Orion examined the scene, the blood splatter and patterns made no sense to him. What could have caused this? The room looked like an abstract painting drawn with hues of blood red. It was hard to understand.

  He looked over to the boy, he was crowded by guards, talking to him with eerily gazes. The boy started to cry, his hands on his face, as he coughed abruptly. He was responsible for this? Who decided that?

  “What are the clues so far?” Caedmon asked.

  “Nothing yet, just these strange symbols around the room, what do you think?” Liora replied as she walked around the room.

  “It is certainly strange, an effect of destabilisation?” Orion asked.

  “Maybe?, but we have never seen anything like this.” Liora walked around, eyeing the patterns on the walls.

  “But, there is no way they expect us to believe this kid did this?”

  Orion stood still, firmly on the ground, bewildered by the sight in front of him.

  “Thats what they said.” Liora kneeled, eyeing the patterns more closely.

  Orion inhaled, the air pressed against his chest, each breath shallow and incomplete.

  He walked over to the sobbing boy.

  He kneeled down, and looked at the boy straight in the eyes. The boy avoided eye contact, covering his teary eyes with his hands as they dripped to the floor.

  He wanted to sympathize with him. That boy had just experienced his parents die, and now the dominion blamed him for his death. It was depressing, and tragic. However, this wasn't the time for that.

  “What did you see?” Orion asked him firmly.

  No response.

  Orion asked again.

  The boy kept sobbing.

  “That's how he has always been inquisitor, we ask, he doesn't answer.” Said one of the guards standing above Orion.

  “These symbols, they look… otherworldly, as if they weren't made by nature itself but something more human?” Said Caedmon as he continued to write down notes.

  It was true what he said. Orion followed Caedmon's gaze. The symbols weren't ordinary. They were circles, inside circles, lines intersecting at impossible angles. Spirals that tightened and loosened without pattern. Some were thin, precise, others were thick and smeared, as if drawn by shaky hands. Yet, even the messy ones followed an invisible order.

  In certain places, the blood had thinned into translucent streaks, revealing scratches that hadn't been there before. It was as if someone had traced these shapes with claws.

  It didn't resemble ritual or writing.

  It looked like memory trying to constantly repeat itself.

  At that moment, the light became dimmer, the air thicker. Orion suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, his hairs stood on end as if the room suddenly got colder. His stomach dropped.

  He heard the loud, blaring laughter of a young boy coming from behind him, cackling like a person that's gone berserk.

  He turned around, the guards stood back, shocked at what they were hearing. Liora and Caedmon looked intrigued. Orion's heartbeat began to rise.

  “Hey, what's so funny?”

  The laughter rose, to the point it must have hurt his body.

  “I asked a question.”

  The entire room became completely still, no one moved an inch.

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  Then it stopped, like a wave crashing. The boy looked Orion in the eyes, his face blank and expressionless.

  He then smiled.

  The pools of blood moved around Orion's feet as if they had a mind of its own. They retracted, gathering together from all different angles, forming something… something inhuman. The organs previously splattered, floated towards the centre and the blood pooled. Eyes formed, muscles and tissues formed, it resembled an entity out of this world.

  It was a being made of loose, dangling flesh, its eyes scattered around its body, its limbs out of place, it was much larger than a normal size being, made entirely from decayed tissues.

  Orion looked in horror. The guards, they took one gaze, and then were trapped in a trance, as if it broke their minds mentally.

  Caedmon ran to Orion, his mouth uttering something. Liora stood still, her feet planted, preparing to fight. Caedmon got closer, Orion couldn't make out what he was saying, he was so distracted by the sight.

  However, his words soon became apparent.

  “Run!”

  Clash.

  Rubble fell down the streets, the building abrupted in madness, its walls disintegrated as stone fell to the ground. Orion fell to the ground, his body pierced, his head almost cracking open.

  Open wounds riddled his body. He lied on the ground, and looked up. The entity grew the size of the entire building, as it overlooked Orion, covering the sky.

