Chapter 514: Offering
CRACK—
RIIIIIIP—
The sound came before the blood. A wet, tearing rip that silenced every voice in the vicinity, cutting through the distant sirens and the murmuring crowd.
Then the blood came. It sprayed from Ruby’s severed throat in a hot, arterial fountain, painting Arzhen’s face and chest and outstretched arms in broad, grotesque stripes of crimson.
Her body, still standing for one horrible moment, convulsed. The heart still pumping, the nerves still firing, the limbs still twitching with the ghost of life, before it crumpled to the ground in a heap of mud-stained white robes and spreading red.
The blood pooled beneath her, dark and glistening in the moonlight, seeping into the earth like an offering to gods who were not listening.
Arzhen stood in the center of the carnage, Ruby’s head clutched in his hands. Her long pink hair, once so lustrous, was now matted with gore, the strands wrapped around his fingers like ribbons.
Her blue eyes were still open, wide, disbelieving, frozen in an expression of ultimate terror. Her mouth was slack, her lips parted as though she had died mid-scream, which she had.
The torn flesh of her neck was now a ragged wound of exposed muscle and severed trachea, the white gleam of her cervical spine jutting from the gore like a broken column. Tendons and arteries hung in loose, dripping strands, swaying gently as Arzhen’s hands trembled.
His smile stayed.
For one eternal, frozen moment, the world around Arzhen Vasiliev was silent. Then it shattered.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHH—!"
The screams came first, a wave of raw horror that rippled outward through the crowd of de-evacuating civilians.
A woman clutching a child to her chest stumbled backward and collapsed, her mouth open in a shriek that seemed to have no end. An old man turned and vomited into the dirt.
Children who had been too young to understand what they were seeing began to wail, their high, piercing cries cutting through the chaos like shards of glass.
The hunters who had been circling surged forward, only to recoil. Their weapons, half-raised, wavered in their grips.
Some of them had seen corrupted monsters tear people apart. Some of them had witnessed rifts swallow entire squads.
But this, a man, a beastman, a Vasiliev, standing in the moonlight with a woman’s head in his hands and her blood dripping from his chin—this was something else entirely.
This was not corruption. This was not madness. This was something far, far worse.
"For God’s..." one of the younger hunters whispered, her spear clattering to the ground as her hands went slack.
Isabeau had stopped struggling. She hung limp in the werebear’s arms, her face blank, her eyes fixed on the body of her partner. The body that was still twitching, still pumping blood into the mud.
A low, keening sound escaped her throat, not quite a scream or a sob, but it came from somewhere deep where language had not yet been invented. The horror—
The werebear holding her tightened his grip, his own face pale beneath his fur. "Someone... someone restrain him!" he growled, his voice unsteady. "Now! Before he—"
But no one moved. No one dared.
Arzhen Vasiliev stood in the center of the carnage with Ruby’s head in his hands and a smile on his face. No one could bring themselves to take a single step toward him.
"See? I didn’t lie," Arzhen said gently to Cecilia, his voice soft and tender, as though he were reassuring her. As though Ruby’s blood was not still dripping from his chin. As though her head was not still clutched in his trembling hands. "She truly means nothing to me, okay?"
Cecilia was engulfed in horror. It seized her chest and squeezed the air from her lungs, turning her blood to ice and her bones to lead.
Her hands flew to her mouth, pressing against her lips as though she could hold back the scream that was building in her throat.
Her eyes were fixed on the scene before her, the crumpled body in the mud, the severed head in Arzhen’s grip, the smile still curving his blood-spattered lips.
The smile.
He had torn a woman’s head from her body with his bare hands, and he was still smiling at her like a lover asking for forgiveness.
Behind her, Oathran moved. His hand found her shoulder, firmly trying to pull her behind the shield of his body. His wings half-manifested, white dragon wings bristling with fury.
His mist grey eyes blazed with a cold, murderous light as they locked onto the tiger. He tried to step in front of her, putting himself between Cecilia and the thing that had once been her husband—
But Cecilia didn’t budge.
Her hand shot out and grasped Oathran’s arm, not to be pulled behind him, but to push him behind her. Her fingers dug into his sleeve, tight.
She stepped forward instead of back, her pregnant belly leading, her body positioning itself as a barrier between the dragon and the tiger.
"Now that it has come to this, you’ll forgive me, right...?" Arzhen asked, his voice soft and hopeful. "See? I’ll give you her head. You can do anything to it."
He extended Ruby’s severed head toward her, his blood-soaked fingers cradling the matted pink hair with almost reverent care. His golden eyes, wet with tears and bright with manic desperation, searched Cecilia’s face for any sign of the forgiveness he was so certain he had earned.
"Spit on it—"
He suggested, his voice rising with eager enthusiasm.
"Crush it—"
He took another step forward, his feet squelching in the mud that was now more blood than earth.
"Shit on it—"
Another step. His smile was widening, cracking his blood-spattered cheeks.
"Step over it over and over and over and kick it—HA—" His laughter burst out of him, echoing across the silent medical area like the cry of some wounded animal. "AHAHAHAHA—"
Then he stopped. The laughter cut off as suddenly as it had begun.
His face softened, the manic energy draining away into something gentler, something tender.
"Cecilia..." He looked at her with those wet dark eyes, and for a moment, he looked almost like the man she had married. "There’s nothing between us now. The bitches who drew us apart are gone now, both of them."
He chuckled softly, a warm, intimate sound that was somehow more horrifying than his screams. "See? Everything... everything will be better from now on."
Cecilia glared. Her eyes, which had been wide with horror moments before, were darkening now. The trembling in her hands was no longer fear.
Anger.
"I know I broke your heart, but... but it’ll heal, okay?" Arzhen burst into silent tears, his face crumpling like a child’s, his shoulders shaking with sobs that made no sound.
He whimpered before taking a deep, shuddering breath. When he spoke again, his voice was steady. Certain. "I’ll do anything to be with you—anything, huh? I’ll... I’ll give you all my heart, okay? It’s useless on me since it keeps hurting now—so it’s all yours!"