[POV: Otos Exemplar | Otos: Age 28 | Vanitas: Age 19 | Aretia & Justitia: Age 22]
The massive wooden door of Father's study rebounded shut behind Vanitas, swinging closed with a harsh, grating shriek and a heavy metallic ring that echoed like a funeral toll throughout the wrecked chamber.
The air remained thick and choking, heavy with the sharp reek of scorched ozone and the dry powder of ancient teakwood splintered like parched reeds. Beyond the wreckage of the desk, Father stood rigid as a dark monolith in stone-still silence; his unblinking eyes were fixed upon the empty air, his chest heaving in ragged, suppressed gasps that struggled to contain an earthquake that had found nothing to pulverize save the heirloom of his ancestors. In the corner near the shredded velvet drapes, Mother knelt upon her knees, her entire body wracked with violent shudders, her fingernails clawing frantically through the fabric of her dress to stifle the sobs tearing at her lungs.
I looked down at the sole of my boot, where a jagged, blackened splinter of teak remained wedged, and then down at my right hand.
It was pulsing.
A vicious, deep-seated burn coursed through the flesh of my palm, as though the embers of that ancient day—when I had raised this very hand and struck away Vanitas's outstretched palm as if it were a scorching coal—had suddenly flared to life to sear my very bones. My jaw clamped shut with a sharp, agonizing grind that sent pain lancing through my molars, and my viscera dropped into a cold, sickening void.
I did not look back at Father. I did not spare a glance at Mother.
My boots parted from the floor, and I lunged through the cracked doorway into the darkened gallery.
The oil lamps along the corridor cast flickering, amber phantoms against the towering ashlar walls. Outside, the night was young, drawing the last pale violet threads of twilight from the high arched windows after the departure of the nobles' carriages and the emptying of the grand hall.
Ten paces ahead down the gloom of the gallery, I caught sight of his black silk mantle drifting with slow, measured strides—a phantom gliding through shadows without sparing a single glance back at the ruin he had left in his wake.
"Vanitas!"
He did not turn.
My stride surged, the heavy combat tread of my military boots slamming against the marble floor with a resounding clatter that shattered the palace's hushed stillness. I overtook him in two wide, driving paces and pivoted sharply to bar his path entirely, coming to an abrupt halt directly before him in the pool of pale light spilling from the arched window overlooking the frozen garden below.
"Where do you think you're going?"
The words ripped from between my lips, choked by a ragged, burning pant.
Vanitas stopped.
Not a single line upon his face shifted; his breath did not quicken by the breadth of a hair. His hands remained clasped loosely behind his back, his blank, glassy eyes fixing upon my chest with a dead, unmoving gaze that bore not the faintest tremor of an eyelid.
He tilted his head ever so slightly, speaking in an entirely ordinary cadence, as though inquiring about a turn in a hallway:
"Brother... I prefer not to converse with you blocking the corridor like this."
The muscles of my neck seized, blood pounding into my temples in searing, violent pulses: "Blocking the corridor?! Is that all you have to say after what you just did in there?! Mother is on her knees choking on her own tears, and Father stands amidst the shattered ruin of his legacy... and you speak of the path?!"
He slowly turned his gaze away, shifting his eyes toward the frosted glass of the arched window. He contemplated the pale reflection of his countenance in the dark pane, where the corridor's shadows bled into the black expanse of the gardens outside, murmuring in a low, placid tone, smooth as a blade slipping from an oiled scabbard, devoid of both apology and spite:
"I love the family, Otos. That is a truth, not an illusion."
He leaned his shoulder against the window frame and continued, his voice soft and dispassionate: "Yet... I love other things far more. In your crude tongue, you see me as a madman—a foolish boy eager to torch the house with everyone inside. But in my tongue... it is merely an error in composition. I am simply... something different. Born this way from the very first breath."
My jaw twitched violently, a scalding bitterness rising in the back of my throat: "Born this way? And you believe that excuses turning us all into kindling for your hearth?!"
He released a short breath through his nostrils that sounded like a dry, neutral chuckle, then murmured, his eyes lingering on his reflection: "This house is magnificent, Otos. Exquisitely crafted to forge a thousand ideal knights like yourself. But... by mistake, it brought forth me. And perhaps... I am the curse of this hou—"
He did not finish the word.
Not an eye blinked; not a fraction of a second was spared for the flash of a thought.
My right shoulder exploded in an involuntary, violent surge, and my armored fist drove through the empty air with the full, unbridled momentum of pent-up years.
The hardened ridges of my knuckles crashed into his lower jaw and cheekbone with a wet, brutal crack.
