Chapter 245
The change was triggered by a sight that was impossible for Erusha to ignore.
From within, he witnessed Theo interacting with the two pillars of the world he himself had once avoided with trembling fear.
Erietta, the primadonna who more often let silence speak on her behalf—present like a sword forever poised to be raised.
And Aldraya, a calm figure who rarely spoke unless the situation truly demanded it, radiating a sacred serenity that inspired dread rather than comfort.
In the past, merely gazing at them from afar had been enough to mix Erusha's lust with a crushing sense of shame.
Yet Theo approached them not with desire or fear, but with a cold, analytical courtesy, a composure that felt almost natural.
Theo conversed with them like fellow colleagues, discussing tactics, philosophies of freedom, and the meaning of liberty—things that had never once crossed the mind of Erusha, the devotee of shallow pleasures.
Erusha stood stunned as he watched the two women he had deemed untouchable respond to Theo with seriousness, and even a certain respect reflected in their eyes.
A new and confusing reality began to creep in.
Perhaps there existed another way to "rule" this world.
Not through coins or coercion, but through knowledge and the play of the mind.
The true turning point, the one that caused Erusha's resistance to melt into bitter acceptance, came instead from Theo's darker side.
Erusha realized that the level of "depravity" Theo committed while using his body existed on an entirely different stratum.
This was no longer about flirting with barmaids or extorting merchants.
Theo, with the coldness of a writer who viewed characters merely as narrative objects, carried out deep and cruel psychological manipulation.
He imprisoned a woman in a psychiatric hospital.
Not with brute force, but with words and carefully engineered scenarios that shattered her sanity.
The victim was violated not only physically, but mentally, her soul torn apart down to its very roots.
To Erusha, who had always considered himself a scoundrel, this was madness of the highest order.
His own wickedness suddenly felt shallow and childish, like crayon scribbles on a wall compared to the painting of cruelty Theo presented.
There was something far more terrifying than lust.
A cold intellect that used evil itself as a tool for narrative experimentation.
"His presence wasn't merely a curse.
That day—when my consciousness was seized, when this body was no longer fully mine—might not have been the unluckiest day of my life.
Because it was from that moment that I was forced to face my own reflection."
Slowly, amid the fading ripples of rage, a new awareness began to seep in like water trickling through cracks in stone.
Erusha, trapped in the dark corner of his own consciousness, began to view Theo's presence through a different lens.
He realized that the day a foreign soul invaded and seized control of his body might not have been the worst day of his reckless life.
A strange paradox revealed itself.
The invader had, in fact, opened the prison of perception that had confined him all along.
Behind the chaos and violation, a potential he had never explored was laid bare.
A way of interacting with the world far more complex, far more dangerous, and yet far more alluring.
The true enlightenment, the one that pierced straight to the core of his existence, came from observing Theo's own crimes.
Erusha watched, with a tangled mix of revulsion and deep fascination, as Theo committed sexual crimes using their shared body.
These were no longer impulsive acts driven by blind lust, as Erusha himself had once done.
Theo approached them like an artist curating an exhibition of cruelty.
Each victim was chosen with precision.
Every word was measured like poison.
Each stage of manipulation was designed to strip away not only clothing, but dignity, sanity, and self-worth.
Theo did not break social norms.
He twisted them.
He turned them into snares, using society's expectations as tools to imprison his victims even more deeply.
The woman he confined to a psychiatric hospital was one of many masterpieces of this method, proof that evil could be an intellectual construct capable of total destruction.
In those moments, Erusha was enlightened.
He understood that he had not been lacking a moral compass.
He had simply never grasped how deep the abyss of the human soul could go.
A life filled with shallow pleasures and petty transgressions suddenly felt painfully naïve.
Theo was his darker, sharper shadow, unbound by restraint.
Theo was the embodiment of a madness so systematic that it disregarded norms entirely.
Rather than rejecting them, he treated norms like a tactician treats a battlefield—something to be understood, manipulated, and ultimately weaponized for conquest.
Theo's chaos was not wild chaos, but directed chaos.
And that made it far more terrifying.
"In an instant, he took everything—this body, this consciousness, even the name Erusha itself.
Of course I was angry.
Of course I was disgusted, reduced to nothing more than a vessel with no right to speak."
Hssshhhh!
"But after seeing what he did through my body—every depraved, bastardly, shameless act, the way he hurled corruption forward with full awareness—I lost my footing.
More precisely, I no longer knew how to respond."
Fhooooh!
"Should I laugh now?
Or postpone it—because it's far too absurd to accept all at once?"
Back in the present, within the cave's silence illuminated only by the unnatural glow of two differently colored pairs of eyes, the atmospheric pressure seemed to shift.
After the long series of confessions exposing their inner war, Theo deliberately withdrew his consciousness behind the stage.
He yielded that stage, if only temporarily, to the rightful owner of the voice and the body.
Erusha Birtash.
The air that had once been filled with analytical tension between Theo and Aldraya now turned more organic, more fragile, saturated with raw emotion.
Erusha, now once again fully in control of the vocal cords and facial expressions that had long served as Theo's instruments, drew in a deep breath.
That breath sounded different.
Heavier.
More human.
And laden with a burden he had carried for far too long.
His eyes, glowing with vivid pink light, looked at Aldraya.
Yet their gaze no longer carried the sharpness of an observer or the depth of a planner.
What remained was profound exhaustion, deep confusion, and an irrepressible bitter irony.
He spoke, and the voice was unmistakably Erusha's own, though tempered by the shared experiences that had eroded his childishness.
He once again acknowledged how, at the beginning, Theo's presence had been an existential disaster.
The sense of being cheated, robbed, and rendered powerless within his own body was the deepest of first wounds.
But now, that admission was delivered in a flatter tone, more like an accepted fact than a blazing complaint.
Then he reached the core of his most complex confusion.
Before Aldraya, who listened with an undisturbed gaze, he confessed that after witnessing all the "depraved and bastardly" behavior Theo enacted through his body, he had truly lost his sense of direction.
Caught between fascination and horror.
Between disgust and admiration.
He expressed that confusion through a question that was, in truth, an admission of surrender.
Whether he should laugh now, or postpone it for a while.
The question sought no answer.
It merely reflected his total disorientation.
Laugh, because Theo had dragged him beyond boundaries he never believed existed, showing him the darkest and most powerful version of himself.
Or postpone it, because he was still afraid.
Still unfamiliar with the monster he had now begun to accept as a part of himself.
To be continued…