The Anomaly's Path

The silence inside the memory was thick, suffocating, smelling of dust, sweat, and blood. The door swung open with a creak, the sharp sound cutting through the quiet room like a blade.

Malva’s father stumbled over the doorway, reeking of stale drink and the sour smell of the street. His clothes were torn at the sleeves, his face red and ugly from a night of losing at the gambling dens. He slammed the door behind him with a loud bang, cursing under his breath.

"Where is she?" he spat, his bloodshot eyes scanning the dim room. "Get up, you useless—"

He froze.

His gaze landed on the ragged bed across the room.

Ten-year-old Malva stood beside her mother’s pale, still body, her small, thin hands resting over her mother’s cold chest. Her black hair hung in messy, uncombed strands over her face, hiding everything except her eyes.

There were no tears. No trembling shoulders. Her black eyes were wide, pitch-black, and completely empty of life.

"What are you looking at, you little rat?!" the man growled, his face twisting into an ugly fury as he stepped forward, grabbing a wooden stick nearby and raising it high above his head. "Get away from her! Go find me some food before I break your legs!"

Malva didn’t shrink back. She didn’t hide in the corner.

Slowly, her small, dirty fingers slid down her apron, reaching deep into her pocket. Her grip closed around a jagged piece of dark, broken glass, a shard from a bottle her father had smashed against her mother’s head long ago.

"She’s... gone," Malva whispered. Her voice held no pitch, no tremor, no anger. It was a flat line. "You killed her..."

"What did you say to me?!" the man roared, taking two fast steps across the floor. He swung the wooden stick down with all his strength.

Crack!

The wood hit Malva’s face and shoulder with a loud sound. The force lifted her thin, weak body off the ground, throwing her hard against the floor. Blood burst from her split cheek and lip, staining her chin and spilling onto the floor.

Pain flared through her face, sharp, blinding, and overwhelming. The physical impact made her vision turn black at the edges, her tiny body trembling violently from the raw shock of the blow. Air exploded from her tiny lungs as her father stepped over her, raising his boot and kicking her square in the ribs.

"You arrogant little monster!" the man spat, lunging forward to kick her again.

Thud!

The sound of her small bones cracking echoed inside her chest. Blood sprayed from her mouth, splashing across the dusty floor.

Move, Leo roared from deep within her consciousness, his own mind suffocating under the pain of her broken bones. Malva, move!

But Leo was just an observer trapped in a ten-year-old girl’s failing body.

He couldn’t force her limbs to move. He couldn’t manifest his black flames. He could only watch helplessly as her father reached down, grabbed her by her long, messy hair, and violently dragged her across the floor, lifting her until her small, bare feet barely touched the ground.

"You think you’re special?!" he screamed into her face, spit flying from his lips. "You’re nothing! Just a filthy, worthless—"

Malva didn’t scream. Through the haze of pain, tears, and blood filling her mouth, her hand shot up with desperate, wild force.

She drove the jagged glass shard straight into his eye.

The thick glass crunched as it sank deep into the socket. The man screamed, a high, horrible sound, his grip on her hair loosening as he dropped her to the floor. Thick red blood and fluid burst from the wound, covering Malva’s face, hair, and clothes.

"Aaargh! My eye! You little beast!" he choked out, clutching his bloodied face with one hand while using his other fist to hit her small, trembling body.

Bam! Bam!

Heavy, brutal blows rained down on her head and shoulders. Malva lay on her side, her head throbbing with pain, her small arms raised weakly to protect her face. Her bones felt crushed, her vision was fading fast, and her breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps.

She was a thin, starving ten-year-old girl, she was too weak. She couldn’t win. She was dying.

Through the dark haze, her hand dragged across the floor, her fingers brushing against the cold handle of the small iron knife her mother had used to cut dry bread.

I have to... send him... to her... her fading mind whispered.

With the very last bit of strength in her broken body, as her father dropped to his knees over her, sobbing and blinded by his own blood, Malva threw herself forward.

She didn’t fight like a warrior. She lunged like a dying animal, driving the rusty blade into the side of his neck. She pulled and tore at the flesh with her small hands, gasping for air as her own blood mixed with his.

