Chapter 249: keep your eyes open

Chapter 249: keep your eyes open

I knew this boy.

If I wasn’t mistaken, his name was Damian Blackthorne. He was a member of the Eternal Night cult and one of the three major obstacles Felix would face.

I hadn’t remembered who he was when I saw him in the arena. His white hair and blue eyes hadn’t been enough to connect him to what I’d read. But now, after the title he’d used to address me, the pieces were falling into place.

What did he want from me?

I supposed I was about to find out.

Damian started walking toward me. With that friendly expression, he hardly looked like someone approaching a stranger in an empty corridor. Judging by the way he sped up and then slowed down again, he wasn’t even sure how to approach me.

When he stopped a few steps away, he opened his mouth.

Then he blinked as though he’d forgotten what he was going to say.

"Um..."

He put a hand on the back of his neck and let out a short laugh.

"Ahaha... I forgot what I was going to say. I’ve dreamed of meeting you for a long time."

I raised an eyebrow slightly.

The boy standing in front of me had just called me the Prince of the Void. Now he was acting like some idiot fan meeting his favorite hero for the first time.

Damian must have taken my silence as permission to keep talking.

"Kaiser’s Heir, the Seventh Prince of the Apocalypse, the Bearer of Lilith’s Curse..." He extended a finger with each title. "The King of the North, the Godslayer, and..."

He paused.

His lips moved silently as he looked up, trying to remember.

"I’m sorry. I’ve heard so much about you that it’s a little hard to remember everything."

I kept my eyes on his face.

No one at the academy should have known most of those titles. Watching my fight with Marven didn’t explain it either.

So Eternal Night had gathered this much information about me.

"Ah, I remember!"

Damian’s face lit up again.

"The One Beyond Fate!"

His voice grew even more excited as he said the last title. Then he dipped his head slightly, as though realizing he’d gotten carried away.

"How rude of me. I should have introduced myself first. My name is—"

"Damian Blackthorne."

The boy’s mouth stayed open.

"The Child of Eternity," I continued. "The Eternal Night cult’s little plaything."

He stared at me for a few seconds.

Then he smiled.

"Wow... You already know who I am!"

He didn’t seem to realize I’d insulted him. Or perhaps he did and simply didn’t care.

"As expected of you, Prince of the Voi—"

"Cassian."

Damian tilted his head slightly.

"Sorry?"

"My name is Cassian."

"Ah, yes. My mistake." He lowered his hand from his neck and straightened the edge of his jacket. "I should have known you’d prefer to be called by your name."

I saw no reason to share his excitement.

I was late for class. More importantly, I had something to discuss with Iris. I wasn’t particularly pleased about this boy wasting my time in the middle of the corridor by listing my titles.

"What do you want?" I asked coldly.

Damian’s smile stayed in place.

But his eyes narrowed slightly.

The boy who’d forgotten what he wanted to say moments ago seemed to know the answer to this question very well.

"It’s not my place to ask anything of you."

He bowed slightly. The gesture was respectful, but the look he gave me hadn’t changed.

"I only thought I might ask a favor. For both our sakes."

I put my hands in my pockets and waited.

Damian straightened.

"Could I ask you to stay out of our cult’s affairs?"

So that was what this was about.

It wasn’t a coincidence that he’d approached me while I was thinking about the dungeon exam. Eternal Night had learned I would be there tomorrow too.

I remembered the circles I’d drawn in the dust with the tip of the stick.

While I was trying to find a way to send Alicia to Felix’s team, they were trying to keep me out of their affairs.

"You know, you have a lot to do. People you need to deal with, things you need to find... There’s really no need to waste your time on us."

I met his eyes.

How much did he know?

"You don’t have to make enemies of us too. We could make a deal."

His smile slowly widened.

That new look on his formerly friendly face didn’t suit him at all. As he watched me with his head slightly tilted, the excitement in his eyes turned into an unsettling anticipation.

It was as though he thought his next sentence would force me to take him seriously.

"After all, you have people you care about too. You wouldn’t want to see them get hur—"

I moved my right index finger.

Damian’s body was suddenly dragged downward.

