Chapter 427: Runis [1]

I groaned under my breath before I even opened my eyes.

Something felt wrong.

Not pain exactly. More like my body had been pulled somewhere while the rest of me was still asleep. I tried to move, expecting the thin mattress in the little shop, the warmth of Maribel against my chest, the faint smell of dust and old wood around us.

Instead, when I opened my eyes, there was only white.

White above me.

White beneath me.

White stretching so far in every direction that I could not tell where the ground ended and the sky began.

I pushed myself upright.

There was no shop. No mattress. No Maribel.

Just that endless, empty place.

I knew it immediately.

My stomach tightened.

If I was here, then—

"Awake at last?"

I turned around.

She stood several steps away from me.

The White Lady.

Her long white hair hung past her waist, unmoved by any wind in this strange blank world. Two horns rose from either side of her head, smooth and pale against her hair. Her dark-green eyes watched me with the same amused look she always had, as if she had been waiting for me to figure out some obvious joke.

Her skin carried that gray-white glow, faint enough that I could still see her features clearly but bright enough to make her seem separate from the empty world around us. She wore the same long gown as before, the fabric falling around her without touching the ground.

Even after seeing her more than once, I did not know what to make of her.

She looked beautiful.

She also looked like somebody who could say one sentence and make my entire life worse.

"I expected to meet you," I said as I got to my feet.

The words came out more awkwardly than I meant them to.

The White Lady tilted her head.

"Oh? Were you eager to see me?" Her mouth curved into a smile. "Does that mean I will be joining your growing list of women soon?"

I groaned and rubbed my forehead.

"You really enjoy watching me struggle, don’t you?"

"Struggle?" She looked genuinely puzzled for half a second. Then her smile returned. "I did not see much struggling a little while ago. You seemed quite occupied with Maribel."

Heat rushed straight into my face.

"Can you not say it like that?"

"Why? It happened."

"Yeah, I know it happened."

She walked closer, her bare steps making no sound against the white floor.

"You are the one who came looking for answers, Ryan."

I looked away.

That was true. I had wanted to see her. Not because I enjoyed being mocked by some strange former host living somewhere in my dreams, but because I did not know who else could explain what was happening to me.

Since Maribel’s stabilization, I had not been able to settle down.

The urges had gotten stronger. It was not just attraction. It was not just wanting someone close to me. My body kept reacting before I could think, and after what happened with Summer, I had spent hours wondering whether I was becoming someone I did not recognize.

I looked back at the White Lady.

"Fine," I said. "I do have questions."

"I know."

"About Dullahan." I hesitated, then forced myself to continue. "Ever since I cured Maribel, I have felt strange. More and more restless. Like I keep wanting..."

"To sleep with women?" she finished.

I flinched.

"Yes," I said. "That. I keep feeling that urge. It is getting out of hand."

The White Lady did not laugh this time.

She studied me, and the joking look left her face.

"You are asking whether it is normal."

"Yeah."

"Hm."

She walked past me, stopping at my side rather than in front of me. Her gaze moved through the blank distance as though she could see a horizon I could not.

"I cannot give you a perfect answer," she said. "I was a female King Host of Dullahan. I did not experience the same urges you do. My body was also stronger than yours, and I had lived with Dullahan long enough to understand when its influence began and where my own feelings ended."

"That does not really make me feel better."

"It should not."

I gave her an annoyed look.

She ignored it.

"You are different," she continued. "You are young. Your body is still adapting. And more importantly, you did something I did not."

I waited.

"You shared Dullahan."

"I did not do that on purpose."

"No," she said. "But you still took part in it."

Her words irritated me, though I knew she was not entirely wrong.

The Symbiote had spread from me to Sydney, Rachel, Cindy, and the others. It had happened through circumstances I could not control, through danger and survival and decisions that had never felt simple. Maribel had become part of that network too.

I had never sat down and decided that I wanted any of it.

Still, it had happened.

"Dullahan becomes stronger when it is divided among hosts," the White Lady said. "Each Sub-Host carries a fragment. Each fragment grows, adapts, and feeds information back through the same bond. The more people share it, the more potential Dullahan has."

I stared at her.

"So what I feel is because Dullahan is getting stronger inside me?"

"In part."

"In part?"

She turned toward me.

"You want an answer that lets you place every uncomfortable thought on the creature inside you. It would be convenient, would it not?"

I did not answer.

The White Lady stepped nearer. Her expression was not cruel, but she was no longer playing around either.

"Dullahan strengthens your connection to the people carrying it," she said. "It reacts to proximity. To stress. To injury. To desire. To the relief of being held by someone who understands what you are carrying."

My hands curled at my sides.

"And that makes me want them more?"

