✧ ˚ · . THE FOURTH BETRAYAL . · ˚ ✧ || «SCARAMOUCHE X READER»

14 | A Thousand Petals

Every day became a living hell.

My hands became stained with blood that belonged to the same girl, over and over, slowly taking over my little sanity. I heard her screams like I was in a never-ending nightmare, her screeches that frightened even the birds playing in my head all throughout. Each time I raised my arm to prepare to strike down on her, I saw her terrified face - eyes bulging and shaking her head in fear. I couldn't bear the weight of what I was doing anymore. The guilt, the horror, it was all consuming. Every night, I'd lie awake, haunted by the echoes of her pleas for mercy. But every morning, I'd wake up to the same nightmare, trapped in this twisted cycle of violence.

In the end, I couldn't escape Miko's commands. I had become chained to her, following her orders like a doll. She had left me here to strike my electro-infused sword down to the helpless girl every day, for the sake of 'training myself to be stronger'. I kept telling myself that she was just an illusion - nothing more, nothing less.

After a week of observing me, Miko didn't appear before me to watch me kill the girl. She was far away, and she left me to act upon myself to kill the girl as a daily duty. Yet I could still feel her presence, her overwhelming energy tied to me like a rope. Perhaps she had expected me to continue to follow her orders even through her absence - just kill and kill the same girl everyday.

With each passing day, I could feel my sanity become shattered like a mirror, and everytime my sword became an inch close to striking the girl, I whispered something under my breath.

"I'm sorry."

Her response every time was a piercing scream, her protruding eyes staring at mine as she cried until she turned into dust with blood spattering across the ground.

This was my new life. The first chapter.

I was trapped in a twisted dance of torment, unable to break free from Miko's control. Every swing of my sword felt like a betrayal of my own humanity, yet fear continued to trap me in this suffocating box. Darkness filled this small box that I had become contained in, unable to leave. It flooded blood, I couldn't even tell if it was mine or someone else's. I wondered, was everyone outside this box still happy?

Mum, dad, everyone - are you all happy right now? I miss you all, I want to dream about you, but my memory fails me every time.

Kabukimono, I still love you more than anything in this world. I want to chase after you, embrace you, and laugh as we tease each other.

Am I just another forgotten memory to you?

"I miss you." As a sudden burst of emotions travelled to me, I found myself collapsed on the ground. "Do you hate me for wanting to give you my heart?" I faced the night sky as I tried to contain my tears, the crows cawing as if they mocking my helplessness.

As I sat still on the cold ground with the wind mercilessly blowing through my hair, an unfamiliar voice arrived to break my short monologue - a voice that carried a certain sweetness to it, a fragile voice that could only possibly belong to a child.

And a child it was - the girl that I had killed numerous times stood only a few meters away, her eyes not filled with fear, but instead with warmth.

"I miss my parents too... They're on the other side, waiting for me! They're all I have!" Her words, though spoken with a brave smile, trembled with pain, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Master calls us illusions, fated to be used as puppets to be slain a million times. But everything I've seen and felt, there's no other word to describe it other than 'real'."

It was the first time I had heard the girl's voice, aside from her piercing screams as I killed her each day. Miko called her an illusion, as if she was reassuring me that whatever I did to her didn't matter. But the girl's words contradicted that, and a surge of guilt came rushing to my blood. I stared at my hands with fear, realising once again what these hands had done to the helpless girl.