Darius struck their souls with a wave of his hand, leaving them to scream in immense agony... they felt like their souls were being torn apart, and they could do nothing to stop the pain. As mere commoners, their consciousness barrier was already frail. If Darius hadn’t controlled his strike, they might have been killed instantly.
"Was this enough to refresh your memory?" Darius asked coldly, leaning closer.
The pain was unbearable, and yet... they didn’t say a word. They just kept crying and shaking their heads, insisting they didn’t know what these men were talking about.
Seeing this, the Bishop’s face didn’t change... he slowly lifted the sobbing Levi by the back of his neck. Then, he walked to the parents, leaving them to stare at their son kicking and screaming, but to no avail... even when the spiritual pressure was lifted, there wasn’t much they could do against them.
The Bishop stopped in front of Brian and Ruqya. Then, he held Levi up so they could see him clearly... before their horrified eyes, a scarlet tentacle claw emerged from his shoulder blade.
He brought it closer to Levi’s back and said, "Last chance... tell me who you really are."
"We don’t know!! Please! Stop! He is just a boy!"
"We beg of you!! Take everything! I can give you my company, my houses, my everything! Please! Put my son down, please don’t hurt him... please!"
Brian and Ruqya cried out hysterically, shaking their heads violently... their watery eyes were already as red as the claw before them. Hearing Levi’s fearful cries and calls for them made them feel like someone was tearing their hearts from the inside out with their bare hands.
The sickly feeling.
The dread.
The despair.
They had never felt such emotions this strongly in their life before, feeling like they could pass out any moment, just to avoid seeing their son getting hurt.
Alas, that wasn’t an option, and the Bishop wasn’t one to make false threats.
He sighed, "Then, let’s see how far your ignorance goes."
He pressed his cold claw against Levi’s small back, making him flinch instinctively... before Levi could react, the Bishop dragged it downward.
Aaaaaa!!!
A deep, red wound opened as Levi let out the sharpest scream there was, filling the apartment with the echoes of his cry. They soon were mixed with the sound of his parents’ sobbing, screaming, and pleading.
They looked like they wanted to eat the Bishop and Darius’ flesh apart... and yet, their hateful, despairing eyes meant absolutely nothing before them.
He just kept looking at them silently, bathing under the Larsons’ unified cries... when he saw no other reaction, no sign of divine awakening, only human despair, he frowned.
"Mortals..." he said indifferently, "I guess we were wrong... maybe the Radian bloodline runs faint in your ancestry, and you had no clue about it."
The Larsons didn’t even hear what he said... Levi’s mind was occupied with the agony of his burning back, while the parents had a single thought in their minds: how can they save him?
Nothing... nothing came to mind.
Their device and Astra AI were the first to go after the Bishop and Darius made their move... a single thought was enough to break them apart without being close to them.
"Darius." The Bishop ordered, "Harvest their memories... There might be something there related to their ancestors."
Darius lifted his hand, and his eyes dimmed to soft gray... then, two faint spiritual strings emerged from his fingers and landed on the parents’ foreheads. It took him no less than three seconds to harvest every memory from their birth to this final moment.
Though the agony of the process was so much, it left them falling on the ground with their hands holding their heads tightly, feeling like they were about to explode... in a way, they were... Levi watched as blood poured down their ears, nose, mouth, and even some facial pores.
He was seeing this, but his brain failed to register what was happening... it was like the pain of his wounds, the harrowing sight of his parents bleeding from their heads while screaming until their throats turned hoarse... everything about this whole situation felt like a sick dream.
A sick dream he wanted to wake up from so bad... but it wasn’t.
While Levi’s traumatized, dead pupils were affixed on his parents, his ears picked up on a disgusting wet noise... like someone fiddling their finger on wet spaghetti.
It didn’t take long before he found the source of the noise... tens of sickening dark red tentacles slithered out from the Bishop’s back, each one ending in a small, snapping mouth that looked like twisted dogs from the seventh hell.
Brian and Ruqya lifted their heads from the ground with great difficulty and looked at their son, who was surrounded by tens of revolting tentacles.
They reached out with their arms shakily, uttering simultaneously with a hoarse, low tone.
"Take... me... instead..."
"How loving... but, they were meant for you in the first place."
As Levi heard the Bishop’s unbothered response, he blinked once... when he opened them, his heart went still for a moment like the world around him.
It was like the universe went silent for him, so he wouldn’t need to hear his parents’ screams and the sound of their flesh being chewed on like they were some sort of food for dogs...
