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Levi took a slow breath, forcing his expression to remain neutral despite the horror still churning in his gut.
Alright. New approach. The direct method doesn't work. His mind literally deletes the information to protect itself. So we go around it. Build context. Establish trust. Get him talking about something he can remember.
Standard therapy protocol for dissociative amnesia. Start with what they know. Work backward toward what they don't.
He picked up his teacup, took a deliberate sip, and set it down with practiced calm. The gesture was intentional, designed to signal a shift in conversation, a return to normalcy.
"Father Reven," Levi said, his voice taking on the gentle, non-threatening tone he'd perfected over years of practice, "I'd like to understand your situation better. You mentioned you've been running from the inquisitors. How long has that been going on?"
Reven's shoulders relaxed slightly, grateful for the change in topic. His hand stopped trembling quite so badly.
"Two years," he said. "Two years of running. Hiding. Never staying in one place more than a few days."
"That must be exhausting."
"It is." Reven laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I used to think I was serving Morvexis by healing the sick. Now I'm just trying to survive long enough to... I don't even know anymore. There's no endgame. Just survival."
Levi leaned back slightly, creating physical space that signaled safety, openness. "Can you tell me about when it started? When you first had to run?"
Reven was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant, remembering.
"Velshire," he said finally. "That's where it started. Where everything fell apart."
"What happened in Velshire?"
"The plague hit hard. The real plague, not divine, just disease. The Eternal Sun Church refused to help. Said it was punishment for harboring heretics, for not turning in plague cultists when given the chance." Reven's voice carried old bitterness. "They let people die in the streets rather than risk contamination. Children. Elders. Anyone too poor to afford their 'purification rituals.'"
Levi nodded, encouraging him to continue without interrupting the flow.
"I was younger then," Reven said. "Still believed I could help. Still thought Morvexis wanted me to heal, not harm. So I came at night, in secret. Wore the mask to hide my face. Tried to save who I could."
"And the church found out."
"Eventually." Reven's jaw tightened. "After the tenth death, someone reported me. Told the local inquisitors there was a plague priest operating in the lower city. They came with fire and steel."
"What did you do?"
"Ran. What else could I do?" Reven's hands began to shake, and he gripped the armrests of his chair hard enough that his knuckles went white. "They burned the houses where I'd tried to heal people. I watched from the rooftops. Watched the families scream as the flames took them. The inquisitors locked the doors from the outside. Said the fire would purify their sin of harboring a heretic."
His voice dropped to barely a whisper.
"I could hear them. The mother of the child I'd tried to save. She was screaming his name. Begging them to let her out. The wood was green, you understand? It burned slow. So slow. They were alive for a long time in there."
Levi kept his expression neutral, professional, but he was cataloging every detail. The way Reven's entire body had gone rigid. The way his eyes had gone distant, seeing something from two years ago. The trauma bleeding through every word.
Classic PTSD response. He's not just remembering. He's reliving it.
"The Eternal Sun Church," Levi said carefully, using the redirect technique to pull Reven back from the edge of a flashback. "They're the dominant religion in this country?"
Reven blinked, coming back to the present. "The only legal religion. Worship of Morvexis was declared heretical fifteen years ago. All temples destroyed. All priests executed. The church said disease gods were abominations, that worshipping plague was an offense against the sun's purity."
"But people still sought you out."
"Desperate people don't care about legality. When your child is dying and the church won't help because you can't afford their fees, you'll turn to anyone. Even a heretic." Reven's voice was hollow. "They came to me knowing the risk. Knowing they could be arrested just for speaking to me. And I... I took that risk and made it a death sentence."
"How so?"
Reven was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice carried the weight of confession.
"Because I failed. Everyone I tried to heal died. Every single one. But it wasn't quick. It wasn't merciful." He looked down at his hands. "The transformation, the plague mutation, it took hours. Sometimes days. I'd watch them drown on dry land, watch the corruption spread through their bodies, watch them beg me to make it stop. And I couldn't. I couldn't do anything except watch them die knowing I'd caused it."
One of the mushrooms on his face twitched.
Reven didn't notice.
"The baker," he continued, voice breaking. "He was the first. I remember his wife standing in the doorway, watching. I remember the moment the light in his eyes changed. Went from hope to horror. He looked at me like I was a monster. Like I'd betrayed him. And then he just... melted. That's the only word for it. His insides liquefied. He drowned in his own blood and bile while I held him."
