(Warning. This chapter depicts self harm and mutilation.)

"How wonderful!" Kraim crooned, clasping Luke's side if only to steady him. "I knew you could do it, Thing of Eyes and Teeth." A look of greed twisted up his face as he stared at his body hungrily, admiring how the knight breathed once again.

Xoris could only manage to stare, his sword clattering to the floor. It was him. He was alive again. He wanted to embrace him, he wanted to run. It was the best thing he had ever done, he was a monster. Tears flowed from him while a smile filled his face. "Luke... It's you! I-"

He gave up, tossing the words aside to run up to him, wrapping his arms around him. A cheer rose around him as members of the cult shouted praises to the descendant of Xeth and his secret to eternal life.

He listened to their words. They loved him, worshipped him, the eye insignia of each clasp of their dark robes symbolising him, and all that he could do.

I... saved a life. It was the exact opposite of anything he had done before. It was a good thing, right?I could do it again... I can still help Humans win the war! With a toothy smile, Xoris brought one arm around the back of Luke's head, soft hair flowing through his fingers as he brought his own face close enough to touch. "I missed you."

His skin was cold.

With a jolt, Xoris released his hand. He could hear it now, a heartbeat that ran alongside his own, a fast pace run in sets of three. He looked at Luke, his eyes– once the same colour as the blue behind sky– now held the same purple hue Kraim's did. Xoris let go, backing up down the steps, terror seizing his lungs.

"Xoris, is that... you? What's with the look of fear? And-" Luke could speak, but the words were wary, cautious. His brows scrunched in confusion as his gaze ran over Xoris again and again. Everything about the way he held himself was different: off put... stiff instead of the confident, playful man Xoris had known. "Palkhiv... the Stain took you over, didn't it?" His grip tightened on his sword, eyes narrowing, looking at Xoris not like a friend, but-

The enemy.

Xoris trembled under the cold look of his indigo eyes. "K-Kraim, this isn't right." Xoris looked at the awestruck advisor, shaking his head at him. Anxiety spiked in his veins, making words even harder to form than usual. "That's... that's not— He's not Luke. I don't know what happened, but that's not what he's like."

A small, hurt look ran across Luke's features at Xoris' words, but it wasn't as though it were real. Xoris was sure of it. Even now, the look was fading as he continued to stand and stare, clearly needing to be told what to do. Part of Xoris told him that if he encouraged Luke along with the help of the violet eyes, he'd go along just fine, but he didn't want that. Luke wasn't a doll for him to play pretend with.

"Of course it's him. He looks just like him... moving, breathing, and he still holds all the majik he did in his lifetime. He'll be a better asset on the battlefield than ever before." Kraim put a hand on Luke's back, encouraging him down the steps. "Come now everyone, let us celebrate our achievements!"

The cheer erupted again, from every part of the room.

"No!" Xoris shouted, making the advisor jump. "This... this is all your doing!" He swung his sword in front of him, slashing the air with each point. "The cult, the quest for eyes..."

"A spectacular knight, you say? I suppose we can allow it."

His eyes shot open, and he whirled around to glare at the man. "You ordered for him to die, didn't you? It wasn't the king! I told you he was a powerful soldier, and you just..."

Kraim raised his brows at him, eyes dead. "Well, I brought him back one way or another, didn't I?"

"Brought him back?" The shout echoed through the dungeon, forcing the robed members around him into a hush. "And to think I was going to take out the king for you. I was going to put you in charge! You... you-"

"... you were going to kill someone?"

Luke's words hit him like a blunt blow to the chest. It was the same voice, but twisted. Hateful. "The Xoris I know would never do that."

Kraim's face stretched in a wide, pointed grin, to the point where if it went much further, Xoris was convinced it would break in two. "It's been doing that quite a bit in your absence, actually. Let's see—" He splayed out his fingers, ticking off each one. "A general..."

"Stop." Xoris ground the word out through grit fangs.

"The body of a servant I found shredded to bits outside the castle, no doubt from its teeth..."

A low growl emitted from his throat, and he took a step forward. He needed to stop him. Now.

