Chapter 239: The Real Trap
Kai made his way back to the dormitory with slow steps.
He felt the chilling night air was carrying something other than coldness and its fondness for him. A warning, or perhaps a plea. The same darkness that only he could see was blowing the other way, making it harder for him to continue onward.
Pushing him back like it was begging him to go the other way.
No matter what lies ahead, he didn’t need to know.
Didn’t need to see.
But his stubbornness carried his body past the front door and into the empty corridor.
Nobody was around.
Just him, the emptiness that was choking him from all sides, and the darkness.
Chester looked at him with hatred the last time their eyes met—the kind of eyes that made it painfully clear that he would do anything in order to satiate his hatred. He would not stop at anything to get what he wanted.
And though Kai didn’t know for certain what lay ahead, he knew it was done by Chester.
He was wearing his mask, his breaths were steady, and the Ox Leaves gave enough oxygen.
But it felt like he was suffocating.
Kai threaded the corridor and ascended the staircase. His footsteps rang louder inside his ears, as someone had deliberately increased their volume. And—the last thud that his foot made once he was on the second floor was even louder.
It disoriented him for a second, causing him to see stars.
Not too far away, he saw a dry crimson smear on the floor leading up to a door.
Nausea rose from his stomach up his throat, but he swallowed it down.
Kai did not feel his body move, yet somehow it had—carrying him through the corridor until he stood before a door marked with the carved number thirty-three. It was cracked open a bit, and beyond it, there was only darkness.
And he also heard something.
It was really faint, but the sound was really there. He wasn’t imagining it.
Slowly, he raised his trembling free hand to push the door open.
His breath was caught inside his throat as what greeted him on the other side was a nightmare.
The familiar room breathed with the copper-thick stench—before Kai’s eyes could even make sense of what they were seeing. Moonlight slanted through the broken window, casting long silver blades across the floor, and there, sprawled between the bed and the wooden wardrobe, was a figure.
A familiar student.
Her uniform hung in tatters—great tears running the length of the fabric as though someone had pulled from the collar all the way down to expose her. Bruises covered every inch of her exposed flesh—dark, mottled stains that spread from her neck down to her ankles.
From the way her arm was tilted unnaturally, it was certainly broken.
But the cuts were the worst.
Each one had been placed with intention—deliberate lacerations at the soft places.
Cuts designed not to kill quickly, but to create a terrible haunting sight.
Her aqua-blue hair was tangled and looked thin, clumps torn away by force—and her white mask was shattered at the bottom, revealing a mouth split with cuts and lips caked with wet crimson.
The eyes behind the mask moved. Weakly.
Slowly, they found Kai’s face, and then there was a flicker of recognition.
It was the desperate, drowning light of someone who had completely lost hope.
Kai’s gaze dropped to the floor—fixated on the trail of drying blood that led from the doorway to where she lay. A dark, glistening path painted across the stone floor. He blinked once, and his mind clicked.
"Abigail..."
Almost as soon as the realization dawned upon him, his hands lost strength.
The Blood-phantom Scimitar slipped from his fingers—and sharply clattered to the ground, released from a grip he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. He rushed to Abigail, quickly dropping to his knees in the pooling blood, and slid his arms beneath her shoulders to lift her up.
Considering the condition she was in, it was a miracle that she was still alive.
And the vitality of a Supernal was the sole reason for that.
But it won’t be long before her body reached its limit, so he needs to bring her to the infirmary.
Bring her right now.
Kai stopped abruptly as the slightest movement twisted her face into a mask of agony, and a pained hiss slipped through her broken lips. He couldn’t carry her. He couldn’t move her even a little bit without hurting her more.
Not to mention, he heard blood splattering against the floor as he moved her.
It seemed she was bleeding from behind, too.
Kai’s hands hovered, trembled, and were utterly useless to help.
"What happened?" The words tumbled out through a frantic voice. "Was it Chester? Abigail! Was it him?" His eyes bulged with fury that had nowhere to go. No target to strike. "I’ll make him pay for this. I swear I’ll do—"
Abigail’s lips moved.
She was saying something, but her voice was fainter than a whisper.
A ghost of a word, lost beneath the wet gurgle of blood pooling in her throat.
Only then did Kai realize that her throat was also crushed.
"What?" Kai leaned in, pressing his ear as close as he could to her lips. "Say it again."
Kai waited for a moment, but all he heard was the choking and drowning.
Only the sound of a failing body.
"She must have a healing vial. She’s an Angel."
