Everly screamed silently and woke up from the nightmare.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at the banshee’s face, just inches away.
Perhaps because she had been drinking the banshee’s milk for so long, Everly’s vision had become excellent. Even in the pitch-black underground stone chamber, she could clearly see the confusion and concern reflected in the banshee’s blood-red eyes.
Confusion at Everly’s panic, concern for Everly’s unease.
Plop. A tear rolled down the corner of the baby’s eye. Everly trembled as she stretched out her arms and tightly embraced the banshee’s neck.
It was clearly only a dream, yet for some reason, upon waking, she was gripped by a powerful fear and shock. Her heart thudded incessantly in her chest, while anxiety and terror burned at her throat, almost making her unable to breathe.
This sense of panic and breathlessness made Everly vividly recall her frail state when she was just born.
The banshee’s milk contained some kind of magical power. Under her care, Everly’s body grew strong and solid at a speed visible to the naked eye. Meanwhile, the banshee’s originally swollen chest quickly shriveled with each feeding. It was as if she had squeezed all the vigorous life force from her own body, condensed it into milk, and fed it to Everly.
This made Everly’s feelings toward the banshee increasingly complicated.
She still feared the banshee—she had sharp claws, rows of shark-like teeth, and a thick snake-like tail. When enraged, any one of these could easily take Everly’s life. Yet at the same time, Everly could not help but feel attachment and closeness to her.
This was not hard to understand. Even though her soul was that of an adult, Everly’s body was still that of a helpless infant, naturally brimming with a longing and attachment for maternal love. Not to mention, the banshee had been meticulously caring for her all this time—holding her, caressing her, feeding her… No one could resist a mother’s love, even if this “mother” looked somewhat unusual. But a mother’s love was a mother’s love, nonetheless.
Everly held the banshee’s neck and quietly nestled against her chest for a while.
Once the initial shock had subsided, she shook the banshee’s arm and cooed, “Ah, ah,” playfully guiding her to carry Everly to the far corner of the stone chamber, away from the water pool.
That corner had suffered the worst collapse in the chamber. Large boulders lay scattered haphazardly, pressing down so densely that the ground was nearly impenetrable. The banshee was highly sensitive to blood and worried that stepping on sharp rocks could injure her. Everly had always avoided this area when exploring the chamber, never venturing there before.
In her earlier dream, she had seen West enter the chamber through a secret passage hidden deep within this rubble.
Everly couldn’t quite describe the feeling, but from the moment she woke, she had an overwhelming premonition: the dream was not to be ignored. It was more than just a simple dream—it seemed to point toward some deeper, more mysterious principle, something imbued with power…
“I just have to take a look,” she told herself. If she could walk through the rubble to the spot where the secret passage had been in her dream, and confirm whether it really existed, she would finally know whether it was all an illusion or truly real.
The banshee’s snake-like tail, covered in hard scales, scraped lightly against the rubble with a soft rustle. Amid nervous tension, she carried the baby across the jagged pile of stones, stopping before a section of the chamber wall shielded by a massive boulder.
The moment Everly saw the passage on the wall, her racing heart plummeted into her stomach, and the dust of uncertainty settled.
She stared steadily at the passage before her. It was man-made: a square doorway built from stone blocks carved with reliefs. The style of the carvings matched perfectly with the stone platform in the center of the chamber. Inside the doorway was a stone staircase, narrow and spiraling upward. Years of neglect had left the steps covered in fallen rocks and dust.
Everly guessed that the top of the passage must be blocked; otherwise, the banshee would have simply used the stairs leading upward instead of digging a tunnel through the opposite wall of the chamber.
The discovery of the passage threw Everly into a state of panic.
Dreams couldn’t be this coincidental, and many of the details in her dream—like the oil lamp or the silver inscriptions appearing on the exorcist—were things Everly had never seen before. People always said that dreams were reflections of reality, but how could someone dream of things beyond their own understanding?
—Unless it wasn’t an ordinary dream, but one of the legendary “precognitive dreams.” This wasn’t without precedent. According to the “Prophet” legends circulating in Pukati, the town’s founder, Sokdis, had received divine inspiration in a dream, through which he foresaw both the location of the gold mine and the ensuing mining disasters. She had originally thought these were mere stories concocted to shape Sokdis’s image, but now it seemed they might be true.
Sokdis had gained foresight by sustaining the banshee and sharing in her power. And she, Everly, had obtained a similar ability by drinking the banshee’s milk.
This explanation was far more convincing than attributing everything to coincidence.
She needed to act quickly… After thinking through everything, Everly furrowed her brow.
She couldn’t bear to see the banshee suffer as in her dream—being coerced, having her eyes crushed, and ultimately reduced to a pool of shredded flesh. Even if, selfishly, Everly longed to leave the chamber and return to human society, that didn’t mean she wished the banshee to die in such a horrific way. Was there some way to save her?
