Page 402 of Light Leech

I knew its face too well. His face. He shouldn’t have been here in such stark reality. I felt like my reality was collapsing under another cruel twist of Gong’s narrative. He was the same being that had fought for us in Luminate League.

Sha.

“No!” Ralia demanded. She reached back to rip Kim’s light lines from the base of her skull. He whipped her back onto the floor, using them like a leash. She continued to fight, but as Kim tightened his grip, her movements lost their strength.

“That is my Gui, not your Dokkaebi,“ Ralia said like a child who knew she was wrong but could not admit her fault. “Sha! Stop this!”

Sha laughed.

“One of the Journeymen?” the bald woman asked. She looked at Kim. “Sha is one of the Journeymen, is he not?”

“Indeed,” Kim said. “Care to explain yourself to your withered vessel, Dokkaebi?”

Sha glared at Ralia as he shed excess weight, becoming more of a well-toned goblin than a gargantuan ogre.

“You were always quite the perceptive one.” Just as his body had gone from behemoth to imp, so did his voice. “Though I knew I would win you over eventually.”

What. Is. This? I asked Zhu.

“A betrayal most vile,” he said.

“Zeg you!” Ralia shouted.

Kim laughed. “Like a child caught in frustration over a lack of understanding, she yells instead of pleads for clarity.”

“Such vermin,” Sha–Dokkaebi said, “deserve to suffer in ignorance.”

Kim let out a nervous laugh that he tried to fix by clearing his throat. “While I would like to agree, the rest of our council needs an explanation if they are to serve you as best as possible.”

Dokkaebi rotated in his prism, facing everyone with a perceiving glare, then landing on me with a sharper focus. “Revenge is best marinated over millennia, Zhu.”

“You killed our brother!” He spoke through me, amplifying my voice with his deep growl.

Dokkaebi laughed. “Did I really? I was the brother you loved since you believed I disappeared.”

“Please explain what is happening!“ Don groaned, not acting the least bit as intimidated as the others by the supernatural exchange happening before them.

Dokkaebi looked at Kim with a raised eyebrow.

The man nodded.

“Promise to restore me to my full state, Dear Leader?“ He said the title with more belittlement than when Don had spoken it.

“Of course. I will return my fragment with pleasure.”

Dokkaebi pointed a clawed finger at Ralia. “And her implant? My prison that she calls her ‘Bite?’”

“All of it.”

“Delightful.”

Dokkaebi’s words were a venomous blade to my core. Not only was the initial puncture a searing pain, but the longer the implications of his words marinated in my thoughts, the more I wanted to cry out in agony.

I would not let her suffer.

I ran towards her.

Dokkaebi shot me a piercing glare. Violet light shot out from the prism, then reflected to link me to Kim’s hand. The Dear Leader laughed with Ralia on her knees before him and my autonomy in his possession. The light line that connected me to his glowing hand imprisoned me in a faint violet shell that gave everything I saw a rose tint.