Chapter 15

(𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬)
This story contains dark and potentially distressing themes such as Twisted Religious aspects, Cult indoctrination , Gore, Psychological Horror and Death.

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You feel disgusted with yourself, a rancid, sour taste clung at the back of your tongue; something putrid and noxious festered in the pit of your chest that refuses to decay away properly.

And yet, at the same time, there’s a contrasting sensation that skeins around this revulsion. 

The disgust doesn’t cancel it out and it makes it worse to a bitter kind of sweetness that resembles the scent of night-blooming flowers that lure insects to their demise.

Yzrivis was the flower, you were the insect—quite literally, you could say.

But you can’t deny that it’s intoxicating, and  narcotic even if it insinuates itself between the fibers of your mind until your revulsion and yearning become indistinguishable. 

But still, the bigger question that’s presenting is; what have you become?

You used to know. Now you didn’t even know who you used to be—everything has eluded your mind and clouded itself; Faces fade, places have dissolved as if someone reached into your mind and gently, meticulously erased the world—piece by piece—until there was nothing left but static.

You can’t even remember what you liked, what you feared, what made you laugh.

The past feels like a book you once read but never truly understood, and now the pages are torn out, scattered to the wind.

You stopped remembering everything altogether.

Or maybe… you let yourself forget.

Because there is one thing—one name—that remains untouched by the erosion.

One presence that stands intact amidst the ruin of your unraveling identity.

Him.

Yzrivis.

The name moves through your bloodstream with the rhythm of a second heartbeat.

It echoes in the hollow chambers of your mind like a sacred chant or a cursed malediction—maybe both. 

Yzrivis, Yzrivis, Yzrivis.

Everything is him.

Every emotion—shame, longing, fury, devotion—bends toward that single gravity. It’s nauseating. It’s intoxicating. It’s humiliating how thoroughly he has eclipsed the sky of your existence.

And the worst part was you don’t know if you want to be free. Because without him… what are you?

An empty shell with fragmented recollections and trembling hands? A body moving through the world on instinct alone? A ghost haunting a life that no longer belongs to you?

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Yzrivis, I despise you. What have you done to me? You hollowed me out until there was nothing left, but I can’t even remember if there was even a time I was thoroughly not empty. 

I’m not even a person anymore. But what am I even before you?

—Monologue of a dead man living.

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Yzrivis was a monster who feeds on karma and never the compassionate deity poised to rescue you—that’s the truth you failed to decipher. 

Not because the omens were faint, nor because the proof was meager, but because you confused dazzling intellect for genuine kindness and power for true sanctuary.

How amusing, he thinks, watching your certainty fracture in slow increments. You called me a “God,” and yet you never knew the depth of the abyss you were courting.

But you are far too gone to notice.

Too deeply entangled to comprehend that every seeming coincidence was meticulously rehearsed, every sharp argument pre-written, every painful wound anticipated. 

You fancied yourself spontaneous, rebellious, unpredictable—and yet he had charted your every trajectory like constellations across a night sky he utterly owned.

Everything was orchestrated.

And you? You were never the player.

You were the piece.

A pawn, lacquered in pride and dipped in naivety.

A poisoned pawn gambit was what happened to you, and oh— how deliciously nostalgic it is.

Because that was the same maneuver he used against you in that chess match back then, when your fingers trembled over ivory pieces and your brows knitted in determination.

You thought you were clever then, too. Thought you had spotted the trap.

But you never learn, Yzrivis supposes. 

Perhaps that is what renders you so irresistibly alluring; you were all bark and no bite; you bare your teeth as if you are a feral little wolf, yet they clatter when the breeze turns biting. 

You seethe with defiance in crowded rooms, yet fold so exquisitely when confronted alone. 

You defend yourself with such fervor, dismiss every dissenting voice, refuse to bow to “madness.” You pride yourself on being the only sane one—the only one who did not believe in him.

How foolish, You are laughable. Do you hear the irony? You think you are untouchable. You think you see the truth but you see nothing. He had once thought when he had first gone down his domain to visit the settlement.

You clutched tightly to that double-edged weapon you christened “humanity,” brandishing it like a standard of moral superiority. 

You proclaimed yourself incorruptible; compassionate and above blind devotion the zealots had so proudly expressed.

And yet your empathy is selective, curated like a gallery. You care when it benefits you. You mourn when it bruises your own heart.

You rage only when your reflection is distorted.

