Page 105 of Demon Monster's Little Human

LIORA

The vision rips through me like a blade, carving through flesh, through time. I see the past unraveling before me, each thread woven into a story I wasn’t supposed to remember.

Dain was never the villain of this tale.

Amara never betrayed him.

She saved him.

The truth slams into me, vicious and unforgiving. I see Amara standing before a council of dark elves, her hands bound in shackles of enchanted iron. She pleads, her voice raw, but they do not listen. They will not listen.

They have already made their decision.

The artifact pulses in their grasp, a relic forged from the tormented souls of the countless beings Dain had slain in his reign of power. It was an aberration. It should have never been created.

But the dark elves had other plans.

They were the ones who cursed him. They took his strength, his mind, his very essence, twisting it into a prison of suffering. The artifact is alive, feeding on him, fueled by his rage, his agony.

It wants more.

Amara could not destroy it.

She could only weaken it.

So she did the unthinkable, she sealed Dain away.

Not to imprison him. To save him.

The bond, the curse, the cycle, it was never her doing. It was never supposed to be this way.

I stagger backward, gasping, my vision blurring as I rip free from the memory. My hands tremble as I clutch my chest, my heartbeat wild, erratic.

Dain is beside me, breathing hard, his body rigid with the implications of what we’ve seen. He is still locked in the remnants of the vision, still seeing the truth shatter everything he has believed for centuries.

His hands shake.

His claws twitch at his sides.

I reach for him.

He does not move.

“Dain—”

A voice echoes through the cavern, smooth as silk, dripping with malice.

“Now you see.”

The darkness shifts, the presence slithering closer. The entity that has hunted us, whispered to me in my dreams, stands just beyond the flickering light of the shrine’s torches.

It laughs.

“Now you understand.”

Dain is still frozen, his breathing ragged.

The voice slithers around us, into us, curling through the depths of our minds.

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