The light portal that had swallowed the girl was tightly closed, leaving a buzzing emptiness in the air.
Arthur still stood there, his chest rising and falling in an unnatural rhythm.
He shifted his gaze to Amelia.
The white-haired girl stood calmly, her ice sword in hand glistening as it reflected the cold heavenly light.
They stared at each other in silence.
Soon after, Arthur's pupils dilated. A cold realization, colder than the ice Amelia created, crept up from his spine to his brain.
Why?
That question exploded in his mind.
Why did I attack that blond girl?
He looked down, staring at his hands. His fingers moved hesitantly, touching the skin of his arm with a careful touch, then pulling away quickly as if shocked by static electricity.
Arthur's forehead furrowed deeply, creating trenches of doubt on his sweat-covered brow. His eyes narrowed, his pupils trembling following subtle changes in his memories that he had never felt before.
He replayed the memories from a few minutes ago.
"I... have been controlled," he whispered, his voice breaking like dry twigs being stepped on.
That was the only explanation his now intact sanity could accept!
Amelia, who had been observing him, smiled. The smile didn't reach her eyes; it was a precise and terrifying curve of her lips.
"Have you finally realized?" her voice flowed melodiously, but carried a sharp mocking tone. "You have a stronger adaptability than the others. Most people need a lifetime to realize that they are just passengers in their own bodies."
Arthur stepped back, nausea hitting his stomach.
"As someone who immediately notices changes around you, and as a token of thanks for your very efficient help earlier," Amelia continued casually, "let me give you a gift."
She raised her right hand. The ice sword she held suddenly cracked. KRAK! The frozen blade shattered on its own, crumbling into thousands of crystal shards that fell back to the mirror floor with a beautiful yet deadly tinkling sound.
"The gift is the truth about my ability."
Amelia stepped forward, her shoes making no sound. "My ability is Sovereign Dictation. I can control anyone I know—their names, their faces—without limitations of space and time. I just need to want them to do something."
She stopped right in front of Arthur, staring straight into the man's soul.
"And the best part? They will feel that their actions make sense. They will rationalize every movement, every murder, every betrayal as if it were their own brilliant idea. When in fact, they are being controlled. Just like you. Just like that girl. Just like this world."
"What...?" Arthur whispered. His voice barely came out, more like a breath caught in a choked throat. His body froze for a moment, paralyzed. He looked at his own palms again—repeatedly, turning them over.
Amelia curved her smile even more. "You're welcome."
She bowed slightly, a gesture of respect filled with painful irony. And in the blink of an eye, the space behind her split. A jade green portal appeared, swirling with chaotic energy, and swallowed her whole.
However, before she completely disappeared, her voice echoed for the last time, cold and emotionless.
"Send my regards to Charles."
Before then, she continued,
"Even though he's dead now."
The portal closed with a soft wush sound, leaving Arthur alone in the silence.
...
Arthur's shoulders rose and fell rapidly, as if he were choking on air that was too thin. He looked back, to the side, everywhere, his eyes moving wildly but never really seeing what was in front of him. His breath was ragged, each inhale sounding like someone holding back a long, painful scream.
Charles.
That name hit him like a sledgehammer. Hearing Amelia's last sentence, he immediately spun around, his eyes sweeping the entire light room with mounting panic.
"Charles! CHARLES!" he shouted, his voice bouncing off the light pillars, returning to him as mocking echoes.
But even though he searched, circling the giant pillars, he still didn't see his friend's figure. There were no signs of life except himself.
At this moment, Arthur's gaze stopped. His eyes caught something in the distance, near one of the dimmest pillars.
He suddenly froze. His feet felt nailed to the mirror floor. His eyes widened, his pupils trembling violently as he recognized the shape lying there.
With heavy steps, as if walking in water, he slowly approached. Each step felt like a century. He hoped his vision was wrong. He hoped it was just another illusion from this cursed place.
He stopped right in front of the figure.
A man lay on his back. His torn ronin cloak was smeared with blood that was now starting to dry and blacken. His face... his unmasked face stared blankly at the golden ceiling. His right eye was destroyed, splitting his face. His remaining left eye was wide open, but there was no light there. Only traces of bloody tears that had dried on his cheek.
It was Charles.
Arthur's knees buckled. He fell, hitting the hard floor with a pitiful thud. He didn't scream. He didn't cry. He just stayed silent, staring at his departed friend's face, trapped in a grief paralysis so deep it surpassed tears.
He stayed there for quite a while, becoming a statue of despair beside the corpse.
...
Suddenly, the reality above Charles's corpse vibrated.
Not a golden light portal, nor a jade green one. This was a dark tear, like black ink spilled on a white painting. From within that darkness, a man stepped out.
He was tall, sturdy. His hair was pitch black. His face was handsome in a disturbing way, and on his lips was a smile that was too perfect, too symmetrical, as if carved by a surgical knife.
He didn't look around in awe. He didn't care about Arthur kneeling. He walked casually, putting both hands in his fabric pants pockets, whistling softly.
