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Levi placed his hand over his eyes, pressing hard against the bridge of his nose until he saw spots.
This shit is fucking migraine-inducing.
The gesture was small, brief, but it was the first crack in his professional composure since the conversation began. His fingers trembled slightly before he forced them still.
So this is what Horror (Grimdark) really means. No monsters. No demons. No gods descending to punish the wicked. Just guilt that won't die. Just suffering that becomes self-sustaining. Just a man destroying himself and everyone he touches while his mind refuses to let him stop or remember or learn. The cycle eating itself. Forever.
He lowered his hand and looked at the mushrooms again. Twenty-eight consciousnesses trapped in fungal flesh. Twenty-eight people who would never die properly. Never rest. Never escape.
The room felt colder than it had moments before.
"Can I ask one more question?" Levi said, his voice carefully controlled.
The mushrooms pulsed in response, their bioluminescence creating shifting shadows across Reven's unconscious face that made it look like his features were melting.
"Do you want to stop existing?"
The mushrooms went completely still for a heartbeat.
Then they erupted into chaotic movement, all pulsing at different rates, different intensities, as if all twenty-eight consciousnesses were trying to scream at once.
The voices came overlapping, desperate, breaking:
"Yes."
"Please."
"God yes please."
"More than anything."
"I just want to sleep."
"Make it stop."
"End us."
"Please end us."
The child's voice rose above the others, high and cracking: "I've been awake for eight months. I haven't slept once. Not once. Do you understand? I can't close my eyes. I can't look away. I just exist and exist and exist and I want it to STOP."
The largest mushroom on Reven's temple pulsed once, hard enough that Levi could see the skin around it distend slightly.
Then it opened its tiny mouth, revealing teeth that were too human, too perfect, too familiar. A child's teeth. Baby teeth that should have fallen out years ago if the child had lived long enough to grow.
"Can you kill us?" it whispered.
The question hung in the air like smoke from a funeral pyre.
Levi was quiet for a long moment, watching the mushrooms pulse and twitch with desperate hope.
Then he said, simply: "Yes. I can."
The room went completely still.
Even the ambient sounds seemed to stop. No distant creaking. No whisper of air through vents. Just absolute, suffocating silence.
The mushrooms stopped moving entirely, their bioluminescence frozen mid-pulse.
"You can?" the baker's voice asked, and it was so small, so fragile, like someone afraid to hope after years of disappointment.
"I can," Levi confirmed.
The Library will figure something out. It always does. That's what it's for.
"You're lying," another voice said, bitter and broken and venomous. "Everyone lies. Everyone promises and no one delivers. You're just like the priests who promised my mother I'd be saved. Just like Father Reven when he said it wouldn't hurt."
"I'm not lying," Levi said calmly. "But first, I need to speak with Father Reven. I'd like you to sleep now. Let him wake up."
The mushrooms twitched violently.
"Why?" the child asked, and now its voice carried a sharp edge of suspicion. "Why do you need to talk to him?"
"Because I'm going to tell him the truth."
Silence.
Then the mushrooms began to laugh.
It started as a single voice, soft and broken, then spread like infection, twenty-eight consciousnesses laughing in bitter, horrible harmony. The sound was wrong in ways that made Levi's hindbrain scream. Like children laughing at a funeral. Like joy that had rotted from the inside out. Like madness given voice.
Some laughed high and manic. Others low and broken. The child's laughter dissolved into sobbing that somehow kept the rhythm of laughter. The baker's laugh sounded like he was choking.
"You'll see," the baker said through his laughter, and now there was something cruel in it, something that had learned cruelty through suffering. "You'll see that it's futile."
"His mind won't let him know," another added, voice dripping with poisonous satisfaction.
"He can't know," the child said, and its voice carried a horrible glee. "It would break him. Shatter him. Destroy him completely."
"We've tried," the female voice said. "So many times. Screaming in his face while he couldn't hear us. Watching his mind erase every moment of truth. Watching him forget over and over and over."
"It's funny, in a way," another voice added, and it started laughing harder. "The ultimate joke. We're trapped because of his guilt, but his guilt is so strong it won't even let him remember we exist."
"Watch," the female voice said, and all the laughter cut off at once, leaving ringing silence. "Watch and learn what real horror looks like."
The mushrooms pulsed once in perfect unison.
Then their bioluminescence dimmed, fading to near-darkness.