You are not merciful.

You are territorial.

Yzrivis saw that long before you did.

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It first began in the garden.

That was where he learned the texture of your conscience—how thin it was, how easily it bent beneath pressure.

Let’s see what you choose when no one is watching, Yzrivis had mused, observing you the way one studies a fragile insect beneath glass. Will you cling to virtue, or will you reach for what glitters?

He remembers the way your eyes flickered, how you searched for the right answer, not the true one.

Morality, to him, was never about what was right. It was about what you would sacrifice to remain comfortable.

And his words are the law.

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“And religious texts—especially this one the codex of Yzrivis—it has so many examples of psychological manipulation. You’ve got fear-based control, divine authority appeals, guilt-tripping and the cognitive dissonance.“ 

“I mean, have you read this thing? It’s full of contradictions. Love and obedience, but also punishment. It’s like mercy will be given to you, but only if you suffer enough first — because it makes people desperate enough for salvation, so they’ll believe anything.“ 

You had said everything so confidently. So certain. So proud of your ability to dissect what you believed was sacred machinery. 

You judge what you do not endure, he thought. You call it a contradiction because you have never held two truths at once without dropping one.

From your words alone, Yzrivis mapped you.

You worship autonomy, yet you crave direction—logic. You despise control, yet you test every boundary to see if it will hold.

You speak of morality as if it is a fixed star—yet yours bends the moment it costs you comfort.

He didn’t need to test you to know you would fail.

The first trial was simply confirmation and you failed in a small, human way; you hesitated where you should have refused. 

You rationalized where you should have rebelled. You bent just enough to prove you could be bent further.

“So that’s all it takes?” Yzrvis had murmured, amused, because all it takes was a simple twisting of words and you fold.

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The second trial was a game.

Yzrivis made it feel like one, at least by actually playing a game with you. 

But you gave yourself away too quickly and then you lied again—not to him, at least, but on Father Myron.

That was the favorite part of Yzrivis.

Not because the lie was convincing—it wasn’t—but because of how easily it slid off your tongue and how natural it felt, and it shed light on how manipulative you actually are underneath that holier-than-thou veneer.

“Do we not believe that Yzrivis guides all things? That not even a grain of rice falls without his breath stirring it? You told me that yourself, didn’t you, Father?”

“If the flowers are gone,” you have said, “then Yzrivis willed it. If I was stopped in the hallway, if I saw someone— then perhaps it was not a test of my obedience… but a lesson meant for me. A lesson only I could receive.”

You lifted his own teachings and turned them, polished them, angled them just enough that they cut in your favor while  looking at Myron with those eyes that wanted absolution and offered deception instead.

Clever little thing. Yet, you don’t even know what truth is anymore, do you? Yzrivis mused, watching you unravel.

Because that was the time that he figured out that you would give anything just so you could survive

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By the time the final test arrived, he already knew the outcome.

The little girl; Alri. She was a simple catalyst and a moral crossroads wrapped in innocence. 

He never really intended to kill her. That was never the point. The point was you.

Would you defy him?

Would you protect her?

Would you choose something other than him?

He withdrew and you came to him yourself.

He remembers the way you approached him—carrying that girl with pure unadulterated panic in your face.

“If it’s the blood, I can cut it out—if I move fast, if I amputate the hand or the wrist. I know that the infected don’t turn instantly—it starts local, and then it spreads—and if I remove the infected tissue before the virus reaches the heart, before it can rewrite the nervous system, there’s still a chance!”

You spoke so quickly you nearly tripped over your own certainty.

You had learned just enough science to sound convincing. Just enough battlefield medicine to think you could bargain with inevitability.

You recited progression timelines and infection pathways as though the universe were obliged to obey your memorization.

And you believed harm could be undone by simply choosing a sharper blade. But underneath that, Yzrivis noticed that you wanted him to validate you.

You wanted him to say you were right. So he just played with you a little before placing the axe in your hand and covering your face with his own veil—just so you can pretend that you are still stable.

And you chopped Alri’s arm off.

That was the moment he understood you completely.

You don’t need to be corrupted, he realized.

You only need to be directed. You call yourself moral, but every time I ask, you choose me over your principles.

And perhaps, that was the cruelest artistry of all.

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You are the experiment.

The paradox.

The one who said “I will never,” and go against your own words — which made proving you wrong so intoxicating.

