Chapter 38: Star of Sadness 2

  The scream erupted from my metallic throat, ripping through the eternal silence of a starless sky. A scream not of flesh and blood, but of steel and a shredded soul. The scream of "The Sorrowful Child Who Cuts Endlessly." Me. They were talking about me. The prophecy. The sorrow of the Five Heroes. They weren't weeping for a dying world. They were weeping for me.

  I collapsed to my knees on the cold edge of the mountain. The truth was too heavy, heavier than this body. I am the monster. I am the killer. I am the one who ended it all. "Cairo..." I whispered his name, feeling ice form in my heart. "..."

  Then, like a stab of cold glass, another thought pierced me. "Clara?" I froze. Did I kill her too? "My son..." The voice escaped me like the whimper of a wounded animal. "Did... did I kill my son whom I never saw?"

  Memories overlapped like shards of shattered glass. Is my dream of cutting just a dream? Or reality? Is this reality? No. It cannot be. There must be a mistake. Then, I felt it. Faint, and distant, but real. A signal of life. A single signal of life, pulsing weakly in the heart of the dead cave. Coming from one direction. The Throne Room.

  "Clara..." There was only one way to find out. I rose. I was no longer running from the truth. I was running toward the only hope left to me.

  My return through the dead city was a torment. I no longer saw mere victims; I was counting "what else I had done." Every silent house I passed was a testament to my crime. Every open door screamed my name. I passed the spacious dining hall. The soup was still warm in the bowls.

  The wooden toy that had fallen from a child's hand... Did I knock it from his grasp? Did he look at me with innocent eyes before I cut him down? "No... No..." I quickened my pace, my metallic voice clanging against the stone like a death knell. Every silent house I passed screamed my name.

  Every open door was a testament to my brutality. "Clara, please," I whispered, desperate hope being the only thing keeping my soul from evaporating. "Be alive. I will fix everything. I swear."

  I reached the Throne Room. I pushed open the stone doors. The hall was empty. Silent. The stone walls absorbed every sound, even the sound of my ragged breathing. In the center of the hall, beside the throne, was a corpse. "Cairo..." He was lying on the cold marble floor. Cold, still, and that mysterious smile still on his face.

  Then, I heard it. The sound of spitting. I raised my head. There was someone. A man wearing strange, tattered clothes, standing over Cairo's body. "Trash," the man spat on Cairo's face again. "I did all this... all this planning... only to find a defective body that can't even use the simplest forms of magic? Damn it!"

  The blood froze in my veins. Not blood, but cold coolant fluid. Everything stopped. I saw the man raise his foot to kick the corpse again. "How..." My voice came out unhumanly quiet. "...dare you?"

  The man turned, shock visible on his face for a moment. "Aha! You're still here? Fine. At least I gained something. Let's skip this failure and..." He didn't finish his sentence. I wasn't fast. I was instantaneous. In a moment, I was in front of him.

  I grabbed his neck with my metal hand and lifted him off the ground. He choked, kicking at my legs, but my grip was like steel. "How. Dare. You." I looked into his eyes, and I saw pure terror. Then, with absolute coldness, I squeezed. I heard the dry, sickening crack of neck vertebrae shattering. His body went limp and stopped moving.

  But he didn't die. Instead, the body began to change in my hands. It was melting, twisting, like molten wax. Bones were breaking and shifting. And in seconds, I was no longer holding the corpse of a man. I was holding a small deer, trembling violently, its eyes burning with ancient hatred.

  In that moment, my anger vanished suddenly. It evaporated completely. Nothing remained but icy coldness. And a strange understanding. This is it. This is the "Fate" that was playing with me. This is the Devil who made me kill everyone, then came at the end to desecrate the final corpse, just to mock me. A slow, cold smile—a dead smile—drew itself upon my face. "You won... Fate." "I am not the Star of Change. I am not the Hero. I am nothing." "You won."

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  I stood in the center of the ruined Throne Room. I had won. I had caught "Fate" itself. But what now? I looked at Cairo's corpse. Then at the trembling deer in my hand. No. I will not allow this to happen. I will not see this scene. I will not live in this reality.

  I closed my eyes. I no longer needed to see this cave. I no longer needed to see the starless sky. I no longer needed to see anything. I built it around me. An illusion. A prison. I pulled darkness from the corners of the universe, from the void between the stars, and wove it around me like an eternal cocoon.