A wet, gurgling sound echoed through the silent room. Her father collapsed heavily on top of her, his huge weight pressing her broken ribs against the cold floor. Hot, thick blood pooled beneath them, soaking through her clothes and staining her skin.

Malva lay trapped under her father’s body, her lungs crushed, her sight fading into a dark, narrow tunnel. She couldn’t move her arms. She couldn’t feel her legs. Her heart beat slowly, painfully slow. Through her fading vision, as her heavy eyelids began to close, the creaking front door swung open once more.

Dark purple fog spilled over the doorway. A tall figure wrapped in robes covered in eye-shaped charms stepped silently into the room. He walked past the pooling blood, stopping right beside the fallen girl.

He didn’t look at her with disgust. He knelt down, his pale, fingers gently brushing a strand of bloody black hair away from her dying eyes.

"So small..." the Harbinger whispered softly, his voice carrying a strange, fatherly warmth that felt completely wrong. "So broken, yet so pure. You need a real father, little star... Come with me."

As the figure reached down to lift her broken body, Malva’s eyes finally closed, plunging her world into darkness.

_

Suddenly, the visions shattered.

The memory didn’t flow smoothly anymore. The order of her mind shattered into a chaotic, terrifying storm of fast, broken pieces.

"Argh!" Leo screamed in his mind, clutching his head as a wave of sheer, agonizing pain slammed into his consciousness.

It wasn’t just memories anymore, it was the raw, pain of a broken mind fighting against his presence. Malva’s soul didn’t want him here. The weight of her buried trauma turned violent, churning like a grinder.

The broken pieces of memory flew past his vision so fast they blurred into a painful mess.

Snap!

A dark, underground place filled with dozens of young children wearing the same gray rags. They were kneeling on cold floors, crying, screaming, begging for mercy.

Snap!

The Harbinger of Ruin standing over Malva. "Call me Father, Malva. The man who gave you life was dirt. I am the one who gave you purpose..."

Snap!

Children disappearing one by one. Malva sitting alone in a dark, empty cell, her black eyes growing colder, her Void core eating away every little bit of her feelings until she couldn’t feel pain, couldn’t feel sadness, couldn’t feel anything at all.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Hundreds of memories crashed together at once, years of harsh training, pain, cold-blooded killings, and the heavy weight of the Fallen’s lies.

Leo couldn’t take it all in. The sheer amount of raw suffering flooded his consciousness like boiling water. His consciousness shook violently, his walls cracking under the huge, chaotic force of her mind pushing him out.

"Get out... GET OUT!" a hollow, twisted echo of Malva’s voice screamed from all around him in the void.

Snap!

The mind-space exploded outward. Leo was thrown backward through the darkness, his mind tumbling wildly through layers of breaking space until he was forced out of her head. His eyes snapped open.

Reality slammed back into him like a heavy blow. His left knee was still on the ground, his right hand still pressed flat against Malva’s cold forehead. The sudden break hit him like a punch to the chest.

"Gah—!"

A violent wave of sickness hit his stomach. Leo pulled his hand back from her head and fell forward, his knees hitting the ground as he vomited. Tears of sharp pain streamed from his eyes, his vision spinning wildly as a terrible headache ripped through his skull.

His heart was pounding against his ribs like a drum. His blood felt like fire, and his hands shook so badly he could barely hold himself up.

What... what was that...? he thought desperately, clutching his head with both hands, his fingers digging into his scalp as if trying to hold his mind together.

The pain wasn’t physical, it was a burn deep in his soul. Experiencing a child’s bones breaking, the suffocating terror of her mother’s death, and the chaotic storm of her buried trauma had nearly torn his own consciousness to shreds.

Did her mind forcefully kick him out? Or did his own soul pull back before he drowned in her pain? He couldn’t tell.

Breathing hard, his chest heaving under his white silk coat, Leo slowly forced his head up, leaning heavily on one arm. Standing motionless right in front of him, surrounded by the swirling purple mist, was Malva.

Her simple dark violet dress hung still around her thin frame, her shoulders bare in the cold air. Her face was completely pale, her expression blank, and her black eyes stared straight down at him. empty, cold, hollow.

She didn’t ask him what he saw. She didn’t move. She just watched him suffer on the ground.