Vanitas's head snapped back at a sickening angle, a spray of dark blood and saliva bursting beneath the dim lamplight. His slender frame hovered suspended in the air for a fraction of an instant before plummeting, his shoulders and spine slamming hard against the icy marble flagstones, sliding across the polished stone until he came to rest crumpled beneath the window sill against the base of the wall.
In a heartbeat, I was over him.
My knee drove down into the heavy silk of his mantle, pinning him to the floor. My fingers clamped like iron claws around his lapels, my other fist raised high, quivering in the air with unspent violence, my chest heaving with scorching, ragged breaths.
"Don't you dare... Don't you dare utter that word again!" I roared into his face, my voice cracking and torn between clenched teeth. "You are a son of this house, Vanitas! Even if you reduce it to ash, you remain its son! Say what you will, heap the blame upon me, scream at me... but never call yourself a curse! Don't you dare!"
Fresh blood seeped from his split lower lip, trickling down the stark ivory curve of his chin and staining his throat and silk collar.
Yet his face...
His pupils remained locked in their sockets without dilating, not a single muscle twitching around his brow.
Vanitas wiped the crimson welling from the corner of his mouth with the back of his fingers in a slow, automated motion. Then, driving his heels firmly into the marble, he arched his hips in a sudden, explosive surge of leverage that shattered my center of gravity, slamming both open palms into my chest with a dry, overwhelming force that ripped my knee from his robe and tore my grip from his collar.
I stumbled backward, tumbling onto my heels until my knee struck the floor.
Bracing his back against the masonry, Vanitas rose from the marble flagstones with a fluid, effortless grace that bore no sign of muscular exertion or strain; he was not breathing hard, his lips betraying not the faintest tremor.
He drew himself to his full height, dusting away the grime clinging to his black trousers with rhythmic, methodical taps of his fingers.
Then... he lifted his chin.
His lifeless pupils locked onto my eyes.
Two bottomless pools of dead ink regarded me in absolute, stony silence, blood dripping steadily from his chin to spatter onto his collar, without parting his lips to utter a single sound.
He turned with glacial composure and resumed his stride down the darkened corridor, leaving me kneeling upon one knee in the center of the gallery, my fist stained with his blood trembling in the vacant air, as the suffocating silence of the palace swallowed me whole once more.
Vanitas's footsteps upon the polished marble were rhythmic, hushed, gliding through the gloom of the palace's secondary corridors without haste.
The deep crimson beads trickling from his split lip gathered at the curve of his chin, then fell away onto his dark silk collar, swallowed silently into the weave. He did not raise a hand to wipe it again. He walked with his eyes fixed ahead, submerged in a deafening void; as though the brutal blow he had just received had been nothing more than a raindrop glancing off granite.
The passageway veered toward the eastern wing, where the stately grand corridors converged with the rear service corridors—austere stone walls anchored by a lower wainscoting of polished marble.
There, beneath the dim, pallid glow of a solitary bronze lantern hanging from the vaulted ceiling, the maid Mira knelt upon the stone beside the wall. Her slender spine was bent in exhaustion over a wooden bucket brimming with grey water and alkaline foam set beside her knees, her hands scrubbing vigorously with a coarse rag at the stubborn residue of wax and spilled wine left behind by the departed guests.
The quiet, measured rhythm of approaching boots murmured down the empty hall.
The hurried scrub of her hands faltered; her gaze jerked upward in startlement. Soft strands of brown hair tumbled from beneath her plain linen cap. But the moment her eyes caught the black silk mantle and the slender, towering silhouette advancing through the shadows, the color drained instantly from her youthful face, leaving it the sickly grey of corpse-flesh, her neck seizing in petrified terror.
Her trembling fingers lost their grip on the wet cloth, letting it splash into the murky water. She scrambled to her feet in frantic haste, pressing her spine flat against the stone wall, leaving the wooden bucket resting at her feet so as not to obstruct the young master's passage.
Vanitas drew near.
Mira folded her torso forward in a low, desperate bow, pressing her chin tight against her collarbones, unable to lift her eyes to his face. Her voice emerged barely above a rasp, choked by a shivering chill:
"Master Vanitas... g-good... a peaceful evening, Master..."
Vanitas did not slow his stride. Nor did he pause.
A step.
Another step.
He came abreast of her, and without a word, without the flutter of an eyelid...
His bare fist shot forward.
The lightless black ring upon his index finger caught the meager lantern light in a dull, devouring glint as the blow descended with blind, merciless momentum upon the girl's right temple.
