Chapter 199: Feast of Hollow Light
"Huff... Huff..."
Aman stumbled forward, his small boots sinking deeper into the snow with each step.
Around him, the world had dissolved into absolute blackness-no sky, no ground, only the howling wind and that pulsing light, now brighter than ever, as if the darkness existed solely to make it shine.
Just a little further...
His breath came in ragged gasps, his cheeks raw from the cold. The light danced ahead, always almost within reach.
Then, finally, it stopped.
The next moment, it flared, blossoming outward to illuminate the suffocating darkness around him.
Aman blinked, his young eyes wide with curiosity and confusion.
The void had given way to what appeared to be a familiar, comforting space, the edge of a sun-drenched meadow he vaguely remembered from a forgotten dream.
"Come, my child."
A soft voice, melodic and impossibly tender, drifted from behind him. Aman’s head snapped around.
Standing there, shrouded in a soft, ethereal glow, was a shadowy figure, its arms outstretched in a familiar gesture of love.
"Mom!"
Joy erupted in his small chest, overriding all fear, all confusion. He didn’t question why she stood knee-deep in snow when they were meant to be in a sunlit meadow. Didn’t notice how her shadow stretched long and grasping behind her, far darker than it should be.
He simply ran.
With every step, the figure gained detail: the silver-threaded chestnut hair that always escaped its braid, the chapped lips that still managed soft kisses - all rendered with unbearable perfection.
The illusion fed on his recognition, stitching itself tighter into reality with each desperate footfall.
The Lament Shroud’s massive palm trembled, its frost-blackened claws twitching in rhythm with Aman’s dream-sprint. On its shadowed surface, the boy’s physical form jerked forward mechanically, his boots scraping against the creature’s flesh-like mist.
Thick tendrils of obsidian mist now completely obscured his eyes, swirling like ink dropped in milk. His mouth hung slack, expression eerily blank save for the faintest tremor in his lower lip - the only betrayal of the battle still raging behind those sightless eyes.
Above him, the Shroud’s jaw unhinged with a sound like cracking glaciers, revealing a throat of spiraling black ice that pulsed in time with Aman’s racing heartbeat.
"Just a little further, my heart!" his mother called, arms widening. The meadow’s light seemed to concentrate around her, pushing back the edges of Aman’s suspicion.
Every step toward her carried him deeper into the Shroud’s waiting maw.
The creature’s hollow eyes burned with cold triumph as its jaws widened further - wide enough now to swallow a man whole.
Aman ran closer, three steps, two, one.
The meadow’s golden light thickened like syrup, making the air heavy. His mother’s smile widened, her arms opening to an impossible span.
Then—
"Oww—!"
Aman’s foot caught on nothing, or perhaps on the illusion’s fraying edge. He pitched forward, knees slamming into suddenly frozen earth.
The impact jolted up his spine, real pain flaring through the dream. Tears sprang to his eyes as he clutched his knee. "It hurts!"
For one fractured instant, his mother’s face shattered. Her skin cracked like porcelain, revealing the hollow blackness beneath—then reformed, faster than a blink.
The Shroud’s claws screeched across its own palm, black ice splintering. Aman’s physical body convulsed, his blank face suddenly contorting in mirrored pain as his dream-self fell.
"Oh, my poor darling!" His mother knelt, the snow around her not melting from her radiant glow. Her cool fingers brushed his cheek, a degree too cold. "Let me see."
Aman sniffled, looking up through his tears. Her hands slid under his arms, lifting him effortlessly - too effortlessly, like he weighed nothing at all. The moment his feet touched ground, he wobbled deliberately, forcing her to steady him.
"Wait, Mom," he hiccuped, rubbing his eyes with one hand while the other crept toward his inner pocket. "Let me show you something first!"
The Shroud’s jaws vibrated in the real world, sensing imminent victory.
It didn’t notice the boy’s fingers closing around cold glass. Didn’t see how his tears suddenly stopped mid-fall, hanging frozen on his lashes.
They stepped forward together, one perfect, synchronized motion, falling right into the spiraling abyss. The Shroud’s jaws were already beginning to constrict, its throat-mist solidifying into shadowy black tendrils that slithered around Aman’s physical legs.
The merge had already begun.
"Look!"
Aman yanked the object free, his eyes still wide and innocent, utterly oblivious to the true gambit he was enacting.
His mother’s smile remained beatific as she leaned in, her eyes drinking in his vulnerable expression, savoring the irrevocable process—
—just as the black, glassy surface of the Crescent Mirror slid into her vision.
For a fleeting instant, it reflected nothing at all, a void mirroring the one in her own false eyes.
Then, its surface shimmered like water trembling from a distant tremor.
The gentle reflection of ’mother’ and ’son’ smiling together warped, fractured, and then rapidly reformed.
A new, terrifying reflection bloomed.
Aman’s round cheeks sharpened into Lumin’s angular face, his tear-filled eyes hardening with glacial focus. The childish pout twisted into a hunter’s smirk.
And her-
Oh, her.
The mirror showed what she truly was: not a mother, but a starving thing, all jagged mist and hollow eyes, its cavernous maw frozen mid-swallow. The truth rang through her like a struck bell.
"KRAH!"
The sound tore through the illusion like a knife through canvas. Her - no, its - gasp became a grinding shriek of cracking ice as the perfect maternal facade crumbled away in jagged pieces.
Hollow eyes darted between the mirror’s horrific truth and the ’child’ it held, only to meet Aman’s gaze, now sharp with terrible awareness.
The boy was awake.
The realization shuddered through the Shroud’s vast consciousness like a dying tremor. Its claws in the physical world spasmed, black mist-tendrils tightening around Lumin’s legs in reflexive panic.
But the cold certainty followed instantly, a whisper through its corruption:
No matter.
The merge had begun. The connection was made. The boy’s body was already knitting with its essence, his memories unraveling into its grasp.
"Do you really think so?"
The words hung in the air like a knife balanced on its point.
The Shroud’s hollow eyes flickered, just once, a ripple of confusion passing through its vast consciousness.
This wasn’t the whimper of a trapped prey.
Something was wrong.
"Well, you’re only half-right."