Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Bellaslayn woke up to a clean, snow-white ceiling, and the sounds of metal clinking nearby. It took her a second to realize she wasn't in her own room.

'Is this my next life?'

And since she still had her memories with her… was she one of the Children of the Empress?

The thought did not linger long. Her body felt the same as always, and when she raised her left hand, she could see a crooked scar running along it.

So she failed to die. No. It was proper to say she refused it.

"You're awake," a voice resounded near her.

Flinching, she lifted her head to see Evin… or whoever the hell it was now, sitting on a chair next to her bed, playing with something metallic.

She pushed her body up and managed a half-sitting, half-lying position. "What are you doing here?"

Her voice came out coarse and weak.

A cup of water appeared in front of her, previously familiar but now foreign hands offering it to her. She tried to swat it away, but her hands were too slow to hit it off the hands' grip.

The monster-inside-Evin put away the cup and resumed fiddling with the metal again. They were two intertwined nails, bent in some special way.

"You just missed your father and the Mage guards. They really drilled about what happened." He started pulling at the two metal pieces in his hand. Didn't seem to work. "Told them about our breakup." He then twisted the two nails in a weird way. They came loose. "They didn't think you'd do something like this over a mere breakup. Well, I told them to ask you when you wake up." He then fiddled with the separated pieces a bit, and they became tangled again. "I'll go with whatever story you come up with."

With the way he acted, sometimes it felt so difficult to tell he was different from Evin. But he absolutely was different from Evin. There was something fundamentally different between the two people.

"You're a murderer," she croaked out.

"I am," he said softly. "But that's not something you should worry about, really. You couldn't have known about what was going inside Evin, and you wouldn't have been able to prevent what happened in the end… Though, of course I know these words are meaningless to you now."

"Of course it is!" Bella hissed. "Leave!"

She wanted to scream, but for the love of the Empress, her throat felt like she'd swallowed a mouthful of sand. She badly wanted that cup of water now, but her pride did not allow such thoughts.

"Perhaps you'll find my words useful when you grow old," he said, showing no sign of leaving. "For now, you'll have to excuse my presence here."

The way he spoke was so terribly akin to Evin. Bella always noticed Evin trying to speak a certain way but never naturally. She could see who she was trying to mimic now.

But those memories of him felt worthless now. Seeing his body only caused her heart more pain.

"Leave!"

Acting as if he heard nothing, he pulled out another pair of tangled metal pieces and started fiddling with them. Bella was powerless to do anything him. She could only look away, unable to bear looking at him any longer.

"Though, how did you end up outside anyway? I'm guessing you jumped off your bathroom window, but why would you do that?"

Bella remembered lying in her bathtub, trying her best to not think of anything. Keeping away the thought of her body turning cold and numb from the blood trickling out of her hand. She remembered getting startled, feeling how warm her blood felt when it touched her skin.

Then… all hell broke loose as her survival instincts kicked in.

'Like hell I'm going to die a stupid death like this,' she remembered whispering in a coarse voice.

At the time, she intended to scream the words out, but she didn't realize just how weak her body would become after losing all that blood. She tried to push herself off the bathtub, but her left hand was completely useless and her right hand couldn't even form a fist. She could only get her left hand out of the water so she would at least stop bleeding.

She wanted to use a spell, but had no lodestone nearby to cast anything helpful.

She could only use the mana in the air, and she'd have only one shot at saving herself. As she gathered them in her core, she started drinking from the water she was in, pushing down her disgust and nausea. A part of her hoped the bloody water would help her body recover, but she knew that was too optimistic.

With a hazy mind, she worked on a plan. She knew she couldn't simply get herself out of the water and be done with it. She could easily die from anemia and no one would know until the next day comes.

Hence, she decided she needed to jump through the window.

Someone should get her the help she needed.

Everything after that was hazy, but since she was still alive, she seemed successful in her task.

Her gaze inadvertently turned towards her guest. He was idly glancing at her, expecting an answer. Her eyes softened at the sight of him, but the emotion immediately sent pain to her heart.

"Well, it doesn't matter much. What matters is that you're alive."

A deep, revolting hate appeared inside Bella.

"How can you say that?!"

He, who murdered a 10-year-old boy, did not have the right to say those words. Did he just kill Evin so he could survive by himself? Of course he fucking did. What else would a parasite like him do? Filth like him did not deserve to breathe!

Consumed by her rage, Bella found herself lunging off her bed. Her hands reached for his neck, but she was unable to reach her target. Her tumbled onto the ground, only able to glare at the figure above her.

The murderer in Evin's skin did not react at all to her sudden outburst.. He peacefully observed her struggling on the ground, content to do nothing.