40K: When evil spirits appear

The evil spirit continued to wail. One scream after another, a shriek, a roar, a curse. The ground occasionally trembled, like some heavy object collapsing, often accompanied by another chilling cracking sound, easily reminiscent of a blade slicing through flesh.

Saen could clearly see the truth behind these sounds. The snow curtain pressed down on her, blurring everything, yet she could still see...

The Dragon Slayer hadn't transformed into the figure she'd seen before, braving the frost dragon head-on. His head now bore black hair instead of the menacing golden horn crown, and his speed was no longer impenetrable. Yet, even so, he could still fight it, even gaining the upper hand. However, the demon's long-severed hands had miraculously regrown, resembling the bare branches of a dead tree, only now ending in terrifying claws that could easily tear the air apart with each swing.

It roared and attacked like an enraged beast, only to be met with flying flesh and endless pain. Then it opened its blood-red maw, trying to bite off the dragon slayer's head with its steel-needle-like fangs, but he swung his sword and sliced ​​off its entire lower jaw.

Blood flowed like a waterfall, and the evil spirit cried out like a wounded old man. Its already exaggeratedly large eyes now occupied two-thirds of its face, and Saan even saw some arms waving inside its eye sockets. They grabbed the edges of the hollows and tore at them with all their might, trying to get out.

"No--!"

It howled and retreated, pressing them back with its hands, then turned and ran, but the dragon slayer did not agree.

He sprinted a few steps to catch up with it, his greatsword slashing across, leaving a line on its back. Pale gray flesh, the color of a frozen person, burst forth from it, followed by a small, twisted vertebra that looked like many thin fingers linked together... And only after all this was exposed to the night did its blood gush out with a sudden, unexpected roar, like a house collapsing unexpectedly.

And so, it stopped running, but its body began to sway uncontrollably, the exposed bone at the wound creaking and cracking before finally breaking. Its upper body fell backward, its ridiculously large head colliding with its rump, before it collapsed to its knees, motionless.

It appeared to be dead, but Saan instinctively knew it was still alive, and not only that, it also—

She suddenly stopped in her tracks.

A strange sound reached her ears, and the psychic power relayed the reason in great detail: the evil spirit's protruding belly was splitting open.

Its skin had swelled to its limit, and several hands pressed against that thin, transparent, eardrum-like thing, pounding it incessantly, creating hollow echoes. Then, it was torn open, and what rolled out was not internal organs or bits of flesh, but two people, a man and a woman.

They were covered in blood, their eyes filled with terror, but the moment they saw the light of day again, their gazes were fixed on Saen, still hidden behind the snow. The man smiled with immense relief, trembling as he grabbed a handful of snow and smeared it on his face, wanting his daughter to see his true face buried beneath the blood and grime. The woman, tears streaming down her face, stood up and opened her arms to him.

"Saan! My God, you're alive! Come here quickly!"

Saan stared intently at her outstretched hands, remaining silent. They seemed a little too long and thin, but her mother's voice was fine, sounding as gentle as ever. Her father, too, had always treated her very well, bringing her gifts every time he returned from a hunt, sometimes even drawing the ire of her brother...

Yeah, where's my brother?

The girl turned around, trembling, and saw a boy.

He was a bit taller than her and could barely be called a man, though his face still held a trace of youthful innocence. He wore a cotton-padded jacket over a leather vest, his hair piled messily on his head. He smiled happily and stretched out his hands to her.

"Little sister, so you've been here all along."

The girl suddenly reached out and pushed him down, her lips trembling as if she wanted to say something.

The boy straightened up from the snowdrift with a hint of complaint, and asked her, puzzled, "What's wrong, Saan? Did someone bully you?"

"You..." the girl managed to utter, her body stiff. "You..."

"What's wrong with me?" the boy asked softly.

A gash slowly emerged from the center of his face, tearing open his eye socket and causing his eyeball to fall out. Then came his nose, which was split in two. And of course, there was his neck, where a fatal wound was visible, through which his throat was laid bare.

Now, his face looks exactly the same as the last thing Saen remembered.

The girl bit her lip tightly and kept backing away, while the boy stood up, stayed where he was, and didn't chase after her, but just smiled.

"Sahn".

A voice came from behind her. She didn't want to turn around, but she did anyway. She saw her father, his abdomen ripped open, and her mother, a knife protruding from her chest. They stood side by side beside the monster's bloodied body, their eyes as black as the shrunken gums of a dead man. They laughed, then called to her.

"Child, come here quickly. Come with us, we'll never be apart again."

Saen was supposed to answer them, but she didn't because another knife caught her attention.

The knife was in Ald's hand; it was a short, small bone dagger, far too short for him. Two months ago, on that night, she had used this very knife to try and kill the Night Watcher who was pursuing her... but it should have been abandoned long ago. How did it end up in his hands?

Olde silently tossed it at her feet, with perfect accuracy, not a fraction off. In the darkness, his eyes shone so brightly, like two lights that would never go out.

The girl knelt on the ground, distraught, and instinctively grabbed the knife. The feel was familiar; the rough texture of the knotted rope was just right. This knife had been a rib from her brother's first prey, painstakingly shaped by her father, the knots tied by her mother over half a night. How old was she when she got it? How old is she now?

Tears streamed down her cheeks, dripping continuously. Her sorrow made the smiles on the faces of the three ghosts even clearer, as if they could already see her standing with them.

But this did not happen.

The girl simply gripped the knife tightly and pointed it at her chest. The pain, and the other kind of pain that comes with having her life threatened, suddenly brought a sense of peace to her chaotic mind. Everything in the world seemed to fade away at that moment, and only her own breathing and heartbeat remained clear.

"You are already dead..." she whispered. "You have been dead for a long time."

