Chapter 165: Inconvenient Conscience
“Please don’t kill me… Please, I didn’t see anything, I promise!”
The nurse’s voice cracked into a sob as tears streamed down her face. She shook violently, back pressed against Ravial’s chest, his large hand wrapped around her slim, fragile neck. Only minutes ago she had been inside the clean, brightly lit hospital room. Now she found herself in a dark alley behind the hospital, the stench of garbage and damp concrete filling her lungs. She was so terrified she was seconds away from wetting herself.
Ravial felt nothing but mild irritation.
Her crying grated on his nerves like nails on glass. The wet, pathetic sounds, the trembling, the desperate pleas, all of it was inefficient. Humans were always so loud when they faced the inevitable.
He tightened his fingers just enough to feel her pulse flutter wildly beneath his palm. One quick squeeze and her neck would snap like dry kindling.
It would be easy.
So very easy.
He could already picture it, the satisfying crack, the way her body would go limp, the way he would dispose of her before Leitana even woke up. No one would ever know. No one would ever connect it to him.
But as his grip began to squeeze, Leitana’s voice echoed in his mind, soft, pleading, full of that infuriating gentleness:
“Mi no want yu hurting people just because yu can.”
The memory annoyed him.
It was inconvenient.
He was the monster. He had always been the monster. Why should he care what she thought when someone had dared to see what he truly was?
Still… her tears. Her disappointment. The way her small hands had clutched his wrist, begging him not to kill Charles.
He hated how much that affected him.
Yet here he was….hesitating.
He looked down at the nurse, her eyes wide with terror, lips trembling as she continued to babble.
“I won’t tell anyone… please… let me go… I have a family… I swear I saw nothing…”
His grip tightened further, cutting off her air just enough to make her eyes bulge.
“Quiet,” he said flatly, voice devoid of any emotion. “Your begging is tiresome. You saw what you should not have seen. That makes you a problem.”
She whimpered, tears pouring faster. “I-I won’t say anything… please… I have children…”
Ravial’s thoughts were cold and clinical.
Snap her neck. Drain the life from her. Leave the body in the dumpster. Clean it up later. Simple. Efficient.
His hand flexed, ready to end it.
But Leitana’s words echoed again.
“Mi no want yu hurting people just because yu can…”
The annoyance flared hotter. Why was he hesitating? Why was her voice still ringing in his head like some inconvenient conscience he had never asked for?
He looked at the crying girl again.
Perhaps killing her was unnecessary.
He could simply wipe the memory.
It would be cleaner. Less risk of questions.
With a sigh of irritation at his own weakness, he tightened his hand around her neck, cutting off her air supply again just enough to make her panic.
He leaned in close, lips brushing her ear, and muttered ancient words in a language long forgotten by mortals, a command that reached into her mind and tore away the last few minutes.
The nurse’s eyes widened for a split second. Then they flashed pure white as the compulsion took hold. Her body went limp. She crumpled to the dirty alley floor in a heap, unconscious but alive.
Ravial looked down at her with bored detachment.
Pathetic.
He turned to leave.
A man suddenly staggered into the alley from the street, swaying slightly, clearly drunk.
“Hey… what did you do to her?” the man slurred, eyes narrowing at the unconscious nurse on the ground.
Ravial looked at him and said nothing.
The man stumbled closer, reaching into his pocket for what was probably a phone or a weapon.
Before he could pull it out, Ravial moved.
Unnatural speed carried him behind the man in a blur. One hand snapped out, gripping the drunk’s head.
Another hand clamped over his mouth and then twisted his head with brutal, precise force.
Crack.
The neck snapped instantly. The man dropped dead to the concrete, eyes staring blankly at nothing.
Ravial stared down at the fresh corpse with the same bored expression he might give a speck of dust on his shoe.
Without turning around, he spoke into the shadows.
“Come out.”
Three figures materialized from the darkness, stepping into the dim light of the alley.
Asmodeus, Beelzebub, and Leviathan, all in their true demonic forms. Horns curling, skin shifting between shadow and scaled crimson, eyes glowing with hellfire. They dropped to one knee in perfect unison.
“My lord,” they intoned together, voices layered with power and reverence.
Ravial turned to face them, his own eyes still burning faintly with the same infernal light..
“Why do you follow me like dogs sniffing after scraps?” he asked, voice cold and laced with irritation. “I do not need babysitters.”
Beelzebub smiled, fangs glinting, his eyes glowing with hungry desire as he glanced at the unconscious nurse on the ground.
“My lord, the girl behind you is still alive,” he said, voice dripping with anticipation. “Should I finish her off?”
Ravial’s head tilted slightly.
The alley fell silent except for the distant hum of the hospital generators and the soft, unconscious breathing of the nurse.
Ravial looked at Beelzebub for a long moment, the weight of centuries of command in his gaze.
“No.”
The single word dropped like a guillotine.
The three princes exchanged a quick, uneasy glance, but none dared speak. Beelzebub’s hungry grin faded into a tight line. Leviathan opened his mouth, a question already forming on his demonic lips, when Ravial suddenly turned his head toward the hospital building.
One of the second-floor windows had a curtain that rustled just once, but unmistakably, as if someone had been standing there and jerked back.
Ravial stared at it, unblinking.
Asmodeus stepped forward carefully. “My lord… we have a message from the heavens.”
Ravial stiffened.
A message from the heavens had not come in centuries.
He turned back to his princes, expression cold and unreadable.
“Dispose of the man’s body,” he ordered Beelzebub. “Make it disappear completely.”
Beelzebub bowed deeply. “Yes, my lord.”
Without another word, the three demonic princes vanished into the shadows, taking the dead drunk with them.
The alley was empty once more.
Behind the curtain on the second floor, pressed hard against the wall of an empty patient room, Avery stood frozen.
Her chest heaved in short, panicked bursts.
She had seen everything.
Ravial had just killed a man.
With his bare hands.
In seconds.
And he had done it without hesitation, without remorse like it was nothing.
And the look on his face when he did it… it wasn’t human.
It wasn’t even close.
Avery’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle the terrified sound trying to escape.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t think.
All she could do was stare at the now-still curtain and realize that the man her sister had married, the man who had just saved her mother from Charles, was far more dangerous than any of them had ever imagined.