His steps stopped when his foot felt an obstruction.
He looked down.
"Oh?"
His eyes widened for a moment, a feigned surprised expression, as he realized that his shiny leather shoe was stepping on the corpse's chest—Charles's.
Then, he smiled again. Wider.
"Oops, sorry," he said lightly, as if he had just stepped on someone's foot in a crowded bus, not stepping on a corpse.
Arthur looked up, his eyes blazing with a mix of confusion and anger, but the man ignored him completely.
The man crouched beside Charles's head. He stared at the ruined face with an unwavering smile, as if admiring a damaged but intriguing work of art.
"As an apology," he whispered, his voice soft but containing a vibration that made the surrounding air cold, "let me give you... a new place."
He extended his pale hand, palm open, and placed it right on Charles's cold forehead.
BZZZTTT!
A sound like exploding static electricity filled the air.
At this moment, a thick dark aura exploded from the man's palm, enveloping Charles's body like a living tar blanket. The black liquid writhed, entering the pores, into the open eye wound, into the stiff mouth.
And he... felt it.
Not as a spectator. But as the subject.
His consciousness was forcibly pulled, snatched from nothingness, and slammed into that turbulent vessel.
The stranger's body began to melt, dissolve, and merge with the corpse below. Bones cracked, flesh shifted. His physical form changed slightly, his features softened, shifted, until resembling Charles—but with a horrifying distortion. His right eye, previously perfect, suddenly split, creating an identical slash wound to Charles's.
"ARGHHH!!!"
The man screamed. It was Charles's voice. No. A new voice. A mixture of both.
He pressed both sides of his head with violently trembling hands. His body staggered, swaying like being hit by unseen ocean waves. His balance was lost. The mirror floor beneath him spun like a top.
His breath was ragged, each inhale feeling like breathing shards of glass. His eyes—one intact, one blind and bleeding—jerked wildly each time flashes of different memories vied for dominance in his mind.
Memories of Earth. Memories of a boring office. CRASH. Memories of a slyly smiling man. Memories of a devil's contract. COLLISION. Furina's crying face. Keqing's hateful face. An unknown woman's smiling face from behind shadows.
He experienced severe disorientation. His brain was like a library on fire, where books fell from shelves and pages mixed on the floor.
Who am I?
Am I Charles? Am I... him?
Selective amnesia hit him. He tried to remember his mother's name, but only white static appeared. He tried to remember his childhood friend's face, but that face was replaced by a cracked fox mask.
His hands clawed at his own hair, pulling hard at the roots as if wanting to remove his skull and extract the clashing foreign thoughts inside. He grimaced, his teeth grinding until they felt like they would break. His knees buckled, and he fell to his knees beside Arthur, who stared at him in confusion.
"DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!"
The scream escaped his throat, a voice that was a combination of two different tones—hoarse and deep, but also smooth and sharp.
He held his head, body bent until his forehead touched the cold floor, while tears fell freely, mixing with blood from his ruined eye. Thousands of foreign shadows battled within him, fighting for control over the soul that had just been roughly stitched back with black thread.
He realized there was a huge black hole in his memory. He knew he had forgotten something important. He forgot who he really was before this second. However, at the same time, the foreign feelings from Charles's soul—his despair, his grudge, his love—still lingered faintly in his mind, like the bitter taste of medicine left on the tongue.
He stepped back, away from Arthur who was frozen. His face paled white; his gaze trembled wildly, staring at his own reflection on the mirror floor. He no longer recognized that face. He wasn't sure who he was being.
"What... happened...?"
At this moment, amid the mental storm that nearly destroyed him, he suddenly felt calm.
Then, he opened his eyes.
And at that moment, the world became clear again. Sharp. Full of color.
At this moment, the sound of footsteps suddenly echoed.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Light footsteps, approaching from behind.
"I realized something was wrong," the voice sounded. A girl's voice. Cold, sharp, and familiar in a painful way.
"So I came back."
Charles felt her presence standing right behind him. Her shadow covered his still-kneeling body. He could smell the scent of blood and ozone emanating from her.
Her face was right above him as he looked up.
Her amethyst eyes stared down, into Charles's ruined eyes.
It was Keqing!
"Have you risen from the dead?" she asked, flatly.
Charles tried to answer, but all he saw was swirling darkness in his eyes. His breath was gasping, cut in half, as if his airway was no longer neatly connected to his new lungs.
"Wait!"
Arthur's shout sounded distant, muffled and distorted as if he were shouting from behind a thick ocean wall. His voice broke.
The muscles in Keqing's arm tensed, her fine veins bulging beneath her porcelain skin.
Charles saw flashes of purple Electro dancing along her sword blade, hissing like snakes ready to strike.
And her eyes. Those amethyst eyes didn't blink. Her sharp oval pupils locked on him.
At this moment, a curved purple line suddenly appeared in the air, splitting the space between them.
