The darkness above the canopy bed lacked shape for no more than a second. Before Hayjin's mind could process the silhouette bent over him in the half-light of four-thirty in the morning, the figure moved with unnatural, ruthless, soundless speed.
A heavy hand, clad in a stiff, icy leather glove, shot downward and clamped over Hayjin's mouth and nose with brutal force, crushing his lips against his teeth so violently that he instantly tasted the metallic tang of his own blood. Simultaneously, with its other arm, the figure seized the large feather pillow beneath his head, folding it double and slamming it down against the boy's neck and chest to pin his shoulders and smother any chance of movement.
Hayjin's eyes flew open in the dark, his pupils dilating in sheer terror. He tried to scream, but only a muffled sound escaped his throat a pathetic, helpless vibration that died against the leather glove.
Then came the steel.
A cold, sharp, ruthless point of pressure pierced the right side of his stomach, just below his ribs. There followed a wet, sickening sound the noise of steel rending skin, muscle, and internal tissue until embedding itself with a dull thud against bone.
SQUELCH.
The agony was instant, white-hot, blinding. It wasn't a superficial pain; it was an explosion of infernal heat spreading through his abdomen as if someone had poured molten lead straight into his gut.
"NO! NO! NO! NOT AGAIN!"
Hayjin's brain was overwhelmed by a surge of primal panic. Memories of the alley on Earth, the blade that had run him through back home, limbo, the decapitation, and the unrelenting terror of being hunted like an animal surfaced all at once in a single, devastating tidal wave of despair. His legs began thrashing frantically beneath the heavy blankets, kicking against the mattress in a series of uncontrolled spasms, but the weight of the figure pressed down on him like a marble slab.
Burning, hot tears spilled from his eyes, mingling with the cold sweat drenching his forehead. He felt his own warm, thick, viscous blood gushing from the wound in surges, soaking his white shirt and the sheets in a matter of seconds. The sense of helplessness was absolute, suffocating, agonizing.
"Is this how it ends?!" his mind screamed into the dark as oxygen failed in his lungs. "After everything I've been through?! After what Wren said to me... after talking with Wilder... I have to die like this, like a slaughtered animal in my own bed?!"
Yet just as despair threatened to paralyze him permanently, the survival instinct of someone who had already died once overrode his fear. Hayjin refused to give up. He refused to let himself be smothered in silence in that bed.
With a frantic motion, he swung his right arm into the dark, sweeping his hand along the edge of the wooden nightstand beside the headboard. His trembling fingers struck the smooth, heavy surface of a large, thick glass tumbler left there by the maids the previous evening.
He seized it. He tightened his grip with every single ounce of strength left in his body and, accompanied by a raspy, muffled roar that died in his throat, he cocked his elbow and hurled the heavy glass tumbler straight into the side of the mysterious figure's head.
CRASH!
The glass shattered into hundreds of sharp shards with a sharp, deafening strike. Residual liquid and fragments sprayed everywhere in the darkness. The figure let out a brief grunt of surprise, its grip on Hayjin's mouth slackening for a fraction of a second, its weight shifting on his chest.
Hayjin didn't wait. He seized that instant of instability to shove with both knees, rolling off the left side of the bed and crashing heavily onto the wooden floorboards, dragging blankets, shattered glass, and blood down with him.
The impact with the floor was sheer torture. The stab wound in his abdomen sent a flare of agony so violent that his vision blurred into a dark fog for an instant, but Hayjin dug his hands into the rug and dragged himself forward toward the door, leaving a dark red trail in his wake.
He opened his mouth wide and, with whatever breath remained in his tormented lungs, began screaming at the top of his voice.
"HELP!" Hayjin shrieked, his voice cracked, raspy, disfigured by terror. "HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME! THERE'S AN ASSASSIN! HELP!"
His screams echoed tragically against the bedroom walls, shattering against the ceiling before filtering through the cracks of the heavy, locked wooden door.
He didn't manage to cover more than a meter and a half.
The mysterious figure leaped from the bed like a wounded beast, boots landing silently on the shards of glass. With fluid movement, the attacker overtook Hayjin from behind, planted a boot onto his ankle to pin his escape, and seized his black-and-white hair, yanking his head backward.
Before Hayjin could do a thing, the blade flashed in the dark once more.
STAB!
A second knife wound, deep and ruthless, plunged into his left flank, grazing his back and sinking deep into the muscle.
"AGGGHH!" Hayjin let out a choked scream a groan of pure agony that dissolved into a bloody cough.
