Chapter 158

I could hear the crack of her chest. How the shards made her feet bleed, but she didn’t care enough to stop walking and fighting to see me ruined.

I let go of her face, troubled. My impulses were against any rationality from me in that moment, if I was even being logical at all.

My gun was thrown to the ground, at her feet.

Her brown irises shone with confusion, while my shallow breath showed how everything inside me was in conflict.

"You want so badly for me to die, then take it. Kill me. End this. Erase me from your life, Gray."

Her reaction was none.

The astonishment on her face didn’t disappear.

Her shock was so caricatured that I thought I had killed her with the challenge.

I waited for her hatred, her repulsion, her revenge to come as she had wanted it to. Emília was only able to stare at the gun and do nothing.

She had always been like this. Her strength was locked away. I knew Emília was capable of much, yet no key to life had been able to unlock her own demons.

I sighed.

As expected, I was still her weak point.

"I didn’t hesitate that night."

I turned my back, heading out of the cell, but a snap froze me.

A subsequent cry came next. A scream so silent it filled the air and flipped my heart. Damn, it initiated a bombardment of aggressive blood.

When I turned, I could see Emília with the gun in her hand, her finger already pressed on the trigger, and her face in complete tears.

I didn’t move.

My lungs barely expanded to capture air. Uncertainty hovered in my mind, preventing any synapses from firing.

She had fired.

She had the courage to hit me.

She pressed the damn trigger.

But the gun wasn’t loaded. I had used all the bullets on the monitors.

However, she didn’t know.

And I hadn’t remembered.

My cells became aware of how every word from her, laced with hatred, wasn’t false. It carried truth. It carried courage. It carried revenge.

All doubts were eliminated, and I boiled. I had nearly died. Had it not been for the damn fate, I would have had my skull pierced and blood gushing like a slaughtered pig.

I would have died for being fooled into thinking that the girl I left four years ago was still in love with me.

Gray collapsed.

She fell to her knees, naked and helpless, crying violently. Her broken, dirty side mirrored in her tear-filled eyes. Emília was as surprised as I was.

It was what I had done to her. I had made her like this.

Her scars were visible. Her soul was being stitched with pain. And it was being healed with the will to decimate the world.

To destroy me.

Her head lifted with her red-tinted sclerae, flooded with tears.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, as she had repeated in the last few days.

She needed an answer.

This time, I would have to take her where it was necessary.

I needed to make up for what I had awakened in her.

So, finally, I accepted our destiny.

"I’ll tell you who we are."

***

POV Emília Grey

**Four years ago**

Reaching the door was a nightmare in human form. Although the lantern guided me through the darkness, my brain was shut off. Destroyed. Torn apart.

My hands were shaking. My fingers were no longer made of bones. I was dust.

The smell of blood dominated my nostrils and filled my lungs. I tried to get rid of the image, but it was impossible not to have a strong urge, pinching my legs, to turn back and stay with Dante.

He could die.

He was in bad shape. Suffering.

But there were other questions, and the answers wouldn’t come from him.

What was happening?

What was the Day of Punishment?

I ran heavily toward the exit. Natural light crossed the stage as soon as I arrived. The main door had already been opened. The people were no longer inside.

My eyes took a while to adjust to the little light, even though it was nighttime.

As soon as I could open them, I was met with a line of police cars, ambulances, and firefighters organizing the scene. I didn’t go unnoticed. In seconds, two officers were around me.

"Are you injured?"

I shook my head.

"You have blood on your clothes. It’s not yours, then?"

I shook my head again.

"Where have you been?" he insisted.

"We’ll leave the interrogation for later. We’ll take you to your family," another officer said.

I took a deep breath.

"They didn’t come. I’m with my friends."

The officer watched me carefully. "Where are they..."

"Emília!"

Kayleen’s voice interrupted the conversation. The tobacco scent from that officer was replaced by the adrenaline of my best friend, who hugged me tightly around the neck.

"You can't be in this area," one of them informed.

"I thought my best friend was dead! You couldn’t do your job finding her, and now you’re ordering me to leave? Don’t piss me off!" she spat, furious, without letting go of me for a second.

"Miss Cullbert, I understand your distress, but orders are orders," the officer stated. "So please, step away. This is a crime scene. Only authorized personnel are allowed to stay."

Kayleen let go of me. Her anger now resided in her movements and in how her voice was projected.

"Authorized personnel? I’ve been here, damn it. Me and a hundred other people went through a nightmare while you couldn’t open the damn door!"

"Miss Cullbert, calm down."

"Calm down? You sit your ass down and don’t touch me!" she shouted, lightly pushing the officer.

"Kayleen, don’t stress. I’m fine."

"Thank God! But what if you weren’t? What if you were just another one of those people..."

Her voice was interrupted by a wave of tears, but she managed to control it.

"What people, Kayleen?"

Her eyes landed on me, the whites reddened from the intense crying. She was devastated.

"Those, Emília."

I turned to where her finger pointed.

My eyes traced the door, reaching a few windows, then finally the upper floor.

My body froze.

It was as if death had humanized itself, in flesh and bone; I felt it. I was trapped in its dark aura. And I saw its true form. How it scares, brings nightmares, and creates a void within us. Veni. Vidi. Vici.

The words were written in dark ink on the theater wall.

And the presence of five bodies forming each letter "i" ruined my existence in that moment.

Or the beginning of it.

"Who..."

"The hospital deputy director, the president’s secretary, the two sons of the new president, and the former police chief," one of the men began, understanding my shock and the lack of vocabulary to complete what I wanted to say. "All of them hanged."

"Oh, my God."

I was so scared by the lack of humanity that lingered before me.

It was ugly. Cruel.

"We still have one of our missing people. We believe they are inside. Probably with the killer," he continued.

"I don’t know why they haven’t removed these bodies yet," the other officer, smelling of tobacco, shot. "This isn’t normal!"

"We’ll take them out as soon as we understand how," the man said. Doubts flashed in his dilated pupils. His face was confused. He couldn’t tell if it was out of admiration or terror. "How did this happen? When, and where, was someone able to do such a thing?"

"More than one."

I turned to Kayleen, who was still dissecting the theater wall. "What do you mean?"

"Impossible for it to have been just one," she continued. "It was more than one."

"And they’re not human. There’s nothing good or alive in whoever did this," the man finished, speaking for my friend.

I took steps forward, scanning for any explanation.

My brain couldn’t absorb so much information that was being thrown at me that day. It was a life test I hadn’t studied for, to pass.

"Come on, friend. You need to clean up."

Kayleen placed her hand on my shoulder, caressing it. She guided me away from the area without letting go.

We passed people crying, their faces full of terror. Everyone had seen the same ghosts, gone through the same sensation of tightness and finality.

The street had a funeral atmosphere. We knew it wasn’t just for the hanged bodies. It was more for us and for the future of the city that would never be the same again.