Then the other man's body was drenched in blood.
He couldn't move. Couldn't run. Couldn't scream.
He just stood there, mouth agape—wide as a borehole—staring.
The man with peeled skin began thrashing violently on the metal table with wheels. Agony surged through his body in unbearable waves. His screams thickened the air, mingling with the raw scent of blood until breathing itself became impossible.
When he finally went still, silence crashed into the room like a falling wall. He blinked once, locked eyes with Leo—whose eyes were red and glistening—and darted toward the small hole beneath the door.
Tables wheeled frantically around him, but he twisted his body, dodging them. When he glimpsed the other room through the gap beneath the door, he exhaled sharply—almost in relief.
But it wasn't over.
Something fell—fast and sharp—landing squarely on his leg. The blade-like object sliced clean through his foot, leaving a shredded, blood-slick stump. His scream tore from his throat and echoed through the hole, crashing into Leo's ears.
Even then, maimed and shaking, he dragged the rest of his lower body through the narrow gap and disappeared.
"You weren't meant for this…"
Leo barely whispered the words when something heavy and wet splattered on the far side of the door. It sprayed across the small square glass at the top—thick, red, unmistakably blood.
Leo staggered back, collapsed into the foamy chair facing the bed, and buried his face in his hands. His sobs filled the room like smoke, dense and suffocating.
Oliver turned his head toward the sound.
When Leo lifted his gaze, their eyes locked.
He was the last one left in the room. Out of the seven, only Leo remained—besides Oliver.
Leo couldn't look away. He knew—if death returned, it would be his turn.
Still, something inside him urged him to look away. He didn't.
He stared, eyes stretched wide, veins bulging across his face like twisted roots beneath skin.
Just as the eye contact broke, a thunderous sound shattered the silence. The walls shook. Oliver fell back onto the bed.
And then, she entered.
Nyxara.
The sealed door opened with the effortless touch of a single finger. She stepped in as though no blood had ever touched the floor. Her eyes… they were not the same as before. Not the same as when she had taken Oliver.
Something cloaked her from head to toe—greenish, enormous, like some vast leaf drawn from a monstrous garden. As she walked, the tables stopped moving, pausing as if in reverence. They rolled aside, giving her passage.
She reached the bed.
Smiled.
Surveyed the carnage.
Then signaled Leo to rise.
Her voice shimmered with something unnatural. "Congratulations. You managed to escape death."
To Leo, it was like throwing a mouse into a lion's pit—and then applauding. Fury twisted inside him. If he had the strength, he'd have torn her throat out mid-sentence. He began cursing her in his head.
But the moment their eyes met, another voice rang out in his mind—hers.
Not imagined. Not a thought. A presence.
"I can hear everything you're saying. SO BE CAREFUL HOW YOU THINK AROUND ME!!!"
He froze instantly. His rage collapsed into silence.
Nyxara reached for a new syringe—same red liquid, but this one shimmered faintly, glittering like broken stars. She pressed it into Oliver's neck.
The change was immediate.
His eyes calmed. His skin softened. A strange stillness settled into his body—like he had returned to himself, but a different self. A self he'd never met.
Then he saw them. The bodies.
They lay scattered, soaked in blood. Motionless.
"What… happened here?" he asked, voice low.
Leo tried to hide the truth, but when he turned his head—Oliver saw it all. Saw the truth dancing in his eyes. Saw the bodies twitch, bounce slightly, each time he looked again.
Guilt began to rise in Oliver's chest like a scream that wouldn't form.
Nyxara cut through the silence with a single sentence.
"Don't worry. This isn't the first time you've done something like this."
Both Leo and Oliver turned to her, stunned.
"For Leo, yes—this is his first time. But for you…" she smiled faintly, darkly. "You go through this every generation. Every time you're reborn. Sometimes as a human. Sometimes as... something else."
Her words made no sense. Not yet. But something in them trembled with ancient truth.
Oliver's voice trembled.
"What do you mean, I go through this every time I'm reborn? What do you mean, human or something else? How many versions of me have you seen?"
But before she could respond, the room—the blood, the silence, the bodies—fell under the weight of her unspoken answer.
But before she could respond— "Remember the faceless creature in the dream you had?" she asked, raising a single eyebrow, her tone both casual and chilling.
At once, Oliver felt it again—the presence. That thing from his dream. No eyes, no mouth… but watching him. Close. Closer than he wanted to believe. His expression twisted in confusion.
"Wait… was that even a dream?" he asked, voice low, almost afraid of the answer.
"Yes," she replied, calm as glass. "And no. It was a dream—but not just yours. Every version of you dreams that same dream… right before the transformation begins."
Her gaze drifted toward a wheelchair at the far end of the room.
And then it moved.
It swelled toward her, crossing the blood-slick floor without sound or touch. The crimson stains vanished from its surface as though they had never existed. No one pushed it. No cloth cleaned it. But the chair came to rest at her feet—spotless.
Oliver stared. Disbelief spread across his face like ice.
His mind spun with rapid questions:
How is that even possible?
How can a chair obey her without a gesture or a word?
Not even Yama did that—he pointed, at least. He moved things with visible force. But she… she did nothing.
And yet the room obeyed her.
Who is she really? he wondered.
His heart raced now, not from fear, but from a rising sense of awe and dread—like standing at the edge of something vast and unknowable.
She looked down at the chair. Then, softly, she turned back to him with a slight smile.
You've seen Yama's fury, felt the beast's teeth," she murmured. "Yet you still haven't asked… why you remember them."
Oliver blinked. "Wait… WHAT!?"
Her eyes—now glowing faintly—locked onto his.