The agony was unbearable, but rage and despair gifted him one final, terrifying rush of adrenaline. Instead of slumping, Hayjin grabbed the assassin's arm holding his hair with both hands. He twisted his torso with all the rotational force he had left, planted his feet on the floor, and threw himself backward with all his weight, shoving the mysterious figure with blind, feral violence.
The two went flying backward, slamming at full speed into the large solid wood table in the center of the room.
CRASH-SPLINTER!
The impact was devastating. The table snapped in two under the combined weight of their bodies, collapsing to the floor in an explosion of splintered wooden planks, torn papers, and brass candlesticks clattering everywhere.
The attacker landed on the floor beneath the wreckage of the table, temporarily dazed by the fall.
Hayjin found himself on his knees among the rubble.
His breath came in ragged hitches, producing a horrific wheeze in his throat with every inhalation. With his left hand, he pressed desperately against his abdomen, feeling warm blood gush unchecked between his fingers in a futile attempt to stem the hemorrhage draining his life away.
With his right hand, still trembling and bloody, he groped through the wooden debris until his fingers wrapped around a large, heavy piece of a broken table leg nearly half a meter long and ending in a sharp wooden splinter.
The assassin was already pushing back up to a sitting position among the wreckage, blade still gripped tight in hand.
Hayjin didn't hesitate. He raised that massive chunk of wood with both arms and brought it down with every shred of strength he had left, smashing it straight onto the figure's head.
THWACK!
The blow connected squarely, brutally. The piece of wood struck the side of the attacker's skull with a dull impact that sent the figure reeling, slumping sideways into the broken planks.
Without losing a single second, Hayjin flipped onto his stomach and resumed crawling toward the bedroom door. Every inch gained was pure agony; his two wounds burned as if he had burning embers lodged in his flesh, and his head began to spin from the catastrophic blood loss.
"Help..." Hayjin wheezed, his voice fading to a raspy, suffocated whisper. "Someone... please... help..."
Meanwhile, along the dark corridors of the castle's east wing, Isabelle was walking at a brisk pace.
The petite housekeeper, dressed in her signature plum-purple velvet gown, was making her final night rounds before retiring to her quarters. It was her habit to check that the guards were at their posts and that the guests of honor required nothing a routine she maintained with her usual aristocratic precision.
Suddenly, Isabelle froze in the middle of the hallway.
From a distance, coming from the guest-of-honor wing, an unmistakable sound reached her: the dull echo of an impact, followed by desperate human shrieks.
"HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!"
Isabelle's dark eyes widened. That voice... wasn't a guard's. It was Hayjin's cracked, terrified, unmistakable voice.
"Hayjin?!" Isabelle whispered, her aristocratic demeanor vanishing in an instant, replaced by a clutch of icy dread.
She wasted no time. Gathering the hem of her long purple skirt, she sprinted as fast as she could down the corridor, her heels clicking frantically against the marble. Her heart pounded in her chest; she knew the tensions surrounding the boy, knew of the Cult, and knew how precarious the situation was.
As she neared Hayjin's bedroom door, she heard the horrific sound of wood splintering CRASH! followed by one final, smothered groan of agony.
Then, suddenly... silence.
Isabelle stopped a meter from the door. The silence enveloping the hallway now was ghostly, unnatural, heavy with dreadful foreboding.
With hands trembling slightly, the housekeeper reached her fingers toward the heavy brass handle. To her terror, she discovered the lock had been forced or broken from the inside during the struggle.
She pushed the wooden door open slowly and with extreme caution, nudging it a few inches to peer inside.
"Hayjin...?" Isabelle whispered in a quavering voice, stepping into the room.
The bitter, metallic odor of fresh blood struck her nostrils like a blow.
By the faint moonlight filtering through the torn drapes, the scene confronting her was the stuff of nightmares: the central table was utterly destroyed, glass and splinters littered the rug, and in the middle of the room, sprawled in a dark pool of blood spreading rapidly, lay Hayjin.
The boy was gravely wounded, contorted in agony, with two deep knife wounds tearing through his abdomen and flank. Seeing her enter, Hayjin forced his head up from the floor, his hazel eyes wide with horror.
"I-Isabelle..." Hayjin stammered on a thread of breath, coughing blood and desperately trying to warn her. "Run... it's... behind..."
Isabelle, thoroughly shocked and terrified by the gruesome sight, lost every shred of composure. Her usual mask of icy composure shattered into a thousand pieces.
"Oh merciful mother! Hayjin!" Isabelle cried out, abandoning all caution and rushing forward to kneel over him to render aid. "Hold on! Hold on, I'm calling the guards right now..."
But she never had the time to make a single move.
