Curses! Faisuri spat in her mind. Curse this! Curse the world and its grandmother!

Everything had gone smoothly up to that point. The line had been cast and the king had taken the bait — hook, line, and sinker. All Faisuri had to do was reel him into the blinding light from the dark depths he had sunk — a light that he could mistake for the sun's brilliant rays, only to find that it had been her all along who held the torch.

She would be his friend, his trusted ally in the dark hallways where they loitered, maybe even his salvation. She recognized the cloud of loneliness that plagued the young king, to be surrounded with so many others yet feel segregated all the same. She knew the thoughts that ran through his mind that night. "I am the one and only king," he would think to himself. "The burden is mine to carry alone. Nobody else would understand because they are not the king."

Oh, she understood that very well. After all, she had been there herself.

Even after Jonathan had taken her hand and pulled her out of that nightmare, even when the Raines had taken her in, the scenes of that night were like scars on her mind — slowly fading over the years, but never vanishing. Like scars, they hold the subconscious memory of the injury that had been inflicted. Back when the wound had still been fresh in her heart, young Faisuri had been desperate for someone to be able to reach out to her and relieve her of the pain.

Jonathan, Daud, Aunt Farisa, Uncle Allister, her governess, her nursemaid Irayani... none of them could ever really understand her affliction.

Which was to be expected. They had never been in her shoes. Everyone knew the Mist was to be feared, that those who were swallowed by it were never seen again. She was the sole known survivor. A living contradiction.

And perhaps, even now, she was still walking down that lonely path, all on her own. The fact that she was here, again, was a testament to that.

Why now? She asked silently to anyone who would listen, robbed again of her voice in a frigid, shapeless world of torment. Did the gods even exist in this wretched place?

Faisuri had an inkling to the answer — one that she refused to acknowledge. Was this her punishment for trying to take advantage of another lonely soul (a king, no less) for her personal benefit?

No, it could not be punishment. She had been forcefully thrown into this place for as long as she could remember. Although, recently, she found herself back in this hellish realm more often than usual.

"She's back," the mouthless forms murmured. Their words were like acid dripping into her ears. "She can't stay away for long. She will join us soon."

There was a hint of vindictive pleasure amidst their morose voices, as if their personal suffering was slightly alleviated by the notion that she would join them in their not-so-merry band of woeful souls. Even after sixteen years of going in and out of this hazy world, Faisuri could not determine the nature of its dreary inhabitants. Whatever they were, one thing she did know for sure was that she did not want to spend eternity as one of them — as a formless being who knew no joy, bringing only negativity to those unfortunate enough to be there.

This time, however, anger fueled her resistance. The unseen claws that raked over her exposed skin no longer caused her to convulse. A sort of dark triumph blazed in her eyes. The formless creatures must have seen it, too, for their frozen grip on her faltered. Faisuri had never known a shred of respite, so their sudden vulnerability slapped her in the face.

In this seemingly endless tug-of-war that had gone on for sixteen years of her life, was she finally winning?

Just as she had started to dare to hope, the entire world tilted sideways, sending her tumbling onto the cold, hard nothingness below her feet. The 'ground', which Faisuri had always taken for granted, gave way beneath her. She fell, engulfed by the fog, drowning in it. Her invisible limbs flailed wildly, attempting to find something solid to latch onto for support. It was a foolish endeavor — there was nothing material in this accursed place. There was only the thick gray haze, swallowing her up whole.

And then, her fingers found the touch of skin.

Faisuri fought the urge to recoil, forcing herself to cling onto this vague anchor for her life. The fear of losing herself in the miasma overcame her repulsion. She felt flesh shift against her gripping palms, slowly drawing her out of the swirling pool of mist.

When the fog cleared from her vision, the first thing she saw was a face — decidedly a person, but also not. The skin was pulled taut against the face's facial skeletal structure, exposing all the crags and pits of the skull. It rotted away in places, almost threatening to peel off to expose what little flesh remained in the face. The skin around the mouth had already fallen away, its jaw unhinged, revealing a set of hideous, yellow teeth bared at her in an animalistic manner. The eyes residing in the face's sunken sockets were naught but milk-white spheres, glaring at her without seeing her. The morbid expression was frozen in place, like a still painted to commemorate whatever tragedy this wayward soul had to witness.

