It was now that Sitan thought he finally had Benny at a point where he could consume all of him in his entirety. The mortal was broken, bleeding, barely conscious. Ripe for the taking.
But he played it one more time. He wanted to savor this moment.
"Then let me show you who the boy is, mortal."
Benny was sucked into another scenario before he could protest. But this time it was the mother's perspective. It went back as far as when her husband left for war.
—
She knew there was a chance of him not making it back alive. Or even if he did, he wouldn't be the same man as he was before. War changed people. It hollowed them out and filled them with something else. The days passed and her tears dried. She knew that the silver wouldn't last them long enough. Her son Benny was still two years old, so she figured she needed to find a job that would support both of them.
But finding work wasn't as easy as she hoped.
Then she hit a roadblock. The only place she almost found employment was owned by a man who collected a harem of women. A rich businessman and merchant from the next town, Kagyan. She was invited to what seemed like a business dinner, and unable to refuse in her desperate situation, she accepted. She hoped that at least she would find work, even if it meant becoming a maidservant.
But during the dinner, she didn't realize that her cup was laced with something. A substance that clouded the senses and made the mind pliable. The merchant's words became like honey, sweet and impossible to resist.
He manipulated her into gambling. It was his way of making her owe him. As soon as the money she had received from her husband ran out, the merchant suggested she borrow from him. He promised she would win it all back and more.
It was all rigged, of course. She lost all of it to the gambling den. The merchant had her exactly where he wanted her.
She sobbed all night when she returned home. Her mind was confused and cloudy as to what she had done. Had she really gambled away her husband's silver? The silver he earned with blood and possibly life on the line? She couldn't remember clearly. The memories were hazy, like trying to recall a dream.
The following morning, the devil came knocking at their doorstep.
He screamed so that the neighbors would hear of her crimes. She was set up and framed, and the merchant brought the town's authorities with him to make it all seem legitimate. He accused the woman of not paying her dues to him after wasting all his money from gambling.
Then it dawned on her. Those flowery words, all of those promises, they were all lies. She was a fair-looking woman. No, she was beautiful. And in the merchant's eyes, she was wasted on someone like Dong.
Once the scandal spread enough and her reputation was damaged beyond repair, the merchant asked for compensation. Left with no other choice, the authorities forced her to become his slave if she was unable to pay him. It was one way of paying for her crimes, they said. The law was on the merchant's side. The law always favored the rich.
And her child? Benny was sent elsewhere. Due to his age, he wasn't prepared for any work yet. He was too young, too small. That was how he became an orphaned child, lost and adrift. He may have blocked all memories of his time with his family, unable to remember them. Their names and even their faces faded like morning mist.
—
Back to the more present timeline, while Dong's wife suffered under the merchant's schemes, Dong himself was already marching toward the town. A veteran soldier who thought wrong of his wife because he didn't know what she had been through. He didn't know about the drugged wine. The rigged games. The trap that had been laid for her.
His anger and remaining bloodlust from the war hadn't faded. He felt rage boil inside him. His judgment was cloudy, and his thoughts were of death and vengeance.
When he arrived in Kagyan, he confirmed what the neighbor had told him. He saw his wife with another man, the merchant. His already darkening eyes saw only a fragment of the pained smile his wife made when she noticed him. She looked relieved for a moment. Hopeful. Like he had come to save her.
But he didn't see salvation in her eyes. He saw betrayal.
A veteran of war committed a crime that day. He killed all of those around the merchant. The guards. The servants. Anyone who stood between him and the man who had taken his wife.
He was unable to hear his wife's pleas as she tried to console him, tried to explain. Her words fell on ears deafened by rage. She reached for him, and he saw it as an attack.
She was next.
He stabbed her right through her heart. A gasp of shock escaped her lips as the weapon passed through her. Her husband was angry, she understood. He must have heard from others what they knew, but not what she knew. Not the truth.
