Chapter 483

The night air in the small Thai village was heavy, thick with the scent of jasmine and a quiet dread. Nine-year-old Anu lay still on the thin mat, his small frame barely making an impression. Every creak of the old wooden house sent tremors through his body, his heart pounding like a trapped bird.

Tonight was no different. The drunken shouts downstairs were beginning, escalating into a familiar chorus of threats and blows. He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing, for the millionth time, that he could simply cease to be.

This existence, this home, had become his personal purgatory. His skin always seemed to crawl under the rough edges of his father's hands, and his mother, usually, simply watched with wide eyes, seemingly trapped as he was.

Tonight though felt different. There was an energy in the house that seemed new, an oppressive feeling that wrapped around him like a shroud.

It wasn't simply his fear. A cool draft snaked through the cracks in the floorboards, making the small hairs on his arms stand on end.

He drew his knees tighter, the thin blanket offering scant comfort against the chill that penetrated him. The voices downstairs had reached their peak, punctuated by the awful sound of his mother's sharp cry.

That same dread turned into pure terror and hatred. Something inside him started to churn.

Anu's breath caught in his throat as the wooden walls around him seemed to grow hazy. The familiar contours of his room became distorted, almost like looking at the world through warped glass.

A pressure built up in his skull, not painful, but powerful. As he tried to calm himself, he discovered that he was floating, hovering slightly above the mat he usually used to find his tiny bit of rest.

He felt detached from his physical form, seeing it as a thing, rather than as himself, like it was a discardable thing, a shell. Panic gripped him.

He didn't scream, fear locking his jaw, keeping any sound locked in his chest, as a bright, blue light slowly appeared around his form, becoming more powerful as each of his parent's terrible yells reached his ears, adding to the rage, he discovered he now possessed.

Below him, the awful din reached a new pitch and he watched with an unexpected calm as the wood underneath began to warp and twist. He noticed, almost detached, how it turned from brown to black like coal as something took him to new places.

He wanted to help. The next few moments passed like a nightmare unfolding in slow motion.

Anu, hovering, saw a wave of raw energy surge from his small form, twisting the wooden floor beneath, turning it black as tar before it snapped like dry twigs. The cries of pain downstairs abruptly halted.

This wasn't the normal sudden stop. No, this was final, and with the newfound ability, he felt it like a dark power coursing through his small body.

The energy pulled him down, and he landed, lighter than before, his eyes finally adjusting, a faint, blue luminescence now emanating from his small pupils. He didn't feel afraid.

The light, though faint, seemed to distort the edges of everything, casting strange, dancing figures upon the rough walls. The world was new.

He cautiously went towards the door, pulling at it and the rotting wood crumbled and it opened easily, creaking on its single, rusting hinge. He could sense, like never before, the silent house, almost dead and he almost heard it cry for help.

He wasn't alone now. Something else, had become a part of him and it helped with his desire for more destruction, more than the wood he had broken so easily just seconds before.

The short walk downstairs felt longer as the wooden steps creaked ominously under him, and the blue light became stronger with each step he took. At the bottom, a gruesome scene awaited.

His father and mother lay still, contorted in ways that human bodies shouldn't contort, twisted wood surrounding them. Their blood, dark and clotted on the splintered floor.

Anu felt something at seeing it. Something that made him not be bothered at all, something like he wasn't alone, the part of him wanting it, relishing it like it had craved it for the long duration.

This made him feel more empty. He didn't shed a tear, the capacity for such emotions had been twisted from him.

Now he was only something of rage and an empty sort of sadness that pulled at him like a tide. Stepping over the grotesque remains of what were supposed to be his family, he wandered into the dark streets of his village.

There was no longer any comfort in any of it, the usual familiar sounds of nightlife were silenced like before. All were silenced, almost fearful like him when he first floated above the mat in his small room.

The air grew heavy, filled with the stillness that only follows sudden trauma. He kept going.

The village, with its shuttered windows and narrow lanes, seemed to hold its breath. Dogs whimpered, a rare and welcome change from their nightly howls, and the usual sounds were like faint reminders of some normal sort of time he now felt detached from.

He noticed people trying to hide inside of their wooden homes. The few stragglers hurried past.

He heard something call to him. Something wanted out.

As Anu walked, a strange energy enveloped the town, the same deep blue hue emitted from his body now pulsed from the old roads under his feet. Cracks formed in the foundations of the houses, as if an earthquake was taking root, not from below, but from him, and from that pull from something that shared him.

Fear turned into anticipation. He saw people huddled together. It was like they knew.

He could almost hear the sound of blood pumping, a symphony of terror growing as they attempted to find an escape. But there was nowhere for them to go.

The ground seemed to anticipate them. As a few made it closer to the road they attempted to move on, large black spires erupted from underneath the cracks he left behind, preventing a normal attempt at fleeing from their dark little houses.

He turned, the blue glow of his eyes growing stronger. Some people began to pray, murmuring desperate pleas.

This made the presence sharing his mind laugh. He could feel their fear.

He saw it was good. One man tried to make it out of the edge of the small road, but with only a gesture of a hand, Anu simply warped the man's skin.

It was simple for him to accomplish, almost no effort for the newly empowered child. Another woman begged for her life, he noticed her small children trembling and he simply made them disappear as well.

As each individual made a feeble attempt at an escape, it all ended the same way. Each was destroyed and turned into black, crumbling, dust by the dark presence now controlling what the town was seeing.

What once were his friends, family, acquaintances and simple townsfolk turned into another terrible thing in a matter of mere moments. Soon, every person was gone.

He continued to wander through his village. With every ruined house, the energy grew within Anu, becoming more and more terrible and cruel.

The blue light pulsed through the roads and sky now and there was no respite to what he had become. There was a feeling in his gut, or in what was now in the area that used to be his gut, an insatiable emptiness that sought more pain.

A terrible need to see the same terror and hurt as before and the desire never went away. All was ruined now, just as it should have been all this time.

The streets and homes became distorted and twisted like they were in his home but now with all the town. As Anu reached the center of what was once the village, the destruction seemed complete.

Houses were mere husks, broken by spires of wood from beneath that had now formed an inescapable cage around everything and everyone was simply, no more. The very air had turned dense, the blue energy swirling in a terrifying display of his might.

And then he could see it, a dark entity, taking full form beside his little body, its eyes like dark portals staring, reflecting Anu's own suffering. They weren't really reflections though.

Anu had given up any resemblance to being human, now simply a vessel for pure power. "It's all gone" a raspy voice croaked and Anu felt an echo of his own thought in his head.

The entity held up its hand as a few pieces of wood floated and shifted until they joined, creating the shape of his childhood house but darker, taller, with spikes. The shape was wrong, somehow skewed and twisted in such a way that made Anu understand the form was always horrible.

Just as he had discovered with his power. The presence laughed as it moved its clawed hand up and brought it all down upon them both, not only breaking all they had done but smashing it into oblivion.

Anu was no longer himself and could no longer feel anything but what the dark presence that now shared him felt. As the dark spikes plunged and obliterated his once small form he understood.

There was nothing left. The form that once contained his fragile mind simply ceased and he drifted into blackness as his final act as himself was seeing his own little heart shatter like glass under his own hands.

And finally, there was nothing.