  An infinite black wall, separating me from everything. From reality, from memories, from the light. And when the void was complete, I opened my eyes.

  I was alone. No. I threw the deer into a corner of my mental prison. It was trembling. "You won't die," I whispered to it. "You will stay here. And you will watch." I extended my hand. The black sword appeared in it, as if it had always been part of me. Cold. Familiar. Comforting. I raised the sword... and I began.

  It was the first night. Or perhaps the first eternity. Time does not exist here. I began cutting. Whoosh. "Cairo!" I screamed, and cut the void in front of me. Whoosh. "Clara!" Whoosh. "Isabella!" Whoosh. "Claraaaaaaaaaa!" Whoosh. I was screaming their names, cutting their ghosts.

  Trying to tear the truth apart. But they always returned, staring at me with their dead eyes. "I'm scared!" I screamed into the darkness. "I'm so scared! Someone... Someone come! Please!" Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. The cutting continued. It wasn't just a movement; it was a ritual.

  I was cutting the air as if I could cut time itself. As if every drop of metallic sweat leaving my body was a tear I couldn't shed. "Why?!" Whoosh. "Why me?!" Whoosh. "Why did you leave me?!" Whoosh.

  On the fourth night, or perhaps the thousandth, the darkness changed. I saw my house. Our house. Warm, bright, smelling of tea and old books. And I saw her. "Clara..." She was standing by the window, sunlight illuminating her black hair. She was smiling at me.

  "Clara!" I ran toward her with mad happiness, painful happiness. "Clara! You're alive! You're here!" I reached her. I hugged her tightly, burying my face in her hair. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." "I know," she whispered in that warm voice I had missed. "I know you didn't mean to." "I didn't mean to... I didn't mean to..." I began to weep. Then, I felt something cold and wet fall onto my shoulder.

  I pulled back to look at her. She was still smiling. But her head... Her beautiful head fell from her shoulders and rolled onto the wooden floor. It stopped, her black eyes still staring at me with love. "No..." Her headless body collapsed in my arms.

  "No... No, not you... not you too..." I grabbed the severed head, trying to put it back in place. "No! No! I'll fix you! I can! Just... don't leave me..." But it turned to dust between my fingers. "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!" The house vanished. The darkness returned. And the sword returned to my hand. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. I was cutting and crying, the screams tearing my metallic throat, but the tears would not come.

  On the seventh night, or perhaps the millionth, the darkness changed again. I was standing in a wedding hall. Music was playing. But it was the song "Warm Kitty" that Mia used to sing to me. It was playing backward, slow, distorted, like a funeral dirge.

  The guests were there. Cairo, smiling, his severed head floating above his shoulders. Arda, a pile of ash wearing a black suit. Mia, smiling at me with her warm smile, her eyes just empty sockets. Isabella. Alessandro. Leonardo. Eva. Even my father, Corvus.

  They were all raising glasses filled with blood, cheering silently: "Long live the killer! Long live the killer!" Then I saw my bride. It was Clara. She was wearing a white wedding dress, but it was stained with deep crimson blood. And she was headless. She extended her skeletal hand toward me. "Dance with me... my love."

  "Hahahaha..." I started laughing. I couldn't stop. "I... I am the brave hero!" I screamed amidst my hysterical laughter. "I am the Star of Change! I am the Savior!" The wedding vanished. I returned to the darkness.

  "I killed the world! Hahahahahahahahahaha!" "Hahahahahaha!" "Hahahahahaha!" I struck my head with my metal fist. Clank. "I want to feel pain!" Clank. "Why don't I feel anything?! Why doesn't this damned body hurt?!" Clank. Clank. "I don't deserve death! I don't even deserve to suffer! I deserve nothing!" Hahahahahahahaha!

  I stopped. Everything settled. The laughing, the crying, the screaming. I sat on the black floor of my eternal prison. I remembered. I remembered everything. Cairo's smiling face. Clara's rolling head. Arda's weeping. I raised the black sword.

  Whoosh. Then I remembered again. And I wept. Then I remembered again. And I screamed. Then I remembered again. And I laughed. Then I remembered again. And I raised the sword. Whoosh.

  Weeping.

  Screaming.

  Striking.

  Laughing.

  Remembering.

  And cutting.

  Forever.