EL RITCH
El Ritch floated in the void, untethered, weightless. The darkness stretched on forever, unbroken, save for a small patch of white. At first, he thought it a trick of his failing mind—a desperate attempt to conjure light where none existed. But then it moved.
A rabbit.
It hopped toward him, stepping across an unseen plane, paws pressing against nothingness itself.
"You are a strange one," the rabbit mused, its voice smooth, unsettlingly calm. "I've met many across the span of this world, yet none quite like you. You cannot die, and you cannot live. You are truly a mess."
El Ritch stared. "Great. Finally losing my mind. Welcome, imaginary friend."
He blinked.
There were two rabbits.
Another blink.
Four.
Again.
Eight.
They multiplied in twos, a growing tide of white, pooling around him like foam on a blackened sea.
"Thank you for the greetings," the rabbit spoke again, unbothered by its growing numbers. "But I believe you are our guest here."
A movement. A stain among the white.
A rat.
It slithered through the ever-multiplying herd, its fur a sickly brown-black, marring the pristine tide. Each rabbit it touched darkened, its coat spoiling into rot, the color of filth.
"Not ours," the rat sneered, voice sharp, mocking. "How does it feel to be dead? Enjoying the silence? No more burdens, no more responsibilities. No one can touch you. No one can hurt you. You don't even have to speak anymore. Just an endless, peaceful void."
It crawled closer, whiskers twitching, beady eyes gleaming.
"You should be grateful," it continued, tilting its head. "Isn't this what you wanted? To be left alone? To slip away without a trace? No more people, no more expectations. Just you, floating in the dark, unbothered."
The rabbits remained silent, their eyes fixed on El Ritch.
"But you're not grateful, are you?" the rat pressed. "Why not? Could it be—" it twitched, amused, "—that you wanted to escape something else? Not just people. Not just responsibility. But this."
The void.
The silence.
The nothingness.
El Ritch clenched his jaw.
"You could've asked for help," the rat sneered, its tail curling around its feet. "Jolnochaya. Badaguinbir. The hopping hare. They would've saved you, wouldn't they?"
The rabbit stirred, ears twitching. "The boy needs time," it interjected, voice kind but firm. "At his age, it wasn't intention that led him here. He simply… didn't know how."
A defense.
A kindness.
But was it true?
El Ritch's fingers curled into fists.
He could have spoken to Jol. He could have faced Bada and Jol, both. He could have tried.
But he hadn't.
Not out of arrogance. Not out of pride.
But fear.
Fear of what he had done.
Fear of facing the truth.
Fear of the blood on his hands.
Perhaps that was why he had wished for death.
The rats churned and writhed, multiplying in grotesque numbers, their blackened forms wriggling over the pale rabbits, corrupting them in their wake. The rabbits recoiled, their pristine coats marred further, the rot spreading as they twisted and shifted, some turning fully to rats, others curling into themselves as if trying to unmake their own existence.
"It is a shame indeed," the rabbit lamented, watching its brethren warp. "You could have avoided this, dear boy. If only you had spoken."
El Ritch clenched his jaw. "They wouldn't have understood."
And why would they?
Why would anyone risk themselves for him? He was a stranger. A fleeting moment in their lives. The only thing that separated Jol and Bada from the boy with the axe—the one he had killed—was the direction in which fate had thrown them together. Had circumstances shifted by even a hair's breadth, he might have been laughing beside the boy, their blades pointed at another.
"Indeed," the rat crooned, its voice slick with mockery. "How could anyone understand someone like you? You are special. No one will love you. No one will ever see you as anything but a burden. And now, here you are."
The rabbit picked up where the rat left off, its voice dripping with warmth of a loving parent. "But we love you. You are not alone. We are here with you, forever."
Perhaps this was death. Not a violent severing, but a slow, creeping embrace. A gentle hand leading him deeper into the quiet.
Then—
"And what about your promise to Adeline and Aldric?"
El Ritch stiffened.
The voice was not the rat's. Not the rabbit's. It did not belong to the suffocating dark.
He turned sharply, breath catching in his throat.
The witch stood behind him, her head tilted slightly, her expression unreadable. There was no warmth in her gaze, no pity in her voice—only the sharp edge of disappointment.
"I had expected better," she said. "After all Adeline has done for you. After all Aldric has risked. And this is how you repay them? Moping in the face of death?"
The rats and rabbits alike stirred, their forms writhing with unease.
"Witch," the rat spat, its voice turning sour. "You do not belong in our home. Return at once."
"Witch," the rabbit murmured, though its voice carried an odd reverence. "We have no claim over you, and you have no claim over the boy. He has stepped into our realm, and his body is rotting as we speak. He will not return. Let him have peace."
El Ritch stared at her, his mind reeling.
She was here.
Why?
Why had she come? Why had she followed him into this abyss?
Why waste the effort on someone like him?
"I..." He tried to form words, but the weight of them pressed heavy on his tongue. "I'm not worth it."
The confession fell from his lips before he could stop it.
