Fallen Star

Chapter 24

"What do you want?" the darkness asked me.

"I want to destroy my enemies," I told it calmly.

"Why do you want this power?" the darkness asked me.

"So I can right the wrongs of the past," I told it unflinchingly.

"For whom will you use this power?" the darkness asked me.

"For myself," I told it truthfully, "and for those who've long since fallen. They shall have their legacies cleansed."

"How will you use this power?" the darkness asked me.

"Destructively," I said in a sweet murmur. "I want my enemies to fall beneath me in shreds."

"Who do you want to be?" the darkness asked me, growing ever darker. I smiled sweetly.

"A killer," I told it in a single breath.

The darkness thus granted me its strength. I took the plunge. There was no going back.

The dead will have their retribution.

Emyr was finally on the ropes. Empyrean could see that even though her combat experience was limited to what she had experienced with Hiro. But she didn't like it, not at all. It wasn't because the force of the battle was keeping her confined to the filthy ground or because she was scared out of her wits.

Empyrean didn't think she'd ever make any connections on Cadere but Hiro and to an extent, Sayuri, begged to differ. Frankly, Empyrean never had many friends, preferring to keep to herself with her nose shoved up a book. Hiro changed that. She thought they'd grown close. What a fool she was to think as much. It seemed her naivete had caught up with her, since the beast before her wasn't Hiro.

Was he even human? It was hard to tell. What were these Malefic drugs? As soon as he plunged that needle into his neck, black vines erupted from the injection site and overtook the right half of his body. They wove around his arm and even corrupted Argenti, a slave to the will of its master, decorating the blade in their cursed power. As the creeping black ivy wove around Hiro's face, it infected his hawk orange eye and turned it dark and downright evil; even a fang protruded from his upper teeth as if he were a demon.

Throughout the transformation, Hiro was howling and screaming in pain but when the Malefic had taken full effect, there was nothing but elation on his face. Even as black sludge coursed through his veins and blood and spit drooled out of his mouth like a wild animal, the expression of exhilaration never left Hiro. As Emyr struggled to put distance between him and this monster, he seemed frightened, as if he knew he was in trouble.

Hiro seemed to delight in crushing Emyr's arm with Argenti's blunt hilt. Good God, how much strength did he have now!? A shudder went down Empyrean's spine as Emyr choked on blood. Was Hiro really going to kill him? ...What a silly question.

Of course he was.

Hiro was a lonely human, just like Empyrean. He sought attention, which was why he ran his mouth, but he always retreated into himself. He lived in praise and walked the shadow of a fallen legacy. He upheld that crumbling pillar, but he put no strength or effort into maintaining that goal. He would not forsake the values instilled into him by Shino but at the same time, his soul was too darkened to truly inherit the will of his predecessors. But here, right now, Hiro was picking up the pieces. He was rebuilding that pillar of legacy by taking matters into his own hands and bringing the Five Lights of Omega to justice. But at the same time, he wasn't.

He was destroying the pillar, Empyrean realized. She didn't know Shino or any of the Lights, but she hated seeing Hiro like this. She was frightened by him. Would the Lights feel the same? ...Oh, she was full of silly questions today, wasn't she? The answer was obvious.