"Ahhh... shit. Am I going to die today?" Brianna thought, her body collapsing to the ground, pierced by bones in both her left eye and stomach. The pain was unlike anything she had ever experienced before—a searing, excruciating agony that left her trembling.
Even the torturous training she had endured under her master for years paled in comparison. This? This was hell. She was completely screwed.
Her vision began to blur as darkness crept into the edges of her consciousness.
Because she had a fucking hard boner inside of her COUGH SHIT Wrong line. I meant she had a hard big bone inside of her body right now, piercing through her flesh while another bone stabbed into her left eye.
I don't think any of us could hold on through that either.
'I really am going to die,' Brianna thought once again in a very dramatic tone, practically replaying her entire life in her mind. But suddenly, she felt a burst of an urge to live, as sudden and unpredictable as her personality shifts.
"I d-"
She tried to mutter something, but the pain was just too much for her to bear right now. She closed her eyes as they became too painful to keep open, succumbing to the comforting darkness.
'I DON'T WANT TO DIE.' Since she couldn't say it out loud, she screamed it in her mind, her only solace in the pitch-black void she now saw.
Regrets began to fill her mind and heart as she felt death creeping closer with every passing millisecond. It was the first time she had felt this particular sensation.
It was the first time...
She felt...
FRIGHTENED.
Brianna, the genius, the prodigy, the girl who always came out on top, had never known fear like this. She had never encountered someone who could do something so utterly devastating to her.
'Should have learned that regeneration magic... Shin was forcing me to learn,' she thought, blaming herself for her current predicament as tears threatened to fall.
"DEMON! AHHHHHH! SOMEONE SAVE ME! AHH—"
Suddenly, Brianna's ears picked up on the deafening sounds of chaos. Screams pierced through the air, and the unmistakable pounding of frantic footsteps echoed around her. The crowd was in complete disarray.
"DEMON!"
Some yelled in fear, their voices cracking.
"HELP! HELP!" others cried out, their desperation cutting through the pandemonium.
Though she couldn't see what was happening, Brianna could feel the chaos as though it was seeping into her bones. Every cry, every panicked shuffle, resonated with a vivid clarity.
And then there was the smell.
The sharp, metallic tang of blood hung in the air, mixing with the earthy scent of dirt and sweat. Was it hers? Someone else's? She couldn't tell, but it didn't matter. The fear was almost tangible, pressing down on her as her body lay limp and unresponsive.
A Few Seconds Earlier
"Ha... ha..."
Octavian's breaths were shallow and labored, his chest rising and falling in uneven rhythms. He was barely standing, swaying like a broken marionette. Blood dripped steadily from his left hand—or rather, what used to be his hand.
The entire limb was a mess. The skin had torn apart completely, flayed and dangling, exposing raw muscle and bone beneath. Blood poured freely, pooling at his feet in sticky rivulets. His left hand no longer had any structure to speak of.
It was as though the life energy he'd used to manipulate it had burned out, leaving it to decay right before his eyes.
Slowly, almost painfully, the remaining shreds of skin detached, fluttering to the ground like autumn leaves shaken loose by a winter breeze.
His right hand wasn't in much better condition. Though it had been the tool that delivered the decisive strike, it was smeared with a mix of his own blood and hers.
His grip trembled slightly, the aftershocks of what he'd done reverberating through his body.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, the droplets tracing a slow path down his chin before falling to the dirt.
Meanwhile, his once bright-white sclera—the whites of his eyes—were shifting. Slowly, they darkened, filling with a sinister, deep crimson as though his very life force was bleeding into them.
"Ah... So, this is the limit of manipulating life energy to force my body to move, huh?" Octavian muttered to himself, his voice raspy and strained.
He tilted his head back, his blurry gaze fixing on the vast expanse of the sky above. It looked so... distant.
The clouds, the faint sunlight breaking through them, all of it felt like it belonged to a world he could no longer reach. His vision wasn't entirely gone, but it was dimming, growing hazier by the second.
