Chapter 2:
Darkness embraced him once more.
Not death.
Not peace.
Pain had simply found another shape.
Water dripped somewhere beyond his fading senses.
A familiar voice shattered the silence.
"Lieren."
His eyes opened.
The cavern had not changed.
The dead still carpeted the stone.
The scent of fel still poisoned the air.
Only one thing was different.
Celithra stood above him.
Without a word, she dragged his battered body across the blood-soaked floor until they reached the largest demon he had slain.
The creature dwarfed them both.
Its black flesh still smoked.
Its lifeless eyes stared toward nothing.
Celithra's glaive flashed.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Each strike split the demon's chest wider until its ribcage lay open like a broken cage.
Deep within pulsed a heart the size of a shield, still glowing with imprisoned fel.
She knelt beside him.
A dagger was pressed into his trembling hand.
"Cut it out."
Lieren stared at her.
He thought he had misheard.
"...What?"
Her voice became harder than steel.
"Cut out its heart."
He remained frozen.
"Now."
Years of helpless obedience moved his body before his mind could protest.
The dagger bit into demonic flesh.
The heart came free with sickening resistance.
It burned in his hands.
Its beat had ceased.
Its hatred had not.
"Eat."
His stomach recoiled.
Every instinct begged him to throw the thing away.
Celithra did not blink.
"Eat."
Lieren raised the heart to cracked lips.
His teeth tore into its flesh.
Sulphur.
Ash.
Fire.
The taste was beyond revulsion.
It was corruption itself.
The moment he swallowed, agony erupted through every fibre of his being.
The fel already coursing through his veins welcomed the new poison like an old companion.
His scream echoed through the mine.
But this pain did not stop at flesh.
It reached his soul.
---
The visions began.
Not memories.
Nightmares given life.
Again and again he watched demons descend upon Caalen.
Again and again he watched Aesa scream.
Again and again claws tore them apart before his eyes.
Every time he rushed to save them, he arrived too late.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The nightmare refused to end.
He begged it to stop.
It only became clearer.
More vivid.
More merciless.
His resolve cracked beneath the endless horror.
He wanted only one thing.
For it to end.
Then, through the storm, Celithra's voice reached him.
Cold.
Certain.
Unyielding.
"There is only one way."
Something was placed into his hand.
The same dagger.
"Blind yourself."
The visions continued.
Caalen died.
Aesa died.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Lieren understood.
So long as he clung to mortal sight, the demon would rule what he saw.
His grip tightened around the dagger.
There was no hesitation.
The blade rose.
One swift motion.
Then another.
The world vanished.
Darkness swallowed everything.
For the first time since drinking the fel...
The visions ceased.
He welcomed oblivion like an old friend.
---
When consciousness returned, he found no joy in it.
He had survived.
Why?
The question haunted every waking moment.
Others far kinder than he had died.
Caalen.
Aesa.
His father still lived somewhere beneath the same sky.
Yet he endured.
There could be only one answer.
He had not suffered enough.
Death itself had refused him.
His debt remained unpaid.
Every breath was another payment.
Every scar another coin offered to memories that could never be repaid.
He whispered the question into the silence.
"Why..."
His voice broke.
"...does everything I touch turn to ash?"
No answer came.
Only the quiet breathing of demon hunters who understood such questions too well.
---
Training began.
Pain became routine.
Failure became instruction.
Within every demon hunter raged a captive fiend desperate to escape.
Many believed strength came from mastering the demon.
Lieren learned something different.
Strength came from mastering himself.
Will.
Discipline.
Memory.
Each became another chain binding the monster inside.
When battle demanded it, he opened the cage.
When the danger passed, he closed it again.
The demon became a weapon.
Never a master.
---
The quartermasters laid many weapons before him.
Great warglaives whose edges shimmered with fel.
Axes taken from pit lords.
Spears forged in Black Temple's fires.
Lieren ignored them all.
Instead he lifted two simple shortswords.
Exodite craft.
Elegant.
Balanced.
One in each hand.
Someone asked why he would reject the traditional blades of a demon hunter.
Lieren gave only a quiet answer.
"They remind me."
He never explained further.
He did not need to.
One blade bore the memory of an old draenei whose kindness had asked for nothing in return.
The other belonged to the young woman who had smiled even in chains.
Together they became more than weapons.
They were promises.
When rage threatened to consume him...
He remembered.
When guilt whispered that he deserved only death...
He remembered.
When the demon clawed at the walls of his soul...
He remembered.
Caalen.
Aesa.
The twin blades became two lights shining through endless darkness.
Not absolution.
Never that.
But direction.
---
Years passed.
Stories spread across Outland.
Travellers spoke of a hooded figure clothed in black leather appearing where demons gathered.
No one saw him arrive.
Few saw him leave.
Only the dead demons remained as proof that he had ever been there.
Those he rescued searched for their saviour.
They found only footprints disappearing into shadow.
Lieren never waited for gratitude.
He believed he deserved none.
He was not a hero.
He was a debt walking upon two feet.
A broken soul keeping watch over a world that had shown him both unimaginable cruelty and impossible kindness.
Hidden beneath his hood were empty eyes that no longer saw the world as mortals did.
Hidden beneath his calm lay a demon forever straining against its chains.
So he walked alone.
Watching the innocent.
Watching the darkness.
Most of all...
Watching himself.
For Lieren feared no demon in the Great Dark Beyond as much as the one that carried his own name.
