Fifteen years have passed since that dreadful night. Nerovigo does not remember it fondly. He often relives it in his nightmares, but he tries to forget it when he wakes. The only memory he allows himself is that of Faia’s face, her green eyes, and her warm smile. He repeats his mission and the promise he made to himself: he would free her.
“Nero!” His cousin Furio calls him back to reality. It’s dawn, and Nerovigo is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into space. “Get ready, I’ll wait for you downstairs. Let’s eat something.”
Nerovigo stands up heavily, watching his cousin leave the room. He puts on his brigantine, straps his sword to the belt, and joins him in the common room of the inn. The ground floor is filled with tables, mostly empty, except for two patrons at the counter. Furio is waiting for him by the fireplace, already lit, warming the room, and breakfast on the table. Nerovigo joins him and sinks into his chair.
<<We keep going south, Nero?>> Furio says as he spreads the map on the free space of the table.
<<I’d say so. We’re almost home now.>>
<<Are we sure we’ll find him right there?>>
<<I hope so, Furio. The clues we’ve gathered lead us right back to Bisivio.>>
Nerovigo takes a sip of wine and bites into his breakfast. They’ve spent the last few years hunting creatures that the mainland’s population deems as monsters; deformed, animalistic beings that attack on sight or infest a place and claim it as their lair. The people are terrified. Typically, these creatures exhibit no intelligence, but rather a territorial instinct and a need to feed. What mainly worries the two cousins is that these creatures seem to have recently developed a specific level of consciousness. There’s something unusual about that evolution, which is present only in certain types of creatures. They haven’t yet been able to identify the cause, but the reports of sightings seem to come all from Bisivio itself.
“Hunters, thank you for last night.” One of the patrons begins, approaching their table with his cap in his hands and his head bowed. “That monster killed my sister, and you avenged her. Thank you infinitely.”
Furio glances at his cousin, who raises his head at the man’s words.
“There’s no need to thank us. But please, don’t call him a monster. He was just a poor victim.>>
The man looks at him confusedly, then stammers another word of gratitude and leaves the inn.
Poor souls, that’s what they are. The creatures the two cousins have been hunting for the last ten years are nothing more than victims of the alchemical experiments of Nito Almavetra, Furio’s father and Nerovigo’s uncle. But people don’t know this, and the “hunters,” as they had begun to call them, prefer to leave them in ignorance.
<<If we want to continue towards Bisivio, the most direct route is the coastal one.>> Nerovigo continues.
<<Good! Then we need more rations; the ones we have won’t last. And more wine, I’d say.>> Furio closes the map and puts it away, then continues. <<I’m gonna buy everything. I’ll pay for breakfast too, then we can leave.>>
<<I’ll take the horses. Meet me at the south entrance.>>
Nerovigo takes a last sip of wine, then heads for the stables. He has time to be alone for a few minutes as he heads toward the wide arch that supports the small watchtower. He watches the merchants and the artisans opening their shops. From the town gate, Nerovigo sees the countryside on the hills around the town, where laborers and shepherds have been at work since before sunrise. He clicks his tongue at the horses, who readily obey. A few townspeople stop to quickly thank him, then disappear promptly. Furio emerges from a side street and reaches him, head low. “He also has a deep scar.” Nerovigo thinks. “Just like me.”
The coastal road isn’t very traveled, so the two cousins keep a good pace and urge their horses to cover as much ground as possible before sunset. They leave behind the Dorsale, the mountains that extend from north to south, dividing the continent, and in just three days, they reach the slopes of Mount Bisivio, the great volcano that towers over the city of the same name. They linger for a few minutes, admiring the enormous gulf and the silhouette of the menacing mountain that has spared its citizens for years, allowing them to continue with their lives undisturbed. They savor with sadness and nostalgia the maze of streets and alleys that stretch like a spider’s web. They have finally arrived home.
“Do you think there’s still anyone left who remembers us, Nero?”
“Quite likely. Our family was once highly respected in this city.”
“Before my father was killed by the very creature he himself created, along with our whole family and so many innocent souls of Bisivio.” Furio’s face darkened as he continued. “I will never forget that look, Nero. I still see that beast’s yellow eyes before me every time I close mine.” Furio looked at his cousin with sorrow.” If it hadn’t been for your mother, I would probably still be lying among the ruins.”
For an instant, Nerovigo too recalled those eyes—burning with rage and terror alike. He also remembered the sacrifice his mother had made to save his cousin.