"People saved me all my life," he continued, the words pouring out like water through a cracked dam. "Again and again, I was given chances I did nothing to earn. And I failed. Every single time. I ran from them. I ran from everything. I failed them, time and time again—"
The witch clapped her hands together, the sound ringing sharp and jarring in the empty space.
"Pathetic."
El Ritch flinched.
"Excuses," she snapped. "All I hear are excuses. Convenient little words to justify your own avoidance. You hide. You lie to yourself. You refuse to take responsibility, and then you wallow in your own misery as if that somehow makes it noble."
El Ritch stared at her, shame rising like bile in his throat.
The witch stepped forward, each movement pushing the swarm of rabbits further back.
"What have I told you about hope?" she demanded.
El Ritch hesitated. He didn't understand why she was asking, but instinct took over, forcing the words from his lips before he could think.
"Hope is a value that is treacherous," he recited, his voice small, "placed on something that is transient."
"A lesson you should have understood by now." The witch's voice was a blade, cutting through his feeble justifications.
She exhaled sharply and crossed her arms, her eyes boring into him.
"Hope is treacherous to the one who needs it most," she said. "It is a trap, a lie, a crutch for those too afraid to act. You do not need to hope, El Ritch. You need to do."
She took another step forward, and the rats, the rabbits, the filth and the dark—all of it quailed.
"We are not foreseers," she continued, her voice steady, unwavering. "We do not know what the future holds. We do not know the thoughts of others. We do not need to wonder why others struggle. We do not need to understand what we mean to them. We are no saint. And we are certainly no God. We are here, now. And we have a task. That is all that matters."
El Ritch's breath trembled.
He wanted to tell her she was wrong. That it wasn't that simple. That he had no task, no role, no meaning.
With every step she took, the swarm of rabbits—so once pristine, so once gentle—recoiled.
They feared her.
El Ritch swallowed hard.
"You do not need to worry about deserving the life you've been given."
Her gaze burned through him, cold and relentless.
"You simply need to live."
"I... I..." El Ritch faltered, the words slipping from his grasp like sand through open fingers. He had no excuses left. No justifications. No path forward but the truth.
A beast who kills and does not repent, and a beast who kills and does—what difference is there? His apologies would not absolve him.
But still, he apologized.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice breaking under its own weight.
And for what? For the lives he had taken? For the ones he had failed? For his own fear, festering inside him, dictating his every step? "I don't know why... I kept avoiding responsibility," he admitted, his words stumbling over themselves, raw and unfiltered. "I—I was scared. I am scared. Of the beasts, of the people who tried to kill me, of..." His breath hitched. "I don't even know anymore."
"It is okay to be scared," the witch said, her voice firm, unwavering. "Fear is instinct. The first law of self-preservation. It is okay to fail. It is even okay to give up. But you must stand again, El Ritch." She paused, letting the words settle, her gaze unreadable. "You are what you are. Your identity matters, not the world."
His identity?
A thief? A boy who had done nothing but survive at the cost of others? And yet...
Was it not better to be something than to be nothing? To exist, even in pain, rather than to fade into the dark?
"The cost of leaving our domain is huge—" the rabbit began.
The witch cut him off. "I will pay the price."
"Do not mock us, witch," the rat sneered. "You, who belong neither to this world nor the old one, have no claim here. This child cannot leave—"
"Actually," the rat turned, a slow, knowing smile creeping across its face, "we accept."
The rabbit hesitated, its brow furrowed. But then, as though some silent accord had passed between them, it nodded.
"We shall take your sight and your speech," the rat declared. "Until this child leaves our domain, you shall neither see nor speak."
For the briefest moment, El Ritch saw something flicker in the witch's expression—surprise, perhaps. But then, as quickly as it came, it was gone.
"Fine," she said, her voice as steady as stone. "I accept."
The rabbit and the rat grinned in unison. "A pleasure to bargain with you."
El Ritch could only watch in silent horror as the witch's brown eyes paled, clouding over into an empty white. When she opened her mouth, no sound came forth. Silence. Heavy, suffocating silence.
She had traded her power for him.
For him.
And yet she had told him to move forward without looking back.
How could he, when his every step was paved with debts he could never repay?
The trade was done. The bargain sealed.
The darkness swallowed them whole.
The witch's final words echoed through the void.
"Your body has rotted and is destroyed. Even if I let your soul leave the domain of death, you have no body to return to. You may, however, inhabit something non-living. Do not despair—it will take time, a lengthy time."
El Ritch drifted in the abyss, weightless, untethered. He thought himself alone, suspended in nothingness. But then—contact.
Something brushed against him, something solid. He flinched.
A silhouette took shape before him, shifting, trembling. A creature. It whimpered as he touched it.
El Ritch reached out, tentative, fingers grazing the darkness-made-flesh—
And it latched onto him.
Not hands. Paws.
It was a beast.
Teeth sank into his arm, a bite without pain, a presence consuming his own. The creature vanished from his sight, from his grasp, and in its wake, something stirred beneath his skin.
He looked down.
A mark, dark and curling, etched itself into his flesh—a sigil, an omen, a contract sealed in silence.