And yet, he continued to speak with that same, enthralled smirk. "Oh yes! And a third of the Fae population. Say, Luke, was it? Aren't you half Fae? Strange."

"I said stop!" Xoris' eyes glinted violet, but he kept his heka at bay, only bringing his sword up to Kraim's face. Determination filled his chest like a breath of fresh air, but it hardly cleared the tension sitting in his heart. "Stop talking to him. He should be dead! He needs to be laid to rest. You can't just... bring him back to blindly fight for your side when his head isn't right enough to make a choice like that! What kind of life is that? Spent in sheer obedience?"

Kraim eyed him, that cold, menacing look returning. "Projecting, are we? And besides that, you're not suggesting that we kill him again, are you? Your own friend?"

Xoris picked his sword up off the floor, staring at the design on its hilt. This is where they had led them to be. All the kind words, all the excuses for his actions, it was just to keep them under their finger until he could raise the dead. Kraim had never been kind to him. He was just the descendant of something they could use, and that's all they had ever seen him as.

"Yes, yes I am." He glared at Kraim. He could kill him in an instant, but he didn't want to. The man deserved something much slower, much more torturous for dragging him around, especially for pulling Luke into this. "I'm done playing for your side."

A conjoined gasp filled the room around him, and he tried to focus from every viewpoint he had. Besides the splotches of darkness where the eyes met nothing but clothes, he could see unmals huddling in the corner, a woman standing by the Vilve, more men all around. There were nineteen of them, including Kraim and... including Luke.

His throat locked up, but he couldn't stand to see his friend's body being disrespected anymore. Maybe it would have been different if his eyes had been full of life, but if it was him, he would have jumped up with a spring in his step and laughed as he took Xoris' side. That's what he always did. But that... thing standing there, looking disgusted, horrified...

He would never look at me like that.

Tears sprang to his eyes, blurring the image that was false anyway. That wasn't him. It couldn't be. That's not the man I know. I would never fight the man I cared for.

Without wasting any more time, Xoris lunged, bringing the edge of the blade close to Luke's leg. It collided with a clang into the armour under the yellowed bandages, but not hard enough to knock him off balance, nor out of whatever spite-filled trance he was held in. His gaze only shifted to a false sense of hurt as Luke leapt back, readying his own blade. Then the other members broke from their shock, and with that, they were bounding forward to stop him.

Xoris ducked as a hand brandishing a large stone swiped over his head, choosing to sweep out his leg to knock the woman off her feet. Only a moment later, he felt a heavy force bash him in the face, and he raised a hand to his nose, watching the red blood drip onto it. But... nothing was there?

A glance behind him showed an unmal with short hair raising their hands, and he could feel the active hold on their potent majik coursing through the room. They didn't need to be close to hit him. They could simply bludgeon him with hardened air from afar.

"Careful! We can't damage the eyes!" Kraim shouted, panic raising his already high voice. "...I'll scoop them out myself if I have to."

In an instant, he was in front of Xoris, faster than Humanly possible. It was as if he had blinked through reality, only to reappear once again next to him. The Vilve blood... Xoris thought before Kraim was raising a hand to his face, the tips of his fingers cracking and splitting to reveal a dark void inside where there should have only been flesh and blood.

What? With a jolt, he tightened his grip on the sword, raising it to jab it deep into Kraim's side before backing away. Instead of the tell-tale emerald of Human blood though, a thick, dark mass leaked from the man's robes, shifting hues of purples and blacks twinkling with white as it flowed. There wasn't time to put much focus on it though as Kraim ignored the attack, the distant look in his gaze returning. As if he couldn't feel the pain. Instead he turned to Luke. "Aren't you supposed to aid your country? Why aren't you fighting one of the Stained? It's your job."

"I..." Luke looked up, focusing indigo eyes on Xoris, all of him. The wince slowly faded from his face, hardening as he nodded. "Of- of course, my liege."

Then Luke's body tore itself into action. Xoris could barely stand and raise his sword to his face before he felt the heavy weight of Luke's own blade come crashing down onto it.

Xoris grit the rows of fangs in his mouth, trying to push back harder against the weight. "Luke, stop. I'm just trying to give you peace, can't you see that? Just let me help you. I... I'm your best friend." The words came out broken, choked up with his own emotion. He didn't want to fight him, but he wasn't fighting him, was he?