“Yes, I remember, Furio. And that’s exactly why we swore to return here. Destroying that creature has been the only thing that’s kept us going all these years. Let’s make sure we end it here.”
“And Faia?”
That question struck Nerovigo like a dagger to the ribs. For a moment, a memory resurfaced, sharp, yet distant.
Her green eyes gazed deep into mine, and with a smile, she took my hands. The rays of the sun lit her face, while her golden hair fluttered lightly, caressed by the sea breeze. The scent of salt blended with Faia’s fragrance: myrtle and sage.
Furio goes on. “Do you think she’s still alive?”
Nerovigo allows himself a few more moments lost in those memories, then answers.
“I can feel it. I will free her.” Yet in his heart, he hopes his beloved has already found peace.
Furio lays a hand on his shoulder, comforting him.
As they make their way deeper into the city, timid eyes follow them from the windows with poorly concealed discretion. They remembered streets once full of people, affable merchants, and shops brimming with goods, but now Bisivio seems a weary, almost deserted place, except for those eyes that gleam in the dark. Furio gives voice to his cousin’s thoughts.
“What has happened? Why are they hiding?”
Nerovigo does not reply. He presses on toward the main square, where once a flourishing garden had offered rest to its citizens. Now weeds had replaced the rose bushes, and rusted railings lay buried under overgrown plants. They notice a presence behind them: a group of three figures standing on the far side of the square. Nerovigo and Furio immediately recognize the man in the middle: Clodio Mitroano, son of the Regent of Bisivio, back when the cousins still lived in the city. Clodio, too, was present that tragic night, another who had miraculously survived. As the cousins approach, they see he holds on to a walking cane, and a great scar disfigures the left side of his head.
“You are not welcome in Bisivio. Leave.” Clodio begins.
“Clodio, you are alive! What has happened? Why is the city in this state?” Nerovigo is as bewildered as his cousin.
“You dare ask me? You condemned our city.”
“What our families did has nothing to do with us. We were only fifteen, Clodio. You know that.”
“And yet you fled, cowards that you are.” Furio snaps back, irritated by the accusation. “We were just boys! What could we have done?”
“I stayed!” Clodio nearly shouts the words. Like the cousins, he carried a void within him from that night. His family slaughtered, his friends gone, vanished into nothing. “I fought. I was a boy too, when I took my father’s place. I held my mother in my arms and could not stop the blood…” He points at the scar. “This is my reminder, my anchor to reality.”
Furio presses his lips tight, unable to answer. Clodio is right.
“We have not returned out of nostalgia, but for one reason alone. To end what my father began.”
Nerovigo pulls out a leather-bound journal.
“Here we have gathered everything we’ve learned about the creatures we have faced over the past ten years: their peculiarities, their weaknesses, all we’ve managed to understand.” He passes it to Clodio.
“And what am I supposed to do with your scribblings?”
“Use them. Fight. Defend yourselves. We know it all by heart now.”
Clodio flips through the journal quickly, then continues.
“You’ve come at the wrong time, then. No one has seen that monster in years. One day, it stopped attacking and vanished; only the Creator knows where. It left us its underlings, and they have ravaged Bisivio. They wait until we finish harvesting or rebuilding, then strike and destroy everything again. We cannot even sail far enough to fish.”
A dead end. Furio lets out a curse, but Nerovigo feels it could not simply end here.
“Has no one seen where it went? Or where are the other creatures coming from?”
“We don’t go seeking death. And in any case, it’s been years since it was last seen. It could be anywhere.”
Nerovigo sighs, defeated. Despite all the clues and testimonies gathered through the years, they are back at the beginning. Clodio notices their discouragement, and for a fleeting moment, he remembers life before that dreadful night fifteen years ago; how he used to play in the park with his friends, the same ones who now stand before him.
“The Lady might know more,” he finally says in a low voice, almost as if unwilling to be heard.
“The Lady?” Furio repeats.
“Yes. One of his monsters. Some time after that night, she reappeared mysteriously in your family’s villa. She has never left those walls. She simply wanders the halls and drives away anyone who dares to enter. As if she were waiting for someone.” Clodio meets Nerovigo’s eyes.
“Nero, let’s go check—” Furio did not finish, halted by his cousin’s expression. He knows exactly what he was thinking.
“We thank you, Clodio. We will help you at any cost.”
The new Regent of Bisivio nodded without a word. The two cousins left in silence, headed toward their old home.
What remains of the structure is but a skeleton of the past, weakened by the years and the weather.
