_Chapter Begins_
William stood frozen with a grim expression on his face.
Meanwhile, the cultists that had stalked William for an entire day were now right in front of him, looking at him with their crazed eyes.
But out of all the cultists there, one stood out.
It was a man with pale skin who stood at a lengthy two meters tall. He towered above all the other cultists, and just like them, he also had a black robe covering most of his body.
But the most striking feature of his were the madness-filled eyes that were colored a dangerous crimson.
After a short moment, William finally started to snap out of the shock that had been caused by Elsa's disappearance.
But the reaction that followed was... unexpected, to say the least.
William slowly put his hand over his face and covered his eyes, and then he... started to chuckle... and then that chuckle turned into a mad laugh.
Even though the cult members didn't show it on their faces, it was clear that William's sudden laugh made them unapprehensive to advance.
But as William's laugh started to wither off, the cultists slowly started to walk towards him, with their hands in their robes.
And inside their robes, they all seemed to cling to something... sharp.
You don't have to be a genius to understand what hid under their black robes.
Strangely, while the cult advanced towards William, he seemed completely indifferent, and as a matter of fact, he wasn't even looking towards the cultists that spelled his doom. Instead, he was looking just to the side of where he stood. And William's expression was... grim.
Right beside him was the figure that had stalked William by sticking just outside of his perception.
And William also found that this figure was the one that had made not only him but also Elsa feel all that dread when the sun was coming down.
Now, how exactly did William find this out?
It was simply because the feeling of dread that he had felt inside the bush had now increased by ten times, now that this figure was standing right beside him. And the reason why William had a grim expression on his face wasn't because he somehow wasn't surprised or concerned by the appearance of this menacing figure.
It was because William was literally struggling to stay conscious in the presence of this being.
Before the cultists fully reached William, two things happened.
First, William made one last attempt to get a good look at the figure beside him.
And what he saw... made him shiver as cold sweat ran down his back. Beside him, what seemed to be just a teenage boy was stan—... well, he wasn't standing—he was floating just a meter off the ground.
The boy had thick, short hair that was a color of light grey or maybe a heavy white—if that even existed.
He also wore a black robe to cover his body, just like the cultists did.
But there were two other things about the boy that stood out amongst the rest.
One was the two massive black wings that sprawled out of the boy's back, with two smaller ones resting just below his massive wings.
And the second feature that William noticed was also the most unnerving.
The boy... didn't have a face.
No eyes, no nose or ears, and not even a mouth,he had the face of a perfect mannequin.
But that didn't matter anymore—nothing really mattered anymore for William, at least.
William slowly put his hand in his pocket and proceeded to pull what seemed to be a photo. He put the photo right in front of his face.
And then a deep scowl formed on his face, and he looked at the photo with pure hatred.
Of course, it was the photo of his family that he had held on to all this time.
The hatred that he held towards these people was so pronounced that even the feeling of dread emitted by the faceless boy was drowned by it.
But then William's expression suddenly turned completely still, with no emotion on it whatsoever.
And then a few drops of blood dropped from William's neck, down to the photo he was holding.
The photo dropped from his hand, but that wasn't the only thing William dropped.
A second later, after the photo touched the ground, William's decapitated head fell right beside the photo, having the same expression of cold stillness.
And then his body followed as well, drowning the ground in a pool of crimson blood.
All the cultists had already fled the scene.
But the faceless boy that William had assumed was also a part of the cult... well, he did move, but he didn't move away from William.
In the last few seconds that William's brain still held oxygen—thus still being able to perceive things and even utter small words—William's head stared up to where the faceless boy was staring right back at him.
But this time, there was a face on the winged figure.
The boy looked at William with a... smile?
As William's eyes slowly started to close, he managed to use the last second of consciousness he had left to utter one simple sentence.
"A... are you D... death?"
The boy's smile slightly dimmed.
But then he gave a small nod, and proceeded to close William's eyes himself with a small wave of his pale hand.
William died.
_Chapter Ends_