Chapter 147

Vile, Evil, and Inhumane

A shadow moved swiftly and silently, creeping between the simplistic houses unheard and unseen. It was like a knife searing through the pounds of flesh effortlessly, gliding through the many soft throats and ending lives as unsuspectingly. There was something dastardly and bedeviled about Sylas as he shadowed life in the hidden mountains and made it undone. His face was expressionless, eyes void of guilt and hesitation.

His hands didn’t shake and his lips didn’t quiver and his mind didn’t waver. And yet, he didn’t stop to question it. After all, it was normal--by now--who he had become. At the flip of a switch, he would cease being human. His heart would still, and all those emotions that would pile into the gut and churn out their demands would be frozen in time, suspended in the state of permanent ignorance.

He could disassociate one reality from another--fabricate an entirely new world and, more importantly, an entirely new self. This was, partly, why he didn’t want Asha with him. She would not understand, not in the slightest, that he had to do this. He suspected that nobody normal, truly, would understand. And he understood that. Normal people, after all, don’t have to kill without asking questions, without bothering to uncover the truth. After all, for all he knew, most everyone if not everyone he'd killed up to this point could just be an innocent who lived here by happenstance. And still, he didn't care.

The guide of his soul was anger--and that anger was rooted in his soul. It flourished into unbound hate that he simply couldn’t ignore. For so many years, that anger, that hate was focused inwardly. Innumerable wounds and scars festered within him as a result, with maggots feeding on the necrotic waste that was his inner self. For the first time, it felt, he had a direct outlet for it--something and someone to point the finger at besides himself. Though anger lays buried, it thrives nonetheless. He always knew he’d have to do this. Once, twice, thrice--however many times he needed to do it.

In a way, it was only possible in a loop. He did it because he knew it could be undone. Were it not for the chance at a restart, he’d either become maniacal and do it, severing the last bond he had with humanity within, or he’d continue stabbing himself with the memories until, inevitably, dying. As such, this was a particular set of circumstances where, as the saying went, he could have the cake and eat it.

He made swift progress, but it still seemed slow--there were so many houses, stacked both horizontally across several dozen islands, but also vertically across the strangely-shaped mountain. He hadn’t even gotten to the latter before the dawn began to surge. Soon, he knew, screams of horror would envelop the site--but he simply hid in one of the houses. In fact, it worked in his favor, since he’d get to learn immediately who was in charge rather than having to blindly stab away until he lucked into it.

Settling down, he only now realized he was covered in blood--he had been too focused, and it had been too dark, in all fairness, to spot it. Looking around the single-room house, just beyond the four corpses lying near a wall, he saw a bucket. Lunging over, there was some water in it. He used it to wash his hands and face, leaving the rest as it didn’t particularly matter.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” a scream suddenly erupted, a familiar one, one that he held close to his soul. But... it was different. Instead of harrowing, it was... flourishing. Beautiful. Vindicatory. Retributive.

A horrid and deplorable smile crept up his dry lips as he stood up and walked up to the doorless frame, looking outside toward the distance where he saw a swarm of souls descending from the mountains like locusts, converging toward the many, corpse-laden houses. That was merely the first of the many blood-curdling, throat-burning screams that tore a hole in the sky that unrelentingly crimson dawn.

What followed the screams were the wails; though to an ordinary ear they would be grating, painful even, to Sylas, at least for that particular moment, they were a morbid, ungodly song. He knew it was wrong both to think and feel the way he did--but he let go of the chains, let go of the reigns that he had been using to hold himself back.

Right around when it seemed that there was nobody else descending, he stepped out of the house and slowly walked toward the crowd. Well, one of them. There were dozens, gathered around the many islands. It wasn’t difficult to spot him--after all, he was shirtless, blood-doused from head to toe, unapologetic.

"Who--YOU DID THIS?!!! WHO ARE YOU?!!!" a man in his mid-forties suddenly sprinted from the crowd, armed with nothing but his fists. His eyes were bloodshot red, his lips quivering, the soul within the glaze burning. It was as though Sylas was staring in a mirror himself from that day. The man lunged at him like a tiger pouncing. Rather than dodging, Sylas stepped into it, grabbed the man the shoulders, and turned him around, facing the horrified crowd before, just a breath later, violently snapping his neck. The crack of it sounded out like thunder as the thousands of eyes descended upon him. Only now did he gather the sheer numbers. They were staggering.

Eerie, bloody silence followed as he let go of the lifeless body. It fell flat in front of him as he kicked it aside, causing many to wince and even more hatred, if possible, to stir. Today, he was becoming their nightmare. The seas of people began to part right then. In the distance, amidst the sea of black cloaks, Sylas saw several white ones approaching swiftly. Nearly a minute of stares later, the group was in front of him--eight in total, four men and four women, all seeming to be in their late forties. As soon as they saw him, Sylas recognized something in their eyes--familiarity. They knew who he was. Unlike everyone else, it seemed, they knew.

“Looks like,” Sylas cracked a smile. “I came to the right place. Mighty well at hiding you are, you cunts.”

"Who are you?!" one of the women feigned ignorance. "What kind of a monster can do something like this?!!"

"The one that's not afraid to do the unthinkable himself, at least," he fired back. "On that day, I made several promises to myself. One of them was that I would find those responsible... and make your lives a unilateral hell for all eternity. And do twice as much toward all who you love. It took me many, many years to find you. Hah. That's wrong. I didn't find you. A kind man told me where to go. And I can't express the level of joy I'm feeling right now."

“They had nothing to do--”

“I don’t care,” Sylas immediately interrupted. “I genuinely don’t give a shit. I don’t care who here is innocent. I don’t care who here is just an abused victim themselves who chose to escape into seclusion. One day, in the future, when I am a better man, I will care. And when that day comes, I'll carefully find the eight of you and whoever else is responsible, and selectively end you. But today... today I'm not a good man. I have no empathy, no sympathy, and no love in me left. Only anger. Only anger that had fueled me through the darkest of times. If I could have died, I would have. If gods allowed me, you would have never seen me. But they didn't let me die. And thus, today came."

“... you’re a coward,” one of the men said. It seemed that they had realized there was no escape today. “There is a story here, you must know that much.”

“Is there?” Sylas turned toward him. “Is there a story that can justify what had happened?”

“Yes--”

“No, there’s not,” he interrupted again. “No matter what tale you concoct--even if you tell me that if you hadn’t done that, the entirety of the cosmos would have ended... I would still tell you: should have let it end, then.”

“There is a higher purpose to things,” the same man said. “Reasons that write the story. We are not your enemies, Sylas. We truly are not. In fact, if you would listen, you would understand we could be the best friends you make on your path to crowning Prince Valen a King.”

"... I'm fucked up," Sylas said after a momentary silence. "No, that's short-selling it. What I've done last night... Jesus, it's fucked up. It's one of the worst acts against humanity I think anyone's ever committed on an individual level. So, know that I tell you this from the place of absolute understanding: your mother should have killed you on the day you were born. All your mothers would have been better off heaving themselves into an active volcano than giving birth to any one of you. But, you're right. There's probably a story. Perhaps one that, if I were an objective god, I might even agree with. And, one day, I will hear it out. But I promise you, from the bottom of my heart, no matter what the story is, you eight, at least, will not survive this. Even if the gods themselves deign you innocent, it will all be the same. Today, though, I'm not interested in stories. I'm not interested in chatting. Not anymore, anyway. All I wanna do today is try to bring the vile in me to the surface and kill it, one corpse at a time. That's all, I'm afraid," stillness was brief, yet eternal. But it broke still, like a tossed clock. And chaos, as per nature, began to reign.