Chapter 32: The Time for Reckoning Approaches

  The silence in the demolished building had weight. It pressed on my ears, permeating my lungs with every dust-laden breath. Kairo and I were sitting amidst the rubble, two ghosts in a city of ghosts. Before us, through a gap in the wall, loomed the "Black House," the new Jacobin fortress, like a dark heart pulsing with evil in Lutetia's dead body.

  "Today is the day the barrier will be destroyed," I said in a calm voice, as if reading a weather report. "They will enter. It's ironic, why would they want to enter when there's no one left here but us."

  I looked at Kairo. He was thinner, his eyes holding a feverish glow of exhaustion and lack of sleep. "But before we run, I have to finish a mission alone. I will fight Jack by myself."

  Kairo jumped to his feet, anger giving his exhausted body sudden strength. He grabbed me by the collar of my worn clothes. "What the hell are you talking about?!" he yelled, his face inches from mine. "Do you think I'll be a hindrance?!"

  I looked into his bloodshot eyes calmly. "Yes, Kairo, you will be a hindrance." I let the words sink in. "You are getting stronger at a tremendous rate, you've become a Sixth Circle Sorcerer, and soon the Seventh. Maybe you can kill a one-star clown by yourself now. But Jack... impossible. I can kill him now, and only because of this damned chip. Without it, I would be just like you, and perhaps we wouldn't have made it here."

  His grip slowly loosened. I saw the struggle in his eyes, his wounded pride fighting cold logic. Finally, he sighed, and looked away. "Lead the way... you bastard."

  We were stretched out on the roof of a dilapidated building, overlooking the Jacobins' temporary camp in front of the "Black House." They were like ants, moving without a clear purpose.

  "I'll take care of the rest," Kairo whispered, his eyes gleaming with lethal focus. "You finish Jack."

  "Certainly."

  Kairo raised his hand. There was no long incantation, just a soft whisper. Energy gathered around him, not as a fireball, but as a miniature sun of burning ice. He launched it. The "sun" traveled in a silent arc, then struck the camp. There was no loud explosion, but a blinding white flash, followed by the sound of the air itself freezing. Everything in a wide circle turned into a fragile ice statue for a moment, then crumbled into frosty dust.

  But from the middle of this icy destruction, a person walked out calmly, brushing the explosion dust off his shoulder with boredom. It was Jack. He was unaffected.

  Kairo and I jumped from the building.

  I landed in front of him in seconds. Finally. Face to face. "I'm tired of this cat-and-mouse game, Jack," I said, smiling. "Or should I say, tortoise and hare?"

  A muscle twitched in his disfigured face. "Finally," he said, his voice a painful rattle. "I smell your death."

  "Kairo," I said without taking my eyes off Jack. "Go. Avenge Eva."

  Kairo left to wipe out the rest of the stunned clowns.

  "Oh, Magic Swordsman," Jack said slowly. "I forgot to tell you. Your friend Alessandro... apologizes to you greatly. 'Sorry, Deo, I couldn't protect them.' Those were his last words."

  I moved with lightning speed. The Ash Blade cut the air with a deadly hiss. Jack dodged at the last moment, leaving the sword to cut a black streak in the air itself.

  "What a cut," he said with fake admiration. "You cut through space itself."

  "You are Saint Julian's servant," I said coldly. "It seems your Saint doesn't trust you much. He left you trapped here while he enjoys himself elsewhere."

  Anger started showing on his face. "Don't you dare..."

  "And what will you do? Kill me?" I laughed. "Dare to do it."

  He attacked. His black sword was coated in a disgusting mix of fire and darkness. Our swords clashed. He was fast, strong, and skilled. But I saw all his attacks before he began them. The chip was analyzing his style, comparing it to the thousands of styles it had saved, and predicting the next move in a fraction of a second.

  Every time he used darkness, I cut it. Every time he used fire, I copied it and sent it back to him. He felt confusion, then anger, then fear.

  "Unleash your final attack, you son of a bitch! I will kill you!" he roared, and darkness that devoured the light itself emanated from his entire body. Threads of it touched me, and they began to burn my skin and penetrate my body like poison.

  "Good skill," I said, looking at the spreading black wound. "It seems that's a feature for those above one star." Then I smiled. "But, I'll show you something you'll like very much."

  I focused for a moment. The chip did everything. It analyzed, disassembled, then rebuilt. I directed that knowledge into my body. A healing energy flowed, not only closing the wound, but cleansing the darkness and turning it into nothingness.

  Jack was shocked. "Impossible! How can you use healing magic with such speed and precision and cleanse pure darkness magic?!"

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  "It's time for revenge." I attacked with a speed he didn't see. He tried to block, and that was his mistake. I cut off his right hand.

  He started laughing like a madman as he retreated. "Fool!" Another hand grew from the shadow where his severed hand used to be.

  I smiled and looked at his new hand and laughed. Then, his hand began to burn with the same darkness he had attacked me with, and crumble into ash.

  "Pure darkness attack? Did you copy it, you bastard?"

  I started walking toward him slowly. "Today, I will torture you well. I will mock you for being crippled, your appearance disgusting and unnatural. And I will mock your speed, because you couldn't catch us even once."

  He started backing away, stumbling. He tried to run, but he couldn't. Then my punishment began.

  I cut him piece by piece. Every time he tried to regenerate his limbs, I used his magic to burn them. This continued for an hour. An hour of screaming and begging. Before I killed him, I asked him: "Do you know where Isabella and Clara are?"

  He looked at me in fear. "Who are they?"

  "They were with Alessandro."

  Hope appeared in his eyes. "Will you leave me if I tell you?"

  I smiled gently. "Yes."

  He was slightly happy. "I don't know! They suddenly disappeared in front of me! I think they are outside the capital!"