Charles felt no pain. Not at first. His nerves were too slow. What he felt was only a sharp cold sensation on his neck, as if a very thin thread of ice had just been pulled through it at the speed of light.
Then, the world around him jerked violently.
The golden ceiling and mirror floor switched places in a confusing and nauseating spin. He felt his body become very light, floating weightless, free from the gravity that had bound him to the earth.
And in that vertigo spin, he saw something that shattered his sanity for the last time.
He saw his own body.
There, kneeling on the cold mirror floor, was a headless body. Its neatly severed neck spurted thick red blood into the air like a horrifying fountain, staining the surrounding light's sanctity with the color of spilled life.
That body—the new body he had just inhabited, the body that was a rough stitch of corpse and the foreign entity that took over—remained upright for an impossible second, as if not yet realizing it was dead.
Before finally, its muscles surrendered to reality.
It slowly, very slowly, toppled to the side like an old tree felled in a silent forest.
THUD.
And then, his head hit the floor.
THUNK.
The world stopped spinning. His view was now tilted, his cheek pressed against the slick cold of the mirror floor. He couldn't blink. He couldn't breathe. His lungs were over there, in the pile of flesh separated from him several meters away. Yet, his consciousness lingered, trapped in that gray pause, forcing him to witness the epilogue of his own execution with torturous clarity.
The blood spurting from his neck had soaked Keqing's face.
The warm red liquid dripped from her chin, from her nose, staining her pale cheeks. Keqing didn't wipe it away. She stood there, amid the blood rain. Her breath was steady, her chest rising and falling slowly.
Arthur, standing a few steps behind her, froze, his hand still extended forward, his mouth open in a silent scream. He couldn't move.
Keqing stared at the sword in her hand. The metal blade was now entirely red, Charles's blood dripping from it, falling to the floor with a rhythmic tik... tik... tik... sound.
Suddenly, Keqing's expression changed. Her brows furrowed deeply, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
At this moment, she suddenly threw the sword.
CLANG!
The sword fell right beside Charles's severed body, vibrating for a moment, clanging loudly on the mirror floor before going still. Its blood-smeared blade now lay just inches from Charles's fading eyes.
Keqing turned around. She turned her back on the corpse. Turned her back on Arthur. Her long purple hair fluttered, its silver-tipped ends now stained dark red.
She walked away, her footsteps echoing in the empty space.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
Charles, or the remnant of his consciousness still attached to his drying retina, watched her go.
Suddenly, Keqing stopped.
She didn't turn fully. She only turned her head slightly, enough to glance over her shoulder. Her amethyst eyes stared straight at Charles's bulging, lifeless eyes. That gaze pierced the remnants of his soul, judging him to the smallest atom, stripping bare all his sins and intentions.
Her lips moved. Her voice was soft, but in this deathly silence, it sounded like thunder striking right at his remaining ear.
"Disgusting."
...
Now, there was only Charles.
Only a severed head. A severed body. And a spreading pool of blood on the mirror floor.
His consciousness began to fade. An absolute cold started wrapping his mind, shutting down the remaining memories one by one.
Is this the end?
Is this what it feels like to cease existing?
It felt... lonely. It felt like sinking to the deepest ocean floor with no hope of returning to the surface.
Darkness ate at the edges of his vision, leaving only a single point of light that grew dimmer.
However, in the final seconds before the light went out completely, Charles felt something strange.
It was... a pull!
His blood. The blood pooling on the mirror floor, moved!
The blood... was alive!
The thick red liquid vibrated, as if boiling, driven by something invisible. It didn't seep into the floor's cracks. Instead, it began to flow, defying physics, moving like thousands of tiny red worms with a single purpose.
It moved toward the sword.
The sword Keqing had thrown. The sword that had beheaded him!
Charles watched—with vision growing blurrier and grayer, as if watching an old burning film—how his blood crawled up the sword blade. The dull silver metal seemed to absorb it, drinking it greedily like dry earth drinking rain.
At this moment, the sword blade began to glow.
It glowed with a dark red light. Blood red.
Sin will end sin.
THE END
...
A/N: Finally! After a long journey, this story has finally reached its conclusion! I wanted to create a tragic ending for the protagonist who had committed many sins. And this is how it ends... to be honest, I'm still thinking about a sequel. Of course, it will be related to the title of this fanfic... but it seems like I won't be continuing the story on Webnovel. Please check Pâtreon for the continuation of the story. There aren't many chapters, maybe around 3 to 5 chapters... well, I suppose it's related to the ending of this story.
It's been great being with you all this time... Honestly, this is the first time I've finished a story, even if it's just fan fiction... and I think this story is pretty messy, especially in volumes 2 and 3... euh, there are still many flaws, so I need to improve it in the future, I mean for the next story. At least this is a good start for an amateur writer like me, haha... I'm just trying to cheer myself up, by the way.
However, I'm glad you've read this story to the end. That means you're crazy enough to waste your time reading this terrible story xD But I still appreciate it.
Well then, that's all for now. See you next time!