Noah staggered, his breath shallow and ragged, blood dribbling from his lips like threads of ink spilled across skin.
The black energy was still pulsing in his arms, an unbearable heat crawling through his veins, but his mind—his mind—was burning faster than the infection spreading through him.
That dagger... that energy… I've seen it before.
A grim recognition dawned, slow and suffocating.
Not in this world.
No, it was back when he was nothing more than a player watching pixels move, where the battles were scripted and the fates preordained.
This ability… this blade...
He could still rember the ga's later chapters—Xavier, the main character, wielding a blade.
A sword that could cut through the thickest of skins and have their bodies rapture.
This dagger… it wasn't that sword yet.
But it was the prototype.
The sa cursed tal, the sa gluttonous aura.
He rembered how Xavier had reforged it after a hidden route where the protagonist loses control, where his light is swallowed by his bloodline.
Noah's eyes widened, vision pulsing. His heart skipped a beat.
He muttered aloud, "Don't tell …"
His voice barely carried.
It didn't need to.
It was for him.
His mind spiraled backward, retracing the events of the original ga.
Xavier, the bright-eyed orphan.
A boy raised by a kind, naless old woman in a countryside town, who was always sick but never explained why.
A boy with no past, no known origin.
A "blank slate" for players to project onto.
But she wasn't just a kind old lady, was she?
She had known how to suppress curses.
She had hidden Xavier from those seeking his blood.
She had taught him to "never speak his true na."
She wasn't a nobody… she was hiding soone.
His breath caught in his throat.
Xavier... wasn't just so miracle commoner. He was the hidden variable. The untraceable anomaly...
A truth settled in, slow and vile:
Xavier... was a Krasis.
Illegitimate, perhaps. Or a bastard born during the fall.
A child smuggled out of the collapsing House by a loyal hand.
Maybe even the true heir—blood of the highborn darkness, disguised as a nobody.
And then…
It all clicked.
That's why, in the final route, he turns. That's why Xavier—the hero—ends up as the villain. The final boss. The one the world couldn't contain.
Noah's thoughts slamd into place like thunderheads colliding.
The gentle boy who helped everyone.
The chosen one.
The light.
He was never ant to stay good.
"The Krasis family was a dark House…" Noah murmured aloud, his voice shaking now—not from pain, but from revelation.
"Explains how the very main character in the ga turned out to be the villain in the end…"
The ga never revealed it directly.
But being in the novel all the signs were now there—the madness.
'How fare did the ga developers go as to switch stories? and omitting important details and plots as well...'
Noah thought.
It was all absurd to him.
"You two…" Noah's voice was a whisper, raspy, almost amused.
Blood trailed from the corner of his lips as he smiled—not with warmth, but with venomous calm.
"You just happened to appear at the perfect ti…"
His eyes fluttered shut for a mont, breath steadying through the iron fog of pain.
A sound echoed through the space—a sharp crack, like ice splintering across glass.
The very air around him dropped several degrees, frost blooming beneath his feet.
Then—the spear materialized, a long, jagged shard of translucent ice wreathed in a thin mist of frozen breath.
Noah reached up, undoing the black tie from around his collar, and wrapped it tightly around his forearm, binding the spear to his flesh, bone to shaft, sinew to soul.
The fabric soaked red almost imdiately.
He didn't flinch.
His grip on the weapon was like iron—he wouldn't let it go. He wouldn't allow himself to.
"Co," he murmured, voice sharp as a frostbitten blade. His eyes opened, and they glead with a lethal serenity.
"I'll kill you… just like I did your other in the previous route."
Elira's expression twisted—not with fear, but fascination.
That sick delight that always colored her when blood was in the air.
Her dagger pulsed faintly at her side, as if recognizing an old enemy.
"Oh~?" she cooed.
"You've changed. That look in your eyes…"
Then she tilted her head and grinned wide, too wide.
"But tell —how has life been, Noah? At the Academy?"
Her tone was mockery wrapped in silk, taunting cruelty behind a childlike curiosity.
"And what about your fiancée?" Her lips curled.
"That poor, innocent girl."
Noah didn't move.
Elira stepped forward slowly, whispering like a blade sliding against a throat.
"Does she know?"
Her voice lowered to a purr.
"That the man she's engaged to… killed his own father?"
Noah's pupils dilated.
Sothing cracked inside his chest.
Suddenly—
A mory clawed its way to the surface.
He was younger. Smaller hands. Smaller fra. Breathing ragged, his eyes red with terror and sothing deeper—sothing irreversible.
Maya, younger too—tucked beneath a bed, hands over her mouth to stop her sobbing.
And him—standing, a bloodstained knife in his hand, the room painted in a chaos of red. The walls. The floor. The ceiling.
It hadn't been a dream.
Noah's fingers tightened on the spear until his knuckles went white.
A drop of water sizzled at his feet—it wasn't lting ice. It was sweat from his palm boiling in the frost-chilled air.
He took a breath in. The cold followed.
Another breath. The frost deepened.
Then he opened his mouth.
And the world grew still.
His voice was not loud. It was precise. Icy. asured.
Every word carved from a frozen pit of rage, deeper than hatred, older than vengeance.
"Considering you have brought up that specific day..."
His tone dropped lower.
"Since I was a child… the two of you have pissed off more tis than I can count."
His grip flexed again. The spear pulsed in his palm, craving blood.
"Dogs. That's all you ever were. Snarling mutts at my father's heel."
He took a step forward, the frost cracking beneath his feet like glass under pressure.
"You followed his orders. You licked his boots. And when it all collapsed, you crawled into the Ashbourne na like parasites."
He didn't blink. Not once.
"And now... you dare bring up that day?"
A thin sheen of ice was forming across the floor, spreading outward in jagged, sharp veins.
"You know, I've carried a lot of guilt since that night. But now… seeing your faces again…"
His eyes flashed, not with light—but with murder.
"It's not guilt I feel anymore."
He exhaled.
The cold deepened.
"It's despise."
Another step. The spear lowered slightly, as if preparing for a charge.
"You sicken .
The both of you. You always have."
His smile returned, but there was nothing human behind it.
"I should've killed you that day."
Silence.
Then—
"No… I should've made it last."
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