Chapter 48: Feeding on Fear
“No… no, this isn’t right.” Lilith cradled Nidhogg’s body on the ground. The Little White Dragon smacked her cheeks, trying to steady her breath.
“This is fake,” she told herself.
She knew the Wraith of the Undead had condensed an illusion, frost on glass. The Nidhogg before her was a shadow cast by her heart. She knew, and still the tide of panic rose.
Yet she couldn’t stop herself. She hugged the Black Dragon’s cold weight, small hands clumsy as winter moths, trying to wipe the blood smearing his face.
“No… don’t… don’t do this.” Her voice broke like thin ice. She knew it was all her own imagining, yet her body shook out of rhythm. The fear of losing Nidhogg squeezed her lungs like frost.
She wiped and wiped, again and again. The Black Dragon’s features blurred like ink in snow, while her hands went dark red, petal by petal.
Lilith kept rubbing, eyes gone vacant. She held “Nidhogg” tight against her chest, the White Dragon’s arms colder than she was. Crystal tears clicked onto him, beading and mixing with the spreading gore.
“Mm… mm.” She whimpered. The figure in her arms went hazy, then rotten at a terrifying pace, like fruit left under winter wind.
In Lilith’s eyes, “Nidhogg” lost his face. Flesh peeled away like old bark, until white bones lay in her arms like frost-polished branches.
And then even those few bones drifted to ash, wind-scattered. Snow remained, and Lilith alone, sitting blankly at its center.
“Mm… it’s fake. It’s all fake.” She grabbed her head, whispering at herself. It was all a simple lie she made, a paper lantern in wind. Nidhogg was mountain-strong. He wouldn’t fall on this snow.
Even if Lilith fell, the Black Dragon would be fine.
And still the fear wouldn’t obey. Her mind kept staging the wound, like a bad play she couldn’t stop. If Nidhogg really was hurt like that—what would she do?
If she vanished in Lilith’s arms like before—what then?
She trembled. Her body slipped out of her control, as if strings were cut. She couldn’t feel her limbs. Fear stripped her of reason, then stole the keys to her body.
A thread of darkness crawled in without her notice, like a snake under snow. A gaze from the dark encircled Lilith, a smoke ring tightening. It climbed to her crown, coiled around her head, and feasted on the scent of fear.
“So delicious. I’ve never tasted fear this fine.” The Gaze of Darkness laughed by her ear, smiling like a crescent blade.
Lilith seemed not to hear. She stared forward, vacant. Her deep-blue eyes lost their light, like sapphires dusted over—fragile, brittle, beautiful in a way that begged to be crushed.
“What a shame. If Lord Eternal Life didn’t want you, I’d keep you.” The Gaze sighed with theatrical regret. “I’d lock you in my room. Every day, I’d drop you into one dream after another—an endless orchard of fear.”
She licked her lips. She truly didn’t want to give up this White Dragon. Since the Grand Mausoleum fell to the Moonswallow Mist, she hadn’t tasted fear this exquisite in decades.
No—count the years even before the Moonswallow Mist, Lilith’s flavor was still among the very best.
She couldn’t stand it. She needed another bite.
The Gaze of Darkness hunched on Lilith’s shoulder and took another bite of fear she gave off, unable to stop herself. She shouldn’t. Delicious things bring pain, like wine that burns the throat; reason lost to flavor, even Lord Eternal Life’s orders forgotten.
Loyal Miss Gaze of Darkness told herself no, an iron bell in her chest. As Lord Eternal Life’s most faithful subordinate, she had to deliver this White Dragon to him.
But just one bite. Just one more. Just one. That won’t be a problem… right?
Just one bite—if it’s only one, nothing bad will happen!
After that bite, still unsated, the Gaze split her darkness into ropes, binding the kneeling Lilith. She gulped fear in great draughts, greedy, intoxicated. The joy of tasting it sent her near-mad.
She devoured the Little White Dragon’s aromatic terror, never noticing how her own motions slowed, bit by bit, like a winter river crusting over.
“?”
Only when her body hit limits did she realize most of her was frozen solid. The frantic Wraith scanned around, then saw it: her beloved meal ticket had spilled cold outwards and iced her tight.
“How… how’s this happening?” She struggled, but it was too late. Half-frozen, she couldn’t flee the air growing ever colder.
Lilith remained unconscious. Fear had hijacked her body. Her Star Energy, tuned to ice and snow, leaked free. Instinct turned it into screaming wind and frost that could freeze anything.
Glutted on fear, the Gaze of Darkness missed the strangeness blooming around Lilith. By the time she sensed it, she was fully frozen by Lilith.
“How is this possible!?” She thrashed before the ice sealed her, a candle guttering in wind, unable to change the ending.
With the Wraith floating near Lilith locked in ice, the place became a single-white silence again. Yet even frozen, the Gaze’s powers didn’t vanish, embers under ash. Lilith stayed trapped inside the fear the dark had woven.
“Mm… mm…” Vacant-eyed, the little dragon sat helpless on the cold floor, a sparrow in a storm. The petite girl wrapped herself in her two wings, like a child in a thin cloak.
But the wings had no warmth. They only made her night feel deeper.
So scary. I don’t want to be alone.
The little dragon thought, a lone spark in snow.
Miss Gaze of Darkness reminds you: binge-eating is bad for your health.