Another mushroom pulsed, brighter this time.
Reven still didn't notice.
"And then the corruption started. The mushrooms began growing a few weeks after Velshire. At first, just small ones, barely visible. I thought it was normal plague corruption, divine punishment for my failures. I covered them with the mask and kept moving."
"Where did you go after Velshire?"
"South. To Grimwater. Thought I could disappear in a port city, lose myself in the crowds." Reven's laugh was bitter, broken. "Lasted three months before someone recognized me despite the mask. The mushrooms had grown larger by then, harder to hide. A dock worker saw me without the mask while I was washing in a public fountain. Started screaming. Called me the Fungal Horror. The Plague Bringer."
He rubbed his face, fingers carefully avoiding the growths.
"The crowd turned on me. Threw stones. Lit torches. I ran through the market while they chased me, screaming for my blood. A child threw a rock that hit one of the mushrooms. It burst. Released spores into the air."
Reven's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Three people who inhaled the spores died within a day. Their bodies rejected the foreign growth. Tore themselves apart from the inside trying to expel it. The church used it as proof that I was spreading plague deliberately. Put up new posters with a higher bounty. Twenty gold crowns."
Levi made a mental note. The mushrooms released spores when damaged. Spores that killed.
Which means the souls aren't just trapped. They're weaponized. Every time he's injured, every time the growths are damaged, people die. And he has no idea he's killing them with the consciousness of his previous victims.
"After Grimwater?"
"Everywhere. Nowhere." Reven's eyes were glassy now, thousand-yard stare of someone who'd run out of places to hide. "Marshton. Redcliff. Ashford. Winterhaven. I stopped keeping track after the first year. Just kept moving. Always at night. Always alone. The church has agents everywhere. The Eternal Sun's reach is vast and they don't forget."
"Have you tried to heal anyone since Velshire?"
Reven shook his head violently. "No. Never. After the tenth death, I swore I'd never use Morvexis's power again. Never risk killing someone else. The mushrooms are punishment enough without adding more deaths to my conscience."
Except you are adding more deaths. Twenty-eight souls trapped and suffering. But you don't know that. Can't know that. Your mind won't let you.
Levi shifted tactics, probing gently for information about the blackouts.
"You mentioned losing time earlier. When did that start?"
"About a year ago. Maybe longer. Hard to say." Reven frowned, trying to remember. "I'd be walking through a market, then suddenly I'd be in an alley with hours missing. Or I'd be sleeping in a barn and wake up on a roadside miles away with no memory of traveling."
"How often does it happen?"
"Few times a month at first. More frequently now. Sometimes multiple times a week." Reven's voice dropped. "It's getting worse. The blackouts are lasting longer. I'm losing entire days sometimes."
"And you have no memory of what happens during those times?"
"None. Just empty space where memories should be." Reven looked at Levi with haunted eyes. "But the worst part isn't the missing time. It's what I find when I wake up."
"What do you find?"
Reven's hands began to shake again.
"Blood. Under my fingernails. On my clothes. Sometimes on my face, though I don't know whose. Once I woke up in a burned-out building surrounded by corpses. Church officials. Inquisitors. Their throats torn out. Their eyes gouged. I don't know if I killed them or if someone else did and left me there, but I ran before anyone could find me."
His voice cracked.
"Sometimes I wake up screaming. Or crying. Or laughing, though I don't know what's funny. Sometimes I wake up in positions I couldn't have gotten into on my own. Curled in spaces too small for a human body. Or standing in the middle of a road staring at the sun until my eyes burned."
The mushrooms on his face were pulsing now, irregularly, chaotically.
Reven still didn't notice.
"And the dreams," he whispered. "When I do sleep, I have dreams. Voices. Twenty-eight voices, all talking at once, all saying things I can't understand. Sometimes they're begging. Sometimes they're screaming. Sometimes they're laughing. And when I wake up, I can't remember what they said, just that they were there. Watching me. Judging me."
Levi's mind raced.
That's when the mushrooms are talking. When they take control of his consciousness to communicate. He blacks out completely because his mind can't process their voices without shattering. So it just shuts down. Leaves him blank. Empty. And when he comes back, the memories are gone. But fragments remain. Dreams. Feelings. Terror he can't explain.
"Father Reven," Levi said gently, "have you ever considered that the blackouts might be connected to the corruption? That they might be a symptom rather than a separate issue?"
