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Rating:

Mature

Archive Warnings:

Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceMajor Character Death

Category:

Multi

Fandom:

Parahumans Series - Wildbow

Characters:

Additional Tags:

Mystic Eyes of Death PerceptionConceptual DeathHorrorPsychological HorrorBody HorrorCosmic HorrorExistential DreadSad girl hoursAlt-Power Taylor HebertPower CorruptionIdentity CrisisCharacter StudyBeing Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver Is SufferingTaylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver Needs a HugMagicInsanityMurder

Language:

English

Stats:

Published:2025-06-21Updated:2025-11-06Words:56,264Chapters:9/?Comments:252Kudos:757Bookmarks:293Hits:29,582

She Who Sees Death

TheSmilingFox

Chapter 5: Prelude to the Nightmare

Chapter Text

1/The Girl Who Didn't Die

Prelude to the Nightmare

It wasn't enough.

Light seared into my eyes. For a moment I thought it was the sun. But no. Just a streetlamp. Midnight pretending to be day.

I stared anyway. My eyes stung, prickled. Was it the glare... or the jagged black vein slicing down the lamp's glass, splitting the brightness in two? I couldn't tell. I only knew it hurt. Eyes, head, everything.

Still, I kept looking. A moth to the flame.

Or maybe not the flame. Maybe the seam. The tear in the world's fabric. Darkness pooled inside it.

Pain lanced through my skull. A slow throb answered from deep within, heavy footsteps on hollow ground. A fist hammering at a locked door. A broken drumbeat, ritualistic, patient, older than words.

Another pang. My knees buckled. I pressed a palm to the wall, eyes shut tight.

"Hhhah… nngh… gah…"

The rhythm followed me as I staggered forward. Into the dark. Along the wall.

"Ahhh… fhh… ffffaaah…"

It grew louder. Music, maybe. Or not. The pounding was inside, not out. I struck my temple with my hand, trying to jar it loose. Nothing. I tried walking in time with the rhythm. No use. My steps rang hollow.

When I forced my eyes open again, a smaller light burned ahead - flickering, ember-red. A cigarette.

The smoker emerged around it: a man in his twenties, sleek clothes traced with red and green, eyes sharp. He caught me staring, exhaled smoke, and scoffed. Then he strode forward.

"Hey, bud. You lost? Or you lookin' for—"

The silver shard was already in my hand, already sliding into the glowing line on his shoulder. I dragged it down. Flesh gave way with a wet tear, body parting cleanly in two.

Before the halves touched the ground, I struck again, carving the diagonal seam across his face. His skull opened, neat as butchered fruit, the twin halves of his brain glistening under the light.

I pocketed the shard. Smacked the side of my head.

Still too loud.

Not quite there.

My back struck brick. It was hard, and cold. A meaty hand pinned me by the hoodie, lifted me just enough that my feet scraped the ground. Something sharp pressed into my throat. Night, broken off and polished into a blade. New. Imported.

"This is ABB territory, bitch. You searchin' for somethin'? Either way, you ain't leaving."

His lips twisted around the words, a grin, or a snarl, I couldn't tell. Both, maybe.

"Oi, Kiba. Kono yatsu shitteru ka? Kimochi warui… doko ka de mita koto aru ki ga suru."

"Shiranai yo. Hajimete miru. Demo… me ga hen da na," another voice answered, rolling in that alien tongue. Their language clinked against my ears like coins in water, heavy and strange. "Ano aoi iro… omae, cape ka?"

Floaty. As though the air thickened into tar, and I swam through it. As though I sank instead of soared, clouds curdling into black ocean. I blinked, and Death blinked back. Her veins lit up red, an electric scarlet.

"Moshi cape nara… boss ni tsureteku ze. Demo sono mae ni… ore-tachi no tanoshimi da, hahaha…"

Clasps rattled. Metal whispered against leather.

NO CUTTING UNLESS THERE'S NO OTHER OPTION.

There was no other option. No words bridged the gulf. Their language was a locked gate, their laughter a foreign hymn. We could not meet.

So.

They had to die.

The fragment of night nestled in my palm, folded neat. A thumb caress, and it opened into hunger. I pressed it to the glowing seam at his elbow. Drew.

His arm thudded to the ground.

"Wha… W-What… ah—"

He staggered, face twisting as the sound of pain clawed its way out. I silenced it, drove the fragment into the vertical line running belly to throat, split him upwards.

