After nearly fourteen relentless hours of Meditation, Frank's body finally gave out. Sheer exhaustion consumed him, and his thoughts scattered into fragments he could no longer hold together.
His muscles trembled violently, ravaged by the strain of keeping him upright, until at last they failed. He slumped to the floor, unable to move, his body a hollow shell drained of energy. Hunger gnawed at him, his system faltering under the weight of fatigue and deprivation.
Frank didn't even want to know what was happening to him, but his enhanced senses betrayed him, relaying every detail unfiltered into his mind. And what they carried was agony.
He was feeling PAIN—raw, unrestrained, merciless pain that tore through his nerves. His teeth clenched so tightly they threatened to crack, and his mouth filled with the bitter taste of metal, as though blood itself had become his only flavor.
The pain was both physical and extraordinary, a torment so vast that Frank couldn't even comprehend how he was enduring it.
While meditating, he had grown numb to the world, but that numbness hadn't meant his body was impervious to pain—it only meant his brain had stopped acknowledging the signals. Now, with his meditation broken, every suppressed signal came rushing back at once.
The flood was merciless. Pain surged through him like a tidal wave, overwhelming his thoughts, paralyzing his limbs, and dragging him deeper into despair. His body trembled violently, his mind buckling under the sheer overload of sensation.
It was too much—too raw, too unfiltered. His teeth clenched until his jaw ached, his vision blurred, and his consciousness faltered. At last, crushed beneath the weight of agony and memory overload, Frank passed out, his body collapsing into darkness.
A moment passed, then another, and slowly Frank clawed his way back to the land of the living. His eyelids fluttered, blinking several times until his vision sharpened into focus. But it was already too late.
A swarm of small green hands had seized him, binding his wrists tightly and lashing his legs together with crude cords. Frank wanted to resist, to protest, but his body betrayed him—he was far too weak, drained by hunger and exhaustion, unable to summon even a flicker of strength.
The hands returned, nimble and greedy, snatching the fruits he had gathered and dividing them among themselves with gleeful chatter. Then they found the book tucked inside his bag.
Confused, they passed it from one to another, unsure of its value, until at last it vanished from Frank's sight. He lay helpless, watching as his possessions slipped away, powerless to stop them, his mind clouded by despair and the bitter taste of defeat.
***
Willow was dressed in a slightly tattered apprentice soul‑vampire suit, the fabric clinging to her frame like a second skin, whispering of battles fought and secrets carried. She wore a black mask to boot, which covered her face and lent her the silent, shadowed grace of a ninja, concealing both her identity and the turmoil within.
After her run‑in with Love, she had met up with other dark elves like her, and there she learned a grim truth: dark elves inevitably succumbed to a strange sickness after some time, a creeping decay that hollowed them from within.
The only cure for this sickness was life energy, raw and vital, and so in order to continue living she had to keep consuming it, feeding on the essence of life. At first, Willow thought it was a cruel joke, for she had never felt more alive since becoming a dark elf.
Though she no longer possessed the radiant luxury or divine buffs she once received from the Goddess of Life when she was an elf, she had grown to enjoy the sharpened instincts, the heightened senses, and the dangerous freedom of her new existence.
As a dark elf, Willow carried a unique sense of identity, one that set her apart from the rigid traditions of her former kin. She no longer had to follow the set standards imposed by her people, nor bend beneath the weight of expectations carved into centuries of elven culture.
She remembered vividly the days of living in the enchanted domain, where every elf was bound to the four major groups: the adventurers as the first, the workers as the second, the aristocrats as the third, and the royals as the last and final group.
Though she had once dreamt of the life of an adventurer — surviving in the wild, taking quests to earn coin, and carving her own destiny — she now found herself living that dream in a harsher, more dangerous form.
Ever since the soul beings had invaded their land, adventurers became immensely scarce, their numbers dwindling as fear spread like wildfire, and most abandoned the perils and dangers that laid beyond the enchanted domain entirely, clinging to their cushy lives hiding in the enchanted domain.
At that time, Willow was forced to change her aspirations, reshaping her dream into the pursuit of becoming an aristocrat. Some days she even wished she had been born into the royal household itself, where privilege and power flowed like inherited blood.
Yet not just anybody could rise to the rank of aristocrat, nor could anyone simply claim the title of royal; such positions were guarded fiercely, reserved for the chosen few. She had to settle for what she could grasp, and so she ended up becoming a knight.
Though she worked for the royal household, she was never truly part of it — a bodyguard, not a family member, a shadow at the edge of their glittering halls. In times of war, she was treated as little more than a disposable pawn, a shield to break before the enemy's blade, not a real living elf in their eyes. This bitter truth weighed heavily on her, reminding her that loyalty did not always earn belonging, and service did not always grant respect.
Eventually, Willow grew weary of everything — the endless duties, the suffocating expectations, and the gnawing emptiness inside — and she began consuming elixirs.
The strange thing about these elixirs was that they were smuggled secretly into the enchanted domain, their origins shrouded in mystery. No one knew who was producing them or how they were being crafted, yet they spread like wildfire among the restless.
The elixirs brought immense joy to aspiring adventurers, filling them with courage and reckless energy, and for the first time in years, adventurers stepped outside the enchanted domain to confront beasts and monsters in battle.
What they did not know, and what Willow herself could not have imagined, was that the buffs granted by the elixirs carried a hidden curse. Slowly, insidiously, they transformed those who consumed them into dark elves, stripping away their former selves. And soon, after a time, a debilitating illness would take root, binding them to a new addiction — another kind of elixir, far more dangerous and forbidden: life energy itself.