This Is What Justice Looks Like
“Aaaaaaaagh!!!!”
The scream tore through the chamber. It burst from the mouth of a woman bound to a rock, ravens tearing into her liver. Blood sprayed in every direction, fragments of entrails scattering with it. Even as her body regenerated in real time, the healing only prolonged the agony—an endless, merciless punishment designed never to end.
“Haaah… haaah… haaah…”
She hung limp, gasping through the pain. Nux. No matter how many times the torment repeated, the suffering never lessened. She clenched her teeth once more. Yet the worst of it was not the physical agony. The true torment lived in her heart—the fear. That scene she had glimpsed in the street. The one she desperately wanted to believe was only a hallucination. She fought to erase it from her mind while enduring the torture that never ceased.
Then—
“…M-Mom…?”
“!”
The voice reached her ears. A voice she had longed for more than anything—and one that should never have come. Slowly, Nux lifted her head. What she saw made her breath catch.
“N-No… don’t…”
The daughter she had sent to the surface. Kedalion.
“M-Mom…? W-Why…?”
Staring at the horror before her, Kedalion whispered in a trembling voice.
“Y-You… why are you here?! Why… why are you…!”
Nux’s cry was raw, shredded with shock and despair. Kedalion could find no words to answer.
Then a voice full of delighted curiosity spoke from behind her.
“My, my, no need to get so worked up. This is a long-awaited family reunion—shouldn’t you be a little happier?”
Echidna rested a hand lightly on Kedalion’s shoulder.
“Well? How does it feel, seeing the mother who abandoned you in a state like this? Thrilling, isn’t it? She cast you aside and ended up looking this pathetic. If this isn’t justice, what is?”
“N-No… I… I…”
Kedalion had thought it more than once—that she wanted the mother who discarded her to suffer. That the woman should taste the same hardship and scorn she herself had endured on the surface. But now, watching her mother scream through a face contorted in agony, she felt neither joy nor satisfaction. Only shock, confusion, and a sickening pain, as if a needle were driving into her chest.
Echidna leaned close to her ear, smiling darkly.
“Heh… well, enough joking for now. Aren’t you curious? Why your mother ended up like that. Or better yet… why that bitch threw you out onto the surface in the first place.”
“…”
Relishing the moment, Echidna coiled around Kedalion’s body like a serpent that had found its prey.
“I’ll tell you. Exactly how monumentally stupid that woman has been.”
“!”
In the beginning, there was Night.
Born from Chaos—Nyx. She brought forth children who carried her power: Death, Vengeance, Strife, Deceit, Old Age—beings who were the darkness of the world itself.
Then one day, a fragment of that Night’s essence fell into a river. Into the turbid black waters of the Abyss, where the remnants of the dead dissolved. There the shard of Night took form. An existence that resembled her true self, yet was never the same. A small fragment tangled with the residue of the dead—weaker, more unremarkable, more human.
Nux.
The piece of Night stepped from the black river onto solid ground, and there she met a man for the first time. A sinner born on the surface yet imprisoned in the Abyss—the Cyclops Steropes. Though his appearance was ugly, he treated her with kindness from the moment they met. For the first time, the fragment of Night felt love. She bore his child.
A being who resembled her father more than herself. The first responsibility she had ever known—κῆδος. She named her daughter Kedalion.
Raising that child, she found happiness. Despite her nature as a piece of the world’s darkness, Nux loved her daughter with everything she had. For that child, she would have done anything.
But the small, precious happiness of a small Night did not last.
One day he appeared before her—the master of the Abyss, Tartarus. A Primordial God, equal in power to her mother Nyx. He seized Nux without warning as she walked alone through the streets and declared:
“Bear my child.”
From their first meeting, Tartarus announced he would violate her. As a mere fragment of Night, she had no power to refuse. Yet she understood exactly what kind of being stood before her, why he issued such a command, and what would happen if she refused.
Tartarus was the lord of the Abyss and the Abyss itself—yet that same Abyss was also a prison to him. He could never leave Tartarus. It was an eternal seal placed upon him at the beginning by Gaia and Nyx. To shatter that seal, Tartarus sought a child with Nux. If he mingled his blood with hers—fragment though she was, still carrying the power of Night—he could sire an offspring strong enough to overpower Nyx and break the seal.
Nux could never accept it. She would not betray her mother or her husband for this creature’s filthy ambition. But she also knew that if she refused to the end, he would break her by targeting her family—especially her only, precious daughter. That was simply the kind of being Tartarus was.
