*Grrrr*

With its glare set into one of the many small alleys of Erion’s misty streets, a four-legged creature whose body shape looked similar to the dogs Nathan had encountered several times already, growled incessantly. Unlike the seven-eyed dogs, however, the creature had a pair of pale white eyes, its fur was a dirty gray, and it resembled more a wolf than a dog.

Its claws were hard embedded into the cold ground as it debated whether to storm into the dark and cramped alley or bail with everything it had. Saliva was constantly dripping down the wolf’s massive maw as it threw caution to the wind and decided to assault the humanoid figure sitting cross-legged inside the alley.

Its animalistic instincts were screaming for it to escape, but the slumbering meal that looked like a banquet in its beastly eyes was too tempting for it to refuse. With a lunge fast enough to clear part of the mist, it lunged itself forward, aiming to bite through the pitch-black humanoid’s neck.

*Yelp!*

Reaching out one of its claw-like hands, the pitch-black figure forced the wolf to a complete stop as it tightened its grip around the beast’s neck. All the wolf could do was let out a muffled yelp as it struggled to escape the figure’s strong clutch. “...” Alas, without letting out a single sound, the humanoid’s eye sockets opened slowly, only to reveal an abyss-like gaze.

*Crack*

The sound of something breaking echoed in the otherwise silent alley as the light inside the wolf’s eyes faded. The creature let go of the wolf’s lifeless body, resulting in an instant plummet to the ground as a muffled ‘thump’ echoed.

“Don’t… Interrupt…” A little too late with its warning, the creature’s coarse and discordant voice resounded inside the small alley. Ignoring the unmoving corpse lying at its feet, the creature closed its eyes again and concentrated on its inner being.

A multitude of silver and black soul threads were slowly making their way around the creature’s body, and, ever so often, one of them would randomly attempt to escape, before the creature’s will forced it back into the cycle.

Different from Nathan’s ‘coaxing way’ of controlling the soul threads, the shadowy creature seemed to have mastered its own unique way of gaining control. Willing part of the soul threads into a single line, it forced them to attach their ends to one another, forming what appeared to be string-like hairs the length of an arm.

But that was far from the end of it. Using the newly formed strings, the creature started weaving them carefully, as if it worried the strings would break before it was done morphing them into a rope. The whole process took no more than five minutes to complete, but it was a tense five minutes for it.

Should another spirit world creature like the wolf attack it while in the process of forming the rope, it would have no choice but to retaliate, which translates to losing control of the half-created rope and wasting a bunch of soul threads in the process.

It wasn’t a lot, as a creature of its caliber only needed about thirty soul threads to form a meter-long rope. But that meter-long rope was still half a month’s worth of hunting. Humans were just too weak.

Having created a rope out of vibrant silver soul threads the creature easily willed it to circle around its shadowy body. Different from the disobedient soul threads, the rope complied with the creature’s will and acted according to its bidding.