Kai pulled back—and swept his eyes across the room in search of a healing vial, for anything that could stop the bleeding. But his eyes were caught by something else. He didn’t find what he was searching for, but he saw something that made his body freeze.
Against the wall to his right, directly in front of the bathroom door, was another figure.
She sat there slumped—the dim light hid her well, but now Kai saw her.
His eyes instantly noticed the impossibly long blue hair, spilling across the floor in a tangled river. He noticed the collarless white robe. Noticed the metallic golden collar wrapping tightly around her throat.
It was hard to mistake her with those features.
"T-Talitha...?"
Like the soul leaving the body, the name fell from Kai’s lips in a whisper. He stared at Talitha, leaning against the wall with her head dropped forward—strengthless and utterly still. For a moment, his mind refused the image.
He must be hallucinating from the shock of seeing Abigail’s condition.
But with each second that passed, he began to realize that this was real.
He realized that Talitha was right in front of him.
His eyes travelled downward, and they found a wound—a perfect stab hole in her abdomen, small and irregular, and it dyed a deep wet red around the stomach area of her collarless robe. At the sight of the wound, Kai sucked in a breath that felt like shards of glass.
"No, no, no..." Kai crossed the distance, and his hands found her. "No, no, no, no, no!"
He cradled her limp and cold body against his chest, and the same words kept falling from his mouth. A broken litany that he couldn’t stop. Talitha was so cold. The icy chill seeped through her robe, through his hands, through his core.
And with every degree of warmth she had lost, he felt himself growing weaker. Smaller.
As though her cold was a weight that was crushing him from the inside.
Kai blinked and gritted his teeth.
He had to move. He had to bring Talitha and Abigail to the infirmary. There was still time.
There had to be time.
Frantically, he shifted to lift her up, but then the sound of heavy footsteps invaded the room.
A pair of grey-masked Angels barged through the doorway and scanned the gore. They did not pause. They did not speak. Their hands seized Kai by the collar and wrenched him backward, ripping Talitha from his arms, and they slammed him against the far wall with a vicious force that cracked the wall and drove out the air from his lungs.
Saliva burst from his mouth, but Kai quickly recovered.
But before he could move, one grey-masked Angel already grabbed him by the nape and slammed him into the floor—with a loud thud. He pressed his knee against Kai’s back and then leaned down. "Don’t move. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be."
"What the fuck are you doing?!" Kai roared.
Fiercely, he yanked his head backward.
He slammed the back of his head against the grey-masked Angel’s nose, and stood up.
A savage hook slammed into Kai’s jaw before he could react. The other grey-masked Angel seized him by the throat and drove him back against the wall, pinning him there. "Don’t resist! You have been caught red-handed for attempting to murder a student of this academy, Lesser Angel! Struggle again, and your punishment will be far worse!"
"What...?" Kai questioned in utter shock.
He was at a loss for words, but he quickly snapped back to reality and gritted his teeth.
"You’ve got it wrong! You’ve got it fucking wrong! Why would I try to kill her?! They we—"
"Shut up! There’s no getting out of this one, Lesser Angel!"
"You fuc—!"
Blitz—!
Kai’s body seized when a vicious electric current lanced into his body. And during that state, the grey-masked Angel used it as an opportunity to slam him into the floor and then placed a knee on his back again.
The other grey-masked Angel handed a handcuff while holding his bleeding, broken nose.
As soon as the handcuff was on, Kai could immediately feel his mana was being drained.
Sucked out of his body as the special handcuff glowed with a dark hue.
"Listen to me!" Kai shouted in utter frustration. "I didn’t do this! It’s not me!"
"Still trying to lie?" the grey-masked Angel above him sneered in contempt. Out of spite for hurting his partner, he grabbed the back of Kai’s head and drove his face into the floor. "You are done, Lesser Angel."
Kai thrashed, still trying to resist.
His eyes were fixated on the blood-slicked floor as he slowly realized what was happening.
This was a trap.
Just earlier, he thought the trap Chester had set was on the transit cloudlet. He was wrong.
This was the real trap.
"I will not resist, but bring them to the infirmary first!" Kai roared again. His voice was already hoarse from shouting so hard earlier. "Just bring them to the infirmary first! I can’t run away now, so bring them away! Treat them!"
Instead of doing what Kai begged, the two lifted him up and brought him away.
Despite his scream, they didn’t listen.
They left Abigail and Talitha inside, treating them as if they were already dead.
"You’re not in the position to worry about the dead, Lesser Angel. Worry about yourself."