His Challenge

Your Worst Nightmare or Your Best Blessing

Six months ago, Kyro had met someone: a woman.

Dark curly hair, brown eyes, brown skin. She was in her 50s, going through a messy divorce with a man she had been married to for almost 30 years and struggling tremendously with her business.
He hated her; Kyro knew the moment he laid eyes on her.

She smiled the same way his mother did. Stared the same way his mother did. Sat around and cried the same way his mother did.

All because she was too weak to leave her husband, or because times were hard, or because she could not protect her child. That whiny piece of shit.

But those were all a result of her own actions, and Kyro loathed her for it. She always acted like the victim, and instead of consoling her child, the true sufferer to all her husband's abuse, her child was consoling her.

So Kyro spent three months constantly around her, whispering dark thoughts into her ear and convincing her it was her own thinking. He watched her lose interest in everything, watched as all happiness drained from her body. Kyro always stood in the corner of the room, taking note of everything the woman did, rage boiling within him.

He remembers the time the mother took off her beloved golden necklace, in the shape of a goat with one broken horn, and adorned her daughter's neck with it. It was the mother's way of saying goodbye, although the daughter had yet to realized it. And the next day, the mother disappeared.

Kyro led her on for days, watching as her eyes turned foggy and she grew thin and pale. She was at Death's door, but Kyro sustained her, forced her muscles to move, forced her to walk.

And walk she did: for hours upon hours each day until she found herself in front of the Gate. The moment her body entered, she screamed in agony. He hoped it hurt her beyond measure.

Her skin melted and her flesh burned, her bones lost shape and she deteriorated into the ground, her shrieks still echoing in woods. And in that moment, Kyro felt satisfied. Someone as weak as her, someone who always claimed to be a victim of every challenge, did not deserve life.

Now, as Kyro stares at that same golden necklace around Sofia's neck, the memory and the anger of those months come back to him. And as he waits with his hand extended for Sofia to accept his deal, for Sofia to succumb to the same end as her mother, he pushes his rage aside to think that this must be the solution to his current challenge. To take a human out of her misery and to stop allowing her to pursue a case with no end.

He has to take Sofia to the Gate as well; anyone with the right morals would realize that this is what must be done.

Sofia continues to glare at the man in front of her, the only thing on her mind being three little words.

Mother. Death. Deal.

Mother. Death. Deal.

Mother. Death. Deal.

She still doesn't comprehend anything. It's as if he said words she understands individually but when strung together into a sentence, nothing makes sense. The only thing she can do is stare, so that is what she does.

She looks at his extended hand, patiently waiting for her to accept the deal; she looks at his unnerving, pensive eyes, following her every move; she looks at the dozens of papers in front of her, pictures of her mother looking back at her expectantly. What is she supposed to do?

Call the police.

It's the first thought that comes to her mind, but after working tirelessly for months with several detectives, the case leading to nowhere, everyone in the precinct gave up. She tried to fight it, but they eventually decided that she needs to move on, and they refused to listen to anything more relating to her mother's case. So calling the police now, claiming a random man knows what happened to her mother, will only get her in trouble. She has to figure this out alone.