“Two… More…” Letting out a bead of laughter hoarse enough to drive nightmares into children’s dreams, the creature focused on its inner being again, ready to repeat the process.

~~~

“Phew…” Releasing the air stuck inside his lungs, Nathan’s eyelids slowly opened. ‘So the next step is to turn them into ropes?’ He pondered inwardly while doing a quick recount of the shadowy creature’s memory.

This wasn’t the first time Nathan had seen the creature’s memories, but it was certainly the first time he did so intentionally. Putting both the blob’s memories and whatever information Ayla had shared with him to good use, Nathan focused on one of the many black threads in his possession, procuring a flashback from the creature’s life in return.

‘Finally, some progress! Should I check another one?’ he mused inwardly while turning to look at the white blob in the distance. Before this one, Nathan had already gone through the information stored inside four other soul threads, three black and one silver. The silver one corresponded to one of his own memories, which was pretty spooky, whereas the black ones were all fragments of the shadowy creature’s life. 

However, all four of them were irrelevant to Nathan’s needs. Never mind the silver one where his younger self fell and scratched his knee in front of a girl, even the black threads were random fragments of the blob’s memories… Unlike the last one, which proved interesting from several different angles, the other three were not so useful.

Two of them were about it feasting on a carcass, while the other one was about it performing its nightmarish duties to collect more soul threads by haunting people’s dreams. Most of them seemed to be in pretty good mental shape though, unlike Nathan who had been haunted almost to the point of insanity. Had the nightmare disliked him especially, or was there something else at play?

With a tired sigh, Nathan put these thoughts aside, deciding he’d had enough of memories and dreams for now, he opted to try his hand at creating a rope made of soul threads. He wasn’t sure what it would be used for, but, since the creature did it, that’s what he should probably do too. Besides, a quick inspection revealed there were over three hundred soul threads in Nathan’s possession, randomly moving around his heart.

Quite the large haul, if going by the significance the creature attached to just thirty of them. Then again, Nathan’s pool of threads wasn’t refillable, at least as far as he knew.

Additionally, even though most of them were silver-colored, a good fifty or sixty of them were black! He couldn’t go through them in one session now, could he? With that thought in mind, Nathan closed his eyes and emptied his brain of the irrelevant thoughts. Focusing on his heartbeat, he sensed the multitudes of soul threads floating aimlessly inside his heart.

Copying parts of what the creature had done inside the alley, Nathan ‘coaxed’ the silver soul threads to fall in line. Different from the creature’s line though, there was nowhere near enough space inside Nathan’s heart to form the meter-long rope…

‘How about this then?’ Instead of keeping them in a straight line, Nathan had the soul threads follow his heart’s ‘walls’ and do a few loops around it, essentially forming a curved line. ‘Now for the hard part,’ the next step was to attach their ends to one another, but he was uncertain whether they would listen to him or not.   

‘Can you attach to one another?’ He issued a question and waited for the threads to respond. Alas, none of them tried to connect. ‘Should I try forcing them too?’ He wondered and tried to bend a soul thread to his will, forcefully trying to attach it to the one behind it. Needless to say, the thread resisted with all its might, and, in an attempt to escape Nathan’s forceful ways, broke in two, releasing its silver brilliance before disappearing altogether.

“Ughhhh!!!” Nathan screamed as an intense amount of pain jolted through his nerve system. ‘It hurts! FUCK!’ He cursed inwardly as an intense itch spread throughout his limbs. Like needles piercing through his skin, Nathan scratched every inch and cranny his two hands could reach as he rolled around in an endless fit of pain.

A good ten minutes later, the pain was gone and only an intense amount of numbness was left behind. Laying with all of his limbs spread evenly on the white floor, Nathan tried to calm his buzzing mind. ‘No wonder I woke up in pain each and every night… That was just one! How many did that blob bastard steal from me every fucking day?!’ Thinking of the past, Nathan was more than glad to have made that discovery.

Soul threads were too frail! Just one of them brought him so much pain, imagine what would have happened if he forced all thirty of them to do his bidding… Nathan might have died of a heart attack!

With cold sweat running down his spine, Nathan swore to never do that again. He wasn’t sure how the shadowy creature accomplished it, but it definitely wouldn’t work the same way for him. He had to find another way to achieve his goals, and force was not the right way to go about it.

‘Hmm?’ Feeling something wet and moist touch his leg, Nathan turned to look at it. “What are you doing…” He asked as if the white blob could understand english and picked it up with one hand. While Nathan was going through intense amounts of pain, the blob had surprisingly rolled all the way to his side.

“You trying to suffocate me again, you little punk?” He jokingly asked and let the blob rest down by his side. He was still feeling a little numb, but thankfully, the prickling was already gone. Falling to his back, Nathan let out a sigh and stared at the white ceiling, waiting for the numbness to go away. “Just what are you doing?! Is it impossible to stay put and enjoy the moment!?” He continued playing with the blob as it crawled up to his stomach this time. Being almost weightless, all Nathan felt was the wet sensation wafting off of the blob’s moist body mass. ‘Oh, well. Not like it hurts or anything,’ thinking it just wanted to play, Nathan let it be for the time being. Besides, his white shirt was already in tatters, so it didn’t matter if it got wet or not…

‘Hmm?’ Lying motionless for no more than thirty seconds, Nathan couldn’t help realizing something. ‘Where did the numbness go?’ It was quick! Too quick! Even if he just stood there, it should have taken a good five to ten minutes for him to recover. However, not even a minute had passed and he was already feeling better!

Standing up, he felt around his body to make sure it was actually real and then glanced at the blob. ‘Are you responsible for that?’ He questioned and picked it up again. However, how could the blob answer him? Instead, it opened its toothless maw; and tried to bite Nathan’s fingers…

“Maybe you aren’t as useless as you look?” He said as a grin started forming on his face and let the little guy down, patting it twice on the head.

‘Oh well, it’s about time I move on with Ayla’s mission.’ Having experimented enough for the night, Nathan stood up, stretched his limbs, and picked the sole weapon in his possession before locking his gaze to the sole exit of the white space.

‘Please let there be no more dogs… Or wolves… Or anything…’

~~~

Having appeared by the bridge’s side, Nathan’s first action was to check for any signs of the dogs. He already had his fair share of experience with them and would rather not get ambushed the moment he walked into Erion’s misty streets. 

‘Looking good.’ Thankfully, there were no dogs in sight. But he didn’t let his guard down yet. With his dagger placed in front of him, Nathan averted his gaze from the wide river flowing below and took the first few cautious steps towards the staircase.

*Step, step…*

Walking silently enough to hear his breathing, Nathan made it back to ground level again. Inspecting the buildings on this side of the river, he quietly pulled out the crumpled piece of instructions and read the rest of them.

‘Walk down the third path to the left of the bridge…’ Staring at the misty, cobblestone-paved alleys, Nathan spotted the third one and made haste for it. Unlike the open space by the river’s side, the cramped alleyways provided a little bit of comfort to a terrifi- careful person like him, for there was always bound to be a hiding hole in them.

A few minutes of walking later, 

‘Okay, one more left turn, and I should be able to see the Cathedral…’ Following the aforementioned path, Nathan was almost there. All he had to do now was follow the road and he would finally reach his destination.

‘I hope nothing jumps out of that corner… Wait,’ Pinching his cheek in an attempt to avoid jinxing it, Nathan took a sneaky peek inside the last alley. ‘Phew…’ Letting out a mental sigh, he walked down the empty path and finally reached the premises of the Cathedral.

Or so he thought…

‘What is the meaning of this?!’ Pulling out the instructions, Nathan flipped the paper around, searching for any extra tips. ‘There is nothing written about this here!’

Looking at the spectacle before his eyes, a silent ‘fuck’ escaped his lips as he stared at the brightly lit Cathedral about a hundred meters ahead of him.

‘This place reeks of death, Ayla…’ The only thing separating him from it, being a plaza brimming with a filthy black and heavy smog.