"Come now," Hecuba beckoned with a crooked finger, her voice laced with glee. "Come to mama!"
Dahlia hesitated, her gaze narrowing at her master's sudden affection. This strange approach from her usually sends chills down her spins. Still, as though her feet had minds of their own, she found herself moving forward, one cautious step at a time.
"Good child," Hecuba cooed, her withered hands reaching out. She cupped Dahlia's cheek, her brittle fingers cold and dry like dead leaves, brushing gently along her skin.
A shiver ran through Dahlia. The touch made her skin crawl, yet she didn't recoil. She merely endured it.
Hecuba chuckled softly, a rasping sound like wind through a cracked tomb. "Tell me, how has your master been treating you?" she asked, albeit rhetorically.
Dahlia opened her mouth, only for silence to fall out. Her throat tightened. No words came, but her thoughts burned hot:
How else have you treated me, you vile, ancient hag? Like a tool. A vessel. A thing to be shaped at your will.
Hecuba seemed to sniff out her internal dissent. Her grin widened, eyes gleaming as she began to circle Dahlia slowly, her footsteps whispering against the stone floor. Her gnarled fingers made habitual motions at her chin, stroking an invisible beard as she studied the girl with obsessive scrutiny.
"Hm," she hummed in thought, nodding at intervals as she inspected Dahlia's frame from all angles. Her gaze was clinical—almost predatory. Then she came back around to stand in front of her once more, those crystalline eyes of hers gleaming.
"HAHAHA!" she burst out laughing suddenly, wild and shrill. "Those eyes!" She pointed at Dahlia's ocean-blue eyes. "They're nearly the same shade as mine." She widened them, displaying her glacial irises proudly.
"Y-Yes… Master," Dahlia murmured, unsure of how to reply, as her voice barely cut for a whisper. Their eyes resemblance had not gone unnoticed by her. While not the same structure and the same perfect colours, they were still blues like a faded reflection.
Hecuba's expression brightened with amusement and perhaps something deeper—pride? Possession?
"That's right," she said. Her attention then flicked toward the stone table a few feet away. Raising one arm lazily, she made an almost casual gesture, and then, with horrifying ease, her entire hand detached from her wrist and floated through the air like a bird set free.
Dahlia's breath hitched as she saw this.
The hand flew to the table, picked up an empty bowl, then hovered over the bubbling cauldron, scooping a generous portion of the steaming, thick concoction within. The hand returned, bowl in tow, and reattached itself to Hecuba's wrist with a subtle pop.
Dahlia stood rooted in place, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. After everything she'd seen her master do over the years, this act unsettled her the most. Her mind scrambled for explanations—was it sorcery? A trick of the eye? But no illusion could be that convincing as she really saw the bowl in Hecuba's hand hovering to her face.
Hecuba cradled the bowl like a prize and beamed.
"Come now, child," she sang sweetly, "taste mama's soup."
Dahlia looked at the portion inside the bowl oozing of an unhealthy disgust in her eyes and instinctively took a step back. Her head shook before she could stop it. "No… I won't drink it!" she blurted unconsciously, her voice sharp, panicked. Sweat began to bead across her brow.
The earlier warmth vanished from Hecuba's face in an instant, replaced by a cold fury. Her features twisted into something monstrous as she glared.
"What did you just say?" she growled, voice low and venomous. "You dare refuse your master's offering? Are you rebelling, girl?"
Dahlia came to her senses and dropped to her knees, bowing until her forehead touched the ground.
"Forgive me, Master," she cried, trembling. "Please don't be angry. I was foolish—I meant no disrespect."
A long silence followed. Hecuba said nothing, simply stared down at her.
Then—at last—a sigh.
"Stand," she commanded.
Dahlia hesitated, then rose unsteadily to her feet. Her eyes met Hecuba's again, and in that instant, their identical hues seemed to swirl together, as though sharing a single soul.
Hecuba's lips parted, and a soft chant slipped through like a rhyme in a forgotten tongue, barely audible but deeply resonant. Then she lifted the bowl once more and, with a voice that now dripped with gentleness, offered it again.
"Child… this is mama's soup. You wouldn't dare let such love go to waste, would you?"
Something shifted inside Dahlia. Her resistance withered. Her thoughts dulled, numbed, until only one thing remained clear in her fogged mind:
This soup… it's made by Master. It mustn't be wasted.
