It had followed him for days.
At first, Eclipse thought it was just a bird—a regular mockingbird, maybe slightly off. But as time passed, and his hunger grew sharp enough to gnaw at his bones, and he grew more aware, and then he realized something.
It never left.
Always there—watching. Perched in the same tree no matter where he went. Always just ahead when he walked. Always behind when he turned. And always singing.
But the sounds weren't just birdsong. They were whispers. Mockery. Echoes of his own voice thrown back at him in twisted tones.
"You don't have a mom," it had chirped once. His own voice, pitch-perfect, but wrong—too fast, too cheerful, like a puppet mocking its puppeteer.
And when he looked at it—activated his eyes of truth—he saw the truth.
Its feathers were wrong. They shimmered with a sickly, bone-white sheen, twitching and shifting even without wind. Its wings cracked when they moved, joints flexing backward like something that had grown in the dark without light or rules. Its beak was split down the middle, revealing those unnaturally sharp teeth twitching behind each mimicry.
But it was the eyes that made him cold.
No irises. No life. Just two pulsing voids, like rotting fruit filled with breathing darkness. When it looked at him, it wasn't just watching—it was feeding.
On his frustration.
On his anger.
On his unraveling sanity.
Now, after three days with no food, no clean water, and no rest, Eclipse lay beneath the broken rooftop of an old ruined house, stomach growling, blood dry and crusted across his ribs. He waited.
It would come again. He knew it would.
And this time, he wasn't going to swat it away.
This time, he was going to kill it.
Not for food.
Not for survival.
But for peace.
Real, goddamn silence.
It all started when he woke up from his vacation on the water.
Sickly gray light filtered through the trees as Eclipse sputtered awake, coughing violently, hacking up water. He was lying in a shallow, slow-moving river, the current gently tugging at his legs as if reluctant to let him go. His body throbbed with every breath, his wounds now clotted and caked in dirt and dried blood, it seems his limited Aether wasn't able to stitch him up fully.
Above him, perched on a low-hanging branch, a mockingbird stared down at him.
It tilted its head. Chirped.
Once.
Twice.
Then again—as if laughing.
Eclipse blinked blearily at the sky, the sky was too bright, the bird too loud. He groaned and rolled over, dragging himself out of the water. Every muscle screamed. His mouth was bitter, it seems the water had mixed with something else. His stomach knotted in pain.
But he was alive.
Somehow.
The next days blurred into a haze of agony and wandering. No food. No water. No rest. No people. Just duplicated houses and his wounds which for some damn reason wasn't trying to heal up at all, and the persistent call of that mockingbird, always overhead. Always watching.
By the third day, his patience cracked.
He stared at the bird with bloodshot eyes as it chirped and fluttered just out of reach, taunting him with song. He didn't know why, but something inside him needed to catch it. Maybe for food. Maybe to shut it up. Maybe just to prove to the world that he could still take something—anything—back.
And so, as the sun set on the third day, Eclipse lay motionless beneath the roof of an abandoned, half-collapsed house, eyes fixed on the rafters above.
He had found the bird's routine—where it landed, where it called from.
Now, caked in dirt, wounds stiff and burning, he waited.
Silent.
Still.
Predator in the remains of what was once a home.
Then he heard it.
The flutter of wings.
The light tap of feet on wood.
The mockingbird had come.
And Eclipse, breath shallow and eyes narrowing, slowly curled his fingers around his sword.
This was no longer about hunger.
This was personal.
Around a day and half ago he summoned his Dairy to take a look at it, he was so bored so as he trekked along the way and listening to the mockingbird.
'Just keep singing you're in your last day's. He took a look at his Dairy and what he saw stunned him.
He abruptly stopped, as he stopped the Mockingbird flying behind him was caught of guard and almost flew into Eclipse. Eclipse was thrown out of his stupor when a large shadow suddenly appeared, he instinctively jumped out of the way only for him to crash into one of the houses.
Clearing his dizzy head he saw the large shadow recede, looking up he realized who the shadow was for.
"You damn bird I'll kill you". Eclipse Shouted through gritted teeth, his expression full of fury. He quickly escaped into one of the houses to escape from the embarrassing scene.
When he got inside he calmed down then summoned his Diary again.
Race: [High Human]
Rank: [Marked]
Exousia: [Annihilation flame of impermanence]
False God: [Detachment of the primitive world]
Innate Ability: [Rewind]
Soul Aspect: [Truth seeking orbs] [Fear]
Whisper: [Cloak of deception] [Confessor]
Liege: [Nephilm]
True Name:[Nihilion]
Eclipse focused on [Confessor] and the description rolled out.
[Confessor]
[Form]: [A ghostly longsword, semi-transparent, flickering like candlelight in shadow. The blade has no true metal—it's forged from spectral energy, pale blue. When it moves, it leaves behind wisps of soul-smoke.]
[Weightless Yet Heavy]: [To the user, it feels light as air in hand—but to the ones it strikes, it lands with the weight of judgment.]
[Spectral Rend]: [Can cut through a person's soul, temporarily weakening them or severing connections to Aether. Wounds left by the blade take longer to heal.]
[Haunt] : [When summoned, the sword occasionally flickers into visibility, whispering behind your ear, trailing ghost-light.]
[Soul cost]: [The blade grows colder with each kill, emotionally and physically. You begins to lose feeling in the hand that wields it.]
[Once a man of faith, now a ghost bound in steel. His final sermon was a scream, silenced forever when the vile Nihilion who had spilled his blood upon the altar, all he wanted was to please his mother]
Seeing the Weapon, it wasn't the accusations by the Diary that he killed an innocent man, or that recently he didn't have any ability that won't kill him. But that the fact that he wasted materials required to grow stronger.
"I didn't harvest the Soul shards from that bastard, what the hell is wrong with me". He screamed out in anger and he recalled his previous actions of leaving his hard earned shards behind. But it wasn't really his fault, he was not only new to these things but also he was in a hurry to get out of there.
All of these and the constant chirping of the mockingbird that he finally decided to unleash his anger and resentment on it.
"Mother I love you". The mocking voice of the mockingbird rang out. His hands clenched the sword tighter till his knuckle turned white.
It was one of his moments of silence his thoughts were too much so he decided to release it, little did he know it was coming to bite him in the back in the form of a mockingbird.