Chapter 525
The youngest one stepped closer.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Theo did not retreat.
He simply stood where he was, his left leg shrinking, shrinking like the leg of a baby born too early from a womb that was never ready, while his right leg stretched longer and longer, like the root of a tree searching for water beneath soil that had become far too dry. His battered body now stood in perfect imbalance, an imbalance that should have sent him crashing to the ground with nothing more than a single gust of wind.
Yet he did not fall.
"You haven't answered me," the youngest one said, and for the first time, his tone changed. It no longer carried the confidence of victory, but something resembling confusion, genuine confusion born from his inability to understand what stood before him.
"Why won't you fight back? Why do you only evade, dodge, and endure? I've given you a thousand opportunities to draw that sword. I know you have it. I can feel it at your waist, cold, silent, yet waiting. But you've never even touched it. Are you afraid? Do you not know how to use it? Or are you... actually enjoying this?"
Theo let out a breath.
It escaped from lips that had already been torn open in three places, sounding like someone who had just awakened from an afternoon nap that had lasted far too long and still could not decide whether to get up or go back to sleep.
"Are you finished talking?" he asked.
His voice was flat.
Far too flat.
As flat as the surface of a lake never disturbed by wind, even while storms raged all around it.
He raised his left hand, two fingers already gone, his palm still stained crimson with blood that had never truly dried, and touched his peeled-open left eye.
Then, with movements painfully slow, too slow, like someone wiping down a dinner table after a meal he had never invited anyone to attend, he pressed the eyelid back into place.
Not with magic.
Not with prayer.
Not with Sa.
But with something far simpler, and infinitely more terrifying.
Habit.
The youngest one laughed.
Not the deep laughter that rose from his chest like distant underground thunder, but laughter spilling from his throat in broken, uneven bursts, like glass being scraped by a rusted nail left too long in a gutter.
"You know, Inspiration Behind the Scenes," he said between laughs, his glowing crimson eyes fixed upon Theo, who lay with his chest pressed against the ground and his back facing the sunless sky of the Land of the Gods.
"I've seen everything through your memories, Inspiration Behind the Scenes. During your existence in the real world, I watched the memories of your life unfold one by one. I saw people reading your horror novel, Last Prayer. They read it in dark bedrooms, in libraries, on public transportation, even late at night after everyone else in the house had fallen asleep. And do you know what they said? They called it extraordinary. Terrifying. A story capable of making hearts race and leaving fear lingering long after the final page had been turned. Many praised it as a work that shook the soul."
Fwhoosh!!
"But look at you now. The author who filled thousands of humans with terror is the very one lying helpless before me. I've ripped both of your eyes out with Sa: Indeterminacy. Blood pours from the two empty sockets in your face. Your shattered body cannot even move to chase away the flies beginning to gather around your mangled head. Isn't it ironic? People in the real world admire your name, while you yourself are now nothing more than a lump of flesh waiting for death."
He stepped closer.
His shadow stretched over Theo's motionless body.
From within that shadow erupted laughter louder, greater, and more grotesque, laughter that made the surrounding air vibrate at the wrong frequency, laughter that caused the marble floor beneath them to creak like teeth chattering from unbearable cold.
"And there's nothing you can do about it, is there? Because this isn't your world. This is the world of Flo Viva Mythology, a game inspired by your legendary horror novel. But you... you're nothing more than a guest here. An uninvited guest. A guest who arrived with filthy hair, lazy eyes, and shameless manners. And now that guest lies before me, unable to see, unable to fight back, unable to do anything except listen to the true ruler of the Land of the Gods speak."
"Yeah," Theo replied from the floor.
His voice remained flat.
Far too flat.
As flat as the ground beneath him.
He did not even change his position.
His chest still pressed against the earth.
His back still faced the sky.
The two empty sockets where his eyes had once been still gaped open like abandoned wells untouched by buckets.
It was as though the word "Yeah" was not an answer to the youngest one's mockery, but a response to something else, something only he could hear within his own mind.
"Pathetic!" the youngest one shouted.
This time his laughter dissolved into a shrill giggle, higher, thinner, and far more revolting, a giggle escaping through his nose like steam from an overheated kettle, a giggle capable of raising goosebumps even though no one in the Land of the Gods possessed goosebumps to raise.
"The world's most famous horror novelist, whose stories have robbed millions of their sleep, whose words poison minds more effectively than any demon's venom, now lies on the ground like a worm whose head has been crushed beneath a god's boot. You can't even write the ending to your own story, Inspirator. You can't save Erietta Bathee, your own creation, from my hands. You can't..."
He unleashed "Sa: Singularity."
Theo's already battered body convulsed.
His bones, already twisted together with his muscles, cracked like wood burning from within.
From Theo's mouth came not a scream, but a faint hiss.
A hiss so quiet, so incredibly quiet, like air escaping from a balloon through a leak too small for ordinary ears to hear.
"Ohh..." Theo said after the hissing subsided.
His tone resembled that of someone watching a horror movie and encountering a scene that was not particularly frightening, merely a little surprising.
Then he fell silent again.
He returned to lying face-down on the ground.
His two empty eye sockets pointed in different directions, one to the right and one to the left, because the youngest one had not merely torn out his eyes, but had also destroyed the nerves that once controlled where they looked, despite there no longer being any eyes left to direct.
The youngest one paused.
His giggling was cut short, like a cassette tape suddenly being rewound by impatient hands.
He stared at Theo with blazing eyes, not out of anger, but from confusion slowly transforming into frustration, frustration born from his inability to obtain the reaction he desired: screams, sobs, pleas for mercy, or at the very least, a trace of fear he could savor like wine aged for a thousand years.
"You... you only said, 'Ohh'?" he asked.
His voice rose again, rising like a little child whose birthday cake had just been carried away by the wind.
"I just used Sa: Singularity, an Authority capable of compressing your entire existence into a single point no larger than a sesame seed, and all you said was, 'Ohh'? Didn't you feel anything? Have you already lost every nerve in that battered body of yours?"
"Is that so?" Theo replied.
This time, his voice carried something that almost resembled curiosity.
A sincere curiosity.
The kind born from genuine ignorance.
Like a child hearing the word "singularity" for the very first time and wondering whether it was a type of food or some new kind of dance.
To be continued...