Change || The Promised Neverland

⚜ Chapter Twenty-Nine: Snake ⚜

...Alright then, [Name] thought, a bit miffed at his blatant lack of manners. Henry didn't look like he cared what she thought, because soon enough, he started to speak regardless.

"My alibi is Morpheus," Henry introduced himself, "or the snake guy that Minerva put in one of his books. If you're on the new farm, I'm the snake guy with all of the psychology textbooks. But since this is a recording of my mind that you can only access with a certain trait, I'll give you my real name. I'm Henry, also known as your ancestor."

The tan-skinned man stood up, walking over to stand beside [Name]. "You probably don't know what the fu-" he coughed, catching himself, "that is, what's going on, so I'll explain it to you. But to do that, we have to start from the beginning. Hold on a second - there we go."

[Name]'s legs unfroze, startling the girl and almost making her fall over, had it not been for Henry keeping a hand on her back. Confused, she looked up to see if the man had actually seen her and her stumble. However, his eyes were kept straight ahead, focusing on something [Name] couldn't see.

When [Name] got her balance back, Henry had already retracted his hand back into his pocket. It was then that she finally got a sense of her surroundings.

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»

[Name] jumped back as a spear came hurtling her way, impaling itself in the face of a demon who [Name] didn't realize was beside her. It hit bulls-eye, or rather, demon's eye, dead-center in the middle of their face. [Name] almost gagged at the demon's true face - the face that hid behind the porcelain masks they always wore.

Millions of eyes littered the demon's forehead, but only one was hit by the spear - the one in the center. Blood leaked out of the wound, but [Name] didn't hate this kind like she normally did. Normally, [Name] hated blood, whether it be from herself or a child in her dreams, she despised it and preferred to avoid it.

But she didn't gag when she stared at the demon's dying body. No matter what, she felt no pity for this creature, no disgust or anger for its death. Maybe it was because her senses had hardened.

Or maybe it was because she thought it deserved it.

"That's what we call a man-eater," Henry explained. "They go by many names, but I just call them man-eaters because that's all they do. They eat, and they like humans the best. We don't know where they came from - they were probably something resembling a bacteria in the beginning."

[Name] scanned the battlefield, watching as adult humans threw spears, shot arrows, and waved swords at the demons. Some were cut down by the ancient weapons - some cut down the wielders. She didn't see any guns, tanks, or any of the modern weaponry she expected of the humans.

"This is the Great War. Back when the world was still one whole plane. Humans and man-eaters fought and ate each other - yes, some humans ate man-eaters, they taste horrible don't try it - in order to gain the title of the hunter. It was just endless killings. Humans died, man-eaters died, and predictably, they got tired of dying all the time."

[Name] watched as the outer edges of the world curved towards her and Henry, curling into a dome around them. Now, she was watching six people, seven adults sitting in a circle surrounding a small vase, which held the four candles that would illuminate the room.

With a jolt, [Name] almost had a heart attack as the adults' faces clarified. One man had the orange, springy hair of Emma, a woman with the long white of Norman, and another man with the same chin-length black of Ray. The other two were unfamiliar, one having a large white beard and the other a warm-skinned man without any hair.