Novel Full Chapter 270: Nightmares [VIII]
Chapter 270: Nightmares [VIII]
I let out a long, tired sigh.
For the past… oh, I don’t know. Two hours? Three? Yeah, that sounded about right.
For the past three hours, I’d been watching the destruction of Ishtara on repeat.
The streets around me were ablaze as I walked across the scorching asphalt.
People screamed — not just in fear, but in a raw mix of terror and agony — as they were either burned alive or savagely torn apart before being devoured by ravenous beasts.
The stench of gore, seared flesh, and choking smoke filled the air, making me gag every time I drew breath.
Corpses littered the cobblestones — some charred, some twisted, some gutted — their faces frozen in the sheer horror of their last moments.
If I had to describe it in a sentence, then this was exactly what I imagined hell would look like if it were real.
As I passed, one of the malformed bodies — a woman, maybe in her mid-twenties before she was mercilessly mauled to shreds — suddenly jerked upright and pointed an accusatory finger at me.
Then she screamed in a loud, disgruntled, and harsh voice, “You did this! You doomed us all, Samael Theosbane! Children, men, women, the elderly! What was our crime? Why did you kill us?!”
I rolled my eyes and kept walking.
Yeah, some of these corpses had been doing that — jerking up and yelling at me.
At first, it was unnerving.
After an hour, it was creepy.
Now it was just exhausting.
I mean, not to speak ill of the dead, but could they at least come up with some new material? They didn’t even have the creativity to curse me in interesting ways.
All of them had been repeating the same damn thing over and over again.
And on top of that—
“Look at this death and destruction, Theosbane! Look at the faces of the dead! Most of them had families, people they loved and people who loved them! And you condemned them to hell! You damned them all!”
Yeah. This strange distorted voice had been whispering in my ear for a while now.
By this point, I was really getting annoyed.
“Calm down,” I told myself. “Remember the training, Sam. Remember the training.”
Back home, growing up, I had a private tutor who’d drilled me on the basics of what to do if I ever found myself trapped in a mental illusion.
There were too many tips to list, but the important ones were:
1. Start praying. (Unfortunately, I’d always been sort of an atheist.)
2. Don’t answer any question, don’t acknowledge any accusation, don’t give any reaction. And if you hear someone behind you, for the love of Monarchs, do not turn around.
3. If you can move, do it. Movement means you still have enough willpower left. Keep walking. Keep yourself distracted with anything other than what the hex wants you to focus on.
“Most hex illusions feed on engagement,” my tutor had warned once while calmly stirring his tea. “Like rats on scraps. Starve them, and cracks will appear.”
Yeah, well, that was easier said than done when you have severe ADHD and you’re bored out of your mind.
“You’re a monster, Samael Theosbane! A monster!” the voice chided again, sounding suspiciously irritated at my lack of reaction.
…So I gave it a little reaction.
I know, I know — I shouldn’t have. But like I said, I was getting fucking bored.
I needed some change.
I needed to throw a taunt or two.
“You know,” I snickered, “I’m not saying you’re bad at your job… but you kind of are. I thought you’d torment me psychologically. But all you’re doing is talking trash. If I wanted that, I’d have gone to Juli. Trust me, she’s much better at it than you.”
There was a long moment of silence.
For a second, I thought I’d won.
…Then I realized that was a mistake.
“Who’s Juli?” the voice asked, darkly amused for whatever reason. “Oh wait — is she the girl you tormented for simply not hearing you once?”
Without warning, the scenery around me shifted.
In the blink of an eye, before I could even comprehend what happened, I was standing inside my old bedroom at my family estate.
The room was tastefully decorated with lavish drapes, polished wood, and expensive furniture.
But none of that mattered.
Because right in front of me was my younger self.
He was standing tall over little Juliana as she squirmed on the ground at his feet, screaming and sobbing in pain unbearable.
…I remembered this.
This was the day I had used the BloodWorm on Juliana for the first and last time.
This was the day I vented every scrap of pent-up anger and frustration I’d been hoarding on her… even though she’d only ever been good to me.
I watched as her hands clawed at her chest, at the invisible thing writhing under her skin.
She was choking on her own sobs, trying to speak, trying to explain herself or maybe plead… but all that came out of her gasping mouth was a strangled, broken noise.
Then I lifted my gaze and watched my younger self with a kind of detached horror.
That guy wasn’t even yelling.
He wasn’t reacting at all.
He just stood there, calm and quiet, his golden eyes cold like ice. His face was empty of all emotion.
