Chapter 202: A Monster...
She saw no comfort but the ghostly visages of her lost family, a man’s calloused hand resting on a child’s shoulder, a girl’s laugh, bright and brittle as ice. Their faces pale and smiling in the illusory hearth-light.
’...’
The realization struck us both at once.
The Shroud recoiled, its form rippling in distress. It hadn’t meant to conjure loss . It had only wanted... connection.
And soon after, a patrol of guards, bundled in heavy furs, stumbled upon her, lying half-buried in the snow, muttering feverishly about impossible ghosts. They scanned the swirling white, hands on their sword hilts, muttering worriedly about the existence of a "monster."
The Shroud, of course, understood nothing of their words or fear.
But through the kaleidoscope of human memories it had absorbed, it understood the sudden, overwhelming distress in the woman, the frantic energy of the guards.
It instinctively knew what it had done was a bad thing. Its burgeoning awareness recoiled, realizing, with a chilling clarity, that this ’reaching out’ had caused pain.
For such a primal, emotionless entity, this dawning sense of ’wrongness’ was surprisingly amazing.
At least it had the decency to feel guilty, I thought bitterly. More than can be said for most creatures with actual hearts.
In the years that followed, we never saw her again.
I dared not guess what became of her, whether the guards dragged her back to the Keep’s flickering hearths, or if the blizzard had simply swallowed her whole, mind and body.
But her absence carved a change into the Shroud’s very being.
After a handful of similar missteps, each leaving people gasping or sobbing in the snow, its approach changed entirely.
I watched in silent awe as it began to wield its powers more seriously.
It stopped trying its nascent illusions on the Keep’s people, opting instead for the less volatile targets: the beasts that roamed the desolate mountains.
For a decade or so, the bleak landscape became its training ground, a canvas for refining its burgeoning control.
Bit by bit, through countless repetitions and careful observations of the beasts’ reactions, it finally mastered its powers.
But even with mastery, the Shroud couldn’t stop its relentless observation of human memories. It still sought to understand them, to piece together the chaotic tapestry of their lives. And then, an opportunity presented itself, a chance to test its refined power.
It encountered another lost soul who stumbled through the blizzard, far from the Keep’s defensive walls. It reached out to perceive her memories: a young girl, no older than twelve, clearly from the Keep, lost and terrified.
Instantly, the Shroud wove an illusion. The indistinct form of her mother appeared in the swirling snow ahead, calling out, her voice a gentle, distant echo on the wind.
Recalling the painful clarity of its last unintended projection, the Shroud made the mother’s face a bit shadowy, her features softened and hard to discern, a vision of hope rather than stark, haunting reality.
With the phantom call as a beacon, the Shroud guided the girl, subtly shifting the blizzard’s currents, leading her unerringly towards the faint lights of Eclipse Keep. It maintained the illusion just long enough, watching her tiny figure stumble forward, fighting the fierce wind.
Then, the illusion dissolved. Guards, alerted by the storm’s early arrival, emerged from the Keep, their lanterns cutting through the white.
They discovered the girl, half-frozen but alive.
The Shroud lingered, just long enough to see them carry her within, to see frost give way to flush on her cheeks.
And this time, as she recovered, her face showed a smile of pure relief, unburdened and bright.
A strange, foreign warmth bloomed within me, a profound satisfaction mirroring the nascent joy radiating from the Shroud’s vast, formless consciousness.
We smiled together, unseen, a fleeting communion in the storm’s beating heart.
The Shroud reveled in that feeling, that burst of pure, unadulterated relief. This was what its endless hard work had been for, the true culmination of its mastery. And watching it, a new layer of understanding unfolded in my own mind.
It wasn’t some inherently malevolent force born of darkness, but a lonely, primal entity that had simply sought connection and understanding, stumbling into unintended destruction before slowly, painstakingly, learning control and even a crude form of empathy.
It wanted to be good, in its own way.
As the blizzards continued to descend upon the keep, the Shroud’s silent vigil intensified.
It sought out more lost souls, guiding them home, leading them to safety with its now-expertly crafted illusions. But not all memories brought comfort, and not all connections were received with gratitude.
One biting night, a man reeking of cheap ale stumbled through the snow, a stark contrast to the Shroud’s usual lost souls. It saw his memories: fragmented glimpses of a family waiting, their faces half-eroded by time or neglect. So it wove them into the storm, their spectral forms beckoning through the mist.
The man didn’t weep with relief. He shrieked, eyes wild with drunken terror, clawing at the air as if swatting at vengeful spirits.
"Ghosts!" he slurred, reeling backward. "Monsters!" He fled but into the white void, straight into the jaws of the blizzard.
Despite the man’s terrified flight, the Shroud persisted. It followed him, a silent guardian in the storm, subtly altering the illusion’s direction, pushing him, through sheer fear, down the right path towards the Keep’s gates.
He reached safety, collapsing just inside the entrance, still babbling about horrors in the snow.
Our connection hummed with the Shroud’s newfound comprehension - it had learned the nature of fear. A brutal motivator, yes. One that worked where gentle whispers failed. The drunkard proved that.
Yet where its first rescue had kindled shared warmth, this success left only... dissonance. Effective, but empty of that bright, singing satisfaction it’d known before.
The Shroud decided to keep this lesson coiled in its grasp, a last resort for when kinder methods faltered.
Not because it couldn’t wield terror, but because it refused to become the very thing it had been accused of being —
A monster...