Yet sometimes, when you look at him with that mixture of resentment and reluctant fascination, something warmer coils in his chest.

You are my finest work, he thinks while you were with him. “Do you truly mean it, little wolf? That you want me to kill those two?” 

Take it, Yzrivis had thought then. Go on. Greed and vengeance looks so good on you.

And you did.

You always do.

You never learn.

And oh, how exquisite it is, to mold someone so unwillingly in your image of awe.

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Yzrivis finds it darkly amusing that you have always moved through the world like a misplaced spirit—flinching from reflective water, skirting past polished steel, and recoiling from all mirrors as though they were accusations. 

You carried yourself as if your own skin were a borrowed garment, ill-fitted and temporary, as though at any moment the rightful owner might return and demand it back.

And yet, cruelly simple as it sounds, it has always been yours. Every scar, every tremor, every uneven breath.

Yzrivis knew it himself; he handles the cycle of life after all, and he definitely did not do anything with your soul.

It is just you being inventive in your self-erasure.

The estrangement was never physical. It was architectural as something in the scaffolding of your mind had shifted.

There was an accident that happened—though he could not figure what exactly it is—he still knows, that the aftermath or the event; the world did not sit properly on your shoulders. 

Your reflection felt like an impersonator mimicking your expressions half a second too late.

Your voice, when played back to you, sounded like an actor rehearsing lines you did not remember writing. 

You experienced episodes of derealization and depersonalization—forms of dissociation where the self loosens from the body like a knot slipping undone.

It is why you have always thought that your body wasn’t yours—when in reality, it had always been yours in the first place.

The name “Vaelix” had just been plastered onto you like a sigil burned into borrowed flesh—because, quite frankly, you looked exactly like the real Vaelix.

And to the people of Xelvarith, sameness was simpler than truth.

If Yzrivis remembered correctly—and he always did—Vaelix had been a minor blight festering within the cathedral ranks; a delinquent draped in priestly silk—so it is no wonder why the people of Xelvarith had assumed that you were Vaelix.

Because you were a deviant.

Yzrivis understood this long before you did.

He had been watching the fissures in your recollection, the lacunae where memories should have been whole after all.

Yzrivis had been methodical, patient, gathering fragments and fitting them together like shards of a shattered mirror. He was close—so close—to reconstructing the sequence of events that fractured your perception.

But he supposed that there is no fixing of that anymore, because  your mind, already destabilized, had latched onto that performance. 

And if someone could convincingly become someone else, then perhaps you had done the same. 

Perhaps the accident had not injured you; perhaps it had replaced you. The notion nested itself deep inside your psyche and refused to leave.

After all, you have always been so desperate to escape yourself. 

Now your mind has granted the wish in the most inefficient way possible.

You have become what you have hated, and most of all…

You underwent a mental state in which a person has difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is not, delusions, hallucinations, or severely disorganized thinking, distortions  centered around religious ideas or themes.

Or ironically known otherwise as…

Religious Psychosis.

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⤷ꫂ ၴႅၴ₊✦── .✧ 𝐘𝐙’𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 ˎˊ˗ᯓ

⊹₊ ⋆𝐒𝐎 how was the book? I’m really sorry if the ending felt rushed haha. Even I know I could’ve done better with it, but lately I’ve been losing a lot of motivation to continue the story and I’m honestly running out of ideas.

Truthfully, a lot of the ending parts were written pretty last minute, and they didn’t really turn out the way I expected them to. I kept trying to push through it, but at some point I started questioning what the point of continuing the story even was anymore. Yk yk… the comparisons and things like that started getting to me and it kind of drained my motivation. And I find the story really cringe as fuck.

Because of that, I think I’m just going to leave the story here so the ending stays a bit ambiguous, which was actually my original intention anyway. Even though I feel like I messed up a lot of the chapters along the way, I’m still grateful that people took the time to read it.

There is an alternate ending, however. That version is more angsty and less horror-focused than the current one. If you’d like to see it, comment and vote on the poll so I know whether I should work on finishing and posting it.

And of course, thank you so much for reading the story haha. I genuinely appreciate everyone who stuck around until the end.

Special thanks to my beloved Vaya
Terrorbladewho (a.k.a #1 yzrivis simp for no reason) — for motivating me the most while I was writing this.  Love ya mwah mwah.

If you have any questions about the story, feel free to ask them here. I’ll try my best to answer them:)

Total word count: 103,677 words.