Two days later, Nyla can't take it anymore. Seeing Min-ho slowly dissolve into nothing but a void of darkness is like watching a newborn puppy being burned alive. She'll have to get rid of the Hunger tonight.

A chuff, followed by a fishy breath, shoots out of the fence beside her.

"Don't give me that. If I don't get rid of it, he'll die. I find him charming for a human, it'd be a shame if he died," the doctor says, almost pouting.

A low growl follows Nyla's words. The jaguar sitting opposite her is watching her intently. It's after work hours and everyone is gone now, so it's just the two of them.

"You like him more than I do, beast," Nyla accuses, then sticks out her tongue like a brat at the huffy cat.

The big-spotted feline yawns and looks away, trying to feign ignorance.

The problem is that I don't have enough power to destroy it properly and barely enough to purify it.

Elotti rubs herself against the cage. Nyla automatically reaches out and strokes her. Only for the beast to take a swing at her a moment later. The doctor is fast enough to avoid injury as she retracts her hand from the jaguar's claws.

"Really?! Can't you stop being mad at me for even a second?"

Nyla's head starts to throb in frustration.

"I know it's risky. I know I could very much be foiling our plans, but that poor kid is living as if dead simply because we have failed in so much," she confesses, almost crying now.

Looking at the beast, Nyla can almost hear it call her out with her true name.

"Tonatiuh."

But it's been ages since she could hear the beast or the others buried deep within her. With the dreadful seal around her flame thanks to that ungrateful asshole, she can't do much but wield enough to pass for a Highborn.

Nyla, or better yet, Tona as she used to go by centuries ago, exasperatedly sighs, looking up at the twilight. Her shoulders sag, feeling the burden of her duties weigh her down. She silently wishes she were her old, powerful self, instead of this lousy excuse of a wash-out Glamour.

"I need to find the owner of the white flame soon. If I don't, my brothers and sisters will be lost to time forever, and this world will continue to twist itself into oblivion without anyone being the wiser," she utters in a whisper.

"Even though it's already been forever," her voice strains with mental exhaustion.

Her mission has been anything but easy. In fact it has been extreme- BULL-FUCKING-SHIT! Why did she ever trust that insufferable little Highborn?! She wouldn't be here if she had been just a tiny bit more skeptical.

"Ha."

The cat looks her over, knowing somehow full well what she's thinking. There's a smirk in her eyes that makes Nyla want to scream.

He sealed everything away but the key. He separated the key from her very being. Tore it out, inflicting her with the worst physical pain she had ever felt and continues to feel. Even now, under her skin, there are mind-numbing stings that yell at her to soothe, but she has no way out but to kill herself to make it stop.

This beast and a white flame wielder. Those are the prerequisites to breaking the damn curse. She got lucky enough to stumble upon this infernal feline after decades upon decades, nearing a century, searching the jungles across the world, but human mages are all but extinct now. Finding an actual living Highborn is the same as finding a dragon.

And dragons are the fictional line in this reality.

Oh fuck me, why can't fate be sweet enough to bring us all together?

"Ugh, we've lived way too long, Elotti," Nyla tells the bored-looking jaguar.

The animal sorely wants to tell its master a thousand different things. It wants to scream that the half-life she eats lunch with is the white flame user. She wants to tell her that he is the target of not just one Hunger, but of human mages as well. On that boy, Min-ho Suk, are curses upon curses. All of them cast upon him by his own kind. The weary-looking man seems to be a riddled existence hanging on by sheer will alone.

They're both very similar in that way, Elotti thinks as she sadly looks at her downcast master with remorse.

"Don't look at me like that," her longtime companion tells her with a dazzling smile.

The beast chuffs again and turns around feeling the sense to part ways for the day.

"Perhaps by the next blue moon, everything will finally be over," Nyla murmurs happily.

But then her face falls as she finishes, "Along with reality as we know it."

The woman gets up and walks away from the beast in the cage, treading lightly on the path out of the zoo. Nyla says farewell to anyone still hanging about on her way out, like security, and continues to the parking lot. Each step away from the beast seems to darken the sky faster, and by the time she's in her vehicle, it's full-on night.

She starts her Buggy and heads out towards the Bronx. It didn't take much poking around to get Min-ho's address and she gets there within a couple of minutes.

Nyla looks up and down the dark apartment building from her driver's seat as she parks outside the front door. Not only is it old and falling apart, but she suspects it's also abandoned. Min-ho doesn't seem to know, but the Hunger has already eaten many of it's residents. Most rooms are dark and faintly radiate death, but the faint glow from the only seemingly occupied unit radiates an ominous energy worse than death.

Seems he's home.

She gets out of her car with a grunt and walks her long legs to a lamp-post nearby. Nyla leans against it and takes out a cigarette. Her lighter echoes on the empty street as she ignites it and puffs up the ember to her liking.

Now it's a waiting game.

Be it centuries ago, she could waltz up to the guy and tear the Hunger from him. Erasing his memories in the process without risk of mental injury, but now she could barely levitate a piece of paper without breaking a sweat.

The Mother of Flame bestows the power of a Glamour, but unfortunately, humans have twisted even that order around. Since olden times, the mages of flame had taken the free-will of Glamours and used their magic to chain them with powerful, forceful pacts.

Once she was a free Glamour, and she still would be if Tonatiuh hadn't encountered that blasted human. If she hadn't mistook his lies for truth, and became his familiar -a nice way of saying she became his slave- then saving the cute kid would have been no sweat off her back.

It took everything she had to successfully break the contract prematurely, the cost of which was her powers to shift. That vile scum sealed all her souls deep within her, all but the key- his way of getting back at Nyla for breaking the pact.

Elotti is the key. He had separated the two of them as a sick joke, and after so long, Nyla finally found her, but to unite the two again, she needs the help of a wielder with the same flame as the jerk who cursed her. Until they unite once more, she is nothing more than your average human mage.

Only able to fend off a Hunger with but a spell or two.

Hopefully this one's a dream walker or a succubus. Severing the connection should be enough to save Min-ho and help keep him safely ignorant about everything. Afterwards, I just need to chase it into its plain and purify its stone.

Easy-peasy.