"Memento mori:
Remember that you must die."
. . .
It happened less than a second.
Why?
H-how..?
How could they possibly miss it?!
The blade was so cold but feels so hot at the same time, and his throat... his skin and very flesh feels like it was burning away the moment his head was torn off from his shoulders in a bloody, macabre spray.
He could have sworn he tasted ashes in his tongue.
And then, there was numbness.
There was red, so much red-God, oh God that was blood that was his blood-gushing outwards like red rain as he falls, and falls.
He didn't even feel the cold ground beneath him as he slammed right into it. And he knows (whether it was instinct, or some other deep-rooted knowledge that this very ground is going to be his grave), his hands uselessly, instinctively crawling up to his already slitted throat even if it was such a useless gesture. Useless. So useless.
It was all useless.
...a human reaction.
He was not human though. Not anymore.
His hand feels so cold.
There was screaming all around him.
Buck, Luke, Nikki...
His kins' confusion and shock instantly morphed into howls of rage and terror. It was too loud, too unhinged to be considered human, and it cut through the ringing in his ears like the very same blade that beheaded him out of nowhere.
He tried to force his body to move, to heal as best as he could so he could fight through the pain and through the darkness creeping at the corners of his discarded head.
He knows if he fail here now, he will die.
For real.
He thought he saw flashes of Nikki, her eyes glowing red, bulging wide with rage and despair. Fingers flexing until her nails lengthened into claws.
"YOU COWARD!" she screams, "SHOW YOURSELF!"
The rage in her words was like fire and poison combined. And the next thing he sees, she was lunging at a shadowy figure somewhere out of his view.
The attacker.
His killer.
He hadn't even seen their face, only the gleam of their sword descending upon his neck like an executioner's axe. Everything that happened next was a blur, even with their heightened senses.
Then there's another sound.
Loud as crashing waves falling down upon him, filling him with dread. Nikki was screaming again, the others cursing quite too loudly as they yelled, but now there was a hint of pain in her voice. He hears something faint, a sort of whistling sound.
Then, the screaming stopped.
Quiet, it's so quite now. Unnervingly so.
And he knows.
She's gone. She's dead and he's-
He's not alone and he... he was afraid.
And the fear he feels only grew worse when the air around him suddenly changed, becoming cold, colder. He can feel something-someone-was coming closer to him despite the lack of sound. His killer was coming for him. Coming to finish him off.
How did they know that he was still alive?
He had only refrained himself from recalling his head back to him since he feared being attacked once more and simply because regenerating was still too painful to do so at the moment.
Is it because of the sword-?
They stopped.
Oh. God-!
They were right in front of him, are they?!
He can feel someone crouching down a bit before his headless body, the ice-cold feeling of the same blade that decapitated him tilting his head up for its owner to regard him.
Then, he saw her face.
A frightfully beautiful face greets him, her features impassive and angelic that he thought of the tiny droplets of blood marring her pale complexion looked so out of place against such a lovely, fair face.
Her clothes were dark, her hair was long and just as dark. And those narrowed eyes of her's, he thinks they were also the color of black, but she was standing so still against the light, looming over him like a grim reaper of some sorts as his gaze was faltering so much so that he thinks for a moment, that her eyes looked like a pair of black pits.
In her left hand, he thinks he's looking at the weapon that took Nikki's life. The same weapon that's going to kill him as well.
"Do you know why your wounds refused to heal?" she suddenly asks. Her voice was quiet, but it sounds so condescending as she looked down at him through half-lidded eyes, "...Why your body wouldn't heal no matter how much you will it to save you?"
He startled when she lifted the blade ever so slightly. It gleams with an unearthly glow. And it feels so cold, colder than the darkest of night.
"It's because of my sword... Thanatos." she slowly inclines her head to the side, as if listening to something, some of her hair falling to cover half of her face till there was nothing but a lone eye regarding him-but he couldn't hear anything.
The blood was making a fine pool around his headless body, staining his clothing and seeping into his skin. He felt so nauseatingly light and so empty, there but fading within every passing moment.
"In a few seconds, your senses are going to shut down one by one. And then, your body shall soon follow due to blood loss... ironic, is it not?" she let out a hollow chuckle, "Your kind feeds on the blood of others and now, here you are."
"W-Wha..."
Her mouth, those small lips, weren't moving as she spoke, he realized numbly, those sinister words relayed in a tone that held not a tinge of guilt or any sort of emotion, "...you are going to die because of the very same thing you inflict upon your victims."
But he can still hear her voice, it echoed in his head.
"A fitting end, don't you think?"
There's only one way that was possible, but...it couldn't be...
He tried to move but instead, he can only hear a faint, choking-gurgling sort of noise. It took him a second or two to finally realize that it was coming from him.
"W-what... are you?" he finally managed to croak out, blood leaking from the corners of his lips and down to the already bloodstained ground. His vision was almost completely gone by this point. He could only focus on those eyes staring down at him.
"Have you forgotten already?"
She clicked her tongue once, twice. Thrice.
Watching, waiting...
"I am..."
Black pits, emotionless holes, the void itself...
She leans down, as if to whisper on his ear-
(The last thing he soon felt was something cold gripping on to his chest, his bones breaking apart as she slowly scoops something out of his ribcage... and he soon realized after he sees her holding his unbeating heart amidst the fading light that there are still worse fates than-)
"...Death."
