*Year: 2003*
After the unforeseen hunting accident that took the lives of both my parents, I had to sell some of their possessions as their life insurance would be used to get me...a psychology degree. That night, something about me changed. I felt the calmest in my life, I felt my mind clear and devoid of all things but the scene in front of me.
I could smell the fear, I felt full after digesting it, and I didn't understand why. I had an inkling, but nothing concrete, nothing truly. I think there was something supernatural about me, not the regular or even god kind, but the unknown kind, the not-old but new kind. Things that crawl even underneath all this unknown, feasting on well fear, what kind I didn't know, hell, this was all one big theory, one that I based on my experiences in between lives, between my end and new beginning.
I did research, I did a deep dive even on the most hidden pieces of lore, on anything that could indicate what they were, but I found nothing. I did everything I could to understand what they were, how they operated, or even if they were a they. It didn't work, though, nothing ever works, which meant this was a new and very old phenomenon, something that was wanting to be known here and now for one reason or another.
Meaning that while I was working my ass off on the psychology degree, to try and understand my own mind better, alongside those around me. I needed to research these things to try and understand them better, figure out how they ticked and why I felt so natural in that moment, in the moment I saw and took in the fear of my father and those two werewolves. I jotted that bit down alongside the feeling I got when I...felt full, the fear of being hunted, of their inevitable end as they bled down right there in the forest.
I did try my best to get back into hunting every once in a while, to better understand that feeling, but...it just wasn't the same; something was always off. It felt like I was just at the tip of the iceberg when it came to this thing. Though that wasn't the main problem, I was never full, I was always on the cusp of it, but never there, like a sneeze that wouldn't come out.
*Year: 2004*
I figured it out, I understood what it was I was missing, the fear of being simple prey, of the end, of death. These fears weren't the only ones, and I was just too focused on them, too focused on the why of those, and forgot to expand my horizons. During one of my hunts, I passed by a pig farm, a medium one, but the fear it was delicious. The fear of the animals being bred for food, knowing what they were going to become, it was a different flavor, more raw.
I merely passed by and saw a few of them being led into an old barn whilst their family watched in horror or as best as they could display anyway. So I began experimenting, I did what most people would call by well a period beyond this "Living it up" or was it back then, time is hard for a person like me who lived in/died in two different time periods. I went skydiving to experience the fear of falling, of the vast openness around us, I went cave diving to experience both he fear of darkness/confined spaces.
I experience the fear of untold violence in the middle of the most dangerous city in America, the fear of so many people dying randomly. I made myself a stranger in a town of trusted people, I made them question who or what I was to feed on their fear of the unknown. I found apartments full of the lonely and isolated, I fed on their fear of being alone, of their loneliness.
When I graduated with a degree in psychology, I worked in what most would call a loony bin, I fed on the fear of those whose minds lie to them, of the doctors' fear of their maddening minds. I visited places of great suffering, where disease and famine overtook entire populations. I visited those whose homes were destroyed in the Katrina disaster and are yet to recover physically, financially, and even in the mind. I found people who kept secrets, secrets so dangerous for themselves or others that they fear them being known.
So many fears and yet each time I never felt truly full, not until I understood what I was, the being I now serve, whether I wanted to or not. That...that took the rest of the year, and even well into 2004. I studied these things, their influences on the world, either intentionally or unintentionally.
So I locked myself away investing in various up-and-coming technological industries that would make me a mint...hopefully worlds aren't always the same, Google might fail here, but that's rather unlikely. So I may have dumped a bit of it in that, making sure to diversify a bit so that in case it does go under well, I still had a little nest egg, but well, our worlds were similar enough that this was probably going to be big.
Giving me time to crowd myself into my well family home as I was having something built on the side using a combination of the remaining life insurance policy, sold cars as we had three, keeping my dad's black 1969 Mustang, all my well paternal stuff that wasn't invovled in the supernatural side of the world.
That and also the old house, just in case I needed to properly fund the rest of my little underground research facility, well isolated and ready for the more magical defenses. The perfect place to go when I needed to research for a hunt, dive into my own personal research, or just needed to get away for a while. A place of nice and quiet solitude where they could tell me, give me instructions on how to feed them and myself.
On the last day of the year, though, I made a breakthrough, but not through research or anything like that. I simply looked into a mirror, at my short brown hair, my cracked glasses, and scruffy beard that was starting to grow in improperly, not so much on the side and barely in the middle, but strangely a lot under my lip.
I saw my eyes, my glowing eyes, and the deep green behind them, and I saw thousands of eyes behind me, watching me, no, watching everything. They always followed me whenever I shifted around the mirror, changing positions, and I understood what this thing was. I always felt like there were fears I didn't understand either, because I was missing something, or I could never understand it, not truly anyway.
The eyes, though I understood what this thing was, the fear of being watched, of secrets being known, of things that shouldn't nor couldn't be known.
"hehehehe..." At first, my laughter started off low. I contained myself a bit, but I just watched myself in the mirror, my shattered mind clear on display.
"HEHEHEHE...HAHAHAHAHAH!" I was feeding off my own fear, my fear of knowing what I was now, of understanding that I was a conduit for a thing.
A thing that was simply called "The Eye".