"No, no you're not. You're some kind of foul Beast in his body. I know what Xoris looked like. I know what he believed in. You corrupted him, and you have no right pretending to be him." He still held the same hollow tone, but Xoris could sense his majik twisting, poised and ready to strike.

Without warning, his blade shattered into pieces, white shards separating to float in the air. It was the same channelling sword Xoris had envied not that long ago, and now it was set to kill him. Luke closed his hand into a fist and the chipped pieces sailed towards him, angled to slice every eye of his. Xoris went to duck, rolling back to avoid the attack, but even then hot lines were drawn across his skin as they careened past his face, arms, and legs in any small crevice the armour failed to cover.

Xoris took a deep breath, staring at the enemies around him. He didn't want to petrify Luke, nor stab him. Even now, he could see the large slice in his neck, no doubt being the ending blow from Rajul. While it wasn't his friend, saying words he would never say, taking sides he knew he'd never choose, Xoris couldn't insult his body anymore. Those around him though... he couldn't care less.

As the unmal raised their hands to strike him again, he switched tactics, pulling away from Luke to charge towards them. An invisible force ran under his feet, tripping him, while another collided with the side of his head, causing it to spin, but he was close enough. It was hard to settle his mind, the blow making what had always felt like climbing a sturdy, mental staircase into a rickety bridge, but he could make it over. He could do that much. As he reached that final step in his mind, he could feel the heka within him flaring up. Not bothering to stand yet, he took hold of the unmal's robes, yanking them down to his level. Already, the green eyes on his arm were catching sight of their own, and in moments, nineteen would become eighteen.

He pushed his body up off the stone, the elated feeling he had whenever he fought against other people starting to return. Part of it was ridiculous, how many there were, and what they thought they could possibly do against him. The woman charged again with her rock. He let her come, a laugh pulling out of his throat as he focused out of the eyes embedded in his cheeks. All it took was a mere thought of her forcing it through her own skull to send her to the floor. Seventeen.

Then something sharp was sent through him, piercing and painful. Xoris gasped, pulling in air to take away some of the agony crawling through his side. There was the scraping noise of metal against teeth as he turned to his right, seeing another cultist shoving a blade through the mouth on his hip, exposed from when he had bent over to lunge.

A cry tore out of his mouth as he swung his sword down, trying to send the pommel into their head. How did I miss them? I should have seen... He broke off the thought, realising that he'd dedicated too much focus to the woman from before. It was an efficient power, but dangerous. As he missed with the back end of the sword, the figure twisted the knife in his side, yanking it out with a sharp tug. Xoris glared at them, but the hood was too tight around their face, and he couldn't meet their eyes.

Stumbling a bit as his knee threatened to collapse beneath him, another member came up on his right side. His own blade ran down Xoris' arm as he slipped past, making his way to his back. The man listened to Kraim enough to avoid any of the eyes embedded there, but the muscles still split, tendons still stripping back as the deep cut relieved them of their duty. A cry choked out of Xoris' throat as his arm fell in limp agony.

Then a large portion of the left side of the room fell dark.

He had to turn his head to glance at his arm. None of the eyes had been touched, and yet he could see the unnatural coursing of nerves that webbed beneath his skin had been severed. It burned, like his arm had been melted by a Pruul, but with another cry, he tried to lift his hand one more time.

As the pain began to eat away at his consciousness, he placed it on the attacker's neck, sinking the teeth it held deep into the soft flesh and veins. The light, sweet flavour graced his tongue again, and once he'd assured a good hold, he wrenched it away. The man toppled to the floor while his screams filled the air, warbled with no throat to filter the noise. Another member went to his aid, but it only gave Xoris a better angle with his sword, which plunged into their spine.

Exhaustion was starting to spread through him, but he pushed its ebbing call away. He flicked his sword out, shaking drops of blood onto the stone floor. This was taking too long. He wasn't here for all these people anymore. His anger soared, pulsing through his veins as he watched Kraim. He just needed him dead. That was all he cared about right now.