Leo squeezed his eyes shut for a second, forcing his trembling body to obey. He took a long, ragged breath, forcing the nausea down. Weakly, he pushed himself off the ground and stood up, his legs shaking slightly before he locked his knees.

He stared at her, his mind a complete mess.

Before this, he had guessed. He thought she was just the Fallen Leader’s loyal tool, a cold-blooded killer who chose to walk in the dark.

He was completely wrong.

She wasn’t the Fallen Leader’s daughter by blood. She was just another broken victim, a starving child whose world died on her tenth birthday, picked up from a pool of her own blood and turned into a weapon.

Leo stared at her blank face, a heavy silence settling between them.

He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say something, anything, but the words felt useless, stuck in his throat. What was he even supposed to say? ’I’m sorry your mother died’? ’I’m sorry you were beaten’?

Empty words were meaningless. In a world this cruel, sympathy without power was just an insult. His hand tightened into a fist at his side. Standing in front of her, looking at her empty black eyes, his mind drifted back to the past.

To the memory that haunted him every single day.

Mia...

It felt so familiar it made his heart ache. Malva reminded him so much of Mia. Not because they looked alike, Mia had warm amber eyes and a bossy, sharp tongue, while Malva was quiet and cold.

But because of the weight they carried.

Mia had been a child forced to raise orphans in the middle of a war, carrying a burden that wasn’t hers, using her own life to heal others until she died in his arms during the attack on Wayford. Mia had sacrificed everything because she believed her life wasn’t her own.

...And Leo had been too weak to save her.

If Mia were standing here right now, watching this pale, empty girl... what would she say to him?

She’d smack me on the back of the head, Leo thought with a bitter, faint smile at the corner of his lips. She’d tell me to stop standing there like an idiot and do something.

He took another slow, deep breath, fixing his white silk coat, pushing the headache to the back of his mind.

He didn’t know if the choice he was about to make was right or wrong. He didn’t know what future this decision would drag him into, or if reaching out to her would come back to burn him alive. But looking into those empty eyes, he knew one thing for certain, he refused to turn around and walk away.

"Malva..." he spoke, his voice low, rough, but steady. Her dark eyes flickered slightly, but she didn’t answer.

"Malva Elian."

A sudden, sharp tension seized her body. At the sound of her full name, the name her mother had given her, her black pupils shook violently. Her breath caught in her throat. A wave of raw, confused fear spread across her pale face.

How does he know that name...? What did he do to me...?

Questions raced through her mind like fire, her soul pulling back in fear and shock.

Yet, through the horror of having her deepest darkness exposed, a strange, terrifying warmth flared in her chest. She couldn’t understand it, couldn’t explain it, but watching him stand before her after enduring the hell inside her mind, a small, fragile urge to trust him sparked deep inside her.

"...I know you’ve got a lot of secrets," Leo said, his voice quiet against the cold wind of the valley. "And I know there’s a lot of shit we need to settle between us. But we aren’t talking about any of it here."

He stepped closer, reaching out his right hand toward her, palm up.

"Right now, there’s a Grade 8 Gate tearing through the valley, and we still have monsters to kill," Leo said, a small, steady smirk on his face, his eyes locking onto hers. "So get up. I know you’re not so weak that you can’t even stand."

Malva stared at his open hand, her breath shallow, her heart pounding against her ribs. Slowly, hesitating like she was reaching across broken glass, her small, cold hand reached out and rested on his palm.

Leo pulled her up in one smooth move. She stood on her feet, staring at him in silent shock, her fingers lingering against his skin before she slowly pulled her hand back.

"Alright," Leo said. "Let’s go—"

Crash!

Before Leo could even blink, reality ripped apart. He didn’t get a second to sense the danger. He didn’t get a moment to react.

A huge, unnatural blast exploded out of the dark fog right in front of them. Something invisible hit Malva with terrible force. With a loud sound, her body flew backward at terrifying speed, crashing through a wall before disappearing under a cloud of dust and rubble.

Blood splattered across the ground where she had been standing.

Leo stood frozen, his hand still reaching out, his white hair whipping in the sudden, violent wind. He stared at the empty space in front of him, his mind completely blank.

"Huh...?"