Without a word, she took the bowl and lifted it to her lips. The taste was strange, earthy and thick, but she drank eagerly, greedily and even as her senses blurred further. Not a single drop spilled as she drained the contents.
When she finished drinking and finally lowered the bowl, clarity briefly returned. Her eyes fluttered, confused, as she felt an awful taste on her tongue. She looked at the empty vessel in her hands, then at Hecuba, whose lips curled into a smug, knowing smile.
Damn you, Dahlia cussed in her heart before a heavy dizziness pulled her under.
Her knees buckled, and her consciousness closed in.
Before she could hit the floor, Hecuba caught her with surprising tenderness. She carried Dahlia in her arms—frail as they were, they held her as if Dahlia was a treasured relic, which she was to her in any case and brought her to the stone table.
With a wave of her hand, the various vials, tools, and baubles scattered across it were swept aside, some clattering to the ground, shattering in bursts of color and scent.
She laid Dahlia down gently.
The grin returned to her face—wider now, almost maternal as she looked down at the sleeping girl.
"Good girl," she whispered. "Mama will take care of everything now."
Studying the unconscious Dahlia, Hecuba could sense something was wrong with her. It was obvious from the way she had unknowingly rejected the soup offered to her. None of them she had brought here and nurtured were ever meant to defy her will—this was something she had taken great care to perfect within their bodies by wiping their previous identities, subverting their minds and seeding her essence deep within.
It had worked flawlessly on the others, and that success had made her arrogant enough to assume she had succeeded with Dahlia too and she had not paid attention or noticed any changes from her.
"Such cunning. She deceived me," Hecuba murmured, her eyes gleaming. She should be furious, yet instead, she smiled and felt more exhilarated than she had in a long time.
"The cleverer, the better. Now let's uncover the source of this flaw."
She tapped Dahlia's forehead and closed her eyes. A stream of dark energy flowed from her body, surging into Dahlia's form and shaping itself into a small, spectral eye. Through this vessel, she could inspect Dahlia's inner workings.
The shaped eye had not ventured far before it located a small orb of light, glowing fiercely at the center of Dahlia's mind. It was clear: the orb served as her memory storage.
Startled, Hecuba's eyes snapped open as she observed the orb through the shaped eye, a gasp slipping from her lips as she partially covered her mouth.
"This... this cannot be," she muttered, shaking her head in sharp disapproval. "That orb—it contains the memories I wiped clean before. Why are they still here? It is as if I never touched them at all!"
A wave of disorientation washed over her. To Hecuba, these memories were filth—contaminants that defiled the pure darkness she had so painstakingly instilled. The thought ignited her fury, and she turned a seething glare onto the peaceful body lying atop the stone table.
But who was Hecuba to accept defeat? She steeled her mind, tightening her resolve to erase the memories once more—even if, now that Dahlia's maturity had taken root, the body would never again meet her ideal of perfection.
She pressed her finger against Dahlia's forehead again. The dark energy that had formed the eye dispersed, flooding the space where the glowing orb hovered. The power gathered, battering against the looping memories within, struggling to purge them.
Yet no matter how fiercely she attacked, the memories remained stubbornly lodged—impossible to erase or overwrite.
"What is this?"
At this point, Hecuba's fury had gone beyond the threshold. She let out a shriek so intense that the cavern trembled, and cracks split the lair walls. How could she not be enraged? Dahlia's body was the perfect body she had long sought, it had intense malice that made it an evil and dark source of compatibility with her soul. She had found Dahlia's body so easily, trained and cultivated the malice within until now—but those efforts are on brink of going to waste.
She felt going through with the possessing rituals like that, but she knew better the risk involved. That light around the orb was a torment. Its glow alone posed a threat to corrupt and destroy her soul if she attempted to inhabit the body while it remained.
The light surrounding the orb came from Dahlia's memories of daylight and the many illuminations she had once known. These were things Hecuba had long since torn from her own being, and she knew well that any body she intended to possess had to be stripped of them too before it could truly be hers. That was why she had always wiped the memories of Ravenna and the others she had brought into her domain and before trying her compatibility on them, burning away their earliest visions of the outside world and burying them in this absolute darkness. This was the heart of her method—the very crux of it.
She might not have been so troubled if Dahlia's mind—that housed the memory orb—could simply be discarded while she took control. But it could not. The body was not hers by right; she was stealing it. For the possession to succeed, her mind and Dahlia's would have to synchronize, merging together in the moment her soul claimed the flesh.