The sickening crack of shattering cranial bone exploded through the vaulted corridor with a wet, brutal rupture, like a ripe gourd pulped beneath a falling boulder. The force of the strike whipped her head violently into the marble wainscoting of the wall, a scarlet spray lashing across the stone, her frail body collapsing in a heap upon the floor without granting her the breath for a single shriek.
He did not hesitate.
Dropping to one knee over her fallen form, his bare fist began to rise and fall in a relentless, mechanical cadence, grinding bone and cartilage beneath the measured, unfeeling percussion of an iron forge hammer.
They were silent, rhythmic impacts delivered with stone-hewn precision. His face was a mask of dead wax, his jaw set, his cheekbones motionless, his vacant eyes pinned upon the ruin beneath his knuckles with an icy, glassy detachment; there was no pleasure, no wrath, only the hollow, methodical execution of a routine chore.
His shin clipped the rim of the wooden bucket, overturning it with a heavy, hollow clatter. The sloshing water and thick white lather rushed across the flagstones to mingle with the spreading pool of gore, churning into a slick, rust-colored mire that flooded the floor, sending up the sharp, metallic steam of fresh blood mixed with stale soap.
The features of the face were eradicated entirely, reduced to a pulverized, shapeless mass drowning in crimson sludge.
Vanitas rose to his feet. He planted the heavy heel of his boot upon the crushed remnants of the skull, then bore down with his full weight, grinding the fractured bone to dust in a muffled, final crunch that stained the thick leather of his sole entirely crimson.
The silence of the hallway was severed by the sudden, frantic patter of running feet—the sharp click of delicate feminine slippers echoing across the wet marble, before abruptly freezing dead at the archway.
Vanitas stopped.
Framed in the pale shaft of yellow light spilling through the opposing archway stood Justitia, wrapped in her pristine white gown, petrified like a pale marble statue shivering in the gloom of the vestibule.
Her green eyes slowly dilated until the black void of her pupils swallowed the emerald of her irises whole; a shattered, paralyzed gaze taking in the incomprehensible slaughter before her: the pulped, unrecognizable remains of Mira, the frothing, rust-colored mire, and the blood drenching Vanitas's silk attire and coating his hands to the wrists.
She could not move forward. She could not scream. She could not draw breath. Her face was ashen as death, her lips trembling in total muteness, silent tears of sheer horror spilling down her cheeks, her limbs locked in the grip of absolute paralysis.
Vanitas did not wait for her.
He turned toward her and began to walk with glacial, unbroken composure.
A step.
Another step.
The steady, deliberate cadence of his wet boots over the slick marble was the only sound breathing through the dead palace. He drew nearer and nearer, like a nightmare walking in broad daylight, while Justitia remained pinned to the spot like a terrified sparrow before a viper, powerless even to shut her eyes or retreat a single inch into the shadows.
He reached her.
He loomed directly before her, his bloodstained mantle casting cold shadows that swallowed the pale sliver of light falling across her frame.
Slowly, he raised his hands.
Both palms, drenched and dripping with Mira's warm, viscous blood, reached out with an eerie, horrifying gentleness, cupping her cold, trembling cheeks.
A choked, ragged gasp caught in the girl's throat, as though the very air had frozen solid within her chest. The warm, sticky blood of the dead maid smeared across Justitia's pale skin, leaving crimson streaks that ran down her jaw like tears of gore.
Vanitas locked his dead, glassy pupils into her wide, staring eyes. His features were hollow of all wrath and feeling—an unfeeling void regarding her frozen terror.
And in a voice low, melodious, and terrifying in its tender quiet, he whispered:
"My dear sister... look at who lies broken there, and who stands before you."
Then...
He tilted his head gently and leaned forward.
With slow, serene tenderness, he planted a cold kiss upon the center of her brow.
A quiet, fraternal benediction that left a wet, scarlet stain upon her pristine white forehead.
He lowered his hands with effortless calm.
Justitia's limbs seized completely, her joints hardening as though petrifying into stone. The green warmth of her eyes died away, extinguishing the very last ember of life within them; an empty, glassy stare that mirrored a desolate glass shattered from within, trapping in her pupils an abyss of mute, bottomless horror.
Across the marble floor, the dark rim of the soapy, blood-drenched tide crept forward with sluggish persistence, until it brushed against the hem of her pure white gown, its cotton weave drinking in the crimson stain as it spread outward without pause.
Vanitas turned his face from her.
Stepping away with measured, unbroken strides, he drifted down the long, shadowed corridor until the darkness consumed him, leaving Justitia standing frozen as stone—blood streaming down her cheeks, her brow, and her hem, staring into the vacant slaughter amidst an eternal silence of graves that settled upon the house of Exemplar forever.