He wasn’t feeling anything.
…But I, right now, felt utterly disgusted by the very sight of him.
I hated him for what he was doing. I wanted to punch him, bash his head, and garrotte him.
“What a fucking piece of work,” I muttered at the illusion, my voice dry even as I felt sick to my stomach. “Congrats, kid. You deserve every bit of misfortune that will come your way.”
I could almost smell the iron in the air, feel the tremor in her limbs as she writhed.
It was so real I wanted to reach out, to stop my own hand from causing her that insufferable misery and drag that little Juliana away.
But I couldn’t.
Because it wasn’t real.
It had already happened.
“Exactly, Samael! Exactly!” the voice purred behind me. “You hide behind your unfunny jokes and fake bravado, but you know exactly what you are.”
My fists tightened.
“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” I said quietly, and started to turn away to leave.
…But as soon as I did, the world around me changed once again.
This time, I was standing on the cold tiles of an empty school washroom. Only a handful of students were in sight.
One of them was me.
Another was Michael, still dumpy with a round belly. His cheeks were flushed and big eyes wide with fear.
The rest were my friends — or, more accurately, my lackeys. Jake was also there, egging me on.
All of them were laughing and sneering as I delivered a brutal beatdown to Michael.
The chubby boy tried to curl into himself, to make himself look small enough so I’d stop.
He kept whispering something — “I’m sorry,” maybe — but his words were drowned by the jeers.
Jake laughed the loudest. He loved the power in the room. The others joined in a chorus of cruelty.
Everyone was enjoying the show.
And I… I just kept hitting Michael until his pupils shrank like a frightened animal.
I kept hitting him until the look on his face crumpled, replaced by nothing but bruises and swelling.
Watching it now, I wanted to throw up.
But I only shook my head, forced myself to speak. “This isn’t fair! This doesn’t count! I only did it because he kissed the girl I was with! I had no enmity with him before that!”
The voice laughed sharply — more of a snigger, really. “Right! As if, before this, you never mistreated, harassed, or tyrannized anyone. And even if you didn’t, you never stopped it from happening either, did you?”
Before I could reply, the scene in front of me shifted once again.
This time, I found myself standing in the midst of a grand garden, facing a magisterial castle.
I looked around and recognized that castle almost instantly. It was the imperial fortress of the Western Monarch.
Strings of fairy lights and pennants crisscrossed overhead, draped across terraces and parapets.
Floating lanterns painted the night sky in warm hues, their glow casting a dreamlike shimmer over the castle walls.
The air was filled with mingled aromas of exotic dishes and the soft strains of countless violins playing a festive melody.
The distant murmurs of adults talking about adult things drifted from inside the castle’s main hall — polite laughter, clipped debates, and the occasional clink of wine glasses.
Their voices blended with the music, sounding just as sophisticated as they no doubt wanted to sound in this setting.
Children, on the other hand, were wandering outside, far away from the grown-up world.
They darted between hedgerows, giggling and chasing each other beneath the lantern-lit sky.
Some were casually making friends as kids often do. Others were trying too hard to act older than their age by keeping to themselves.
Servants in crisp uniforms moved with practiced grace, offering snacks to the children before the main dinner, balancing trays laden with goblets and delicacies I couldn’t even begin to name.
It was the night of a celebration.
Every noble, gentry, celebrity, and even highly placed government officials of the West had been invited by the Monarch to commemorate the engagement of his eldest son.
I remembered that night.
…But I didn’t remember what was happening before my eyes.
In front of me, I watched my younger self — around thirteen years old — laughing with his friends as they dragged a little girl farther into the garden.
They were pulling her toward the hedge maze — tall green walls of trimmed bushes twisting into confusing narrow pathways.
The girl was short, petite and pretty, with a doll-like face and black curls that fell down to her lower back.
She wore a long tunica with flowy sleeves, the fabric softly hugging her frame. Over it, a saffron shawl was slung across her one shoulder and cinched neatly at her waist — it was called a palla, if I remembered correctly.
But none of that captured my attention like what my sight fell on next.
The girl… she was tightly clutching a long cane, her knuckles white against the smooth wood.
She tapped it on the ground restlessly, the sharp click-click sound it made echoed faintly off the stone path.
She was trying to say something, though it was incoherent. Her trembling voice was muffled into murmurs by her own sobs as tears streamed down her face.
She was crying. She was scared.
And she was… blind.
My heart sank.
“…Alexia?”