Reven blinked. "I... I suppose they could be. I assumed it was exhaustion. Stress. Running for so long takes a toll. Watching people die takes a toll."
"It does," Levi agreed. "But trauma also manifests in unexpected ways. The mind has defense mechanisms. Sometimes it protects us from things we're not ready to process by simply refusing to remember them."
"You think I'm forgetting things on purpose?"
"Not consciously. But the mind is clever. It knows what you can handle and what you can't. Sometimes it makes decisions for us to keep us functional. To keep us from breaking completely."
Reven was quiet, processing this.
Levi took the opportunity to probe deeper.
"Have you had any contact with other priests of Morvexis? Any others who survived the purge?"
"No. As far as I know, I'm the last one." Reven's voice was hollow. "The church was very thorough. They hunted us systematically, used informants, offered rewards for information. Most priests were executed within the first year of the ban. Public burnings. They'd stake us to platforms in the city squares and light the pyres at dawn. Make examples of us."
He paused, swallowing hard.
"I watched one. In Redcliff. I was in the crowd, masked, and I watched them burn Father Mathis. He'd been my mentor once. Taught me the rituals. The prayers. They'd cut out his tongue first so he couldn't curse them. But he still tried to scream when the flames reached him. Just these horrible wet sounds. It took twenty minutes for him to stop moving."
The mushrooms pulsed faster.
"And Morvexis himself? You said he stopped speaking to you. When did that happen?"
Pain flashed across Reven's face, raw and fresh. "Three days before I came here. I prayed for guidance, for forgiveness, for any sign that I hadn't been completely abandoned. Nothing. Just silence. For two years, I'd felt his presence even if I couldn't hear his voice clearly. Like a hand on my shoulder. A warmth in my chest. But three days ago, even that disappeared. It's like he severed the connection entirely. Cut me loose."
Or he's speaking through the mushrooms now. Through the souls trapped in your flesh. And you can't hear him because hearing him would mean accepting what you've done.
Levi was quiet for a long moment, choosing his next words carefully.
"Father Reven," he said, his voice taking on a different quality now, still gentle but carrying weight, "I can help you."
Reven looked up sharply. "Help me? How? No one can help me. I'm a wanted heretic carrying divine corruption. The church will never stop hunting me. Morvexis has abandoned me. There's no help for someone like me."
"There is," Levi said calmly. "The Library has resources. Knowledge. Methods that exist outside the jurisdiction of any church. I can offer you sanctuary. Protection. And more than that, I can offer you a way forward."
Reven stared at him, disbelief warring with desperate hope. "A way forward? What does that even mean?"
Levi leaned forward slightly, holding Reven's gaze.
"It means I can give you the tools to understand what's happened to you. To control it. To transform it from a curse into something you can live with. Maybe even something you can use."
"Use?" Reven's voice was barely a whisper.
"The corruption you carry, Father Reven, is divine power. Raw, uncontrolled, but power nonetheless. With the right guidance, the right training, you could learn to harness it. Direct it. Make it serve you instead of destroying you."
Reven's breathing quickened. "You're talking about power."
"I am."
"What kind of power?"
Levi's expression remained calm, professional, but his eyes held something else. Something older. Something that had seen this conversation play out before.
"The kind that would let you stop running. The kind that would let you face the church on equal footing. The kind that would let you save yourself."
Reven's hands were shaking again, but not from fear this time. From something else. Something that might have been hunger.
"But," Levi said, and his voice dropped, became serious, carrying undeniable weight, "it comes at a price. A steep price."
"What price?"
"The truth," Levi said simply. "You would have to face what you've done. What you've become. All of it. No more blackouts. No more forgetting. No more defense mechanisms erasing what your mind can't handle. You would have to accept everything. Carry it consciously. Live with it fully aware."
Reven's face went pale.
"And if I can't?"
"Then you'll break completely. And there will be nothing I or anyone else can do to put you back together."
The room was silent except for the sound of Reven's ragged breathing.
Then, from somewhere downstairs, came the sound of a bell.
A gentle chime. Pleasant. Ordinary.
The front door.
Levi's head turned sharply toward the sound. His expression shifted, professional mask slipping just slightly to reveal something harder underneath.
"It seems we have unwanted guests," he said quietly.
And in that moment, the mushrooms on Reven's face blazed with light.