As if sensing his intent, Luke barreled towards him again, breaking his focus on Kraim as built arms carried the reassembled blade back to his neck. Xoris screamed as his thick hands made contact with his gouged out shoulder, shoving him against the wall. His right hand caught Xoris' wrist, making him drop his weapon as he pressed it against the wall, above his head. His left clutched the short sword, holding it right beneath his chin.

"So this is how you are now? Another disgusting Beast drunk off violence?"

Xoris' heart shuddered, and he flinched further into the wall if only to avoid the blade. "No! You asked me what I wanted to do and I– I was trying to be a good person. I wanted to save the world... even if you didn't get to see it."

"A good person? Would a good person do all this?" He tipped his head back to show the scene behind him: heaps of bodies, clothes all drenched in green while Kraim bent over them, worriedly trying to shake them awake. The hood tipped back off one, a young girl with braids, head crumpled in.

Xoris' breathing sped up, heart racing in his ears. "This wasn't-"

"Don't lie to me! Only bad guys lie, remember?" Luke tipped his head, his cold gaze meeting Xoris' tearful one. The razored edge of the sword started to drag along his flesh, splitting the skin apart. "No, you wouldn't, because only Xoris would, and he's dead. Now say goodbye, Monster."

A sob choked out of Xoris, the tears falling harder. Why? Why did I do this to him? First he'd gotten him killed, and now he'd selfishly turned him into this... this thing that only sought to insult him. And yet, even as Luke stared into him with a hardened, emotionless gaze, he was still more Human than Xoris could even hope to be.

It's all because of these sekhif eyes!

He turned his head, glaring at the grey one that even now, sat innocently on his right wrist, staring at the damage it had caused. He cursed it; he hated it, the way its energy flowed through him, as blank as death itself. He wished he could just take it all back.

He brought his attention back to the new sensation of heka in his chest, tasting how it felt. The more he settled on it, the more his own emotions felt out of touch... And the more he couldn't bring himself to care what Kraim had done. The room felt distant, fuzzy as thoughts tore through his head, strangely different, but all his own.

"It's bad enough that Humans already exist. That's why they don't need to be brought back. That only makes things more difficult."

This isn't someone important to me. Just another enemy.

"They are small and insignificant. Insects."

He holds no purpose.

The world faded into a simple black and white, and as the grey eye on his wrist turned to Luke's face, Xoris could only bring himself to say one word.

"Goodbye."

The fresh light that had filled Luke's eyes only a few drips ago was fading, the selfish energy stirring in Xoris' body. He felt a tug, then a snap as a chilled energy left Luke and returned to his own body as he blankly watched his friend hit the floor, never to get up again.

Then, the callous mask the heka had offered shattered, the emotions flooding back to Xoris, too much to handle, all at once. He was crying, he was screaming. He was filled with rage and desire to slaughter everyone and everything in sight, if only to not have Luke be the only body on the dekhr floor. His countdown fell away as his blade coursed through body after body. Stone figures began to replace the cultists, but he brought his fist through them, smashing them to shards. Somewhere along the line, his neck had begun to bleed profusely, his arm still hanging limp at his side, but he didn't care.

Another cry of fury left him as he grabbed hold of a woman's shoulders, bringing her face to the metal of his knee. As he threw her to the floor, he swivelled his body to face Kraim. It was just the two of them now, exactly how he had wanted it.

Shaky breaths wracked his lungs as he growled at the man. He looked much less confident now with his men gone, his test subjects gone. Xoris took a step forward, the sound of his metal boots on the stone floor echoing through the chamber as he ascended one step, then another.

He trembled under Xoris' glare, backing up until he was pressed up against the wall with nowhere to go. "Please, Thing of Eyes and Teeth, just calm yourself. There's no need to worry... you can still bring them all back. The king doesn't have to know about this incident, really! You don't have to play the monster here, you can just-"

He was cut off as Xoris brought his blade to his chest. "I'm not the monster! I didn't cause this. You did. Everything is all your fault!" he shouted. "I never would have done any of this. This isn't the type of person I am! I never asked to be a Stained, I never asked to look into this, and I told you that I never wanted to be a paladin! You ruined my life!" Xoris twisted the sword in his hands, pushing it just a bit further into the skinny man, eliciting blood from his ribs. The mix of green and speckled black felt empowering. He wanted to relish every drip.

