Chapter Ninety-Five: The Dark One's Shadow

  Then, a figure emerged—a hooded silhouette moving toward him with deliberate, unhurried steps. The darkness seemed to part for it, shadows peeling away as it approached. Slowly, the figure reached up and pulled back its hood, revealing not a monstrous visage or some twisted demon, but a man. A middle-aged man, his face etched with lines—lines born of worry, of countless sleepless nights, and faint, almost forgotten traces of laughter that had long since faded.

  “I know who you are,” Jace forced the words out, voice trembling and raw. “Persephone showed me everything, Shadow of Errikos.”

  The figure paused, red eyes narrowing, and then a cruel laugh broke the silence. “Oh, did she now? Is that the name she used for me?” It tilted its head, amusement twisting across its dark features. “Fitting, in their world of half-truths. Yes, yes... Errikos was once my name. Just as yours is Jace.”

  It leaned closer, shadows thickening around them. “But long before Errikos, the great and powerful, there was a simpler man. Back then, I was Henry Williams. Just a man with nothing but the clothes on his back and a woman he loved. A wife named Osira. My world, my entire existence, wrapped in that one name. And when they took her from me... there was nothing left. Nothing but the darkness you see before you now.”

  Jace’s jaw clenched, his breath turning sharp, ragged. “Vengeance won’t bring you peace.”

  The figure’s laughter echoed again, bouncing off the void around them, growing louder, almost hysterical. “Peace?” it sneered, leaning so close Jace could feel the chill radiating from it. “You think this is some petty vendetta? Some childish whim of revenge?” It shook its head, eyes blazing. “No, this is a vow. A duty I swore to fulfill. This is what must be done for the sake of everything.”

  “You’re nothing but hate,” Jace growled, his voice raw, trembling under the weight of what he knew was coming. “Hate and a twisted mind unable to cope with the consequences of your own choices.”

  The thing’s expression changed, its smile curving into something monstrous, the sharp edge of a sneer. “Do you think I’ve done all this, survived through years upon years, because the System made me feel something funny?” The void pulsed around them, darkness creeping closer, the figure growing larger, looming over Jace. “No. Let me show you what I feel.”

  And then, the darkness surged forward, drowning Jace in an endless tide. He was no longer in the void. He was standing somewhere else, somewhere he recognized, because he had seen it before in Persephone’s visions.

  A woman bounded up to the man lounging on a blanket beneath a gnarled, ancient oak. He closed his book, the title now visible—Umbra Maleficarum, the Book of Demons.

  “Are you just going to sit there and read all day?” she teased, grasping his hand and hauling him to his feet with a playful groan. She thrust a dull practice sword into his grasp.

  “There’s so much to learn about this place,” he protested, his eyes lingering on the abandoned book. “Aren’t you curious about its history? Its lore? I still don’t understand how they wove such an intricate backstory into everything.”

  She smirked, twirling her own practice sword in a carefree arc. “I’m more curious about how you still haven’t managed to beat me in a single fight.”

  “Oh, but I thought you loved me for my mind, not my might,” he countered, eyes twinkling.

  “And you love me for my surprises,” she quipped, lunging at him without warning. He blocked, his expression transforming into focused determination, though a smile tugged at his lips.

  “As you wish, m’lady. Prepare to be awed, inspired, amazed,” he declared, glancing skyward as though seeking just the right flourish. “Enchanted and enthralled,” he added with a theatrical sigh.

  “Fight or talk,” she challenged, and with that, their swords clashed.

  Jace studied Osira intently. When Persephone had shown him the memories, they had been slightly blurred, distorted like a faded painting—a memory of Spring that had lost its sharpness over time. But what Jace saw now came directly from Henry’s recollections, vivid and unfiltered.

  There was something about Osira that felt familiar. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but a nagging sense told him he’d seen her somewhere before, her face lingering in the recesses of his mind like an unfinished puzzle just waiting for the final piece.

  The scene blurred and hours passed. Jace saw Henry and Osira, laying in a field beneath a sky that looked impossibly bright. Osira was resting her head against Henry’s chest, a softness in her voice. “Do you think we could live here?” she asked, her words half-dream, half-wish.

  Henry smiled, looking down at her. “We are here now,” he replied, stroking her hair gently.

  She lifted her head, her dark eyes searching his. “No, I mean... live here. Really live here. Forget everything back there.”

  Henry frowned, uncertainty flickering in his eyes. “What about our friends? Our lives back home?”

  “Come on, Henry,” she murmured, her voice softening into something wistful. “We could still message them. When was the last time any of us really spent time together? We’re all so busy with our own lives.”

  Henry hesitated, his gaze turning distant. “And what about us, Osira?” he asked, his voice quiet. “What about our own family? Don’t you want children? You know I’d be happy anywhere, as long as you were there. But what about that?”

  There was no answer, and they lay there, silent, the question hanging in the air unanswered.

  The world fractured, like a dream slipping from the mind at dawn. Time stopped.

  Henry turned toward Jace then, his young face bearing an old weight, eyes like darkened glass reflecting a history far beyond his years. He spoke, his voice carrying that peculiar resonance that broke the boundary between now and whatever past he seemed to relive.

