Page 27 of To Trap a Soul

After contending with them, she knew no one was safe. Not her old village of simple farms, whose inhabitants were putting up meagre fortifications, and not the townspeople erecting walls metres tall. Especially not those who were refusing to erect any at all.

Some Daekura were large, some weren’t, but they would apparently grow in size, in formidable power, with each creature they consumed. She even saw one trying to fuckingfly, although it didn’t get far with its small, underdeveloped wings.

And Lindi’s skin crawled as she’d been carted through the night, with her carriage companions none the wiser that those monsters could be lurking in the shadows. They likely weren’t, as they were struggling to cross the desert, but Weldir had informed her that the forest surrounding the canyon was...growing.

Some of the Daekura were, apparently, aiding it. Eating away at the desert to offer a path of shade and life for bloodshed.

A few rather notorious beings were also growing the Veil, breaking off the canyon wall little by little – although Weldir was unclear as to how that was possible. It was as if the canyon was alive, consuming the very trees the Daekura were growing, only for those trees to bring more life to the very bottom of the cliff.

She wished he had elaborated more, but he’d said she would learn more as time passed.

But enough time had passed for her. Enough to reveal that this new life felt rather empty.

She brought the mug of wine to her lips now that it’d cooled, blew on it, and took a sip of its sour sweetness. She tasted it, but it was like ash going down her throat as she lingered on the past six years and what she’d been greeted with when she finally returned home.

The house had felt foreign after what had transpired there, and her mother had been absent. The villagers had been relieved to find that Lindiwe Bernadi was still alive, but their faces had been strained at the same time.

Because what had been her next destination after such a long journey wasn’t the loving embrace of her mother’s arms, but the desolate seat next to a bed. Allira had never awoken to discover that her daughter was alive and had returned. No, she remained comatose, every day slipping further and further away, her pulse slowing and softening with each passing hour.

Considering her mother’s already dwindling health and her weak heart before that horrible night her family had been torn apart, everyone believed that she just couldn’t take it. Her heart was too hurt, physically and emotionally, to survive without Lindi and her beloved husband.

Lindi had been both blessed and cursed with just two days of visiting her mother before she’d passed. To be there in support as she’d held her fragile hand in her final days of life, hoping her presence was soothing even if it destroyed her. Although she’d been thankful to be given the opportunity to say goodbye to a living, breathing person, to feel the warmth of a final one-sided hug, it shouldn’t have been necessary.

None of this was.

After learning the truth from Weldir, she knew these devils weren’t an act of God but justwere, and no number of human sacrifices were going to save humankind. Lindi hadn’t needed to be stolen. She shouldn’t have been presented with a choice between dying forever or trapping her soul to a faceless being.

I really should stop calling them devils, though.

Humans had already begun giving them a name – those that were deemed insane by others. The kind of people who made mothers bring their children closer, as they were screamed at about the ending of time, the fall of Earth, and how the sinsof humans had brought this upon them. They shouted with panicked, crazed, and manic eyes about theDemonsthat were coming to destroy them and how they must repent – must stay in the Almighty’s heavenly light.

To fear the night. To save their children before it was too late.

It was oddly humorous how those deemed insane were completely and utterly correct.

But Lindi knew that was how she’d be perceived if she started spouting the truth, so she kept her lips firmly shut.

She never told a soul about what she’d experienced, seen, or what had happened to her as they buried her mother. She gave her home to the leader of the village, told them she didn’t care what they did with it, and left without so much as an explanation.

Instead, she began to hunt.

Her heart had been so sickly, so broken, dripping with agony in every single drop of blood it pumped into her veins, that she swore she’d stop other women from experiencing what she had. Vengeance led her path.

And as much as it was against the teachings of the religion she’d devoted herself to her entire life, she let hate fuel her. She let it fester into a sore wound, one that she scratched at until it was irritated and impossible to ignore no matter how much she, at times, tried to soothe it.

For years she searched until her path had taken her straight to the easiest man to pick from a crowd.

A part of her was thankful that the first of the three men she found, those who hadruinedher life, was the one who had the biggest impact. The one who, had he not rammed a sword through her father’s gut, may have allowed Lindi to return to her loving parents and find them both alive. They could have reunited; she could have spared them of their grief upon her return.

She could have had a semblance of normality within the overshadowing strangeness her life had turned into as Weldir’spet.

Not a single part of her felt regret when she finally gained the courage, the very will, to do to him as he had done to Nico. Sure, it’d taken her many days of following him to finally enact the first stage of her revenge, needing to shed away the guilt nipping at her, as well as the fear that the Almighty Father would strike her down for going against his teachings.

She had to remind herself that she was out of his reach and trapped by another, now the wife of a deity who didn’t even belong in this world.

So, if her soul was already tainted, traded, and belonged to someone else, it meant her freewill was utterly hers. More so than any other human walking this world. Weldir truly didn’t care. He had bestowed no rules or restrictions, despite admitting thathewas unable to enact such violence.

She was free from his restrictions. She was his freedom now regarding that, a loophole he’d found, and she just hoped he never planned to abuse that through their bond.

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