Suddenly, emerging from the dense shadow hidden behind the newly opened door, the mysterious figure lunged from behind.
Before Isabelle could even turn her head or attempt a defensive spell, the attacker was upon her.
STAB!
The first blow struck with brutal precision straight into the center of her chest. Isabelle let out a muffled gasp, her eyes bulging from her sockets in sheer shock and incoherent pain.
STAB! STAB! STAB! STAB! STAB!
Without the slightest hesitation, the attacker delivered five more quick strikes in rapid succession, driving the sharp blade directly into her chest, piercing lungs and heart with blind, mechanical fury.
Eight stabs in total.
Isabelle let out a horrific wheeze, blood bubbling up between her lips. Her wand dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter. Her knees buckled, and the housekeeper collapsed heavily onto the floorboard, catastrophically wounded, coming to rest mere inches from Hayjin's body in a pool of blood that merged with his own.
Hayjin witnessed the entire scene inches from his face.
To watch Isabelle the person who had scolded him for his behavior just hours prior, the woman who despite her pride protected the castle with total devotion slaughtered before his eyes unable to defend herself was the final, fatal blow to his already shattered psyche.
Hayjin began weeping uncontrollably.
His sobs were hysterical, devastating, accompanied by hot tears washing the blood from his cheeks. His mind, battered by too much suffering, gave out entirely to despair and self-pity.
"Why...?" Hayjin sobbed, his voice reduced to desperate crying, choked by the rattles of blood loss. "Why... why every time my life seems to be getting better... does something always happen to ruin everything?! Why the fuck does it always happen to me?!"
His words were an agonizing lament, the weeping of a boy who could no longer carry the weight of that ruthless world.
"I tried... I tried to better myself... I tried to save everyone..." Hayjin wept, tossing his head weakly on the blood-stained floor. "Why can't I just have a normal life?! Why do I always have to see people die?! Why do I have to suffer like this?!"
The strange, mysterious figure didn't answer right away.
It wiped the bloody blade on the hem of its dark cloak with slow, methodical efficiency. Then, to Hayjin's utter shock, the figure took three steps forward and sat cross-legged on the floor, right beside the boy's body.
It reached out a gloved hand, took Hayjin by the head without excessive violence, and gently pulled him close, laying his head across its lap.
Hayjin was far too weak and distraught to resist. His bloody head now rested on the thighs of the assassin who had just stabbed him.
Then, the figure began stroking his head, running fingers with unnatural slowness through his black and white streaks of hair, exactly as a mother would with a frightened child.
"Shhh... calm down..." the figure whispered in a low, distorted, almost comforting voice that sounded macabre in the room's gloom. "Calm down, Hayjin... everything will be okay. Don't cry anymore... You won't have to worry about anything ever again. No one will hurt you anymore... shhh... everything will be okay..."
Hayjin struggled to breathe from shock and wept uncontrollably, wracked by violent tremors while that grotesque, terrifying stroke continued brushing his hair. The contrast between the sheer savagery moments earlier and this false, perverse tenderness turned his stomach. His chest rose and fell in ragged gasps, producing ever weaker rattles as life ebbed slowly from his eyes.
The figure continued stroking his head for a few seconds more, listening to his sobs grow steadily fainter.
Then, the gentle motion stopped.
The figure decided to end it there.
Feeling the grip on his head loosen slightly, with the last desperate shreds of strength remaining in his body, Hayjin reached out toward Isabelle who lay nearly dead beside him, eyes wide and breath reduced to a wheezing gasp.
Hayjin extended his blood-stained left hand and managed to touch hers, weakly squeezing the housekeeper's cold fingers in one final, silent, desperate moment of human connection. Isabelle imperceptibly twitched her fingers against his a last trace of presence before the void.
The mysterious figure shifted slightly. With its left hand, it lifted Hayjin's chin, exposing his pale, sweat-slicked neck.
With its right hand, it gripped the sharp blade and rested it flat against his throat.
A single, clean, ruthless horizontal sweep.
SWIP.
Hayjin's throat was slashed clean by the mysterious figure.
A spray of warm blood burst from the wound, bathing the floor and the assassin's hand. Hayjin's sobs died instantly into one last, smothered, wet gasp. His hazel eyes gradually lost their light, staring one final time at Isabelle's hand clasped in his before absolute darkness swallowed his mind.
The mysterious figure stood watching the two motionless bodies for a few moments as the pool of blood finished spreading across the rug.
Then, without another word, the figure cleaned its blade, adjusted its dark cloak, turned, and slipped out of the castle through the room's window, vanishing into the freezing night without leaving a single trace.