Faisuri had seen death before and she was certain that this revolting thing was not alive.

She was close to join it in death herself when its unseeing eyeballs turned to stare at her.

The girl let out a shrill scream, releasing her grip on whatever part of its limb she had latched onto, almost not caring if she would be swallowed by the miasma as a result. But she felt another set of limbs wrap around her exposed waist, the feeling of icy cold skin uncomfortably pressed against hers.

That horrendous face was only part of a grisly gallery of decomposed faces welded into each other by flesh. Among the thieran-like faces, she spotted those of equines as well. Some of them had their muzzles, caked with dry blood, melded into the terrified heads of dead thierans. Hooves, arms, and legs stuck out every now and then, twitching erratically like a half-dead spider. She was aware some of those appendages were keeping her aloft at this moment, passing her over and over to its other limbs.

It was as if somebody with a sick mind had stitched together the remains of men and horses into a giant, autonomous creature with a single mind... and it was bringing her to face its head.

Faisuri thrashed, squirmed, and screamed bloody murder. She dug her nails into the amalgamation of limbs that was carrying it upwards in feeble retaliation, thinking that inflicting pain upon it might make it drop her. Her mind was a swirling vortex like the haze around her, unable to think clearly. She was unable to consider that if the enormous creature had dropped her, she would fall into the pea-soup down below and never be recovered again.

And perhaps, she'd rather face that rather than death by becoming dinner for this wretched beast.

In her terror, she recognized bits of fabric, leather, and metal. There were broken swords and spears sticking out like porcupine quills, leather and metal plates of armor coating the flesh like patches of calaian scales, and colorful fabrics marred by various, disgusting, unidentified stains. Among them, she spotted a faded insignia: a charging bull.

The emblem of Halimun.

Finally, suspended from a great height, she found herself face-to-face with the "head" of the great beast — two halves of two different men stitched into a single head embedded in a writhing pile of bodies. The face was strangely intact compared to the rest, with its skin mostly in place (albeit two different shades) save for the area around its mouth, which was colored black with cracked stains. Dark and light hair sprouted sparsely from the scalp.

Its glazed eyes — one a pale turquoise and the other pale brown — registered her with a peculiar curiosity, as if this beast still had a semblance of life in it. A vortex had brewed in Faisuri's bowels, and she tried not to expel undigested food in the repulsive face of her captor.

She forced herself to stare back at the dead eyes, angling her chin upwards in defiance. Her heart nearly stopped.

It had been a long decade since the incident that shattered and reshaped her life to what it now was, but she could not forget. The left half of the face, the one with the faded blue eye and the silvery strands of hair, had often plagued her nightmares.

Faisuri found herself back as a child, quailing in fear under the bloodthirsty gaze of a yildean raising a sword above her. She had scrambled back in fear, finding her back pressed against the rubble of her carriage. As the blade almost fell upon her, the yildean gave a sudden start. Red pooled around his gritted teeth, dribbling past his pale lips before he collapsed forward to reveal his spitting image behind him.

His "doppelgänger", shorter and younger, held a dagger in one hand, chest heaving raggedly. The light of the runestones caused the blade to glint red. His scarlet eyes locked onto Faisuri's for a split second. She could never forget the sheer turmoil that could co-exist in a single set of eyes —pain, confusion, regret, anger... and pity. She felt him study whatever was reflected in her own eyes, before dropping the dagger and turning his back on her.

Whenever she tried to recall his face afterwards, she only saw a pale blur with red eyes. Until she saw it again — half of it — right now. Her savior's older clone with blue-green eyes.

As for the other half, the one with the dark eye, he was a man that would have looked kindly had he been alive. She thought she had forgotten what he looked like, too. It had been so long, after all.