So Nux made the best choice she could. She pretended to agree completely, currying his favor. As a result, she succeeded in having her daughter driven from Tartarus—effectively escaping—on the grounds that the child was a “nuisance.”
She told her family nothing. The plan might leak, and more than that, she knew they would never accept it. Even if it earned their hatred, Nux had already steeled herself. If she could protect her family—if she could protect her daughter—she would gladly bear even the hatred of her child and husband.
The moment her most precious treasure and greatest weakness was safe, Nux closed her womb. No matter how many times Tartarus violated her, his seed would never take root inside her.
When Tartarus finally learned the truth and began torturing her—whipping her, letting ravens devour her liver, raping her countless times every night, forcing her to parade through the streets as a filthy whore who abandoned her family, staining her honor with humiliation—Nux still refused to yield. To this day she had never submitted, never borne his child.
All to protect this world… and her daughter.
“Th-That… that can’t be…”
The truth spilling from Echidna’s lips made Kedalion’s entire body begin to tremble. All this time she had resented her mother. Yet every bit of it had been nothing but her own foolish misunderstanding. Every bit of it had been her mother’s blood-soaked effort to protect her.
“Why… why did you come back…? As long as you were safe… I didn’t care what happened to me… Pain like this… I could have endured any amount of it…”
Nux wept in a voice thick with despair. Watching the woman who had remained unbroken through the cruelest tortures finally crumble, an indescribable guilt flooded Kedalion’s heart.
Echidna laughed lightly.
“Heh. Common sense says a freak like that could never survive alone on the surface. Look—she wasn’t welcomed by anyone and came trudging right back home.”
“! Khh…”
“Well then, enough of the kind explanations. Time to get to work, don’t you think?”
“Ugh!”
“N-No! Kedalion!!!”
With a face full of mockery, Echidna tightened her coils around Kedalion with crushing force. Under the overwhelming pain, a wretched scream tore from the girl’s throat.
“Stop it, Echidna! Rape me, torture me instead! Break my bones, rip out my guts—do whatever you want! Just… please, not her… not my child!”
“Heh. To think the lofty Lady Nux would beg for the sake of a freak like this. As expected… the leverage works perfectly.”
—Crrraaack!
“Guhhhhaaaah!!!”
Despite Nux’s pleas, the sound of every bone in Kedalion’s body shattering rang out as she coughed up blood. At the sight of her daughter so utterly ruined, Nux shook from head to toe and poured out tears.
“Ah… aah…”
The child who looked like a broken doll was shattering the will she had held so firmly all this time.
Echidna’s voice was almost gentle.
“Don’t worry so much. You already know, don’t you? Something like this won’t kill her. No—she can’t die.”
“You… you bastard…”
For the first time, clear fury showed on Nux’s face.
“Now then, here’s a little question. What must our dear mother do to save her beloved daughter?”
“!”
At Echidna’s “question,” Nux’s expression froze solid. She already knew the answer better than anyone. Open her womb and bear Tartarus’s child. She knew full well it would become a blade aimed at her mother Nyx—and that it would unleash catastrophe through a freed Tartarus. Yet Nux no longer had a choice. As a mother, she could not endure the sight of her daughter suffering any longer. To her, that child was the world itself.
Then—
“D-Don’t…”
“!”
“Hm?”
Her daughter’s voice reached her ears.
“Don’t… Mom… don’t do it… Because of me… it’s my fault… I-I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Mom… ugh! Ghhhhh!!!”
Even reduced to a state too horrific to look at, even when the pain made it seem impossible to stay conscious, the girl forced out words of apology and poured every last scrap of strength into stopping her mother. Nux hesitated, unable to answer. Mother and daughter, trapped in the worst situation of their own making, locked in a futile struggle. Knowing even that was nothing but a waste of time, Echidna savored the ironic, entertaining scene and wore a wicked smile.
“Take your time answering. We’ve got plenty of it. Of course, in the meantime your worthless daughter will die a few more times, but still. You really are hilarious bitches. Throwing everything away for one little freak! This is why mothers are nothing but empty-headed idiot whores who—!”
—BOOOOOOM!!!!
In that instant, an enormous impact smashed into Echidna’s head. The face that had been sneering so loudly was driven straight into the wall.
“This is what justice looks like.”
A pair of hands caught Kedalion’s body as it was flung free of the coils. Even that gentle catch sent heavy pain through her shattered frame, yet her eyes clearly saw the man who held her.
“Y-You…”
The first time she saw him, she had felt fear.
“Honestly… I thought we were comrades—both abandoned by trash mothers…”
And now, that same face filled her with an indescribable sense of reliability.
“At this level… she’s the best mother there is.”