Still, if she could cleanse the orb—purge it of its lingering memories—and leave behind only the experiences Dahlia had gathered within this dark domain, the glow would fade. The orb would darken, becoming harmless at last.
Hecuba tried again and again, her body trembling with each repeated failure. At last, she collapsed onto the cold ground with a heavy thud, muttering incoherently as her sanity began to slip. In her despair, she could not help but wish that the fierce malice she had so carefully nurtured in Dahlia had instead been found in someone else—someone like Doris. At least then, she thought bitterly, things would have gone smoothly as planned.
After a while, Hecuba steadied herself. Anxiety would solve nothing. It came down to the only remaining solution she knew: she would eat the memories directly. Instead of trying to erase them with dark energy, she would devour the orb's essence between her teeth until nothing remained but void. This would destroy Dahlia's very being—an irreversible act.
Such a deed was no small matter. It was one of the greatest wickednesses recorded on the one hundredth page of the Book of Fetishism, a taboo she had never dared attempt until now.
To consume the orb essence would be to destroy Dahlia's life and her soul's core. Though Dahlia would technically remain alive, she would be reduced to a hollow shell—unable to move, unable to speak—utterly dependent on others to even exist. A living moron, stripped of all self.
This was no different from killing her soul alongside her mind. Once, Hecuba had considered a kinder fate—bottling Dahlia's soul after taking her body, then releasing it into a new vessel as a reward. But that hope is gone now. There would be no mercy left.
For Hecuba's purposes, this option was perfect. Yet the price was high. The act would consume a massive portion of her own power, costing her years to recover. Still, she did not waver. The malice embedded within Dahlia's body was so potent it would eventually restore what was lost—and more, magnifying her strength far beyond what it was now.
But the risk was real: the slightest mistake could annihilate her soul completely.
Accepting this grim reality, she rose swiftly, her eyes fixed on Dahlia's unconscious form. Her gaze drifted to the bowl Dahlia had drunk from earlier, now discarded nearby. She picked it up without hesitation. This time, the cauldron sat close to the table, and there was no need to sever her arm to draw from it. Everything was ready.
She reached into the cauldron and filled the bowl with the thick, sticky liquid, steaming with bubbles as though it still simmered on open flame.
This was the second time she would feed Dahlia her concoction; perhaps unnecessary, but it was just in case, as she wished to avoid another mishap occuring.
She poured the mixture down Dahlia's throat. Once satisfied, she tossed the bowl aside and leapt onto the table, sitting cross-legged beside the unconscious girl. She closed her eyes, as her consciousness plunged into her own inner body, forming a partial illusion and miniature version of herself that could move within her own inner body.
She floated around and stopped in the thoracic region, where a massive black cell wall that was impossible to explain how it can fit inside a human body stood ominously. She tapped on wall bars, and a rattle echoed from within, as a replica of herself emerged from within its shadows, bound in heavy chains, with hands that immediately clutched the bars and shook it with desperation to escape the confines.
Hecuba sighed as she looked at herself. What lay before her inside the cell was her own very soul—the embodiment of the cruelest act she had ever inflicted upon herself. Although the Book of Fetishism she adored was just a figment of the real book, it was still a fruitful aid to her, since she was able to practice the forbidden art of darkness and evil emulation written on its ninety-ninth page, a powerful incantation that demanded a heavy price: to become numb to daylight and any source of illumination. In a nutshell, she could only live her life in darkness, with the essence of light severed from her life.
At first, she had felt indignant toward the art, repulsed by its grim condition. But when she envisioned the power it promised, she grit her teeth and surrendered to its demands.
She eventually adapted to the eerie existence, trapped in perpetual darkness, no longer able to roam the world freely under the daylight as she once had. Only under the deepest cover of night, when all lights had surrendered to sleep, could she move unseen.
Yet, over time, the weight of it wore her down. She began to lose herself. The isolation grew unbearable, and in her desperation, she searched for a way to escape her cursed existence. It was then she discovered the soul-locking art—one of the most forbidden of dark rituals—opened and revealed to her in the middle page of the Book of Fetishism. A dreadful craft that imprisoned the soul within an abyss of darkness, severing it from all sensations of light, and allowing the body to move freely by itself, untethered by the fragile needs of the mind.