Bound

"Hold on, I don't remember ever seeing you before." Anthony is the first to respond as he doesn't hide his suspicion. "If I'm not mistaken, that sigil was a prior design from a couple years ago. Who are you, really?"

The man does not respond immediately as he pulls out a dagger that shone its pure silver blade, the leather straps of its hilt the only sign that shows that it was ancient. "I assume that we are now in the 21st century, correct?" He pierces the wall with the dagger with one swift motion, causing it to wedge into the wooden plank plastered on the rocks. "So, it's been around a hundred years since I've been outside."

"A hundred? How old are you exactly?" I ask, eyeing him as he prances around the room, manic as he seems to be lost in his thoughts. Is this guy crazy?

"Ha! How old? You seem to misunderstand. There is no age in this godforsaken plane of existence! Only nightmares, fear, death!" The man takes off his ragged shirt and shows a nasty scar, carved across his bare chest. "I have spent over a century, trying to figure a way to kill her, to kill what she has conceived from me."

It hit me; the pieces of information that were presented from the beginning now made sense as if I was finally piecing the puzzle together in my mind. "You're Hansel and Gretel's father…" Anthony's eyes widen as the man in front of us falls silent, as if hit by a hard truth he was struggling to swallow. "What happened exactly?"

He falls on the ground, his back resting against the wall as he looks up towards the ceiling. His eyes seemed empty; lost as he evidently did not know where to start. "I.. made a mistake." A brief moment of silence settles in before he continues. "A long time ago, I was assigned to a case that involved a sudden drought that was suspected to be a result of witchcraft. It was obvious. Me and my partner at the time tracked the one responsible for the strange happenings. A young woman, seemed to be in her twenties, looking like she had no idea what was going on. We thought it was an instance of a newly awakened witch, in the dark of what she was capable of as her powers come out one by one." It was an understandable assumption, since most newly awakened witches rarely have any ill intent. In fact, there are a lot of people at the Office who also practiced witchcraft, taken in before they were tainted by the evil, they were capable of. "We got played. She knew full well what she was and she knew how to manipulate us, turned us against each other. I watch her call creatures I've never even seen before, commanding them to rip my partner into pieces in front of me. She took me in, forced me to form a blood contract in exchange for the safety of everyone else. In the contract, I lost my name, most of my memories were now absent as I only recently recovered some of them. I was bound to call her my wife, forcing herself on me because of the Watcher's blessing."

"The Watcher's blessing? That's not a myth?" Anthony asks, his posture now leaned over as the topic seems to have piqued his interest.

"Have you ever wondered why you never seem to be able to give in to fear? You know that you are afraid, and you feel it gnawing at the pit of your stomach as you deal with whatever monstrosity is in front of you." He explains, trying to talk steady as he struggles to find his breathing. "It's because the Watcher has blessed us, the ones trying to fend off what the dark has to offer, the ability to face it without faltering. It's never fully understood what we gain from it. In fact, she probably knows about it more than I do."

"That's why Gretel and Hansel came to be, a mixture of what you had and what she had." Anthony tries to make sense of what was revealed to us, his eyes never off of the nameless man. "And you've met the present them?" He turns to ask me, to which I nod.

"That's right. The fact that we've somehow come to meet them in the past explains why they seemed to know a lot about us, and about where you were." My head is starting to hurt. "So how do we get to the heart of this place?"

The nameless man picks himself up and heads over towards the entrance, the sky was now a darker shade as we grow near to dusk. "If you're going to go, you need to go tonight." He then makes his way towards the mess of tools he had under his bed and pulls out what seemed to be a worn-out parchment. A map. He jabs a finger onto a location found at the corner of the diagram. "It's not the best sketch, but it is enough. At midnight, a rift within the dark will make itself present to you for a brief moment, and that is an opportunity that you must take immediately."

"Us? You're not planning on coming with?" I ask, his head only shaking as a response.

"Even if I wanted to, I can't. I'm bound to spend an eternity here, something I've now come to accept." It seems that it was hopeless to try and save him, and he knew it better than anyone. "I can only wish you the best of luck."

Anthony nods, taking the map in his hands as the nameless man finishes. "We appreciate it." They shake hands and prepare themselves for the trip when I hear a loud crash from outside. Uneasiness settles in as a loud roar erupts, ear-splitting as we all drop to the ground from the pressure. "What the fuck was that?"