"Daddy!" a small boy shouted brightly as his father walked through the door.
The father laughed a bit as he pushed his eager child away from him. "Wait for Daddy to remove his mantle first."
The boy stepped back, bouncing up and down in anticipation to hug his father.
The man put the coat on a coat hanger before lifting his boy up to him.
He gave his boy a quick kiss on his forehead, and the boy wrapped his tiny arms around his father's neck.
"You need to learn a bit of patience," the father said. "With enough patience, everything will come to you naturally."
But the boy didn't care.
After greeting each other, the father put the boy down and walked into the living room.
When he entered, he had to whistle in astonishment.
A beautiful woman with black hair stood beside the table with a cocky smirk.
"Impressive, isn't it?" she asked. "I felt like cooking a bit more than usual today."
The man laughed and approached his wife.
They gave each other a quick kiss and fell into a warm hug.
"Can I eat now?" the boy asked, eager to eat.
"Honey, what did your father just tell you?" the woman asked, looking at the boy.
"Patience," the boy grumbled.
The father laughed and sat down. "Let's not let him wait for too long. I'm starving."
The three of them started eating.
"This is amazing," the father said.
"I know," the mother said with a cocky smile. "How was work?"
The father sighed. "Difficult. I still haven't found any clues. One would think that there would be tons of Specters in the Outer City, but there are barely any."
"Why are you not looking in the Dregs?" the mother asked.
"Not an option. There are even more Investigators in the Dregs, and the gangs make it difficult."
The father paused eating.
"Also, it hurts just looking at the people living there. There is suffering everywhere."
The mood worsened a bit.
"Right, did you make some more drawings?" the father asked the boy.
The boy's eyes lit up when he remembered his drawings.
He quickly devoured his food and sprang up from the table.
"Is everything okay?" the mother asked, using the boy's absence to ask the father more directly.
"The job is secure," the father said, not looking at her. "That's all that matters."
The mother looked at the father with a pained expression.
She knew that he was doing things that were quite controversial and shady.
She had tried asking her husband more about these topics, but he always avoided talking about them.
He always said that it was his job to provide for the family and that his work matters shouldn't involve the family.
A moment later, the boy ran back in with a couple of drawings.
The father laughed and put his son on his lap.
"This is a Blood Beast!" the boy said as he showed his father the first drawing.
The father looked at it and saw a red animal.
The boy was quite good at drawing for his age, and the outline of the drawing actually looked like an animal.
Sadly, the drawing wasn't very detailed.
"What can it do?" he asked.
"The same thing as all the Blood Specters! It can regenerate super fast and has a lot of power!" the boy said.
The father nodded. "I like the drawing. What about the other ones?"
The boy showed his father all the other drawings, which depicted different ideas for Specters.
Then, they came to the last one.
It was just a completely black page.
"What about this one?" the father asked, looking at the black page.
"It's nothing!" the boy said with pride.
"Nothing?" the father asked.
"Yeah! I wanted to come up with the scariest Specter, but I just couldn't think of anything scary enough."
"So, I just made a black page. If I can't see it, I don't know what it looks like, and that is super scary!"
The father nodded. "Quite deep. You used the fear of the unknown."
"Fear of the unknown?" the boy asked.
"Many people fear the unknown. If they don't know something, they don't know what to do. That makes something scary."
"Ooohh," the boy said.
Then, the boy's eyes widened.
"I got an idea!" he shouted, jumping down from his father's lap.
He grabbed a piece of paper and just put a small black dot in the middle.
"There!" he shouted, showing it to his father.
"What's that?" the father asked.
"Something!" the boy said with pride. "It is something, but we don't know what it is. It is everything, and it is nothing. It can become whatever you fear the most, but you can never find it because it is nothing!"
The father seemed interested in the painting.
By now, the mother had also become interested.
"That would need to be a Force Specter," the father said. "A Force Specter that can basically be anything and nothing."
The father looked at the painting for a bit longer.
Then, his fingers lost their grip on the paper, and his eyes widened in horror.
"What-" the mother wanted to say, but the same thing happened to her.
They both broke out in sweat.
Then, they both started screaming.
The child opened its eyes in horror and ran away, its pencil still in its hand.
It didn't know what was happening.
It stood in the middle of its room, looking at the doorway in horror.
Flames appeared in the house.
The child didn't know what was happening.
Then, something approached.
The thing unveiled itself.
It was the father, but he looked very different.
His eyes were sunken, and he had lost half of his weight.
When he saw his child, he walked towards it with all of his strength.
The child just stood there, frozen.
The father tore a metal pipe out of the metallic house.
As the child stood there, it finally realized what was happening.
And then, deep pain appeared inside of its body and mind.
Now, it knew why its parents were screaming.
The child was screaming just like its parents.
And then, the child stopped screaming as its father hit the child over the head with the metal pipe.
A deep wound opened in the child's head.
With his last power, the father threw the child out of the window.
Then, he collapsed to the floor, screaming in pain.
He had used his last strength.
The father knew what happened.
They learned something about the Null.
The only way to save his son was to make him forget.
An unknown period of time later, the child woke up.
It was still disoriented and couldn't make sense.
It didn't know what it was, where it was, or who it was.
It just looked at the burning building in confusion.
It saw a couple of people arriving beside the house to stop the flames, and some people also came over to the child.
But then, the child just lost consciousness again.
Many hours later, it woke up again.
It was in a random alley, and all of its clothing was gone.
The child looked over as it heard a voice.
A moment later, a rat walked out of the shadows.
"Life got you down?" the rat asked.
"I can make all your pain end."
The author's . If he gets more than 1000€ per month, he will increase the number of words in the chapter.