But the pang of longing in her heart told her differently. Even after all these years, Faisuri could never forget the face of the man she had loved and lost. Tears began to trickle from the corners of her eyes.

"Father—" she began, before a sliver of rational thought stopped herself. "No. You're dead."

The half that looked like the late king Farhan twisted in slight confusion. At the same time, the yildean half convulsed in rage.

"Child," a strange voice resonated. It was akin to the discordant voices of the invisible beings in this land, but she could pick out two distinct voices among them. "Why are you here?" The voice from her childhood, warm and kind, overpowered the rest.

"You're not dead like the rest." The other voice — deep with a rasp — drowned her father's. "How?"

"Who... what are you?" Faisuri yelled, as if her terror could slightly be dispelled by raising her voice.

A bunch of incoherent murmurs answered her, voices overlapping each other in a desperate race to answer her question. They were all hoarse and hollow.

"We... are the fate that awaits you," said her father. "We are the end... for everyone."

"You would wish that fool had killed you sooner," growled the yildean. "You would rather be these faceless wayward souls than be a part of us."

"It hurts," her father lamented. The melancholy in his voice was deep and heartrending. "It hurts to be like this, child. It hurts."

"And soon, everyone will know our pain," the yildean continued. "Betrayal. By the gods themselves."

"Wh...what are you talking about?" asked Faisuri, lamely. Her head was starting to pound.

"Child. Faisuri."

Her father had spoken her name. He remembers, she thought, before shaking it off. Was this hideous figure really her father? How could he be speaking to her?

He's DEAD.

The two halves of the face twisted into a perfect, synchronized frown.

"The gods have turned their backs on us. There is no rest for the dead. There is only... pain. They have forced us to continue to wander this world, reliving our regrets over and over until we know nothing else. And we are forced to swallow those who still live, so that they can partake in our torment. That is our curse."

The Mist, Faisuri realized, in a horrific epiphany. She shut her eyes. I'm in the Mist. I have always been sucked into the Mist, over and over, since that day.

And if this was the Mist, and such forlorn creatures existed in it... and how they relished in passing on their suffering to her...

"It is inevitable," Faisuri thought, thinking back to the words she heard over and over within this place.

Then, she understood.

Her father and his entourage had all been lost to the Mist. They were here now. They were all dead. The Mist was where everyone who had died had gone to ever since the World's End.

The flowers they put on graves, the prayers they lift to the gods for peace for the deceased... They were all for naught. Because there was only one fate that awaited everyone who lived. It was to join this macabre troupe of despair in their death.

"Child, won't you join us now?" It was her father who spoke. She dared herself a peek and looked into the half-and-half face of the colossal beast. There was pity in both halves. "It is only a matter of time before you die. It is inevitable."

"And we are coming to collect you and the rest of your kind," the yildean half spoke. "Just as we have collected all these other great nations and assimilated them into this vessel of destruction." His eye looked down at his gigantic body.

"You're... the Colossal Horror!" Faisuri's fingers wound themselves in the raven strands of her hair, tearing at it. Her chin sunk to her chest. A scream of frustration escaped her throat.

Her grand plans of the future, the show she had orchestrated for Aidan, her dreams of regaining the throne of Halimun... they were all shattered in the presence of the bitter truth. None of that would matter if her destiny — no, if the destiny of everyone who would remember her legacy — was to end up in the Mist anyways. No matter what she did in life, she would only serve to haunt future generations anyways.

Maybe they're right all along, the voice of reason in her head told her. Just give up now. Save yourself the pain and struggle. You're going to end up here anyway, no matter what you do.

At that very moment, when she was on the verge of giving up, it came back to her. Like in the epics, fairy tales, and ballads, where the heroes she loved to read about would very conveniently recall something at the moment where everything seemed lost.

A memory.

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Chapter Writer: VeryBigMess

AN: Faisuri's life is a soap opera and she knows it XD 

I was originally going to do a double-update, but I'm not feeling confident with 25.2 yet. But I have to get this out first, or else I'm going to chicken out for another two weeks or something haha