"It makes the feeling harder to ignore." She paused. "But it cannot create a person from nothing. It cannot make you care for somebody you do not care about. It cannot force love into your heart."

"Then why do I feel like I cannot control myself?"

"Because you are afraid of what you might do."

The White Lady’s eyes stayed on mine.

"Those are not the same thing."

I hated how quickly she got to the point.

I had spent the entire evening trying to convince myself that Dullahan had made everything happen. That it had pushed me beyond my own judgment. That it was the reason I had become so desperate for closeness, so distracted around Maribel, Summer, Carmen, and anyone else who showed me warmth.

But I knew that was not the full truth.

Dullahan might have made the urges stronger.

It might have made every touch, smell, and memory harder to ignore.

That did not mean I could stop taking responsibility for my own choices.

The White Lady’s voice lowered.

"You hate being alone, Ryan."

I looked away again.

"You lost your mother. You spent years with a creature inside you that never spoke to you. Then the world ended, and you found people who accepted you. People who trusted you. People who wanted you near them."

"That does not make me some kind of scumbag."

"No," she said. "It makes you human."

The answer caught me off guard.

She continued before I could respond.

"You found comfort with women who made you feel wanted. You found relief in being close to them. You liked it. You still like it." Her eyes sharpened. "There is no shame in that by itself."

"But the more there are, the better I feel you say," I said. "That is messed up."

"It can become messed up if you stop seeing them as people and start seeing them only as a way to satisfy yourself." She folded her arms beneath the sleeves of her gown. "That is the line. Dullahan may make connection feel stronger, but it does not give you permission to take whatever you want."

I stood there quietly.

Her words brought Summer back into my mind.

The way she had been trying to clean my injuries. The surprise on her face. The silence afterward.

I felt sick again.

The White Lady watched my expression change.

"You made a mistake."

"I know."

"Then do not hide behind Dullahan when you face the consequences."

"I was not planning to."

"Good."

I looked down at the white floor beneath my feet.

"Am I becoming like Gaspar?" I asked.

The question came out quieter than I intended.

The White Lady did not answer immediately.

"That depends on what you do next," she said at last.

I raised my head.

"That is not an answer."

"It is the only one you get." Her tone was calm, but there was no softness in it. "Gaspar did not become dangerous simply because he had a Symbiote. He became dangerous because he decided everyone around him existed to serve his wants. His power gave him more ways to act on that belief."

I thought of Gaspar’s face. The way he spoke. The way his people obeyed him because they feared him.

"I do not want to be like him."

"Then do not be."

She made it sound simple.

Maybe it was simple.

Not easy, but simple.

I had to learn what was Dullahan and what was me. I had to stop pretending the distinction did not matter. Wearing the Anti-Symbiote collar might help when the urges became too strong, but it would not fix the part where I needed to make better choices.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked.

The White Lady smiled again, though this time it was less mocking.

"Start by being honest with yourself. You are not a monster for wanting closeness. You are not a saint because you feel guilty afterward. You are a boy with too much power, too much fear, and too many people tied to him."

"That sounds terrible when you say it."

"It is terrible."

I paused, my fists closing at my sides.

"Even if you tell me to start by being honest with myself, I am not that kind of man," I said. "I am not going to attack every woman around me like some starving beast. I do not want to keep sleeping with every woman I get close to. But that is what these urges feel like."

The White Lady watched me without interrupting.

"You are not a man who wishes to sleep with every woman he sees," she said at last. "You are taking the worst fear you have about yourself and treating it as the truth."

"Then what is it?"

"You want warmth."

I frowned.

"That is not an answer."

"It is the answer you do not want."

She began walking slowly, her dress moving across the white ground without making a sound.

"You spent years without much of it," she said. "A harsh father. A world that kept taking people away. The one person who gave you uncomplicated warmth from the beginning was your mother."

My chest tightened at the mention of her.

The White Lady looked back at me.

"She was a woman. She cared for you. She made you feel safe before you even understood what safety was. When you lost her, that absence stayed with you."

"That does not mean I am trying to replace her with every woman who is nice to me."

"No," she said. "It does not."

I waited for the rest.

"It means that kindness affects you more strongly than you think. When someone offers you warmth, care, food, a place to sleep, concern for your injuries, or simply asks whether you are all right, part of you wants to hold on to it."

She stopped a few steps away from me.

"Not because you want to use them. Because you are afraid that if you let go, you will be alone again."

I did not reply.

The words were too close to something I did not want to admit.

"That is fucked up," I said after a while. "I was not like this before Dullahan awakened."

"Were you not?" she asked.

I looked up sharply.

The White Lady smiled, though there was no real amusement in it this time.

"Perhaps Dullahan does not create every part of you," she said. "Perhaps it brings certain feelings closer to the surface. Makes them louder. Harder to bury."