This was a Story where only particular humans could reach, specially picked by the Teller as if shopping for a perfect apple. Ripe to eat.
Far too many Tellers enjoyed toying with humans, and even weaker ones found success in their killings and games. It didn't take strength to terrorize; it took an utter disregard of life.
A Teller that could sweep Lucas away under Elias' watch—that was one on an entirely other level.
Elias paced the white paved streets under the vortex of black above, fake night skies that held no light. A shadow approached him, a delirious man murmuring and giggling to himself.
A madness learned in the Stories, perhaps. Elias didn't care, ignoring the man.
Then, the man swung a blade over giddily, and Elias pivoted, eyes a frosted glow of blue. Strings spun out of his fingertips, woven from skin and soul, wrapping around the attacker's arm.
In a second, a severed limb lay on the streets, blood-strewn.
A guttural howl echoed.
Elias continued without turning back. Be colder, be stronger. Be everything that isn't human, everything that forsakes yourself.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, any hint of light disappeared, leaving them dull and dark. A still lake, undisturbed, with depths too deep to comprehend.
The black coat around his shoulders began to warp, the ends fraying and twirling like trailing, wisping shadows or the dark plume of black flames following his wake. The jacket hung over him like a second skin.
He'd become something else, something not himself, a long time ago. In the short duration he had, teasing and observing Lucas, slotting into the group of desperate humans, he'd forgotten that.
The fact that he was no longer human.
And it would be a terrible pity if his name, finally spoken aloud after so long, would become buried again.
He could see it.
That he'd manipulated his ability past what he could control, and that the consequence had been a loss of self and extreme agony. He felt the pain crawl up his skin, sitting underneath in waiting.
He knew it. The inevitable. Where he would stand eventually, and where Lucas would. It was all predestined, a recurring fate appearing once again.
But none of the what-ifs or anything else mattered.
If Lucas died, his name would become buried. Selfishly, he refused to allow it.
If Lucas failed, he would also perish. Gone with the tides of the End's Delusion. His body was hardly sustained by fine threads that were on the verge of snapping, a weakening mind both pathetic and useless.
The most powerful Catalyst?
No, he was a mere human who couldn't resist death in the end.
He arrived back where Kane paced impatiently, with an eagerness to dash off along the dangerous streets. Sylvia had revealed herself, but said nothing as she kept to the side.
Wren tapped the ground with frustration. Hearing Elias' approach, she quickly asked, "Did you find anything?"
However, seeing his appearance, stripped of the leisure mask of humanity, she frowned. "What the hell is with the get-up? It isn't the time to cosplay."
"I didn't find—"
Then he heard it. A whisper by his ears, a shrill and playful laughter that bordered between a siren's singing and nails grating on a chalkboard.
He spun around, grasping onto the sound and refusing to let go.
"It's you." He said out loud, knowing that the owner could hear him, and he her. He listened closely and heard the tumbling wind from a faraway distance.
'Will you become a prince in shining armour, oh everlasting catalyst?'
Wren frowned, raising herself off the ground. "What? Are you talking to me? No, where are you looking? Hey, bastard? Hello?"
Elias realized, in the way his ears jerked, and his stomach dropped at the sound of laughter, dread filling the empty cavity. The way he felt ill to the roots of his body, and scared in a way he hadn't in many, many years.
Lucas could not, would not die. He couldn't allow it.
He was beginning to realize something, an impossible feeling that tunneled into his mind and refused to be ignored. He was realizing it, but it wasn't the time to fully unravel it.
He followed the voice, like a man lost in alcohol, floating down the streets. Wren called out after him, and he couldn't care less.
The group exchanged looks and rushed after him.
They followed him, past huddled and bloodied bodies on the streets, mangled humans both young and old peering with their hair standing on the edge, tension in their weary bones.
Nora covered her mouth and looked away. Kane grimaced, his hand twitching to help, to do something rather than just watch.