The ghosts stopped laughing. Footsteps approached, and her brother walked up behind her, whispering in her ear, "Yes, but you can bring us back to life... truly back to life."

Saen looked up at the face, which was still speaking softly.

"Isn't this better, little sister? We shouldn't die, don't you think so? What did we do wrong? Why do we have to die? Those Night Watchers killed the wrong people, they went to the wrong place, we are innocent, and you now have a chance to change everything—"

Saen suddenly stood up, pounced on it, and plunged the knife into its chest.

"—Don't speak to me in my brother's voice!" she roared through gritted teeth, tears streaming down her face. "You don't deserve it, you don't deserve it!"

Psychic energy surged deep within her pupils. Before she could learn how to transform it into deadly magic, she instinctively poured it into the dagger in her hand without reservation.

The rune priests maintaining the ritual sensed this simultaneously but did not intervene. The wise Irnist even smiled smugly—Sarn was his handyman apprentice. He then raised his scepter, activated the runes again, and carefully guided the power, completely integrating it into the blade…

The evil spirit suddenly roared, its voice filled with genuine fear for the first time, but it was powerless to do anything about it.

Under Irnist's influence, a massive amount of psionic energy surged into its rotting skin like an overturned sea. It stopped feigning death and leaped to its feet, frantically scratching at its flesh, a chilling light bursting from its wounds.

A fraction of a second later, blinding light shot up from the ground, illuminating half the sky. A visible shockwave emanated from the evil spirit's body, clearing away the surrounding snow and revealing the black soil beneath. What followed was a torrential downpour of pus, blood, bits of flesh, and rotten bones, crashing down from the sky with a roar.

Ald calmly raised his greatsword, shielding her from the filth, and strode toward the girl. She collapsed to the ground, her right hand still clutching the dagger, while the thing that had been her brother was gone. The psychic light faded from her eyes, her hair and face were completely soaked, the water stains indistinguishable as tears or melting snow.

Ald handed her his sword to shield her from the falling debris, letting it stain his cloak and armor.

"Is it dead?" the girl asked softly.

Old didn't answer, nor did he need to, because a faint laugh was coming from the center of the shockwave, filled with lingering fear but even more so with smugness.

"Of course I'm not dead, Saan, I'm just going back to where I used to be. But be careful, I'm no longer just your nightmare. Thanks to you, I'm alive! I thank you profusely for that. I'll be back, maybe in a few years, maybe in a few months, maybe even tomorrow, I'll appear in your dreams again... By the way, child, speaking of which, I want to ask you a question—have you ever felt, for a moment, that your tribe deserved to be slaughtered? If you ask me, the Frosthowl's Night Watch didn't kill the wrong people! If you disagree, just look at me!"

After it finished speaking, it burst into wild laughter. The laughter sounded at times like Zarek, and at other times like Saan's parents or brother. The laughter echoed endlessly in the girl's ears. She closed her eyes tightly, unwilling to listen, but she had no choice. She wanted to cry, but her tears had already dried up.

"Don't cry," Ald said.

He finally spoke, silently and suddenly. The girl opened her eyes and found his expression perfectly calm. Then, he thrust his sword diagonally into the ground to shield Saen from the filthy raindrops that might fall on her face, before turning and striding toward the source of the laughter.

There, he saw half a bloodied and mangled head. It lay quietly at the bottom of a deep pit, and a wicked smile could still be seen on the rotting half of its face.

"Ah, hello, great hero..." it greeted with a sneer. "You're quite the fighter, but I won't die, you understand? So next time, when I return, you'd better pray you're still by that child's side, just like today."

Old leaped to the bottom of the pit, kicking up a cloud of putrid dust. He stared expressionlessly at the half-skull, then suddenly bent down and picked it up.

"No," the soldier said very softly. "There won't be a next time."

As he finished speaking, the lines beneath his eyes began to brighten. A sudden surge of heat melted the snow into a persistent mist that obscured his face, leaving only his crimson eyes clearly visible. Flames roared within them, and the evil spirit suddenly stopped laughing. It had finally recognized the lines and those eyes.

In Saan's memory, it belonged to a...

warrior.

Flames erupted out of nowhere, bursting forth from the gap between the warrior's gauntlet and the demon's head like molten lava, yet their clear crimson was incomparably pure, far surpassing any flame in nature. The demon began to scream, a sound almost forced out, the lowest of its roars of the night...

Flames burst from its eye sockets, burning away the remaining filth. It continued to cry out, but had lost the power to make a sound; a hollow wind sobbed from a small piece of its throat, playing a nocturnal melody that no one paid attention to.

A moment later, the warrior released his grip, letting the ashes fall to the ground.

He turned, strode out of the pit, and returned to Sarn's side, where the wolves had already surrounded him. The rune priests brought the iron bed as well, and the wise man released his grip, put down his staff, and carried the girl back to the bed. Her eyes were still open, and despite her weakness, she stubbornly gazed at Ald.

"It says it will come back," she whispered.

"Never again," Ald said. "You can sleep soundly now; tonight you're destined for a dreamless night."

"Really?"

"Really," Old nodded. "I assure you."

The girl quietly closed her eyes, but after a moment, she spoke again.

"Why did you keep asking me that question?" she asked with her eyes closed. "What's the difference between remembering and forgetting?"

Old pondered for a while, and finally, just before Saen was about to fall asleep, he gave his answer, but she couldn't hear it; she was too tired.

But the wolves heard it clearly.

"Because no one has ever asked me, and remembering is just too painful," he replied.

The wind blew in from the other side of the pit, carrying the last bit of ashes into the sky. The snow was still falling; it would fall all winter, but it wouldn't last long. Winter would soon be over.