Still, there was a strange, almost serene majesty to the way he stood there, bloodied and broken, staring at the heavens.
But the crowd?
The crowd wasn't seeing majesty.
To them, Octavian was no hero.
He was a monster.
Every eye was glued to him, their earlier expressions of amusement replaced by sheer terror. The people who had laughed at his pain and humiliation only moments ago were now wide-eyed, trembling in fear.
For them, this wasn't just a circus anymore.
This was a nightmare brought to life.
To the crowd, Octavian was no longer human.
He was a demon.
A being so unnatural and terrifying that the mere sight of him was enough to send shivers down their spines. How else could they explain what they had just witnessed?
Who could, with such ease, rip apart their own flesh and bone and wield it as a weapon? And not just that—but do it without flinching, without groaning, without so much as a twitch of pain.
A normal human? Impossible.
The sheer courage—or madness—it would take to rip one's hand apart, launch out their own bone, and use it to stab someone was something the average person couldn't even imagine, let alone endure.
And even if someone did attempt such a horrifying act, they would surely scream, cry, or grimace, wouldn't they? Surely, their face would twist in agony, their body would convulse under the sheer torment of it all.
But Octavian?
No.
Octavian did none of that. His face remained eerily calm, his expression unchanging. If anything, there was a strange, curious glint in his eyes—a look of someone who had seen it all, who understood more than anyone else in that moment.
It was as if nothing mattered to him.
Not the crowd around him, gaping in horror.
Not the excruciating pain his body was enduring.
Not the crippling exhaustion that had to be consuming him.
He didn't care about any of it.
To him, it was all... insignificant.
"DEMON! RUN!" someone screamed, their voice cracking as they bolted for safety.
"SAVE YOUR LIFE!" another voice shouted, followed by the sound of frantic footsteps as the crowd scrambled to escape.
And then came the most desperate cry of all:
"SOMEONE CALL THE POPE!"
The crowd was in full-blown hysteria now. People pushed and shoved, tripping over one another in their frantic attempt to flee.
Mothers clutched their children tightly, dragging them away from the chaos. Men who had once mocked and jeered were now pale-faced, their bravado shattered.
"Now, what should I do with you?" Octavian muttered, his tone eerily calm as his gaze fixed on Brianna.
The chaos around him—the fleeing crowd, the panicked screams—was nothing more than background noise. A cacophony of useless distractions. His focus was solely on her.
He extended his right arm toward her, and as he did, the skin on his left hand began to peel away even faster, flaking off in grotesque chunks like crumbling bark from a dying tree.
Blood dripped onto the ground, mixing with the dirt and creating a messy, darkened stain.
Without a hint of hesitation, his fingers wrapped tightly around her neck. It was a grip that left no room for defiance—strong, unyielding, and suffocating.
The scene was eerily reminiscent of a god passing judgment, like Thanos gripping Loki in the opening of Infinity War.
Brianna's body hung limply in his grasp, the strength she had once prided herself on now utterly useless.
Just as Octavian prepared to decide her fate, a voice broke through the haze of chaos.
"Why don't you just let her go?"
The words were barely more than a whisper, soft yet sharp, like a blade grazing his ear. The sudden intrusion froze Octavian for a fraction of a second, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
That voice.
It was calm, composed... and uncomfortably close.
Octavian's lips curled into a grin—not one of amusement, but something far darker. Something predatory.
He turned his head toward the source of the voice, except he didn't move his body. His neck twisted unnaturally, almost a full 180 degrees, as if his body obeyed no laws of nature.
His crimson-streaked eyes locked onto the figure behind him, and his face contorted into a smile so unsettling it could make the statue from Solo Leveling look like a child with a beautiful smile.
"How did you do that?" he asked, his tone laced with equal parts curiosity and menace.
It wasn't a question born out of fear but rather fascination, like a scientist discovering something new and utterly bizarre.
{A/N: Who Wants Smut? And Who Doesn't? Vote down below
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