Adelaide strode with the elegance and indifference of a heiress, dragging Julian closely behind so he wouldn't stare too long. If they couldn't even save their companion, could they even think about helping anybody else?
They move past the bone-carved houses, ominous where they stood with broken windows and the odor of rotten flesh wafting from the inside.
At the end, a towering bell tower waited, an open arch welcoming them all inside with no door to lock them out, no windows to peer inside. Sleek, marble stairs made their way to the top.
There was no choice.
Elias didn't hesitate to climb the stairs, and the others quickly fell behind him. Narrow and fragile steps, as if they could shatter with the weight at any moment.
Julian peered over the edge as they went higher and gulped loudly.
Adelaide shook her head, but sweat beaded her forehead as she trailed behind.
The top of the bell tower awaited, so close in their reach. A platform that beheld the city of the dead and the tortured, witnessing everything for what it was.
As they neared the top, Nora stumbled. She tripped, not on a step or air, but because of a sharp pain that bit into her arms as if somebody were digging a sharpened pencil through her skin.
Her hand slammed into a step, and she winced, blinking away her surprise as she pulled away. Her pale blue eyes widened, horrified.
Black scribbled wrote themselves over her hands, up her arms. Inked in a permanence that threatened death. Wren had rushed forward, gritting her teeth when she saw the words, impossible to read, in dense scribbles along the woman's pale arms.
"It's too soon. It hasn't even been a day—how can that be fair?"
Adelaide hovered nearby grimly, and Sylvia stepped beside the pair of women. Coldly, she reminded, "Time doesn't flow the same here."
"No kidding," snapped Wren. "You didn't even have a chance. God, Nora."
Nora smiled weakly. "It'll be fine."
Sylvia tilted her head, golden curls falling over her shoulders. Her eyes remained unfeeling, carved of ice. "You made your choice. To give in to death, rather than to resist to the end. "
Nora held a hand out to stop Wren from lunging. "You're right." She said slowly, quietly as she stumbled to stand. Before anybody could say a word, she pulled out her gun and pressed it against her temple.
Her finger patiently waited at the trigger, and she smiled.
"I believe the only way to remain myself is to kill myself here and now, rather than to succumb to the End's Delusion's games."
Wren raised her hands carefully, horrified. "Nora. Nora, what're you doing?"
The woman, always smiling and gentle, held the silver-crested gun with her delicate hands, once accustomed to holding simple pens and paper.
A curled index finger, resting on the trigger—a trigger she once never dared to pull, now familiar in her hands as if connected to her nerves and skin.
Elias glanced back once, a single look for the woman who was Lucas' companion from beginning to end, and then continued up the stairs. He could have no hesitation when another life hung at death's door.
Kane froze, a few steps up, swallowing harshly. Stuck between a decision, he tore his gaze away and then back, nodding once painfully.
It was his farewell.
Only five remained. Adelaide held Julian back, despite his muscular body. It wasn't their place to interfere in the conflict of companions that had endured Stories together. She pulled the youth to follow Kane and Elias.
Julian let out a choked sob as he passed. "Nora."
The woman only smiled.
Then, there were only three.
With the absence of a large crowd, Nora shuddered, feeling the cold of the muzzle. A light press would relieve her of all worries in an instant, because the dead couldn't regret. The dead could do nothing but sleep.
But she wasn't brave, and she wasn't strong. She wasn't anything special at all.
Nora Nilsen was only human.
A sob escaped her light pink lips, and tears streamed down and blurred her vision. She smiled, choked. "I chose to save Lucas. I chose him because without him, I don't think any of us have the power to overcome the End's Delusion. I can't regret it, because regretting does nothing."
She swallowed, her hand shaking. "But how can I want to die, when I haven't seen the sun in so long, haven't learned to appreciate the breath of fresh air or the strangers that passed me in the street, now dead? I'll die—but I don't want to die."
Her miserable, weak fears stumbled out in an instant. She didn't want to be remembered as a mess, as a wailing woman with nothing to her name.