"Oh no, Stained." It came out as a shaky laugh. "You did all this yourself. I didn't control your actions. This is all you're doing."

The air in the room picked up wildly again, whipping blond and purple strands of hair about. Kraim raised a hand with a crazed smile, snapping his fingers, and the flesh on his face and hands split apart. The cracks reached past him though, seeping out to rip open the wall behind him, the negative space all filled with the same, abyssal emptiness. Raised hairs pricked along Xoris' blood-coated arms, but as he flicked an eye over to the Vilve's body against the wall, he could tell it was long since dead.

No, this is Kraim's doing. Xoris stepped back as the entire wall was replaced by a mix of hues: cloudy wisps of pinks and blues, alive and swirling and glowing, all dragged towards the black, emptiness in its hungry centre. Xoris stared at it, mouths agape. It would have been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen if the nothingness wasn't so... Endless. Terrifying.

And yet, Kraim eased himself off Xoris' blade, slowly backing into its empty hold with a grin. "-And I hope you're satisfied with those actions, because you have made yourself a very powerful enemy."

Another snap sounded, and the air tightened around Xoris, making it hard to breathe as the wall pieced itself back together. The Crack that had broken the very room vanished, and with it, Kraim. It was just Xoris, in a room filled with bodies, alone.

"No! Get back here!" He flung a hand against the wall, clawing at it, tearing at it, but no matter how much he scraped bloody fingers along the stone, Kraim was gone. The tears returned. There was nothing he could do but sit in an empty room and look at the mess around him. The bodies that lay around him, the girl with a broken open skull, practically a child.

But... I would never have done this. This isn't my fault. These were horrible people. Kraim needed to pay! Excuse after excuse ran through his mind, not even flowing together to form a coherent line of reasoning. Kraim had phrased it like a form of saving Human life, but didn't make it the right course of action. Death didn't have to be wrong, if the person was evil, and life didn't mean anything if it was spent causing suffering, right? He looked at Luke lying motionless on the floor. He could still feel the tug of his heka as the eyes on the wrist took away what it had given so freely.

Nausea bubbled up from somewhere in him, and he heaved over, coughing and choking as his body rejected everything it held. There was blood mixed in the liquid, and he screwed his eyes shut, trying to block it from his mind.

"I didn't control your actions. This is all you're doing."

"Monster."

"So this is how you are now? Another disgusting Beast drunk off violence?"

He turned his back to the wall, armour scraping down it until he was sitting on the floor, face blank. Why? Especially Luke. Why did he have to say that?

Was it because he had made a monster of his own kin, or was he truly unrecognisable at this point? He flicked his gaze at the few grey eyes on him, nestled into his wrist, collarbone... He glared at them. This was their fault, too. He wouldn't have— couldn't have done anything if they were just gone. Why did they even grow on him, if only to betray his wishes?

A dagger caught his eyes out of the corner of his vision, still in the hands of the cultist who had cut open his shoulder, still coated in his blood. Xoris reached for it, holding it shakily above his own skin. But it wasn't his skin. It was his. Xoris was dead, wasn't he?

He stared down at the cold, unfeeling iris. That too, was the Thing of Eye and Teeth's, another Stained that needed to die. He lowered the dagger, until the viewing angle of its point conflicted with the image of his hand holding it, mind overlapping the two pictures until he was staring right through it. Like it wasn't really there.

Widening his eyes, he raised it sharply. Xoris was dead, but he would kill the Beast inside him. Then Kraim would never be able to force it to do anything else again.

The dagger plunged into the congealed mass of the eye: slow, dense, and agonising. A whimper pulled out of his lip, another cry wrenching from the maw on his hand, but he just raised it before forcing it in again, mussing up the tissue. A black spot spread across his vision as the ceiling fell out of his view. He was screaming now, but he wasn't done. The dagger sunk into his collarbone, leaking out the same wet sound. Darkness was seeping in around him, but he couldn't stop. As far as he could tell, there were only five grey. 

Soon, there would be none.

~Thanks for reading.