The fire that ended the night of Nerovigo’s fifteenth birthday feast had slowly gnawed at the beams of the ceiling and blackened the villa’s walls, now veiled beneath a shroud of creeping vegetation. Nature had claimed that place, as though it wished to erase its very existence. Nerovigo approaches the gate, bent and twisted by the roots of trees, and climbs over it. Furio’s worried voice reaches him, carried like leaves upon the wind.
“Nero…”
“I’m fine, Furio,” he replies. “I’m fine.”
Furio lets him go. He knows this is a moment Nerovigo has to face alone.
As he walks through the garden, now drowned beneath thornbushes and climbing vines, Nerovigo is cast back into years long gone: the pond where he and Furio once competed by throwing stones, the bench in the shade of the willow where his mother told him tales of their family, and the fountain where he practiced fencing with his father. Faded memories, worn by time yet still piercing. The front door hangs torn from its hinges, and so Nero enters.
There she stands, in the center of the great hall.
“At last!. Your mother told me you had gone off for an afternoon ride, but you certainly took your time, Nerovigo.”
Faia drew near with her usual lightness, and I wondered whether she was only a vision or if I could truly reach out and touch her with my hands. I stammered a few words in reply, and my clumsiness made her laugh. My cheeks burned hot, yet I drank in that smile like sunlight on a spring morning.
“Happy birthday, by the way. Fifteen years is no small thing. You’re nearly a man now.”
I found my voice and answered that I had been a man for quite some time already.
“Sure. In any case, it is a special day. You know that, don’t you?”
The fire rose from my cheeks into my hair. Our parents were negotiating our marriage. I told her I would be forced to see her every day for the rest of my life. I tried to sound tired of it, but failed miserably.
“Fool. I’m the one who will be stuck with you.” She paused and looked at me with her green eye, shiny emeralds.
I told her it would be beautiful to wake each morning and see her smile. From afar, I noticed Furio winking before bursting into a hearty laugh.
Faia hasn’t changed at all. Nerovigo has become a man, with white strands at his temples and deeper lines etched into his face, yet the girl’s radiance still surrounds him, smiling at him. That joy vanished instantly from the hunter’s face.
Faia floats in midair, her long white gown falling to her feet, her hair drifting as if she were underwater.
“Nerovigo.”
A single word, spoken with that voice—sweet as honey—is enough to shatter her beloved’s heart beyond repair. He falls to his knees, tears filling his eyes.
“I have been waiting for you, my love. How much you have suffered, I am so sorry. I wish I could have been there with you. Forgive me.”
Nerovigo tries to answer her, but no words come out. He wants to tell her he’s the one begging for forgiveness, that he abandoned her and fled like a coward. He wants to ask her to forgive him for condemning her to this terrible existence.
“Rise, I beg you. It’s not your fault. We’re both victims of our families. Born for happiness, destined for misery.”
Nerovigo manages to stand, longing to look into her eyes and lose himself in their depths.
“Sweet Faia, I don’t understand. Why have you become one of those creatures? I thought I had lost you forever, yet for you, it seems like time has stopped. Are you just a vision? Am I delusional?”
“No, Nerovigo. It sounds impossible, but I was transformed into what I am now by him. But I broke free from his control, sustained by the love I have for you.”
The missing piece—the one that escaped Nerovigo and Furio—begins to fit into place. The calculated attacks on the people are just an attempt to bring the city to its knees.
“Where is he now?” Nerovigo asks at last.
“I’d ask you not to walk this path, my love. But I see the resolve in your eyes. You won’t stop, and you’ll come back to me somehow. He’s in the ruins of Vellin. Like me, he’s waiting for you.”
“I’ll save you, Faia. I’ll free you from this life.”
Faia smiles softly, offering him a glimmer of hope.
“I know what you’ve done these past years, my love. You’ve freed the suffering souls who endured the sins of your kin.”
A dreadful feeling rises in Nerovigo.
“They’re free from this existence, thanks to you. And now that I’ve seen you again, I beg you to free me as well.”
“No. You can’t ask me that,” he manages through tears.
Faia says nothing more, but her eyes speak louder than words—worn, burdened, pleading for eternal peace.
“There must be a way, maybe you could return…” His voice falters because Faia’s hand caresses his cheek. He then understands that if a way existed, she would have already found it.
Nerovigo loses himself in her eyes as time seems to stand still around them. Once again, he must be the hunter. Once again, he must free a trapped soul. But for the last time, his lips touch Faia’s forehead as his sword slides into her chest.