But she was scared.
She didn't want to die.
The gun slipped from her aching fingers, thudding to the ground as her body collapsed. Wren jumped up to catch her, cradling the narrow shoulders, the body fated to die in perhaps minutes, hours, or days.
Sylvia's expression didn't change. She went over to where the gun fell, picking it up calmly. She raised her arm, pointing it at Nora's shivering body, the dense cluster of scribbles growing darker, spreading further.
Ready to shatter her existence, reduce her to nothing but a memory of lines on a page.
Wren snapped her head up, glaring. It was the eyes of a beast, threatening and deadly, protecting the only thing they cared for. "Pull the trigger, go on. I'll see to it, I swear to you, that the only man you could ever love ends up dead at your feet."
Sylvia stiffened at the mention of Alastair, standing at the edge of the spiraling stairs. One shuffle to the side, and she would plummet to the bottom.
Coldness frosted her expression. "Then kill him," she said icily. "His life can't threaten my actions. It's natural, just as breathing, that should he die, I'll die as well. I can't prevent that, but I won't stop making my own choices either."
Her hand dropped to the side, and she turned her gaze away, striding past. "It was a pleasure, Miss Nora."
She had considered it. That it would be a mercy to shoot Nora, to have her die at by a human's hand, and not the hypocritical nature of the End's Delusion.
But Nora had made her choice.
And Sylvia would respect it, as she respected the woman she'd come to learn.
On the roof, covered by the ivory arch where the large bell hung, its ringing had long faded. Down below were the dozen neat rows of houses, all identical and similar, like a maze that promised death.
The voice continued to call for Elias, taunting, teasing.
'How much do you dare sacrifice, oh Catalyst who clings to humanity? Your life? Your pride? Everything that makes you as you are?'
"My faith." Elias tilted his chin to the black sky, a steady gaze ahead. "Everything that makes me who I am, for the sake of saving that miserable sponge."
'Do you want to save him to feel better? Because he needs you? Because he's lonely? Do you want to play the saviour again, old hero?'
Elias laughed, a sharp and sardonic hitch of his voice. "Save him? It's not he who needs me, but the other way around. I need Lucas Silvius to keep me human. I need him to keep me bound to earth."
'How precious, your words of devotion are. Announcing it to the public.'
"Am I supposed to be ashamed of loving somebody?"
The voice laughed, a jingle that made Elias incomparably uncomfortable. Kane reached the top, his hair blowing in the wind as he stared at Elias' back, facing the skies.
"Elias. Who are you talking to?"
Elias tilted his head back. "Nobody special. She sounds like a miserable woman with a tragic past—a common thing, I guarantee."
Kane frowned, shuddering. The wind wasn't cold, but it chilled him to his core. He peered down below, the houses so far away. He didn't remember walking up that many steps, but the distance between the top and the ground seemed a universe apart.
The doctor had heard Elias' confession, spoken to the air.
"...What you said. Did you mean it?"
Elias turned, darkness cloaked and floating around his body, darker than the gloom of Tartarus. His deep blue eyes curved.
"Of course."
'Then jump.'
The voice hissed, and Elias tilted his head slightly to listen, and a smile spread across his lips as he spread his arms. It was a challenge, he supposed, to risk his life and prove that he would really give up everything.
But this was nothing.
And Kane realized it then, the extent of the man's resolve and the difference between them. Because Kane, he wouldn't hesitate to jump.
Kane watched, the figure of a falling man reflected in his charcoal eyes.
He would fall back gracefully and expect death to steal him. Just as any human would expect, for their bodies were made of mere skin and bones, all too easy to break and bruise.
But Elias, he fell backwards with a burn of dark determination inscribed in his gaze, in his every move. He jumped with the intention of not sacrificing, but knowing he would find Lucas no matter what he did, wherever he went.
He had unshakable faith that he would find Lucas.
The man, cruel and indifferent to every person standing on the roof with him, fell backwards as shadows billowed around him like fluttering wings.