The temperature in the room dropped noticeably. Levi could see his breath mist in the air.
And Reven snapped awake.
His eyes flew open, wide and wild, pupils dilated. His body went rigid, every muscle tensing at once. For a moment he looked like a corpse animated by strings, jerked upright by something that didn't understand how living bodies moved.
Then he gasped, a huge shuddering breath, and his body remembered how to be human.
He looked around the room with sharp, predatory alertness, the look of someone who'd survived by being ready to run or fight at any moment.
His eyes found Levi.
"What happened?" Reven asked, his voice hoarse and raw. "How long was I out?"
"You were unconscious," Levi said gently. "Do you know that happens to you?"
Reven's jaw tightened. His hand moved to his throat, rubbing at it unconsciously. "Yes. It happens from time to time. I've almost been captured a couple of times because of it. One moment I'm awake, the next I'm on the ground with hours missing. Inquisitors standing over me. Guards with torches." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Lost time. Black holes in my memory. I wake up in different places with no idea how I got there."
"Do you know why it happens?"
"No." Reven looked down at his hands, turning them over as if checking they were still his. "I assumed it was part of the corruption. Part of the punishment from Morvexis for my failures. Divine judgment made manifest."
Levi took a slow breath, steeling himself.
This is going to be delicate. Very delicate. And if the mushrooms are right, it's going to be futile. But I have to try.
"Father Reven," he said carefully, his voice taking on the gentle, measured tone of a therapist approaching dangerous territory, "I need to tell you something about your condition. About the mushrooms growing from your face."
Reven's hand moved unconsciously toward his face, stopping just short of touching the growths. His fingers hovered in the air, trembling slightly.
"I know they're corruption," he said, and his voice carried the weight of someone who'd said this many times, like a prayer or a confession. "I know they're evidence of my failures. Divine punishment for killing the people I tried to save."
"They're not just corruption," Levi said gently. "They're more than that."
Reven's hand dropped. "What do you mean?"
Levi chose his words with surgical precision, building toward the truth slowly, carefully, like defusing a bomb.
"When you tried to heal people, and they died, where do you think their souls went?"
Reven blinked, confusion crossing his face. "I... I don't know. Heaven? Hell? Wherever Morvexis judges them to go? I prayed for them. Begged for them to find peace. To be released from the suffering I caused."
"What if they didn't go anywhere?" Levi asked softly. "What if your guilt, combined with the divine fragments you carry, prevented them from leaving?"
Reven's face went pale. Not gradually. All at once, like someone had opened a drain and let all the blood run out.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that when someone dies in your arms, your guilt is so strong that it becomes a command to the divine power inside you. Never forget. Never let go. Carry them forever. Be marked by what you've done."
Reven's breathing became shallow, rapid, the beginning of hyperventilation.
"No."
"And the divine fragments obey that command," Levi continued, his voice remaining gentle, therapeutic, even as he delivered horror. "They reach out to the souls of the dead and pull them back. Not into their bodies, but into yours. Into your flesh. Your skin. Your bones."
"No," Reven repeated, but his voice was weaker now, the word coming out as barely a whisper.
"The mushrooms aren't just corruption, Father Reven." Levi leaned forward slightly, holding Reven's gaze. "They're the people you tried to save. Each one is a soul. Conscious. Aware. Feeling. Thinking. Trapped in fungal form, growing from your flesh, unable to die, unable to sleep, unable to escape."
Reven's face went from pale to ashen, then to a sick gray-green.
"That's... that's not..."
"I spoke with them," Levi said quietly, and this was the knife going in. "While you were unconscious. They told me their names. Their lives. How they died. The baker from Velshire who made the best bread in three districts. The seven-year-old child whose mother brought him to you, crying, begging you to save him. The guard with two children of his own."
Reven made a sound like he'd been punched in the stomach.
"They're still here, Father Reven. Still aware. And they've been trying to tell you for years, but every time they speak, your mind shuts down to protect you from the truth. Every time they try to reach you, you collapse. And when you wake up, you remember nothing."
Reven stared at him, eyes growing wider and wider, white showing all around the irises.
"Twenty-eight souls," Levi continued, relentless now because stopping would be crueler than continuing. "Twenty-eight people trapped on your face, unable to move on because your guilt won't let them go. They can't blink. They can't sleep. They can't die. They just exist, conscious and suffering, for months. Years. Forever."
