Shluk—!
I watched as Celeste raised his hand and whipped a glass shard directly at the back of Kyra's head, piercing through her skull as it came soaring out of the other side from her forehead.
"Huh—?"
Her eyes instantly rolled up.
Blood spurt forth from the hole made in her head, with some trickling onto Darius' face further ahead. He wiped it off with disgust.
"Peace offering my ass… Cute face but a horrible temper. Was she always like that?"
The question was directed at me. Not Sav, not Celeste, and not Kyra who now lay face-flat on the floor motionless.
"Ah…"
I was speechless. My mouth trembled to hang open. All the oxygen from my lungs had been sucked away in an instant.
I couldn't breathe.
"C-Celeste…?" Was the first thing I could acknowledge. I turned my head to look at him, appalled by what I'd just witnessed him do. To my dismay, there was no remorse in his eyes.
They were lifeless.
"Celeste, why…?"
My eyes darted back at Kyra's body. I refused to identify it as a corpse, no matter the pool of blood that began to form beneath her face.
"Why…? Why!?"
My breathing became shallow. I was producing a wheeze.
"How…? How? Why?!"
At that moment, Celeste disappeared before my eyes.
"Comedic, really," Darius said, bearing the usual smirk on his face.
My eyes grew with horror as I came to the realization of what had happened.
"Get it now, Klyson? I said I'd use an apparition that wasn't a tenant. So I used your friend—that guy with the glasses and the highly precise Fractal!" He began to chuckle.
"Celeste was just an apparition…?"
He nodded. "The real one was never here all along. Same goes for your friend over there."
I turned around, panicked to find Sav disappearing right behind me. I'd been fooled. Both Kyra and I had been completely manipulated.
"Since when…?"
"Ever since you and Kyra dove head-first into the army of tenants I sent your way. From the moment you two lost visual contact with them, I replaced them with my apparitions."
"C-Celeste and Sav were never here this whole time...? This whole time we'd been talking with you, we were just standing beside your apparitions…?"
Darius nodded, excited to watch as my face expressed a fall into madness.
This can't be happening.
From the moment we met Darius, we'd been under his thumb the entire time. We were pieces being moved around on his chess board.
"You and Kyra were like performers in my play. The whole thing was truly theatrical. The way you expressed fear, and the way Kyra tried to act like a hero who cared for and wanted to protect her friends, it was all so cliché! I loved it. I loved it!" Darius was laughing with joy.
Kyra was dead on the floor and he was laughing with joy.
My state of utter disbelief and fear had now mixed with pure abhorrent hatred towards the blonde man who'd only introduced himself minutes ago. As I still continued to catch my breath, unable to cope with the fact that Kyra had died before my very eyes, I began to feel a wave of nausea pass over me. My mind was twirling with intense feelings of emotion that I couldn't gather together to muster enough strength or courage in the moment. But I was feeling it—a strong sense of rage. Through the tears that had unknowingly already fallen down my face, my cheeks were warmed by a heated sense of wrath that had been set aflame in my soul. I'd never felt this sentiment to such an extent before, so I didn't know what to do with it.
"Honestly, I'm disappointed with how things turned out. I can see you're angry over there, Klyson, presumably at me, right? But if anything, you should be mad at Kyra. The chick had a Fractal Activation that allowed her to 'see everything,' right? How come she couldn't see the guy aim a shard right at her head?"
"Stop…"
"Because he was her 'friend,' right? What kind of lame-ass excuse is that?!"
"Shut up…"
"That's precisely why I used that 'Celeste' guy as an apparition, so that even with her 'all-seeing' Fractal, she'd never expect a friend to raise a weapon against her. And even if she did see him do that, which I'm sure she did, I know for a fact that she doubted all the possibilities that inevitably led to her death. A friend like Celeste was the last person on her mind to be the one responsible for her death, don't you think, Klyson?"
I'd stopped breathing by then. Madness had overtaken me.
"That was her flaw. She cared too much about the useless concept of 'friends.' In reality, friends are just another term referring to pawns. To benefit the most out of people, you have to use them."
Kyra was my friend.
"Other than that though, she was perfect! Beautiful face, stunning body, and a talented Fractal. She had it all. If only she wasn't so concerned with you useless 'friends,' she'd probably still be alive. That was the only flaw. Oh, and her temper too. She could honestly do without that—"
This absolute fucking scum.
Darius kept rambling. By now it had become a tune in my head. Like a jack-in-the-box, I felt like I was about to burst out of my shell at any moment, interrupting the horrid melody of his voice that continued to speak.
Kyra.
She was the only person who expressed true care and concern for me, and I paid her back by watching her die. I didn't do anything about it. I couldn't do anything about it. My presence alongside her on this floor made no difference even if I were absent.
I was a useless, Fractless prick.
Garren.
I'd spent days with him, and all throughout not once did I do anything that could help him avoid his conclusion in the end. He even saved me at one point along the way. As a Fractless, I was probably only a burden to him.
Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth.
They were my original comrades. Looking back on the feats they produced during the Invidan war, and comparing it to the atrocity of a plan I'd made, I question how I'd been positioned higher in the Tenfold ranking than them.
I never deserved to be Fifth.
I never deserved to be in the Tenfold at all.
If I wasn't at the Invidan War, would things have turned out differently? Would they still be alive?
In just the mere last few months, my Fractlessness had weighed down my mind with unfathomable weight. I couldn't help but use it to blame every shortcoming that came my friends' ways, or even my own. But more than ever before, this was the only moment where that excuse mattered to me. If Celeste and Sav were never here all along, it meant I was the only friend present who could look out for Kyra.
And what did I do?
Nothing.
I did absolutely nothing. Knowing that, I needed the excuse more than ever to prevent a fall into guilty madness. As if I hadn't already blamed myself enough for everything bad that happened before, my guilt was unavoidable this time. It didn't help that Darius continued to rub it in.
"Maybe if you had a Fractal, you could've done something, Klyson. But instead, you chose to run off with 'Sav,' who was really just an apparition all along!"
He won't shut up.
"Can you believe that?" Darius' laugh became hysterical. "You were about to run off with one of my fucking apparitions! That's unbelievable!"
Just shut up already.
"Why are you even here, Klyson? Can someone here tell me what a spectator from the crowd is doing up on the stage?"
Shut up. Please shut up.
"Anyone? Can anyone tell me?"
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
"Oh wait, the only one in the audience is you, Klyson. What are you doing up here? You don't belong here."
Up until now, to be Fractless was to be a burden. That's what I believed, and that's what all the events happening around me convinced me to believe.
I couldn't escape it. I could only ask myself:
How could I ever escape this feeling when my reality can't do anything to deny it?
Everything and everyone was against me. Even me, my mind, myself.
I've been fucking with my mind for so long now.
I was thinking, constantly thinking, about how to lose all this guilt, this stress, all this burdensome emotion. I was stuck at a standstill between two sets of beliefs I'd been presented: Enzo's and Kyra's.
Enzo believed in the power that being Fractless bestowed, bathing in the solitude that came with it.
Kyra believed in the power of assorting oneself with a diversity, surrounding oneself with people who could look out for you and who you could count on.
But only one of these two people were dead.
Kyra.
I was mad. I was angry. I was infuriated beyond comprehension. I convinced myself to blame all these horrible emotions on Darius who caused Kyra's death in the end. But I was kidding myself. In reality, I was angered at the fact that what Darius said was true.
Kyra's flaw in believing in those around her was undoubtedly the result of her death.
I tried so hard to reject this idea, especially out of sorrow and grief for the loss of my friend, but it wasn't possible. With a Fractal Activated Panorama, Kyra should have been unstoppable no matter the circumstance. But she let her guard down for one moment just because it was a familiar face—Celeste's.
I'm sorry, Kyra.
Now that the thread that hung me onto that sliver of belief was gone, I was only left with one confrontation for the card I'd been dealt. The one that Enzo tried so hard to get me to believe in.
To be Fractless, is to be in power.
With such a lack of ability in my absence of a Fractal, there was only one choice I had in keeping up with everyone else.
I'm on my own now.
I had to be selfish. I had to drown in the desire to push myself forwards. Otherwise, I'd be left behind, not by others, but by myself.
"This is getting boring, Klyson. What should I do with you now that there's no one here to protect you—?"
Shut the fuck up already Darius.
Like a jack-in-the-box, I chose to interrupt the melody that played, and I sprung out of the box that'd kept me captive for all too long.
I'm done being a burden to others and myself.
It all happened in an instant. Like a soothing wave crashing over the soft sand bays of a beach, I felt calmness wash over me, wiping away all the feelings of neglect I'd been emitting inside my mind. It was an instantaneous sensation of relaxation, putting an end to the constant torment that serrated my brain into multiples of two. I was done being caught between constant dilemmas. I was done lagging on what to do.
In a world like this, there was no time to ponder for airtight decisions. I had to move before I could think, and in this instant, the world froze for me.
Kyra.
It felt like I'd been given all the time in the world to make the only decision I saw present. I saw the knife fallen by her hand, and grabbed it without a second thought.
Darius.
He stood there looking at me, but his expression was still stuck in place. I could tell the world only moved at my whim right now. I'd entered a sort of state where reality flowed at the rate I wanted it to.
Why am I so relaxed right now?
I was so caught up in my mind by the surprising sense of nonchalance, I didn't notice myself hurling the knife towards Darius' face. It soared through the air so slowly for me, but to him, it was instant.
He was so oblivious to my presence as a Fractless, his mind overlooked the incoming threat twirling his way since it was thrown from my hands, the hands of a Fractless.
Shank—!
It landed right in the middle of his face, impaling his head from one end to the other, dissecting his brain in the middle.
The melody had finally stopped, and the jack was out of its box.