  It was a Recursion Wraith, people who lost their sense of identity and self due to the unstable repetition of reality. Their sense of reality had become looped, to the point that repetition caused them to turn into abnormal beings.

  Orion only read about it in a book, he never saw one in person. In the White Meridian, these people were usually burned before they got to this stage, how did the dominion let this one slip?

  He grunted in pain, the blood smearing on the ground he lay. Pieces of stone came thundering down from above. The people..

  They were unexpectedly calm, composed. They went on their ordinary day, walking past, smiling, talking, as if this was nothing to pay attention to?

  How, people were dying? Questions riddled his mind.

  From above, faint moonlight could be seen, reflecting, then diminishing, then reflecting again against Liora's silhouette. There were 2 of her, then 3, then 4. Her clones, the power of the mirror mark.

  They climbed on top of one of the wrath's many limbs, dancing in the light above ground.

  Liora pulled out her straight sword, she pointed it forward, signalling her clones to attack. They leapt and dashed through the pieces of flesh, cutting through the muscle.

  The flesh dropped to the ground. Orion mustered all his strength and shifted to the side, avoiding the meat that was going to hit him. He hurriedly got up. His wounds and injuries started to close, heal on their own, as the fibres and tissue regrouped and reattached, as if they resembled tree branches coming together.

  Caedmon ran to him, his foot stumbling on the ground.

  “We need to go in!” He screamed.

  Orion's eyes shifted, towards the side. There was someone watching them, silently observing their every move, sitting on top of a building, like a quiet bird. It was a skinny man, wrapped in white clothes covering his whole body, wearing short white pants and a white hoody, completely covering his face.

  He ate an apple, seeing them, as if he was watching a show. Who was he…

  “We need to go in!” Caedmon screamed again.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  Orion snapped out of it. He saw the monster eradicate the clones without much effort. Liora was strong, probably the strongest in their team, but to face an enemy this size was suicide.

  “Right,” Orion said as he began running.

  Orion looked on the ground beneath him. The torn muscles, the limbs, began floating back, and attaching itself back onto the entity, it began healing. It was truly indestructible, how could you kill such a thing.

  Rough, spiked vines grew out of Orion's fingers, he pulled out his curved sword, the vines attached to the wrath's body, and launched him forward. Caedmon turned his body sharp, like a blade, and sprinted upwards, like a knife being thrown.

  The veins cut through the body, blood splattering everywhere, whilst Orion used his sword to cut the prices that his veins didn't. It was no use, the wrath didn't feel any pain, it just reattached its cut off muscles.

  The wrath launched his limbs into Liora, she spat blood, her body tumbling backwards.

  Orion sweated profoundly.

  “Shit”

  “Orion!” Cademon yelled.

  He was below both of them, trying to cut the wrath from below.

  “Its not healing, it's repeating!”

  “Huh?” What did he mean? Repeating?

  “The wrath, it's repeating the same pattern, we need to destroy the anchor!”

  Orion's eyes widened, as if something clicked. That's it, he finally remembered what was written in the books he studied. A wrath had an anchor that caused it to repeat reality, like an order. It was something that kept looping around, like a memory, or a symbol. That was the key to beating it.

  Its names were Draven and Isha.

  Orion looked at the entity.

  “Your name is Draven, Draven and Isha right?”

  The entity's body rumbled, as if it was irritated. This was his chance. Orion swept forward, his veins cutting the body in circular motion, the sword guiding them.

  The dismembered body parts began falling to the floor. Time passed, seconds, minutes, but what felt like hours. The body parts stayed there, refusing to connect. It worked, but it wasn't enough.

  Liora emerged from the rubble, her lips and mouth bloody from vomiting blood.

  She stared at the wrath intensely, her mirror mark started glowing white. The moon light bended around here, reality warped slightly. Her mark trembled, the entity began to shake.

  It was as if she was copying, reflecting back the Wrath's attacks. The wrath swung its limbs at her, it didn't touch her. The attacks reflected back with a cracking sound, putting holes in the wrath's body.

  The man wrapped in white cloth watched from a distance, he smiled - dropping his apple on the ground.