allow.

  'Hana. 35 years old. Loves violet dancers. Snatch-Away was our favorite pastime,' she recited to herself over and over again, desperate to reinforce her memories but to no avail. The most that it did was slow the inevitable. 'Hana. 35 years old. Loves...what did she love? How old was she?'

  Her movements began to slow, allowing the creatures to seize her by the arm. Before she could drive one of the claws into its head, another creature grabbed her other arm.

  "No!" She gritted, her knees buckling as she began succumbing to the growing pain in her head and the increased weight of more creatures grabbing onto her.

  The sensation of something borrowing into her skull and forcefully yanking at the center of her mind was excruciating. She was forced to watch as the memorial began to crack. One by one her most treasured memories began to flicker, threatening to evaporate into nothingness.

  "Maya, stop!" Fuyumi pleaded, completely at the mercy of the witch's relentless torment.

  "Shhh, I promise it'll all be over soon and that lingering hole in your heart will be no more." The witch soothed.

  The pain intensified beyond what she could bear all the while being restrained. She needed to do something, anything. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't break free.

  The witch had transformed Fuyumi's mind into her personal domain. Something that she'd noticed by now was that the manifestations here went out of their way to subdue her rather than kill her.

  'Why? I'm weak right now so it'd be easier for them to,' she glanced down at the claw she was still holding onto.

  The domain was akin to a bad dream. Like any dream, one could jolt awake given the right circumstances.

  She didn't know exactly what would happen if she decided to go through with what she had in mind or if it would work at all. But if she wanted to escape this nightmare, she needed to shock herself awake.

  Using the claw, she stabbed the hand of a one-armed creature pinning her right side. The moment her arm broke free of its hold, the creatures surrounding her reacted, barreling towards her. At the distance they were at and the frightening speed they were traveling, she only had a a couple of seconds to end this nightmare. But that was more than enough.

  Maya glanced down, checking to see if her patient was unharmed when her eyes widened in horror for the first time. As Fuyumi raised the claw to her neck, Maya yelped, "No, don't do it!"

  Every mangled abomination in the vicinity lunged toward Fuyumi, desperate to stop her. Forcing down her hesitation with a piercing cry, she drove the point through.

  The world around her exploded into a myriad of colors, stretching and contorting into complex geometric shapes before they imploded. Fuyumi's vision was momentarily plunged into darkness before the familiar setting of the deteriorating counseling office shot back into view as her eyes snapped open, gasping for breath.

  She whipped her head to the right to find a wide-eyed Maya stumbling back in disbelief. Collecting herself, she waved her hand, her ring emitting amber but before she could cast, Fuyumi had already delivered a reverse crescent kick to her jaw. Maya's unconscious body spiraled into a nearby couch, spewing a cloud of dust in the air.

  Surveying her surroundings, she distinctly remembered exploring the room before but apparently, her physical body hadn't even made it two feet past the doorway. Rushing out of the room and into the hallway, she confirmed she was no longer trapped in hypnosis.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when hearing the low howls of the wind return. The palace was still in its state of disarray, illuminated by the moonlight's soft embrace.

  Returning to the unconscious Maya, she slipped her ring off her finger as she was quite frankly too afraid to leave her alone with it. If she ever regained consciousness, at least she wouldn't be able to cast. She plopped down on the couch across from her and spoke to ensure her greatest fear hadn't come true.

  "Hana. 35 years old. Loves violet dancers. Snatch-Away was our favorite pastime."