Chapter 484: Little Sadie
“Little Sadie? No… no…”
The old woman rushed forward. She moved fast, and yet it almost looked like she was straining against her entire body to move as slowly as possible.
Even so, she crossed a distance of several ters in her old age in what could have only been less than a fraction of the blink of an eye.
She hurried to bend down, picking up Sadie’s little hand. But it wasn’t long before a heart-wrenching cry left her lips.
Things shouldn’t be like this. It should never be like this. She was so very talented, she had her whole life ahead of her—how could she possibly die like this?
So abruptly? So without reason?
In the corner, the Dark Spirit seed to droop, falling to the ground like a foggy sli. Its body spread out, and it too began to quiver, shaking and crying out tears that made the entire cottage high in the mountains turn into a land of darkness.
“Grand Elder Macie!”
There was a rush at the door, and another woman ran in. She was much older than Sadie, but far younger than the Grand Elder. She seed a few years shy of truly maturing and becoming wise, but well past her teenage years as well.
When she saw the tear-stricken face of the old woman and the pale expression of little Sadie, the horror of realization crossed her features. She froze in place, all the blood draining from her face, her body shaking from head to toe.
The shudder shook her to the core, her body suddenly no longer listening to her in the slightest.
Grand Elder Macie’s cries didn’t stop. She held onto Sadie’s little hand so delicately, and yet far more firmly than she ever would before, sohow hoping that if she pinched just a little bit harder, the little girl would yelp in pain and be wrenched from the wretched palms of the underworld.
Unfortunately, the hope of Sadie waking wasn’t there. She was long gone.
**
“Please… please…”
They lost the strength even to properly plead. Their once complete sentences beca fashioned in pain and chopped at their ends. Their minds seed to short-circuit with every attempt at a complete thought.
All they could feel was despair, helpless as the world around them collapsed. But Theron just stood there. He hardly seed to even be breathing, his entire focus on their bodies even as the laws of the continent ceased to make sense.
It wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough.
One flash of mories after another touched his mind, but no matter what he did to Garethon, no matter how he forced the latter’s face to twist in horror and drown in sniveling snot, it didn’t fill the pit in him.
Theron reached forward, his palm almost caressing the exposed, beating heart of Garethon, looking him in the eye as though to find sothing he was looking for.
He saw it all. He saw the remorse, the helplessness, the regret.
At first, it hadn’t been there. This was a cultivator who had been through countless rounds of torture himself, one Tribulation after another threatening to take his life.
The pain he had been through was sothing most mortals couldn’t fathom. Pain wasn’t what he feared—or so he thought. What he had originally wanted to avoid at all costs was death.
He had powered through so much just for the chance to stand at a level all his own, to break the glass ceiling of this world and stand on the precipice of sothing more, sothing greater.
He didn’t want to fall here, not when he was so close, not when he could sll freedom.
But then Theron continued. So slow, so diligent, so observant. He paid attention to everything that made him twitch—every slight bit of discomfort, which nerves of his were long frayed and seasoned, versus those that were more akin to newborn calves.
He paid attention to which ones had suppressive effects on each other, and which ones enhanced the pain felt by one another.
He played him practically like an instrunt.
The much older Gian broke far earlier. His body was so frail. He had given up everything for this day, even his youth. This was his final gamble—all he was waiting for was the opportunity to rge with Garethon once more.
But there was a reason Garethon called him uncle. The latter wasn’t fully aware of things, and the two had spent so long apart that they were essentially two different existences. Garethon wouldn’t be so easily open to rging because his mories would just be swallowed up by Gian, and he would effectively die just the sa.
However, it was also because of all the experiences of the previous Garethons that Gian had absorbed that he knew…
That he knew right from the start there was no getting out of this…
That this was just how his life would end…
At first, he had laughed, accepting his fate, thinking maybe his nonchalance would cause things to end quicker.
They didn’t.
When Theron reached out and pald his heart as well, Gian shivered from head to toe. His legs were already covered in piss and shit, his bowels having long vacated what was left of his insides.
His intestines hung low, and his heart was practically the only organ left in the place it originated from.
“The beating of these hearts…” Theron spoke his first words—so calm, so chilling. “…They’ve changed so much in the previous hours. But they must have been so calm with every life you took, every family you sched against.
“But I… I am truly not satisfied. It’s just not enough to put you through all of this. This torture… it isn’t making feel like I want to feel. Why is that?” Theron asked as though he really expected an answer from them.
And then, he took out a needle and a ball of twine.
The mont the two saw it, their exposed hearts trembled once again.
Reviews
All reviews (0)