But nothing could protect him from the sight... his eyes were as white as a ghost, looking utterly dead as he watched his parents’ blood splatter across the golden-lit floor, the table, the couch, the TV, the wooden puzzle... his home.
Bit by bit... his vision started to lose color as his irises turned pitch-dark while his pupils remained red.
This painted his world black and white... leaving only one color dominant.
The color of Blood.
Levi could only stare in silence, his tiny hands trembling, his lips shaking, and his tear-streaked face frozen solid.
He wanted to scream, but nothing came out... his mind couldn’t process what he was seeing ... a scene so foreign, so nightmarish, no one dared to even dream of it.
When his mother saw her son looking at them like this... even when her vision was impaired by blood, even when her body had massive chunks of flesh missing, even when life was slipping through her fingers, Ruqya still showed a small, comforting forced smile.
Then, she said with a soft, hoarse voice, "Don’t look, Levi... Don’t look, baby... just cover your eyes and ears... It’s okay, mommy’s here... mommy loves you so much, do you hear me? Don’t forget that... never forget that..."
Meanwhile, Brian didn’t say anything as his mouth was bitten off... and yet, he didn’t need to... his smoldering but loving stare expressed thousands of words.
Alas... they couldn’t hold it for too long.
Levi just stared at his parents falling to the ground, their bodies covered in bite marks, reaching toward him with fading, lifeless eyes.
"Mommy... Daddy...?"
Levi finally spoke; his voice was barely a whisper... it was broken and hollow, like he was still in denial. Even the pain from his back felt like nothing but a soft massage compared to what was going on in his heart and mind.
The Bishop turned Levi to face him. He pulled him closer and stared deeply into his trembling, darkening eyes... he could see that they had become empty, lifeless, like a shattered mirror.
And yet...
"No hard feelings, child... You were born with power you could never understand. It doesn’t belong to someone like you."
Without warning, the Bishop reached out with his gloved hand and pressed it against Levi’s face.
Without an ounce of hesitation, he plucked his eyes out one by one in an instant... it was so fast, it took a split second before the blood streamed down Levi’s cheeks as he let out a high-pitched screech.
But his vision? It went instantly dark... making him reach with his tiny hands for his parents, searching for them through the immense pain.
Pain that was enough to kill any other child... but somehow, he was still conscious. The Bishop dropped him on the floor like he was worth nothing anymore to him.
He just lifted the precious bloody gems and showed a devilish smile, "The key to achieving my ambition... is in my hands."
Meanwhile, Levi was left on the ground, screaming for his mom and dad while his hands covered the bloody holes left behind in his face.
"I CAN’T SEE!! MOMMY! MOMMY!! MY EYES! MY EYES!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!"
"Silence him, but leave him alive... It won’t take long before he becomes a Sleepwalker," the Bishop ordered expressionlessly.
In an instant, the shadowy figure of Darius appeared right behind Levi and landed a straight chop on his neck, silencing his whimpers... then, he waved his hand once in front of Levi’s empty, bloodied sockets, and they were sealed shut.
The Bishop glanced around the destroyed apartment one last time. "Let’s go... the officers will be here in a few moments."
A shadowy portal opened behind them, leading to the Boundless Expanse... Darius stepped through first, followed by the Bishop, who was still holding the eyeballs in his hands.
Then, the portal closed behind them, leaving only silence, blood, and the faint, fading scent of blueberry in the air...
Tinkle... Tinkle.
The silence was broken periodically with blood drops falling from the table onto the floor, trickling slowly from the tainted wooden puzzle...
It was still incomplete, missing half of the pieces... but now? even if it was completed, the meaning was no longer the same...
The completed wooden puzzle would have shown a picture of a small, cozy portrait of their family... a man, a woman, and two sons... sitting together on a couch with a window behind them. The father’s arm rested protectively around the mother’s shoulders, and the mother held the little boys on her lap.
A picture of their little family turned into a wooden puzzle to finish together and frame it... It was called: Our Little World.
And now... half of the pieces were drenched in red while the golden border looked like a frame for a tragedy.
The father’s face was covered in blood entirely.
The mother’s smile was crossed through with a dark smear.
The child’s bright eyes were gone, buried under the splatter.
Only the other child wasn’t touched by the blood directly... but his entire world was now framed in red.
The words on the corner... the puzzle’s name, ’ Our Little World’ , were now stained too, leaving only ’ Our World’ barely visible.
It was as if the "Little" piece... the heart and soul of the family, was gone.
It was just their world, or what it had become... broken and incomplete.
Forever.