  “Immortality,” he began, his words soft but sharp as a knife’s edge, “a life together with no hunger, no famine, no war. A life away from the sickness of the world.” He paused, his gaze holding mine, something both wistful and broken lying beneath it. “When John Rearden approached us, offering us this life—this first taste of eternity—it was too good to be true.”

  He looked past Jace, seeing something only he could. “But he didn’t tell us the cost.”

  The air seemed to grow colder, as if his words reached out and brushed against something beyond mere memory, something palpable. “Immortality did not come without a price. If we had known,” he exhaled, a sigh that seemed to carry all the regret in the world, “perhaps we would have avoided death. But there was no loss from respawn then. No cost to EXP. EXP didn’t even exist yet.”

  He laughed, but there was no joy in it, just the hollow echo of something once cherished and now out of reach. “So we tried everything. We lived everywhere. We threw ourselves off mountains, flew through the skies until our wings failed. Each time we died, we reset—imprinted again and again, forever twenty-two-year-old newlyweds.”

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  His voice cracked, the words he spoke now frayed at the edges. “Forever,” he repeated, quieter. And then, almost a whisper, “Except...”

  His eyes fixed on Jace, and he could feel the change in the air, the shift from story to something raw and ugly, something carved out of his very soul. “But here’s the trick—the cruel, sick twist of it all.” Henry stepped closer, a tremor in his voice, the anger blending with sorrow in a way that was heartbreakingly human. “Each time we died, we handled it differently. I—“ he paused, his eyes narrowing slightly, as if the memory was something heavy that he was lifting, “I was immune. Or perhaps resistant to the side effects. But she… she was not.”

  The silence after his words seemed to stretch on, long enough that the force of it pressed on Jace’s chest. “They never tell you of the side effects,” he continued, his gaze distant. “Even if they know them, they hide them from you. They hide them from the world.”

  He glanced down, his hands trembling just slightly, then he balled them into fists, as if trying to control the shivers. “Her mind grew frailer each time. We didn’t notice at first—how could we? Each death seemed like just another turn of the wheel, a reset to how it was meant to be. But it wasn’t.” His voice grew quieter, haunted. “The memories of her past lives began to blur, to twist, lost somewhere between memories of me, of us, of home, of Earth. Every time she died, a piece of her slipped away—a piece of us.”

  His voice broke, and he stood there, the hollow echo of his words hanging in the air, his eyes staring at nothing. “Every death pulled her further away from me. A piece at a time, she drifted.” His chest rose with a shuddering breath, the kind that comes when there are no more tears left to shed. “Until one day… there was a miracle.”

  A flicker of something—hope, disbelief—crossed his face. He looked at Jace, eyes hollow, voice like a ghost’s whisper. “Until one day, she didn’t remember my face.”

  He said nothing more, but the silence spoke volumes. It was the quiet of lost moments and shattered dreams, the quiet of someone who’d loved, truly loved, only to find that love slowly eroded by something he couldn’t fight, something even time could not mend. The world seemed to breathe in that silence, holding on to the ache of something fragile and true that had been broken, irreparably, by the promise of eternity.

  Time shifted again, the scene bending and twisting until it solidified into something else. Something darker.

  Henry stood, shouting, his face a mask of fury and desperation. There was a shadow there—something almost human, but not quite. They were in a cave, deep in the underworld, and the air thrummed with tension.

  “What you’re suggesting isn’t possible,” Hades said, his voice calm, but there was a weariness to it. A heaviness.

  “But it has to be,” Henry snapped, slamming his fist down on the rough stone table, splintering it. “It’s affecting her outside. You’ve seen it.”

  Hades sighed, the sound echoing through the dark. “It is a terrible thing, Henry. I’ve spoken with the others, even with Jack. He believes he knows what went wrong. He and Rearden are working to fix it—for the future.”

  Henry’s eyes were wild, desperate. “The future?” he spat, his voice cracking. “What about Osira? What about her?”

  “The future cannot change the past,” Hades said, his tone turning cold, detached.

  Henry’s rage trembled, his shoulders shaking. “Enough of your cryptic nonsense, Hades. You lied. You all lied. You lied to us.”

  “Death has always come at a cost, Chosen,” Hades said, his voice growing harsh, the shadows deepening. “Even the death of a Traveler.”

  “If we had known, we would have been more careful! She’s falling apart, Hades.” Henry’s voice broke, tears streaming down his face. “She can barely remember my face. She doesn’t even recognize me.”

  Hades looked away, the god’s face unreadable. “Give it time, Henry. Her memories will return.”

  “Do you know that?” Henry whispered, broken. “Or is that more of Jack and Rearden’s lies?”

  “Careful, Henry,” Hades said, his eyes narrowing. “You are under my protection, but even I cannot shield you from the consequences of your blasphemy.”

  “Blasphemy?” Henry laughed, a wild, desperate sound that echoed through the darkened cave. “This whole place is blasphemy—your gods, your world, Jack, all of it. If Jack wants to deal with me, let him come. Let him do his worst!” Henry threw his arms wide, his voice rising, cracking. “Strike me down, oh great System! Take everything you haven’t already stolen. Take my life, or give it back to me.”

