CHAPTER THIRTY

With each rough exhale, Tatsuya gathered his resolve. A hint of anticipation lingered in the air—as if it knew that something was about to change—and it whispered softly to him, even as he slowly generated localised movements around his form, caressing the surroundings with its delicate, calm touch.

As he took a few tentative steps towards her, a subtle shift occurred. The air seemed to awaken, and as he started picking up speed, the once-still atmosphere transformed into a dance of currents, swirling and twirling in harmony with his momentum.

He shoved himself off with everything he had, yielding to his instincts and finding his feet pounding steadily along the smooth surface of the stage, his eyes glued to Farah—and, as the air propelled him further with an exhilarating rush, there came a sound of an explosion, the feeling of the sound barrier breaking under his feet.

However, in that instant, before he reached her, his eyes closed of their own accord. He didn't want to see the light leave her eyes.

A sickening crunch followed shortly after, and the roar of the crowd thundered through the air, filling his ears with a symphony of cheers and applause. In the darkness behind his closed eyes, images flickered like fragments of a broken mirror, reflecting the face of the woman he had killed—her severed dreams, aspirations, and connections.

It was almost surreal.

Time itself had become irrelevant; the seconds could have been hours, or hours mere seconds— yet, unlike before, he felt nothing; no pity or shame, nor did he feel happy or relieved. He had not expected it to feel good per se, but he had thought there would be something at least. There was no sudden sickness or loss of breath. No sense of emptiness or gnawing guilt. It was just quiet.

Instead, all Tatsuya could think about was the blood and bits of gore that splattered on him. The smell was thick, not easily forgotten, and he could feel it on his hands, his chest, his face; warm, like placing a hand near a fire. He knew it didn't belong to him, but it might as well, for he could feel it dripping from his person, further darkening the material of his clothes.

He opened his eyes to see that she had been knocked several paces back in the process; she skidded to a stop on her ass, her body still amazingly upright, and her arms reached up, almost as if she was about to reflexively feel for the remains of her head, albeit feebly.

Eventually, her trembling hands gradually settled down to her sides, and her body folded, falling fairly gently on her side with a thump, blood gushing from her wounds and pooling beneath her.

It hit him. She was dead. Gone.

His arms collapsed from underneath him, and he sat on the ground, his hair hung in sweat-soaked hanks like a curtain, stray strands plastered to his face. When the sound began, rumbling up from his inner core and bursting through his mouth, he was unsure whether he was laughing or crying. It was wavering and shaky, but there was some musical tonality to it, so he decided it must be laughter—though there was a keening in it, so it might as well be crying, too.

As the adrenaline wore off and his tattered body made its state known to him, Tatsuya’s mind wandered back to when he had been mistaken for a corpse. The unsettling experience had shaken him to the core, forcing him to confront his mortality and reevaluate his existence, and caused him to question if his life's purpose was worth it. Now, as he lay on the stage, he pondered the question anew.

Would all the pain and death be worth it if he killed Kuro? A pity he didn't think that was possible again.

There was a ringing in his ears that had not faded since his laughter was cut off by loud coughs—which had quickly risen in intensity, turning into an aggressive hacking intermingled with wet sputtering—and from his bloodied lips, the faintest breath escaped. His heart was pounding hard enough that it should have hurt, but all he could feel was a muted, rhythmic pulsing that sounded as washed out as everything else.

“...killed you…”

Kuro stood beside his downed form, but Tatsuya could barely hear what the bastard was saying. He was somewhere else. In his own world, trapped inside his head—and instead of trying to focus, he felt his head loll back slightly, canting his already blurry vision into an angle that rendered the world unrecognisable.

He moved his eyes away from his surroundings and looked at the sky, watching the white blobs float with a playful buoyancy and paint a mesmerising tapestry of shifting shapes. He found himself imagining his ascension toward them, his passage into the mist of nothingness, and as he became aware of his will to live, he felt it dissolve into the air. He sensed an odd chill start to envelop his skin, and he closed his eyes to give himself to the endless sleep.

A familiar clean, crisp smell filled his nose, felt static up his arm, and a rousing panic struck Tatsuya, jolting his eyes open to the sight of lightning dancing upon the bastard’s upturned palms. Kuro was crouched beside him, bent over slightly, and the reality of said man’s body looking so close in his vulnerable state was a douse of cold water, causing his heart to leap into his mouth.

The display of power simultaneously sent terror stabbing through Tatsuya and threatened to resurface his anger. He tried to talk, to curse at the one that started this shitstorm of a chapter in his life, but it came out sounding more like a sigh. A low, harsh-sounding, pain-wracked sigh.

He struggled to lift his body, but only his head moved, so, with a grimace, he stopped. Even if he was somehow able to push himself past his body’s limit and attack the bastard, it was too late to do so, as he was already fading away.

“Kuro…” With what he felt were his last few seconds of consciousness, he summoned every hit of strength and determination left to him and spoke to the bastard still crouched beside him. At first, Tatauya’s voice was a mere thread of sound, so he strained to make it louder, and thankfully Kuro met his gaze with a questioning look. "I promise I’ll kill you… I promise…”

He tried to finish his statement, but already his eyelids had grown heavy once more. With a rush of panic so strong it almost countered the effect of exhaustion, he realised he was going to draw his last breath while Kuro remained alive.

He had failed.

The weight of those words bore down upon him, and if he could, he would have slumped further into the worn wood beneath him. The very air seemed to close in, suffocating him with a sense of despair that was hard to shake off. He had poured his heart and soul into his endeavour, but now, as he stared unblinking at the bastard, the bitter taste of failure lingered on his tongue.

Self-blame swirled in his mind, tormenting him with its relentless whispers. Had he been too naïve? Not ruthless enough? Did his ambition prove greater than his ability?

He didn't know, and he doubted he would be able to get the answers he sought. There was nothing he could do to save himself; the chill had returned—or it was always there in the background, biding its time—gripping his body in its hold and rapidly draining the last bit of heat he had left. Even his turbulent emotions were gone, replaced by a profound sense of peace. It was as though the weight of a lifetime's experiences had been lifted, leaving him feeling light and unburdened.

“I'm a man of my word. You fulfilled your end of the deal, and I've decided to grant your request. You will be healed and given time to rest, during which a date will be set, and on that day, we will meet in single combat...”

He stopped listening, stopped thinking, stopped doing anything, really, except feeling, or trying not to feel, the gentle release within him. His mind tried to resist, tried to scream out loud no to death, that he still had to fulfil his life’s purpose, but he was a mere human and, thus, unable to resist the mandate of the primordial concept. If he had known, he would have tried harder to stop himself from—

He couldn’t complete the thought. His world turned dark.