Reven's breathing was coming in short, sharp gasps now.
"The child," Levi said softly. "He's been awake for eight months without sleeping once. He can't close his eyes. Can't look away. Can't rest. He told me he just wants it to stop. They all do. They're begging to die properly. To finally rest."
"I... I didn't... I didn't know..." Reven's voice was breaking apart.
"I know you didn't," Levi said. "But now you do. Now you understand what you've been carrying. What your guilt has created. You are not plagued, Father Reven. You are the plague. Every person you've killed is still with you, trapped in your flesh, suffering endlessly, and your guilt is the chain that keeps them there."
Reven opened his mouth to respond.
His jaw worked. His lips moved. But no sound came out.
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, showing only white.
His body convulsed violently, back arching so hard Levi heard vertebrae crack. He fell from the chair, hitting the floor with a sound like meat slapping stone.
Foam began pouring from his mouth, pink with blood.
His limbs flailed, smashing against the floor, against the chair legs, with enough force to bruise and break.
"Shit," Levi said, already moving. "GOLEM!"
The door burst open and Golem One entered, moving with inhuman speed that left blurred afterimages.
"Medical assistance," Levi commanded. "Seizure. Now."
The golem knelt beside Reven, its ceramic hands moving with practiced precision. It turned Reven on his side, cleared his airway, monitored his vitals with touches that somehow conveyed information back to the Library's systems.
Reven convulsed harder, his body trying to fold itself in half. More foam poured from his mouth, darker now, more blood than saliva. His eyes were open but seeing nothing, rolled back so far only white showed.
The mushrooms on his face pulsed wildly, chaotically, their bioluminescence strobing like broken lights.
Levi watched, professional and focused, as the seizure ran its course.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Fifteen minutes of violent convulsions, of foam and blood from a bitten tongue, of muscles contracting so hard they could break bones. Fifteen minutes of Reven's body destroying itself while his mind tried to process information it couldn't accept.
Then, suddenly, it stopped.
The convulsions ceased. The foam slowed. Reven's body went completely limp.
For a horrible moment, Levi thought he was dead.
Then Reven's eyes opened.
He gasped for air, a huge desperate breath, chest heaving.
The golem stepped back, having completed its task, and retreated to the corner of the room to stand watch.
Levi moved forward, helping Reven sit up carefully, then guiding him back into the chair. Reven moved like a puppet, limbs heavy and uncoordinated, head lolling.
"Easy," Levi said, his voice gentle. "Take your time. You've been through trauma. Your body needs a moment."
Reven sat, breathing hard, his whole body trembling. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes were glassy, unfocused.
Levi waited, giving him space to recover.
Finally, Reven spoke.
"How are you feeling?" Levi asked.
Reven was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant, then said: "Like someone stabbed a thousand needles into my head. Red-hot needles. Straight through my skull into my brain."
"That would be the guilt triggering," Levi said carefully, watching Reven's face closely. "Your mind trying to process what I told you. The truth about the mushrooms. About the souls trapped—"
Reven tilted his head, confusion clear on his face.
The movement was wrong. Too sudden. Too mechanical. Like someone had adjusted his head manually rather than him moving it naturally.
"What are you talking about?" he asked, and his voice was completely normal. Conversational. Confused but not distressed.
"I just sat down, right? Did I black out again?"
Levi felt ice water flood his veins.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
Fuck. His defense mechanism just erased his memories. Completely. Like it never happened.
He looked at Reven's face, at the mushrooms growing from the cracks in his skin. They were still now, their bioluminescence dim and steady.
But he could have sworn one of them was smiling.
Not moving. Not changing expression. Just the way the light caught the folds of its cap, the angle of its stem, created the impression of a smile.
A smile that said: We told you so.
And Levi realized with sinking, horrible certainty that this was going to be much, much harder than he'd thought.
Because how do you help someone heal from trauma when their mind refuses to remember the trauma exists?
How do you free twenty-eight trapped souls when the person imprisoning them can't retain the knowledge that they're conscious?
How do you break a cycle that resets itself every time you get close to the truth?
Reven looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer, completely unaware that he'd just been told the most horrible truth of his existence and then instantly forgot it.
The mushrooms pulsed once, in perfect unison, and Levi heard the faintest echo of laughter in the back of his mind.
This is what real horror looks like.