Her fingers grab onto the gravel by her side, her gaze defiant as she stares him down.
“Moe, don’t?—”
The male twitches two fingers and the dagger presses forward.
A bead of blood wells at her throat.
The sight of it… the smell of it as it wafts to my nose.
Something in me snaps. I see red.
I rip myself free with a roar, cloth tearing, skin splitting where the pinned fabric drags against my wounds. I barely feel it. Rage drives me forward in a blind surge of violence as I charge him with everything I have left.
He merely laughs at me and beckons me with a lazy movement of two fingers.
Two swords whip sideways through the air and slam hilt-first into my chest from opposite directions. The impact steals the breath from my lungs.
My body flies backward and smashes into the far wall hard enough to crack stone around me before I crumble to the ground. Pain erupts through my spine and my vision whites out. For one terrible second I know nothing but ringing silence.
As I blink slowly back into awareness, he is standing over me.
Half his weapons circle lazily around him, gleaming in the dim red light. The others hover before my face, their sharpened tips aligned with my eyes, my throat, my heart.
“Well,” he says, crouching slightly. “That was disappointing.”
Blood fills my mouth. With the last of my strength, I spit a mouthful at his feet.
He tilts his head, studying me with detached disappointment.
“Pity, I thought you’d have more fight in you.”
One blade lowers.
Its tip settles against the hollow of my throat.
“Thanks for the points,” he murmurs.
He draws his hand back, preparing for the killing strike.
Moe is crying out in the background, her wailing voice killing something within me.
A disappointment… I was a disappointment again.
There are so many things I still want to tell her, to dowithher—a lifetime to spend alongside her. But now I won’t get to do anything else but wait for my impending death.
Why the fuck is the universe so unfair?
But just as I think I’ve drawn my last breath, the world goes black—literally, not figuratively.
Every patch of darkness in the ruined building deepens at once, stretching across the floor and walls like spilled ink. The corners of the room disappear first. Then the doorway. Then the crimson light itself seems to choke and die.
The Possession warrior stiffens. His brows furrow as he looks anxiously around.
“What—”
Something moves behind him. It’s like a flash of light, there but not there at the same time. It’s so fast, my eyes cannot properly follow it.
Then a wet sound splits the dark. Drops fall to the ground.
