Chapter 160: King Culex

’How did he...’ I thought.

If I was being honest, I shouldn’t have thought at all. I should have acted. I had watched that head come off clean. I had watched it hit the stone and roll, and I had watched the body fall. Everything I knew said it was over, and I let that knowledge hold me still for one second too long. This was going to be one of the biggest regrets of my life.

The third eye on Scharlott’s forehead opened.

It had been shut this whole fight, and I had never once wondered why. Now it stared at me, wide and wet, with no pupil I could find. Then the beams came.

Beams of unorthodoxity shot out in every direction. They hit the walls, the floor and the ceiling, and stone cracked where they landed. They hit me too. There was no pain at first, only a cold pressure behind my eyes, and then my spirit shook like a rope pulled tight at both ends. Something dark began forming in my mind, slowly, like mold spreading across bread. Corruption. I could feel it settling in, patient and quiet, as if it had all the time in the world.

In that moment, Scharlott became a fully Unorthodox creature. I felt it in the air before I understood it. The pressure in the hall doubled, then doubled again. He was stronger than a Devil, but weaker than a Nightmare. That was the only comfort I could find, and it wasn’t much of one.

All of us were exhausted, and I was the only one still standing straight. Petra, Khan and Eva could not stand without sending pain through their legs. I saw Eva’s knee shake. I saw Petra’s hand search the wall for support and find only cold stone. They were still trying. Khan lifted his axes anyway, though his arms trembled under the weight, and I loved him for it.

Scharlott released ropes of blood from his body. They shot across the hall like thrown spears, wrapped around the three of them, and pulled. In less than a second they were all in front of him. I did not see them leave the wall. I only saw them arrive.

"No!" I shouted. I could barely see them move when he pulled.

My heart froze. I tried to run and could not. I tried again, throwing everything I had into my legs, and nothing answered. Scharlott had bound me to the floor with his immense power, and I couldn’t move anything below my neck. It felt like standing inside a block of ice that wasn’t cold.

Scharlott looked at me and snorted. He didn’t hurry. He was in no rush at all, and that frightened me more than the beams had.

"No! No!" I shouted again. I was crying. My face was wet with tears, and I could feel every one of them crawling down my skin, because I had extinguished Soul’s Screech. All five of my senses were mine again, and I hated them for it. I wanted to be blind. I wanted to be deaf.

He grabbed Petra’s head with his bare hand and twisted.

Snap! Splash!

Petra was beheaded. Blood sprayed from her neck and hit the floor in front of me, and a few warm drops landed on my face. He showed no mercy. He didn’t even hesitate.

I could only stare while the love of my life was stripped of her head. I couldn’t even say goodbye. I couldn’t tell her how much I loved her. All those words I had saved for later, for some quiet day after this was over, and now there was no later.

Snap! Splash!

Khan was next. His axes fell from his hands and rang against the floor.

Snap! Splash!

Then Eva. She did not make a sound. Even now, she was calm.

He threw their bodies aside like they were empty sacks and walked toward me. Each step echoed in the hall, slow and even. He stopped two feet away. I could smell the blood on him, and I could see his chest rise and fall.

"Kill me too, you bastard! Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!" I cried. Snot and tears covered my face.

My heart was broken. Dead. And my breathing was heavy and ragged, each breath scraping my throat on the way in.

Several seconds passed. Scharlott was still standing there.

He did not strike. He did not speak. The silence stretched, and I understood, slowly, that he was waiting for something. I didn’t know what.

I took a large breath and looked up at him.

He smiled.

I met the gaze of his third eye. I don’t know why.

Maybe I was tired of looking at the floor. Maybe some part of me wanted to see the thing that had done this.

A spectral thread released from it and connected to both of my eyes.

Pain took over my body.

It was unexplainable.

It was an absolute, blinding agony that made the idea of death feel like a distant, beautiful dream.

Every cell in my body hurt, each one separately, like a thousand small fires. My soul and my body were crashing against each other again and again, until there was nothing left that could be called a spirit. I tried to scream and found I had no breath to do it with.

I dropped to the floor, unconscious.

...

Several minutes later, my eyes opened.

My head felt light and strange, as if it belonged to someone else. I was lying beside a pool of blood. It was still enough to act as a mirror, so I pulled myself up on my elbows and looked into it.

My eyes had gone redder than red.

My face had gone paler than pale.

My jet black hair now reached my shoulders. I touched it with two fingers, and it was cool and smooth.

My canines were longer than any person’s should be. I ran my tongue across one and felt it nick the skin.

I remembered Petra, Khan and Eva dying. I remembered every second of it, every sound, every drop.

And... And I did not care.

I was devoid of human feelings. I searched for the grief the way you search a pocket for a key.

There was nothing, nothing in my chest where it should have been. It was quiet.

Then information entered my brain, all at once, as if someone had opened a door in my head and walked through it.

Scharlott was an Unorthodox creature that had consumed a shard. A shard is an item left behind by a Saint after his death. It contains his sea of consciousness, his mountain of memories, and his soul.

That was why Scharlott had both unorthodoxity and humanity in his soul. It was the reason his soul had felt so dense.

The reason he had been so hard to kill. Every strange piece of the fight now fit together, and I felt nothing about that either.

And I was different now.

Half of me was Scharlott. The other half was me.

We were like Ruin and Protection, two halves in one body, each one pressing against the other.

I had traded my human emotions for some control over my body.

I understood the price clearly. I just didn’t mind it.

’Oi kid,’ Scharlott whispered, inside my head. His voice was rough and amused, and it sounded as close as my own breath.

’What?’ I whispered back.

Now, you might ask why I was speaking so calmly with someone who had just killed the love of my life and my friends.

There were two reasons: One, I had no human emotions left. Two, I needed his cooperation, so I could free the people living here. I had seen their faces, sitting in the soot, and I had not forgotten them.

’What are you going to do now?’ he asked.

I snorted. ’I will rule the palace. Become a Saint, and get the people living here like slaves out through the portal in the mountain.’

I needed to become a Saint because the portal was underground, and a Nightmare protected it. No Inferior or Superior Awakened could pass it, and I was not going to leave those people behind a door I couldn’t open.

’So Emperor Scharlott will rule again. Hehehe.’

I snorted again. ’Who said anything about Emperor Scharlott?’

’Huh?’ he asked, curiously.

I stood up. The hall was silent. The bodies lay where he had thrown them, and I did not look at them.

’From now on, the ruler of this palace is...

King Culex.’