Right and left tumbled apart like broken doors.

A gasp hissed out from the other. A click… metal chamber rolling. His hand shook around a cannon of iron far too large for his hand.

"Stay… stay away. Or you're dead."

I swayed.

Giggled.

"Bang."

Smells like steel.

"Row, row, row your boat… gently down the stream…"

The words slipped from me like smoke, curling into the ear of the girl pressed against my chest. My hand covered her mouth, swallowed her sobs, her breath hot against my palm. She wriggled too much in the closet, catching jackets and sweaters hung inside with her frantic hands, but I pressed her still.

Outside, the world broke. Dark shapes crawled in fog, their edges scribbled with jagged lines. They overturned tables, slammed drawers, laughed in splintered voices.

"Merrily, merrily, merrily… life is but a dream…"

My song wove tighter as the girl trembled harder. Their laughter cracked louder. Glass shattered. Wood split.

"Hey, you hear? Boss wants the head of that creepy motherfucker," one of the shadows said, voice dripping casual. "The one who chopped our guys to bits. Probably a cape or somethin'."

"Why the fuck'd you tell me that?" the other snapped, his words jittering with a tremor. "I'd deleted it from my mind… shit. I was the one who found Tim Tseng, man. All carved up like… like a cow. Slaughterhouse style."

A pause. Silence like cloth tearing. The girl shifted. I hushed her with a breath.

"…Sorry, dude. I didn't know."

"Yeah, and ya don't wanna know. That shit was… unreal. I've seen Oni Lee blink around, Bakuda go batshit. But this?" His voice cracked thin. "This was a horror flick, man."

Thuds. Heavy. I pictured hands clapping, backs being slapped.

"Tell ya what. We find this bitch, teach her not to fuck with ABB, then I buy you a beer."

A laugh. A sigh. Agreement in breath.

"Sounds good. Tear this place down."

Their footsteps quickened, pounding closer, closer. The air tasted of rust and blood before the cut.

I eased my hand away from the girl. Soft. Gentle. Her mouth free. Then leaned close, breath brushing her ear.

"I'm going out there. If you stay silent, if you keep still… I won't come back for you. I won't finish their job."

Her body locked. Then a faint nod. Once. Twice.

The steel claw unfolded in my hand, whispering open like a flower made of razors.

I slipped from the locker into the storm of shapes and lines, hunting.

I feel sleepy.

The wall was cool against my back. I pressed into it, pressed until I thought I might dissolve into brick and shadow. Footsteps pounded outside. Too many. Five? Ten? The number slipped away as soon as I counted.

"Keep your eyes peeled! This piece of shit can't have gone too far!"

Glass screamed. A car shrieked back, its alarm like a dying bird. Boys' voices cracked into orders and curses, barking at phantoms. Gunfire rattled, metal biting air. I imagined them shooting at shapes only I could see. Shadows twisting, too fast, too crooked for their bullets.

"Hey! Right there! Smoke that fucker!"

A barrage. More shouting. Then scattering feet, the sound breaking apart into different alleys. None came to me. The warehouse stayed quiet. My dark corner stayed mine.

I curled tighter, arms around knees. The corpse across from me stared without blinking. Half a man. Eyes wide as saucers, oily hair clotted with blood, one gold tooth catching the dim. His frozen hand clutched a revolver, finger twitching near the trigger. He never got the first shot. With my foot, I nudged the steel out of reach, as if it might still leap to life.

Sleep pulled at me. My head dipped. Every noise snapped me back. Glass breaking, voices echoing, the memory of a gunshot that hadn't come. I never quite fell under.

Minutes. Hours. No difference. Cold in my bones, hunger in my teeth. I wanted a sandwich. Or toast. Butter slick, marmalade sweet. The thought drifted like a dream I could almost taste.

Then the warehouse cracked.

Windows burst. Shards rained silver into my dark. My dark. Shapes entered... two, outlined with glowing veins of red. More hovered outside.

"Don't blink," one whispered. I still heard. "He likes to drop outta nowhere. Not this time."

The other muttered back. Weapons gleamed. A hammer's click. A blade's grin.

The knife in my palm hummed. I blinked once. Twice. Thrice.

NO CUTTING UNLESS I UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M CUTTING.

But I understood.

Shapes. Limbs. Spines.

Nothing complicated.

NO CUTTING UNLESS THEY DESERVE IT.

But they deserved it. They wanted me gone.