Darkness swallows Nerovigo as Faia’s radiance fades into nothing. In the ruined great hall of Villa Almavetra, not one, but two hearts cease to beat.
Furio has lit a fire and roasted some meat. He’s just opened a bottle when Nero exits the villa, walking slowly, still holding his word. Furio immediately gets up and meets him halfway. He hugs him and leads him near the flames, then hands him some wine. A few minutes pass before Nerovigo breaks the silence.
“We go to Vellin,” he says decisively.
“Good, cousin. Let’s put an end to this.”
They ride towards the ruins of Vellin and reach their destination in less than half a day. At their arrival, the cerulean of the afternoon has slowly given way to the violets and oranges of sunset. They make their way to the main square of what was once a thriving city, where they immediately notice dozens of eyes watching them furtively from among the rubble.
“You know why we’re here.” Furio calls. “Show yourself.”
Among the lamentations and monstrous sounds of the creatures hidden in the shadows, one of them steps forward: once a man, now warped by the experiments of Nito Almavetra. Cracks run across his charred skin like blood-red embroidery, while his yellow, piercing eyes have lost none of the hatred that still haunts the two cousins in their dreams. The man speaks in a hoarse, worn voice.
“I see your meeting with the pretty girl was fruitful, Almavetra cousins. Another notch on your blade, if nothing else.”
“Don’t you dare,” Nerovigo raises his sword toward their enemy. “Do not dishonor her for a mistake she did not commit.”
“A mistake, you say, young heir?” His hissing laugh creeps into their bones. “Would I be a mistake as well? No. I am a victim of man’s work.”
“Haven’t you twisted those people too?” Furio points to all the other creatures around them. “From victim to executioner, is that it?”
“They had already been used by your father, boy. I would never wish on others what I suffered. I merely gave them purpose. Yes, even the girl. She begged me to spare her life, while calling your name.” He nods toward Nerovigo. “I did not yet know what I was capable of then, and it simply happened. I should have thanked her for showing me this hidden power.”
“I will tear her name out from your mouth with my own hands…”
The creatures hidden in the shadows stir; some come into the open, ready to attack at the slightest order from their master.
“Ah, I have waited for more than a decade. As much as I despise the human race, my hatred for the Almavetra family far surpasses it. Stand back!” he finally orders his followers. “This battle is mine alone. With the deaths of the last heirs, the Almavetra line will come to its end.”
With a superhuman lunge, he reaches the two cousins and assaults them, howling with rage. His claws slice the air with a threatening hiss, but the hunters are not caught unprepared and fall back, parrying the blows amid their foe’s hysterical laughter. The fight seems to last an eternity, feral snarls from the beast and the cousins’ broken groans mingling with the clash of blades and heavy footfalls. The creature attacks ever more insistently but also more recklessly, leaving openings for Nerovigo and Furio, who land some blows. With a heart-rending cry, the creature lunges at Furio. It catches his left arm and tears it clean off. Nerovigo strikes swiftly, and the creature reels back. Long seconds pass as they study one another, motionless like the ruins of the city around them. Furio’s pained voice cuts the silence like lightning.
“Nero, move!”
The bomb Furio throws with his remaining hand hits the creature squarely in the face, exploding into shards of terracotta and grains of salt that drive into its wounds. Nerovigo takes advantage and launches himself at it again. One thrust, straight to the heart, finds its mark. Both fall to the ground, and Nerovigo feels a stabbing pain in his chest that steals his breath. The dark beast looks at him, furious, with a maniacal grin as it breathes its last rattles.
Around them, the other creatures flee in terror. Furio rises with difficulty, trying to staunch the blood from the terrible wound. With a cry of pain, Nerovigo rolls to the side, dislodging claws buried deep in his chest and spitting blood.
“Nero.” Furio collapses at his side. “We must stop the bleeding, stay still.” But Nerovigo’s hand weakly holds his cousin.
“How are you?” he manages in a thin voice.
“Don’t speak. Save your strength.”
Nerovigo tightens his grip for a moment.
“It hurts like madness, Nero. But I’ll be all right. You’ll recover, too.”
“No. Leave me here. To watch the stars. Leave me with my Faia.”
Furio cannot find any more words; tears stream down his face. He stays at his cousin’s side and, holding his hand, tells him of all their fading memories, recounting them until his voice falters. Furio remains until he feels the last flow of life slip from Nerovigo’s fingers. And with one final sentence, he says farewell forever.
“Join your loved one. Go claim your freedom, Nerovigo Almavetra.”
Thar's Corner 
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