Chapter 50: Jayce
"Gah."
Jayce gasped at the pain, his body freezing. Then his face morphed into Matt, who kept his burning grey eyes on him.
"What... what have you done?"
Right after that, the sound of glass shattering against the floor rang out again, dust flying off the floor in its wake.
Then, as though setting off a chain reaction, more glass fell, shattering and sending pieces everywhere.
The flying shards brushed past his face like little blades, yet he paid no attention to that. What little of his consciousness remained was fully focused on the knife.
Its blade sank in completely, letting warm blood soak his bandaged hand through the rough wound it created.
This much wasn’t enough.
He twisted, then pulled it out, making Jayce actually scream in pain this time. A scream that sealed his fate.
His scream was cut off abruptly by a bloody cough. Blood pooled out of his orifices as he scratched his chest in vain with his one good arm.
The blood landed on Miles’s face and chest, worsening his sight. But he couldn’t care less.
He wasn’t done with him yet, especially so when his face morphed back into Matt. He stabbed his knife into the side of his chest, striking soft flesh and immediately worsening his curdling coughs.
Using the force from the strike, he pushed the dying boy off him, onto the floor beside him. He left the knife in his chest.
Miles could barely see the ceiling above through all the blood. He took shallow, squeezed breaths through his numbed nose; it had likely broken during the fight.
He managed to turn his head to the side, only to find Matt still staring at him. His face, bruised, wounded, and painted red by the blood from his orifices, held a satisfied grin.
His bloodied eyes still held mockery in them. Somehow, his voice still managed to come out clear.
"I was right once again, as always."
Those words, from that voice, with that face. They made a bitter, unfamiliar emotion well up in his chest.
One that took his addled mind a moment to pin down. It was something he hadn’t felt for a year.
Hate. A dark, festering sort of hate.
For the first time since they’d started fighting, Miles replied to him. His wounded lips struggled to make the sounds, even as [Delusion], unstable as it currently was, numbed the pain.
He forced them to voice his emotions.
"I-I... I should’ve killed you when I had the chance."
Matt’s smile only grew wider.
"A failure. A dud. That is all you are, Miles. It is all you will ever be."
Before Miles could respond to him, the face morphed back to Jayce. Tears mixed with blood as they seeped out of his eyes; nothing but pain, regret, and a burning desperation lay behind them. His mouth kept trying to move, to say something, only to end up choking on his blood.
His hand was his only outlet, scribbling frantically on the floor with his own blood. He scarcely wrote three lines before growing too weak to continue, then stopping entirely.
Jayce’s eyes remained wide open. All emotions were replaced with a blank, distant look.
He was dead.
A notification popped up.
[Congratulations, you have slain an Awakened human: Jayce Northman.]
[You have gained 20 points.]
It lingered for a moment before vanishing on its own.
’Jayce is dead, and... and I killed him.’
Those thoughts sent shockwaves through his mind, tearing apart the vitriol that had been gathering in his chest, leaving him feeling small and dizzy.
The blood on his face, his fingers, and clothes suddenly became all he could notice. How it stuck, how it clung to him like little worms burrowing into his skin, forming a layer of filth that he’d never be able to wash off.
’I... I...’
Before he could spiral, he felt the blood squirm, and then the stickiness vanished entirely. Looking at it, he found the blood had changed from liquid to red crayon scribbles, like a childish depiction of blood.
It overlapped with the real world completely, turning all the streams of blood on Jayce’s face into red shifting lines of scribbles. His dead eyes were covered by two black shifting X symbols made in the same style.
Perched on Jayce’s head was a scribbled black crow. The lines making up its body shifted constantly as it stared at him with warmth in its dot-like silver eyes.
An even more encompassing wave of numbness washed through him, drowning his confusion, fear, pain, and emotions beneath its scale, leaving his body cold and alien once again.
Miles felt something dripping out of his eyes, nose and mouth. But he paid no attention to it; the newfound clarity gave him the strength to take his gaze off Jayce’s corpse and the sketched crow on it.
Finally, he was able to look at the room around him.
Chloe was the first to enter his view. She was the nearest to him.
The girl knelt on the glass-covered floor, both eyes squeezed shut, her face pale and sweaty, silently enduring wave after wave of mental attacks. Her hand was outstretched, as though she’d just thrown something.
Her bat lay at the bottom of a shattered glass pane.
Her assailant, the pale girl, could barely even sit straight at this point. She’d overused her abilities in disrupting the flow of this fight. She took a deep breath, pausing her attacks.
Chloe was far too disoriented to advance either way. So the girl shifted her gaze towards the front.
As she did so, her gaze passed over one of the many reflective pieces of glass on the floor.
Then she froze.
A click rang out through the room, and then the staggered clinking of a box cutter being drawn followed.
The next instant, a slash drew across the girl’s throat, with the wet, tearing sound of metal being forced through flesh.
She reached for her throat, only to stop halfway, before collapsing.
It was then that Miles realized what the reflective glass fragments around him were.
Mirrors.