Everly closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to calm her overheated mind.
Then, while the dream was still fresh and many details had yet to fade, she recalled the scenes frame by frame, meticulously replaying everything she had seen.
First, regarding why Wester appeared, Everly believed there was a ninety percent chance he had been commissioned to do so—probably to perform an exorcism. It could have been her father, who wasn’t completely hopeless yet, or her grandfather John, or perhaps another victim of the banshee. The last possibility, however, was very slim, because after her, no new unlucky person had shown up… In any case, according to the information she had gathered, Wester was the type of man who wouldn’t lift a finger without personal gain. Passing by and exorcising for free just didn’t sound like something he would do.
Second, Wester was undeniably strong. He was a battle-hardened exorcist, and his extensive combat experience and formidable skill allowed him to remain calm and composed no matter the enemy. The strange golden oil lamp and the scripture-formed protective shield compensated for the weaknesses of his human body. On top of that, Wester possessed the cold-blooded ruthlessness unique to humans—he was willing to even threaten Everly’s life to obtain the banshee’s eyes…
An opponent like that was like an insurmountable mountain. And that didn’t even take into account the fact that Everly was still a speechless infant. Even if she were a fully grown, able-bodied adult, confronting Wester head-on would still be extremely difficult.
Moreover, the banshee’s attachment to children meant that any attempt to take Everly away would inevitably result in a battle between Wester and the banshee. Not even Everly mediating in the middle could prevent it.
So the only option was an indirect approach.
Everly analyzed the dream over and over again.
One thing she had always been puzzled by—how did Wester find her in the dream?
Worried about harming Everly, the banshee had hidden the baby in a crack behind some stones before the battle. The dream was seen from a third-person perspective, and Everly was certain that in the dream, her little self had been curled up in that narrow stone crevice the entire time—silent, invisible, leaving no trace at all. Yet after trapping the banshee with the lamp oil, Wester had walked straight to her hiding spot and yanked her out.
Seeing that the baby, who had been kidnapped by the banshee for several days, was still alive, he showed no surprise at all. This meant that Wester had already known that Everly was alive!
Did he have some kind of detection tool? Or, like in the movies, could he communicate with spirits?
Everly didn’t dare think that the exorcist had discovered a message in a bottle and only then confirmed she was alive—the odds of that were far too low. Her plan was this: if the enemy already knew she existed, then perhaps by hiding farther away during the fight and delaying Wester’s capture of her, could everything turn out differently?
If only she were a little older—able to run and jump—she wouldn’t need the banshee to hide her; she could evade Wester herself…
For the first time, Everly hated how weak her own body was.
She reluctantly sucked at the milk the banshee offered, clenching her tiny fists, still feeling uneasy.
The banshee was not a combat expert. All her destructive power came from her massive body and formidable physical strength. Against ordinary humans, she was indeed dominant. But in the dream, even her full-strength strike had failed to break Wester’s shield—not to mention that he had various tools at his disposal.
This meant that even if the banshee hid Everly at the edge of the world, given enough time, a lone Wester could still defeat her by sheer force. Whether Everly participated or not could not change the ultimate outcome.
Unless… unless she could protect the banshee’s eyes and prevent the exorcist from crushing them!
The banshee’s obvious weakness was her eyes. In the dream, West had gone to great lengths to capture Everly, all for the purpose of extracting the banshee’s eyes. Without her eyeballs, the banshee’s body would petrify, instantly turning into a stone statue. And when Wester destroyed the eyes, the statue would explode on the spot, reducing her to a pile of shattered flesh.
Doesn’t this mean that as long as the banshee’s eyes were protected, her fatal destiny could be avoided?
The more Everly thought about it, the more hopeful she became.
She turned her gaze to the banshee’s eyes. They were a pair of vivid red irises, with snake-like pupils—thin vertical slits that lengthened or widened according to the banshee’s mood. When she had first seen them, the edges were bloodshot, and the depths of the eyes were layered with resentment and cruelty—just looking into them could silence a crying infant. But since regaining her “child,” under the nurturing warmth of maternal love, the murky shadows had dissipated. Now, the pomegranate-like eyes were clear, filled only with love and gentleness…
“Uh… ah…”
The baby reached out soft, tiny fingers and tentatively pressed against one of the shining eyes.
“%#￥…”
The banshee let out a low, indistinct murmur from her throat. She leaned down, accommodatingly bringing her face closer to Everly’s hand, allowing the baby to touch her further. When she sensed the baby pressing and probing deeper into her eye socket, she did not flinch at all. Her eyes widened, lips curved in a faint smile, and she completely let it happen.
