Chapter 68: A Chilling Turn of Events

It was a soundless sensation, like the air pressure in the room suddenly dropped to zero. The colors of the world shifted subtly before snapping back into hyper-focus.

​It felt like a heavy veil had been dropped from the fabric of reality.

​Finn reared back instinctively at the sudden shift. He dropped Nathaniel, backing away as he scanned the room for the source of the anomaly.

​Nathaniel, currently bloodied from Finn’s last attack, froze.

​His manic laughter died instantly. His eyes that were usually filled with ecstatic madness widened in utter disbelief.

​”Impossible… He was killed…?” Nathaniel whispered, before the clarity of realization shone within his eyes.

“I see… He was right after all,” he smiled softly. A peaceful smile of acceptance that made Finn frown immediately. That was the look of someone who was ready to die.

You want to kill yourself?! After what you’ve done?! YouSinner! Like hell I’ll let you!! Finn moved to deliver a finishing blow.

But ​in a twist that made his blood run cold, the massive shadow creature turned and faced Nathaniel, raising its long arm above his head with a cold air of judgment.

​”And the curtain draws open…” Nathaniel muttered with a peaceful, accepting smile. He looked Finn dead in the eye with a final, tender expression as if admiring his job well done.

​CRUNCH.

​The Tall Shadow Creature delivered a single, sickening blow to the top of Nathaniel’s head.

​This time there was no resistance. No Chaotic Reassembly to save Nathaniel. His head was pounded into the floorboards, pulverized into an unrecognizable mush of bone and brain matter.

​The room fell silent.

​Finn stood there, heaving and panting, staring at the sight in utter shock. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Nathaniel was… dead? Was he truly dead? Just like that?

No. You can’t die yet… You were mine to kill…

“You can’t die yet!!” Hot white rage filled his mind like an incessant drone. “YOU WERE MINE TO KILL!!”

​The Vengeful Nature of the Ferropteryx Eagle he embodied roared in indignation. His prey had been stolen right before his eyes! What a sully to his existence! What audacity from the shadow creature! It had dared to steal his prey?!

​With a shriek of fury, Finn lunged at the Tall Shadow Creature just as it pulled its fist from Nathaniel’s mushy remains.

He spun with fury, bearing his razor sharp wings down on the creature. ​But they passed through empty air.

In a poof, the shadow mass was nowhere to be seen. All that remained of it were black flecks of shadow that dissolved into the air like a whisper.

Finn went mad. He would be denied retribution too?! He had failed to kill his enemy, the sinner Nathaniel who had wronged him, and yet he couldn’t deliver retribution on the one who had stolen his kill either?!

​”GRAAAHHH!”

A pained cry from the depths of Finn’s very soul tore through his throat. He screamed out to the heavens with a shriek that shook the soul of any who heard it. This was the cry of a wounded beast.

But the heavens couldn’t care less about his cry. They were abruptly cut short when a familiar terrifying presence suddenly descended with fury.

Preceptor Elias! Finn instinctively stiffened from the terrible oppression the Preceptor brought with him.

He could sense the old man floating in the sky above the Needle Tower.

No. Not only him. There’s someone else too.

Another presence, one that paled in comparison to Preceptor Elias but was still utterly terrifying in its own right, arrived right not long after the Preceptor.

Together, they released their auras without inhibition, locking every living thing for miles in place.

Finn’s Ferropteryx pride flared immediately. He snarled, standing to his feet and slowly spreading his wings, intent to show his defiance to their oppression.

But just as he took the first slow step towards the broken glass panel, he heard footsteps from the doorway.

Someone was coming up the stairs. And with steady steps too. As if the oppression of the two terrifying figures in the air above didn’t affect them in the slightest.

Finn turned his head, gazing intensely at the door with a vicious look in his eyes. He was presently vengeful, and anyone, or anything that could provide relief to him would be very welcome. He wanted to fight something. He wanted to kill something.

The figure stepped through the debris of the doorframe.

​It was Althea.

But it wasn’t the Althea he knew.

His vigilance rose as he took sight of her.

​She was disheveled. Her violet Feraxian vest was torn and stained with blood that wasn’t hers. In her hand, she gripped a sword formed from pure, solidified shadow — a weapon that seemed to drink the light around it.

​But it was her eyes that made Finn’s breath tense like what was before him was not human, but the very bane of his existence.

​Gone was the calm yet curious girl he knew. Gone was the dutiful Initiate Ossuarist, Althea.

This Althea’s gaze was flat, heavy, and terrifyingly calm. She looked at the carnage in the room — the blood, the pounded remains of Nathaniel’s headless body, and the monstrous, metal-winged creature Finn had become — without a flicker of surprise or fear in her eyes. Without anything at all within them.

​She observed the whole room and settled her gaze on Finn, regarding him with a look so detached, it almost seemed weary and ancient.

​It was the look of a god viewing an insect. A look that said everything she gazed upon was beneath her notice.

​Finn was incensed. The Ferropteryx inside him wanted to challenge that look, to wipe it off Althea’s face and shove it down her throat.

​But that thought remained only that… a thought.

In a soundless blur, ​Preceptor Elias floated through the broken glass panels on his sword and landed in the center of the room with his robes fluttering in the high wind.

His face struggled to mask the thunderous fury underneath, his sweeping gaze took in the dead Nathaniel, the transformed Finn, and Althea standing in the doorway with the abyssal sword in her hand.

The look of fury on his face dissolved into pleasant surprise immediately. He settled his attention solely on her, relegating Finn to the background, as if his transformed body was simply something he saw every other Tuesday.

“It turns out I was right about you,” he said to Althea. “You possess a fragment of… a Transcendent… You were the one who broke the disguise veil, right?”

Althea remained silent. Instead, she slowly cast her gaze towards Finn who was fidgety — fighting between his nature to attack, and the pressure radiating from the Preceptor that kept him still.

Steadily, she stepped towards him, walking past the Preceptor, who followed her with his eyes to see what she was about to do.

Finn tensed immediately. He watched her come at him with an unflinching gaze, filling him — or particularly, the Ferropteryx soul mass he embodied — with a sense of dread.

He let out a low, guttural snarl that was part warning and part desperate attempt to maintain his composure against the distress he felt.

​Althea came to a stop just two feet from him, close enough that the turbulent wind from his massive wings whipped her disheveled hair and tattered vest as he tried to make himself seem bigger, exactly like a bird.

He roared at her, affronted she made him feel this way, and raised his wings to bring them down in a slash. ​But instead of trying to parry, Althea simply raised her left hand.

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