So I would make them gone.

I let my breath fall silent. My body low, sliding in the shadow. The lines glowed bright against their bodies, waiting, begging.

I rose and pressed the knife into the seam running down the back of a skull. Drew it open.

Smiled.

I'm hungry.

I blinked.

Another shape, silenced. I didn't remember the cut.

Just the halves on the ground.

I'm cold.

I blinked again.

His head was already open, eyes staring at nothing. My arm was still raised, the blade humming in my hand, but I couldn't remember the swing. Just the wet sound that still echoed in my ears.

I'm fine.

The alley was empty.

Then it wasn't - there were two of them, both on the ground, blood soaking the cracks between bricks. I was already stepping over them. Had I cut them? I didn't remember.

Only the red lines buzzing in the air, satisfied.

I'm fine.

I thought I was waiting.

But the sun was already lower, the air colder.

A smear of blood darkened my sleeve, drying sticky against my skin. I didn't remember whose it was. Or how many.

I need a shower. Or two.

I heard someone breathing in my ear.

After a few hours—days?—I realized it was me.

Could be worse.

Daylight barred me from the Docks. Every street clogged with blue uniforms and bright badges, patrols sweeping back and forth, even capes drifting across rooftops like hawks circling prey.

Night barred me too. The police thinned, but the gangs thickened. Clusters of boys under every streetlamp, metal glinting at their hips, knives glimmering in their hands. Warehouses glowed from within, broken windows alive with firefly light.

I stood far away, watching. Waiting. My fingers traced the slab of steel in my pocket.

Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

A heartbeat in metal.

Time blurred. Day into night into day again. Once, at four in the morning, I slipped from my hiding place and found the Docks unchanged, still armored in watchful eyes. Another night I crouched in a corner from sundown until the sun rose, my body stone, refusing food, refusing sleep, refusing anything but waiting.

Nothing.

The pattern never broke. The walls never cracked.

It was the belly of a beast, restless but never yielding. And somewhere inside, the Dragon slept in his cave, dreaming with his eyes open.

Waiting.

It was never going to be enough.

I came home at some hour I couldn't name. It didn't matter. Time had no shape anymore, only hunger. I scraped together a meal, nothing warm enough to soften me, nothing heavy enough to slow me down. Just fuel. Just itch.

I paced. Back and forth, back and forth, a caged animal with too much dark inside. Crawled under the bed. Killed every light in the house and watched the glowing veins that spiderwebbed across the walls, red as arteries, pulsing. My eyes learned the dark the way lungs learn air.

I wasn't practicing to hide. I was practicing to cut.

Everything had lines. And lines existed to be opened.

I broke into my own house first. Again and again. I mapped every blind spot, every crack of sound, every curl of hair left behind. If I felt unsatisfied with my performance, I tried again. Until I was sure I was short of invisible.

Then the neighbors.

I listened at their kitchen as a mother told her eldest son he'd be going to college. I stood in a little girl's doorway as she slept, teddy bear locked in her arms. I shifted a table in a lonely man's home an inch at a time, for hours, until the sun came and went and he never saw.

I rehearsed until moving unseen was breath. Until vanishing was instinct. Until my father came home and the first thought in my skull was jump through the window, slip back in after him, see if he notices.

I don't remember sleep. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I refused. Only the pressure building behind my eyes, a throbbing ache, the empty pit in my gut. A heartbeat not my own, pacing me step by step, thought by thought.

I tried watching TV. The voices dissolved into static.

I tried reading. Words smeared into inkblots.

Night returned. Heavy clouds stacked over the city. Heat pressed down, humid, choking. My body begged for air, for movement, for escape. Instead, I coiled tighter into my room, cornered in shadow.

Knife in hand. Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

The wall darkened, became a stage. Shapes twisted there, blooming black on black: monstrous scenes, a theatre of night. And rising from them... a beast. Vast. Its arms flung wide in triumph, wings unfurling like fire born from a spark. Horns, claws, teeth. The heat of its breath almost kissed my skin.

I didn't flinch.

Because the lines glowed across its body too. Because even this shadow-dragon had an end.

I stared. Fold. Unfold. Fold. Unfold.

Then stopped. Pocketed the knife.

My gaze locked with the beast's on the wall, its shape sneering, daring. Waiting.

I licked dry lips. Curled tighter in the corner.

Closed my eyes.

"I will kill Lung."

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Chapter 1042 - 5