Escape - Chapter 32.2
Chapter 32.2
“Hey, are you okay?”
Shade’s face crumpled at the gentle tone, though no one could see his expression beneath the concealing robe.
“Uh… yes. Th-thank you for helping me…”
A trembling voice barely escaped her lips. Luce, his face a mask of sympathy, crouched down.
“What are you doing alone in a forest like this?”
“…I was traveling. With my brother.”
The woman’s gaze drifted towards something the Serpiente had been tearing apart in the distance. Tears welled up before she could say anything more.
“My brother… told me to go ahead… but I couldn’t… leave him alone…”
Transparent tears streamed down her face, gathering at her chin.
“This is still our territory… I… I never knew such monsters existed here…”
It was then that Shade, who had seemed irritated, abruptly turned his head.
“You’ve never seen a Serpiente before?”
“What?”
“Those… those things that look like human-faced spider-snakes… you’re seeing them for the first time today?”
“O-of course. This isn’t the East. I’ve never seen or heard of such monsters existing.”
Shade’s eyes flashed. He vividly remembered the image of the enormous serpent disappearing beneath the water. The only reason Shade, using the water spirit’s power, had crossed over to this side was to follow the monster’s trail.
The monster that had destroyed his guild. And the one next to it…
“Fucking hell.”
Shade cursed, a throbbing pain shooting through his right eye. Startled, the woman began to hiccup.
Snakes that hadn’t been visible before were starting to appear. No matter how he thought about it, the simple fact could only mean one thing.
“The monster has ascended to District 8.”
That monster was here.
Shade let out a harsh laugh.
Hunters know the best time to hunt snakes.
It’s when they’re hidden in their dens for hibernation.
***
TIME: 22:12/09/13/2040
Midgard Southeast Coast
12, who had been looking down, paused. The woman’s ragged breathing was loud. Her face was not just white, but pale, and her closed eyelids were thin and alluring.
Frowning, 12 brushed his fingers against her translucent cheek, the skin, exposed to the sea breeze, hot yet soft to the touch. She didn’t react. The fever must have caused her to lose consciousness again.
“I’m hungry.”
Hunger. The relentless craving that had bound and tormented him from the moment he was born.
Whether he actually intended to bite and tear into her was unclear. But she had undoubtedly stirred something within him. Staring at her with an impassive face, 12 looked down at the changes in his own body. It was the first time he’d felt lust, yet he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
“…Dam…ian…”
The woman moaned deliriously. 12, a chilling smile playing on his lips, looked down at her. That name again. The name she had given him, or rather…
“…Don’t… go…”
The man she mistook him for.
Tears trickled from beneath her closed eyelids. 12 grimaced, a suffocating sensation gripping him.
He wasn’t Damian. He was 12. That fact would never change, not even in death. Yet, 12 followed the woman, as if he were ‘Damian.’
It was absurd that 12, the serpent’s master, had abandoned the serpent’s den, breaking the taboo and ascending to the surface.
12 removed his hand from the woman and slowly ran it over his own face. A sudden gust of sea wind rustled through his dark hair, blending it into the darkness.
“You resemble someone I knew. No, you’re not just similar, you’re identical.”
12 finally realized who he truly wanted to kill.
He wanted to kill Damian. And at the same time, he wanted to become Damian. The name was so tempting, he wanted to steal it, even if it meant devouring its owner.
“Don’t worry. This time, I’ll stay by your side.”
As the hand covering his face lowered, a chilling visage was revealed. His sunken eyes were as dark as a murderer’s gazing upon a corpse.
“My side?”
Sometimes, misaligned gears can still turn. If one breaks and contorts itself to fit the other.
“Whose side is that, exactly?”
12 asked in a flat voice.
The woman had declared that she would stay by ‘his’ side, so 12 never had a choice from the beginning. He despaired at his inability to consume her. It was like someone dying of thirst ripping open their own stomach to drink their blood, and 12 wasn’t the kind of strange human who would destroy their own means of survival to commit suicide.
The misaligned gears grind and screech as they turn.
Whose fault is this?
