Zain: A scream pierced the air, shattering the bathroom's tranquil cocoon. "What was that?" His brow furrowed at the jarring sound cutting through the muffled party ambiance.
It had been mere minutes since he'd excused himself, yet an unsettling sense of Unease gripped him. As Zain finished up and moved to wash his hands, he caught sight of his reflection in the ornate mirror.
His young face looked pale, his eyes wide with an anxiety he couldn't fully understand. For a moment, he hardly recognized himself - it was as if the events of the evening had already begun to change him in some fundamental way. Taking a deep breath, Zain steeled himself to return to the party. He reached for the bathroom door, his hand trembling slightly.
As he pulled it open, The scene that unfolded was an abject horror. His eyes widened, breath caught in his throat as he took in the gruesome spectacle. Mr. Hitesh's lifeless body lay in an Vulgar puddle, blood still oozing from his mutilated form. His eyes were frozen wide. Blood painted his lips, dribbling down his chin - he had choked on his own blood, drowned in the very essence of life.
Zain's gaze swept across the chaos, falling upon his mother - crumpled beside Hitesh's body like a broken statue. A strangled cry threatened to escape his lips as bile burned at his throat.
Yet, even amidst this waking nightmare, a presence more chilling than death itself commanded his focus. A figure covered in an abyss-like shroud wearing a mask darker than a black hole itself, a void given human form. Anumors the "Black Death" stood before them, an ominous specter that defied the light itself.
The chilling stories Zain had heard about Anumors were enough to turn his blood to ice in his veins.
He notices the nearby champagne flutes lay abandoned on tables, slightly changing color, their crystal bodies glistening with residual poison. It became clear the fates of the strewn bodies resulted from ingesting the tainted drinks.
With each measured step the Doom weave took, guests crumpled one by one - violent fits of coughing racking their bodies as blood burst forth from their lips, the neurotoxin inflicting its agonizing toll. They drowned in their own vital essence, suffering the same grisly fate as Mr. Hitesh before them. The only people stood standing were the waiters serving the drinks.
Zain: "What's happening...?" he whispered, frozen in place by the parade of death unfolding. Anumors very presence was a cold vise around Zain's heart.
Yet as the figure's inexorable march carried it towards his mother's prone form, an primal terror more visceral than any fear he'd known before gripped him. "No...please..." The words caught in his throat, little more than a strangled rasp.
He could only watch, trembling, as oblivion's incarnate ambassador turned its sights towards the one he loved most in this world. The desperate pleas built in his mind, yet no sound could escape the vice-grip of horror stealing his voice. His mom...his everything...delivered unto the cusp of annihilation before his very eyes.
As Anumors merciless stride carried him towards Zain's mother, every other guest succumbed - a massacre painting the halls in Organs. Bodies littered the once-pristine marble, now awash in pooling crimson. The very air was choked with the metallic tang of spilled blood, a sickening miasma of death.
The Doomweave halted mere inches from Zain's mother, his unseen gaze seeming to pierce straight into her soul. Before any plea or scream could escape her lips, a vortex of shadows manifested - a dozen black-cloaked forms emerging from the roiling darkness. Twelve figures clad in abyssal black stormed in, agents of annihilation given human form.
This was the Black Death's personal army - a brotherhood of killers, forged in the fires of endless combat training. They were the Army of the Death, the most feared fighting force to stalk the lands, and they had arrived to reinforce oblivion's advance.
Zain's mother was now surrounded, escape rendered an impossibility in the face of such nightmarish martial might. The world seemed to still in those elongated moments as death closed its jaws.
Anumors: He nodded to the waiters "Your roles were executed flawlessly. You may take your leave - the rest falls to us."
His soulless gaze then fell upon his lieutenants "Scour every corner of this venue," the amalgam of death growled, voice like rusted blades scraping stone. "Any still clinging to life are to be brought before me." His hollow eye sockets seemed painted by blood. "Leave not a single soul untouched by oblivion's embrace."
His black-clad army spread out with militaristic precision at his command. But one figure remained before the Reaper's unseen gaze.
Anumors turned his focus back to Neha, crumpled amid the rapidly cooling body remains. "Ah, Miss Revansh..." A sadistic laugh escaped from his hidden face. "Forgive my manners. You seem...unwell. But take heart - your drink remains untouched. Your life is secured, for now, until I have what I desire."
He loomed closer, each step heavy with implacable finality. "Your husband's whereabouts are all that grant you breath at this moment. So I'll resort to civility one last time - where is the esteemed Mr. Revansh?"
Neha: Her eyes smoldered with defiance despite her battered state. "I will never tell you!" she spat, every word dripping with venom. "You've slaughtered these innocents without mercy. I know your cruelty has no bounds - tell you, and you'll simply slaughter my husband next!"
"Innocents?" Anumors rasped a haunting chuckle. "You flatter them, Miss Revansh. This crowd's hands drip with the blood of the innocents they've exploited and oppressed."
His words took on a cold, condemning fury. "That withered profiteer built his riches by abducting orphans and trafficking them into the darkest pits as sex slaves - their bodies and souls forever tarnished."
He slowly swept his shrouded gaze across the macabre tableau. "The matron choking on her own blood? Her beauty empire relied on harvesting organs from the poor lured off the home's with promises of work, only to be vivisected. Have you every thought of what their families must have gone through Miss. Revansh?"
"This monstrous pig used to feast on the flesh of his own kind, abducting innocent, beautiful girls from the countryside with false promises of work and fame. Can you even imagine how their parents felt? How their brothers and sisters felt? Knowing that one of their own kind had devoured their beloved?"
With each damning accusation, he stepped among the fallen, his very presence a harsh judgement. "Not one soul here acted as anything but leeches, draining the life-blood of the downtrodden to fuel their own grotesque indulgences and vain status. I merely delivered the societies' forgotten a long-overdue reckoning." His pitch then lowered to a tone almost mournful.
"The worst sins are the ones committed by the elite who exploit their privilege to disregard the humanity in others. Apathy is a firefuel for atrocity." He then leans close to Neha looking straight into her soul "So now Miss. Revansh, will you finally speak up and tell me where your husband is? Or would you prefer to join these damned souls, following them into the pits of oblivion?"
Her chest heaved, bloody lips curling in a snarl. "Go ahead, kill me if you must. I'll never utter a word to help your inhuman cause!"
Anumors: "Such foolish defiance," the reaper's rasp cut the air like a blade. "You know I can uncover your husband's whereabouts within moments. Yet you choose to die needlessly, your demise serving no purpose."
He shook his cloaked head slowly. "I offered you the mercy of a swift ending in exchange for answers. But it seems I must pursue him through...less cordial means."
Anumors turned his obscured gaze towards one of his shrouded lieutenants. "Have you pinpointed the objective's location?"
Member 1: "Just a few more minutes, my lord. His trail grows clearer."
Anumors: "Very well. Our work here is concluded then."
In a blur of motion, a slender needle-like implement emerged from within Anumors' glove, burying itself in Neha's throat with surgical precision.
"Take what little solace you can," his dispassionate tone carried no hint of mercy. "Your husband will join you in oblivion soon enough."
Zain watched the ghastly scene unfold from the bathroom, helpless as his mother endured Anumors' ruthless torment. Every shred of his being screamed to rush to her side, to shield her from this embodiment of death.
But before he could act on that primal instinct, his gaze was seized by Anumors' lieutenants dragging a familiar figure forward - the same waiter who had brushed past Zain earlier, now a captive.