  The darkness around them swirled, morphing, and Jace saw Henry, older now, the weariness gone, his face almost hopeful. Osira was beside him.

  “I tried,” Henry said, his voice softened by an edge of longing, as though the past were something he could still reach if he stretched far enough. “I hadn’t spoken to Hades in nearly eighty years. The gods left me alone. Jack never showed his face again. I logged out less and less, and eventually, this became my world—my life.”

  A wry smile tugged at his lips, but it held no humor. “Excelsior gave me a deep dive pod, their way of appeasing me, I suppose. A bribe so I wouldn’t need to log out at all. I thought about suing them, but… people who tried that ended up disappearing. Gone without a trace.”

  He let out a slow breath, the sound weary. “The doctors at Excelsior called it early-onset degenerative Alzheimer’s. Claimed it wasn’t caused by the game, that it was some rare genetic disease.” His eyes flickered, a bitter glint catching in them for a heartbeat. “We did test after test in the real world, hoping, maybe, for some other answer. But the damage was there—on both sides, in both worlds.”

  Henry paused, his gaze distant, as though he were staring into a time that only he could see. “There were moments of clarity,” he said, his voice low. “Moments where she’d look at me, and I’d see the woman I loved, the one I’d promised forever. And then, just as quickly, fear would cloud her eyes. Anger. And finally, confusion and loss.”

  His voice broke, just a little, and he swallowed hard, trying to gather himself. “I tried,” he said, almost to himself, as if repeating it made it more real. “For a long time, I tried.”

  The scene shifted again and settled into a new memory. The air smelled of winter, frost curling along the window panes of a small, dimly lit room. They sat in quiet comfort in a castle that belonged to them both.

  And old Osira sat in an armchair, her gaze distant, lost. Henry knelt beside her, speaking softly, his words careful, cautious, as if speaking too loudly might shatter her fragile grasp on reality.

  Oldman Henry turned to Jace for a moment, breaking the scene. “I acquired a fair amount of land and wealth over the years and we had made the habit of avoiding respawn at all costs. In the following years, I became more so her caretaker, than husband. But at least I could be by her side. There were good days, and bad days. This day was both.”

  There was a flicker—a spark of something familiar in Osira’s eyes. Her gaze snapped to his, recognition lighting her face as she looked at Henry as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Henry?” Her voice was trembling. “When did you get here?”

  His eyes filled with tears instantly, welling up until they blurred his vision. “I’ve been here the whole time, darling. I’ve never left you.”

  “Oh, Henry,” she whispered, small and vulnerable. “I’m so scared. My thoughts... my memories... they’re like motes in the breeze.” She shook slightly, her fragility laid bare. He reached out, taking her hands in his, his grip tight, desperate to anchor her. She pressed against him then, wrapping herself around him in a deep embrace.

  “Henry, are you there?” she murmured, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

  “I’m still here, my love,” he whispered back, his voice cracking, barely more than a breath. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  For a brief moment, the world seemed to stand still, suspended in that fragile silence. But then, as quickly as it had come, the familiar fog returned to her eyes, that dreadful emptiness reclaiming her gaze. She looked up at him, her face twisting, not with love, not with recognition, but with fear.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice was cold, edged with panic, her eyes darting around the room. She didn’t see him. Not really. She saw only a stranger.

  “No... please,” Henry’s voice broke, pleading. “Osira, don’t go. I’m here. It’s me.”

  She pushed him away, her frail form trembling now in terror. “Who are you? I demand to know! How did you get in my chambers?” Her voice rose, shaking with fright.

  “Please, Osira, it’s me.” His words choked in his throat, tears spilling freely now, desperation in every syllable.

  “Guards! Guards!” she screamed, her voice echoing through the empty room. But no guards came. There were no guards—only silence, and the fading vision, until all that remained was Henry. The middle-aged man stared back at Jace, his eyes hollow with an ache that defied description.

  “When she logged out of Mythica,” Henry said, turning to Jace, “she became terrified at the sight of me. I had no choice but to let her go, to move her into a luxury care facility specializing in dementia and Alzheimer’s. Excelsior paid for it, sparing no expense. They even provided her with a deep-dive system. She would be cared for.” He paused, a faint tremor in his voice. “In the real world, she was only in her mid-twenties then. The youngest admission they’d ever had.”

  Henry’s gaze drifted, his eyes heavy with memory. “Sometimes, I would break down, even though I knew I shouldn’t. The doctors warned me that the stress I brought her could make her condition worse. But there were nights...” He trailed off, his voice catching. “Nights when I was weaker than I should have been. I tried to reach her. I tried to remind her of who we were, of what we had. But she... she had forgotten me.”

  He closed his eyes, a flicker of pain washing over his expression. “In the real world, she became less and less. Less able to live, to feed herself, to manage even the most basic things. But in Terra Mythica… she was still there. She could live, she could carry on, just… not with me.” His words hung in the air, filled with the ache of a love that had slipped through his fingers—alive only in the pixels of a game that could no longer hold them both.