Dong stood there, stained in blood and covered in his own love's blood. Then his mind cleared of the darkness, the red haze lifting like fog. Below him, he held his wife in his arms. Then he saw his blade buried in her chest, piercing through her heart.
She was still alive, but barely. She was pale already, losing too much blood too quickly.
Dong cried and wailed. His heart broke completely at what he had done.
She spoke one last time, blood bubbling at her lips. "I forgive you, my love. Find..."
She couldn't continue her words.
She passed with that being her last breath. Her heart stopped. Her eyes went empty, staring at something beyond him.
Dong cried and cried. Unable to accept his crimes, unable to process that he had killed his wife. The one person he had fought to return to. It took him some time until he could no longer cry. Until the tears simply wouldn't come anymore.
He got out of the area, leaving the merchant's home behind. He carried his wife's body with him, cradling her like she was still alive. He knew a place where she had found comfort in this cruel world they lived in. Under an old tree that had stood the test of time, on a hill overlooking the fields.
After he buried her, he sat by her grave and finally calmed down. Doused by whatever emotion he felt, only emptiness remained. A hollow shell of the man who had left for war a year ago.
Then he remembered. The little tyke. Their son, Benny.
A small glimpse of light erupted within him, breaking through the darkness. Then he realized what his wife was trying to tell him with her dying breath. It was to find Benny. To protect their son.
He went down the hill where the tree stood and walked to a nearby river to wash himself. He saw his reflection in the water. The reflection of a demon bathed in blood. The blood of his wife and those who had wronged her.
He scrubbed himself, disgusted and reminded of his cruelty. "No, not yet. I need to see my son." He was planning to join her in the afterlife, but not before he saw Benny one last time.
—
Days passed, and he became a wanted man. Wanted by the authorities for committing murder. He had to hide himself and move like a rat through the sewers and in the darkness, avoiding patrols and checkpoints.
Then he found signs of where Benny had been taken. He was sent to a city called Tiamerith. It was far away, several weeks of travel on foot. But that was where the boy was taken, to an orphanage there.
He made the journey. Sleeping in ditches. Stealing food. Avoiding the roads.
He found the orphanage and watched from the shadows. He saw Benny there for the last time. He saw that his boy now at least had a home, a roof over his head and other children to play with. Even if he took the boy, Dong didn't know how he would raise the child. Especially when it was a demon like him who had taken the boy's mother away from him.
How could he look his son in the eyes?
He said his goodbye from a distance, hidden behind a wall. He watched Benny play with the other children, unaware of the man watching him. Unaware of everything that had happened.
Then Dong turned and went back home. Back to the tiny village where he had found the happiest years of his life and the saddest.
One last time, he went to the hill where he had buried his wife. He knelt by her grave and spoke to her. He apologized for what he did and what he was about to do.
He told her that he had seen Benny and that the boy would be alright.
After that, he went on a rampage. He challenged the authorities openly, walking into the town square and announcing himself. Daring them to take him.
They came with arrows and spears. He fought like the soldier he was, but there were too many.
He died riddled with arrows and pierced by spears, his body collapsing in the same dirt where he once played as a child.
Then he breathed his last. Perhaps he saw his wife waiting for him. Perhaps there was nothing. But at least it was over.
Then Benny was ripped out of that scenario, torn from the past and thrown back into the darkness. He now remembered. Or rather, he was forced to remember a fragment of memory he had locked deep within his consciousness as a child. The face of his mother. The sound of her voice. The feeling of being taken away.
He wept and cried. The sobs tore from his chest like something physical being ripped out.
Sitan laughed in amusement at the sobbing human's story. The kind of twisted entertainment the gods enjoyed with their sadistic natures. He now realized why they played this game. It was because it was amusing to them. Mortal suffering was a spectacle to them.
Now he whispered and asked Benny one last time, leaning close.
"Now tell me, mortal. Who was that boy?"
His full smile was already there. Rows of teeth like a predator. His demonic eyes gleaming. A sense of elation and victory radiating from him.
He had won.