Alaric's eye twitched like a bird's. He knew from the very beginning this conversation would not end well, but he never expected that Volt would know this much about him.
Just how? He knows all this. What should I do? What should I do? Alaric thought to himself, but he couldn't come up with an idea or a solution.
Volt raised a brow. "Not planning to answer, Mr. Xle+y?"
Something struck Alaric's mind, something he could use.
It's a gamble... but even if there is a slight chance of me winning, I'll take it.
If he was already exposed, then the only advantage left was honesty—or something that looked like it.
Alaric motivated himself and finally opened his mouth.
He inhaled sharply, his voice cutting through the silence. "Let's say you already know the answer. Then why should I lie? To answer how I scammed him is quite simple."
"And what is that simple thing?" Volt asked, still calm and composed.
"Blackmail, of course."
Alaric glared at the paper Volt dropped in front of him. In the paper was a person whose face Alaric could recognize, yet he couldn't.
Below the image, something was written in what looked like gibberish to Alaric.
Volt leaned forward. "How did you blackmail him?"
Alaric knew he would ask this question.
Alaric could never forget this for as long as he lived.
No matter how hard his amnesia affected him, he could never forget what he did here. He was not able to remember how he scammed the guy, but he still knew how.
It was a contradiction, but then again, it wasn't.
Just like Volt said: Darkness is where a man meets his true self. In that extreme fear and pressure from Volt, he remembered how he scammed that man.
Alaric finally began. "You know, I had a friend. He was also a nameless one like me. Although I don't remember the date, day, or time, I remember that we were cleaning something in the streets when he saw a man wearing luxury clothing, which was rare in the Eastern Sector."
"We followed him but also ignored him. After some time, we started noticing that he came here almost daily, so we decided to find out the reason."
"Why?" Volt asked, not looking at Alaric.
"Out of curiosity," Alaric added, then continued. "Eventually, we found out that he had a bastard with a woman who lives in the Eastern Sector. If she told anyone about this, then you very well know what you guys would do."
"Curiosity?" Volt looked amused. "I never heard of other men following a noble out of curiosity."
Alaric couldn't say anything, so he simply continued. "And then we played our game. I planned that my friend would stay where the mother was, and I would blackmail the man."
"I don't see how it's a scam, anyway. Continue. I'm growing fond of the story," Volt said while lighting a cigar no, a herbal cigar.
Alaric watched as Volt took a slow, deliberate drag, the tip of the herbal cigar glowing a dull, earthy orange.
As he exhaled, the smoke didn't billow out in a chaotic cloud. Instead, it unspooled in heavy, lethargic ribbons that seemed to defy the natural draft of the room.
Alaric continued like a storyteller, a storyteller hiding information from the story.
"And he agreed. So I confronted him and told him about this, but with a twist—"
Before Alaric could continue, Volt asked with a weird smile on his face, "Kindly elaborate on the twist for me."
Alaric hesitated, but he couldn't say no. "I s-said that my friend was trying to expose him, so if he gave me something valuable, I would give him my friend's location."
Volt's cigar ember pulsed once in the darkness.
A soft chuckle followed, low, controlled, and unpleasant.
"I will give you his location," Volt mimicked. He added, "Interesting. You never scammed the Red Bamboo guy. You scammed your friend."
Alaric didn't respond. He knew it was not clean. It was never clean.
Volt took a step closer. The light shifted. Half his face vanished again. "And your friend?" he asked.
Alaric hesitated. That was his mistake. Volt noticed almost immediately.
"They always hesitate at the wrong places," Volt murmured, almost to himself. "Let me tell you the full story."
Alaric flinched and opened his mouth in defense. "That was the whole story."
Volt's eyes reflected the obsidian rune lamp as he answered, "I know, but let me tell you what happened to your friend."
Alaric was taken aback. It was like a bolt of thunder had directly hit him.
He felt a cold sweat break across the nape of his neck, the droplets tracing a slow, agonizing path down his spine.
His limbs felt leaden, rooted to the spot by a primal instinct that told him any movement would trigger a strike.
Across from him, Volt remained unnaturally still—a predator who had already won, simply savoring the moment before the final blow.
The obsidian rune lamp on the table didn't just provide light; it seemed to consume it.
The flickering glow pulsed in a rhythmic, heartbeat-like cadence, casting long, skeletal shadows that danced jaggedly across the floor.
Volt's face was a shifting landscape of amber highlights and bottomless pits of black.
When he moved, the light caught the moisture in his eyes, making them look like two cold glass marbles polished to a lethal shine.
Volt finally spoke. "Just like you, I also don't remember the date, day, or time, but we were getting complaints from nobles that a very bad smell was coming from Mr. Ree's house. He never answered for it."
"So we raided the house and eventually found a half-eaten, butchered body of a male. Pretty disgusting, right? We asked why, but he never told us."
"So we searched for the reasons. We didn't find them, but instead, we found that he had a bastard with a pig. You know the consequences: the death penalty."
Alaric's hand went numb. He felt disgusted, his mind blank again.
He didn't even think about what to say, but still, he spoke. "You didn't punish him for the body? For the murder of a person? For a half-eaten body?"
His anger and rage were justified, but not to Volt. "To be real, no one cares about what you do with a pig. Even if we did, this sounds rich coming from you, Mr. Seller."
"You didn't blackmail him," Volt said. "You created a situation where he had no correct choice."
"Mr. Seller, murder is something everyone does. Don't be sad about it," Volt spoke in a mocking tone.
Volt's eyes suddenly widened as he remembered something.
He rushed toward the window of the room, which was not visible to Alaric. It was very different from Volt's normal calm and composed personality.
The shift in Volt was instantaneous, a fracture in the polished marble of his composure.
The predatory stillness evaporated, replaced by a frantic, jagged energy that made the very air in the room feel thin. He lunged toward the far wall, his boots striking the floor with a heavy, rhythmic thud that echoed like a funeral drum.
Alaric watched, frozen, as Volt reached a section of the wall that seemed seamless until a panel hissed open, revealing a narrow, tall window of reinforced glass he hadn't noticed before.
Volt didn't just look he stared with a desperate, wide-eyed intensity at the sky. Outside, the night was a bruised purple, but dominating the horizon was the half-moon.
It hung there like a severed silver coin, its edge so sharp it seemed to bleed light into the surrounding void.
The lunar glow hit Volt's face, washing out the amber warmth of the lamp and replacing it with a deathly, subterranean pallor.
With a violent flick of his wrist, he didn't just drop his herbal cigar he crushed it mid-air between his fingers.
As his skin made contact with the glowing ember, there was no hiss of burning flesh, only a sudden, violent eruption.
The cigar didn't just go out; it burst. The lethargic ribbons of smoke that had been drifting lazily through the room suddenly surged, multiplying a thousandfold.
It was as if a veil of gray silk had been shredded and tossed into a gale.
The smoke didn't rise to the ceiling; it began to dance.
It swirled in rhythmic, violent spirals, weaving through the skeletal shadows cast by the obsidian lamp.
The clouds took on a life of their own, coiling around Volt's arms like phantom serpents, obscuring his silhouette until he was nothing more than a dark shape shifting within a churning vortex of ash and herbal scent.
The smoke had something in it something that affected Alaric.
Something is wrong with this smoke,Alaric thought to himself.
Then Darkness.