Recalling all the moments they had shared, Everly gritted her teeth. Her fingers pressed inward more firmly, trying to pry the banshee’s eyeball out. Yet whether because her strength was too small or the banshee’s body too resilient, after several attempts she failed to remove the eye. Instead, her own fingers got stuck in the narrow gap between the eyeball and the socket.
It was an incredibly gruesome scene. For the first time, Everly realized that the eyeball and the socket were connected by a network of muscles and blood vessels. They felt damp and slimy to the touch, and if one paid close attention, they could even feel the pulse of the blood vessels beneath her fingertips… The little courage she had left vanished in an instant.
Just as Everly was about to give up, the banshee suddenly spoke.
“&#%,￥#@…”
It was still an unintelligible language, but this time the sentence was unusually long. After speaking, the banshee lowered her head and planted a gentle, indulgent kiss on Everly’s brow. Then Everly saw her raise one arm, the long, black-glossed claws at the tips of her fingers pressing against her lower eyelid, and dig inward—
A soft pop was heard. Everly’s curled-up tiny palm was gently opened, revealing a round, blood-streaked red eyeball resting in her hand.
The banshee had plucked her own eye and given it to her.
…
Everly had received many gifts from the banshee before. At first, it was the glass bottles scattered on the ground, or clothes and toys left in piles of corpses. Later, when the banshee discovered Everly’s interest in her scales, she would excitedly tear off beautiful scales, still speckled with bits of flesh, from the tip of her tail and give them to her.
Those scales drifted off, carried by Everly’s message-in-a-bottle, floating to distant places.
Now, as the baby’s fascination shifted from the scales to an eyeball, the banshee showed no resistance whatsoever. She remained as gentle and generous as ever, removing her own eye and placing it in Everly’s hand.
The vivid red eyeball, heavy with love, made Everly’s eyes water. She couldn’t help but feel like crying.
She held the eye carefully in her tiny palm, intending to communicate with the banshee to see if she could get the second eye and protect them both. Just then, the banshee suddenly lifted her head, alert, and looked toward the passage nearby.
Curious, Everly turned to follow her gaze. She couldn’t see through the rock walls, of course, but being close enough, her ears caught a strange creak.
The sound came from the top of the spiral passage. Mechanical clicks accompanied by the squeak of taut ropes made it sound like someone had triggered a mechanism.
Then came steady footsteps.
Everly immediately thought of the dream from last night. In it, Wester had solved a mechanism at the base of the lighthouse, opened a long-sealed passage, and used it to march directly into the chamber.
Her body tensed abruptly. At the same time, the banshee holding her reacted.
“Hisssss…”
The gentle, loving mother revealed her ferocious fangs in an instant. Her scales bristled, her body lowered, and she assumed a defensive, alert stance toward the passage. Holding Everly, her long tail lashed with the speed of a gale, carrying the baby swiftly back toward the stone platform, bending to try to hide her in a familiar crevice.
Having learned a painful lesson in the dream, Everly refused to hide there.
She stretched out her arms, letting out a series of deliberately low “mm-hmm, ah-ah” sounds. Using the tacit understanding developed over days of interaction, she guided the banshee to carry her to the farthest edge of the chamber, near the water pool, hiding her among the rocks there.
The intruder moved quickly. By the time they finished hiding, Everly could already see the dim yellow light of the oil lamp shining through the passage.
The area near the water pool was where Everly spent most of her time. The ground was scattered with cloth scraps, toys, and other things she had picked up from the piles of corpses. As she hid, her gaze happened to sweep over one of the items, and in a flash of thought, an idea came to her.
“Mama!”
Seeing that the banshee was about to rise and confront the intruder, Everly seized the last opportunity. She grabbed a red marble hidden among the toys and, in the instant the banshee lowered her head, pressed it into the empty eye socket.
Hope… maybe this fake eye can help her…
The banshee suddenly received a “false eye” and didn’t question it. She gave her beloved child one last reassuring smile, straightened her body, and with a flick of her long tail, moved swiftly to the center of the chamber, taking a battle stance.
What followed was like the dream replaying itself.
The exorcist Wester appeared at the passage exit, holding the oil lamp, dispelling the deep silence of the chamber. Using the silver-glowing inscriptions that emanated from his body, he blocked wave after wave of the banshee’s attacks. When he got close, he raised his hand and poured all of the golden lamp oil over the unprepared banshee.
A piercing wail rang out. The banshee writhed like a snake dropped into boiling oil, her tail thrashing wildly, her body corroded and wriggling in agony on the floor. Meanwhile, Wester had already maneuvered past her and was now behind her.
Everly’s hiding had caused the exorcist a little trouble—but not much. It only delayed him for half a minute before he found the curled-up baby among the rocks at the edge of the water pool.