His face slammed into the white floor before his knees even touched it. A muffled groan escaped his lips after the hard impact echoed through the corridor.

His sentence remained unfinished.

I took my hand out of my pocket and looked at him.

"Your head’s too high, kid."

Damian pressed his palms against the floor.

He tried to raise his head, then his shoulders. The mana around him rippled, and a faint light appeared beneath his fingers.

He was resisting my pressure.

For a moment, he managed to lift his face off the stone.

I stepped forward.

I placed my foot on his head and pushed it down again.

As his cheek scraped against the floor, the power he’d been trying to gather dispersed. A thin line of blood along his jaw left a small stain on the white stone.

He kept struggling beneath my foot.

"Getting in my way?" I said.

Damian’s shoulders tensed.

"Being an obstacle to me?"

The resistance beneath my foot weakened a little more.

"Making a deal?"

I tilted my head slightly.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

The glow from my red eyes sharpened the shadow I cast on the floor.

Then my shadow began to stretch.

It spread from my feet toward both sides of the corridor. It covered the floor, climbed the walls, and slowly swallowed the daylight coming through the windows.

With his face barely raised, Damian’s eyes tracked the spreading darkness.

There was no longer any trace of the mana he’d been trying to gather between his fingers.

When the shadow surrounded us, the corridor’s doors and windows disappeared from view.

All that remained in the pitch-black darkness was the boy beneath my feet.

A pair of red eyes opened.

Then another. And another.

Damian held his breath.

Eyes kept appearing throughout the darkness. Some were close to the floor, while others opened far above our heads. As their numbers grew, his gaze began darting from one to another.

Wherever he looked, a pair of eyes was watching him.

Thousands of red eyes.

The last eye to open behind me was larger than all the others.

The moment I felt its presence, the pressure within the darkness grew heavier. When the enormous eye fixed its gaze directly on Damian, a broken sound escaped his throat.

He was trying to pull his hands off the floor.

But he couldn’t.

"Do you really think you or that pathetic little cult of yours could stand in my way?"

There was no answer.

Damian’s blue eyes were now trying to find me. Nothing remained of the ease he’d shown while studying my face a few minutes earlier.

"How stupid."

I lifted my foot off his head.

He must have thought I was letting up. He moved his fingers again and tried to turn onto his side.

I bent down.

I grabbed his white hair and lifted him off the floor with one hand.

As his feet left the ground, his hands reached for my wrist. I didn’t let him touch me. Before his arms had even risen halfway, they dropped back to his sides.

I brought his face level with mine.

Blood running down beside his nose had reached his upper lip. His mouth trembled as he opened it to breathe, and the words he tried to force out tangled in his throat.

He wasn’t addressing me by my titles anymore.

He couldn’t even say my name.

"I was going to spare you and look the other way," I said.

Damian fixed his trembling gaze on my face.

"I didn’t even want to bother with what you were going to do tomorrow."

I could tell he’d heard me. His pupils shifted, but the fear on his face kept him from thinking about what it meant.

"Then you decided to threaten the people I love."

I tightened my fingers in his hair a little more.

I remembered Iris’s hand around my wrist that morning.

Her sleepy voice...

The red hair falling across her face...

The way the boy in front of me had spoken as though he could lay a hand on them had used up the last of my patience.

"You crossed the line, little boy."

The first tear slipped from Damian’s eyes.

Before it reached his chin, a second followed. His lips trembled as he tried to tell me something. Perhaps he wanted to take back his words. Perhaps he wanted to say I’d misunderstood.

I had no reason left to listen.

The red light from the enormous eye behind me fell across his face. When Damian’s gaze shifted over my shoulder, his breath caught in his throat.

I turned his face back toward me.

"Don’t worry," I said, lowering my voice. "I’ll make sure you know what real fear feels like."

He tried to close his eyes.

But it was too late.

A few minutes ago, he’d said he had dreamed of meeting me for a long time.

I leaned a little closer to his face and smiled faintly.

"You wanted to meet me, didn’t you?"

An unintelligible sound escaped his throat.

"Then keep your eyes open."