  "Wonderful." Then I tortured him more. In the end, he was just a torso crawling like a pig, crying and begging.

  "Weak wretch," I said. "Is this what you amounted to, Philip, by imitating me?"

  I cut off his head and burned it.

  I went to look for Kairo. I found him sitting, wounded, atop a mountain of clown corpses. "You took too long."

  "I smiled gently and said I was taking my time."

  A few hours later, the barrier collapsed. We left the capital. We found a working car and drove off. There were many Jacobins at the borders, but we managed to slip away from them.

  "Where to now?" Kairo asked as he drove.

  "To the beginning. To the Van der Wood mansion."

  "Why?"

  "Because this time, I will follow my dreams. I will go to the place my dreams call me to."

  On the way, Kairo was driving, and I was sitting beside him. I laughed. "Your driving has improved."

  Kairo laughed too. "Yes, it has improved."

  The road was a massacre. Skeletons of cities, rivers crying gray water. There was no place untouched by the destruction.

  "Jack told me Isabella and Clara escaped outside the capital," I said. "Do you think they are alive?"

  "Isabella is Isabella," Kairo said. "Don't worry, she'll protect your wife and your weak son."

  I laughed. "Shut up. My son will be stronger than you at your peak strength."

  "What? I don't believe you. He will be a cowardly weakling like you."

  After three days of travel through a dying world, we finally arrived. The Van der Wood mansion. I didn't feel comfort or nostalgia. I felt like I was visiting a grave. The gardens, which were once my masterpieces, had become a tangled wild forest, and the blue roses that Mia loved had withered and died. The silence was heavier than ever, a silence not even broken by the sound of the wind.

  "I feel the presence of someone at Jack's level inside," I told Kairo. "As for the rest, they are weak."

  We didn't go far. When we entered the shattered gates to the main hall, we found it. The sight.

  They weren't just corpses. It was a devilish work of art.

  The body of my younger brother, Louis, was cut into small pieces, and hung from the ceiling with delicate silver threads, swinging slowly in the slight breeze coming from a broken window, like a horrific marionette. And on the floor beneath him, the body of Corvus's wife, Edith, was also cut up, but her pieces were arranged carefully on the white marble to form a hideous, mad smile. And in the center of that smile, Louis's head was placed, his small black eyes staring at the empty ceiling.

  At that moment, everything stopped. My mind stopped thinking, my heart stopped beating. There was no pain, there was no anger. There was only cold, absolute stupefaction. I had seen death, I had seen massacres, but this... this was a desecration. It was a message written in madness and flesh.

  Didn't I say I would protect him?

  The whisper in my mind was calm as a dead whisper.

  Didn't I say I would be his shield against the demons? Didn't I say that to him?

  Here he is now. Like the others. He won't see any future. He won't see the beauty of this world. He won't fall in love. He won't find friends. He died a useless death, like an insect crushed under a shoe.

  I failed. I failed the first real promise I made to myself.

  Kairo had collapsed silently beside me. "I'll take the car and go to my family's mansion," he whispered in a broken voice. We knew what awaited him, but he needed to see for himself. "Maybe... maybe I'll find solace in what he's doing."

  "Yes," I said, my voice hollow. "Go."

  When Kairo disappeared, I heard a calm, polite voice from the top of the main staircase. "Welcome back to your home, Deo."

  He was standing there. A man dressed in black, with white and red clown makeup on his face. He was different from Jack. Calmer, more dangerous. On his chest, two broken stars.

  "Oh, did you see the sight?" he said, slowly descending the stairs. "My Lord Saint Corvus is also punishing his family. How wonderful, and how filled with emotion he is." Then he made an elegant bow. "I am Henry, the servant of Saint Corvus."

  I revealed the Ash Blade, its black blade absorbing the faint light in the hall. "You talk too much."

  Henry attacked. It wasn't a savage attack like Jack's; it was artistic. He launched a torrent of sharp, compressed water bullets, each aimed at a vital point. At the same time, threads of darkness stretched from his shadow, trying to restrain my movement.

  In my normal state, I would have been in trouble. But I wasn't in my normal state. I was empty. And fighting in this state... is the only thing I'm good at.

  I blocked the water bullets with a shield of distorted reality. I cut the threads of darkness before they reached me. Confusion appeared on his face as he saw me handle his dual magic with ease. Two stars are no longer my level. I neutered them after fighting Jack.

  I approached him quickly. He sent a massive wave of darkness. It wasn't just darkness; it carried the coldness of the void, designed to freeze the soul itself.

  I cut it.

  He wasn't fighting a sorcerer or a blacksmith craftsman. He was fighting a concept.

  I reached him. I grabbed his neck. He started hitting me, but his blows were like a child's. I started hitting him, punch after punch, and every punch was the venting of a part of my anger and despair. I stabbed him. I tortured him with the darkness magic I copied from him, making him scream and beg. In the end, I asked him, my voice cold as death itself.

  "Answer me. My father and Philip... since when?"

  He gave a bloody laugh. "You just... don't want to know why we are punishing the world?"

  I struck him again. "ANSWER ME!"

  "Since the beginning."

  I burned him until nothing was left but black ash carried away by the wind blowing from the broken window.

  I stood in the middle of the destroyed hall, between Henry's ashes and my brother's hanging corpse. And I thought about the past. A past that was near, but now seemed distant as if it happened in another life.

  I thought about Philip and I laughing on our trip. Talking passionately about magic and the geniuses we met. I thought about how he would get drunk and tell silly stories. Was all that just an act? Was he using me to develop himself, to prepare me to be a sacrifice in this game of theirs?

  Then I thought about Corvus. My father. The cold one. There are no warm memories with him. Nothing. But he... is my father.