Jonathan’s mouth opened. Closed it and no sound dared to came out. His chest heaved in short, terrified gasps.

Tears — actual tears — pricked at the corners of his eyes.

Phei smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

"Do you know what hope is, Jonathan?"

Phei didn’t wait for an answer.

And Jonathan knew, with soul-crushing certainty, that he was already dead.

"It’s the most powerful thing a man can have. Almost comparable to fate itself — a cosmic cheat code. It makes you fight through the toughest challenges. Makes you endure the impossible. Makes you get back up when everything in your body is screaming at you to stay down."

Another step. The air between them growing thicker, colder.

"It whispers that there’s always a way out. Some infinite space of possibility where things could go differently. Where the ending isn’t written yet. Where you — specifically you — might be the one who escapes what everyone else couldn’t."

His voice dipped lower. Gentler. Almost kind — like a priest with a switchblade hidden behind his back.

"And you believe it. You believe it with everything you have. You do everything hope tells you to do. Sacrifice everything. Become whatever you think you need to become. All because hope promised it would workout in your favor.

"That this was the path. That if you just kept pushing, kept bleeding, kept fighting what you believe is the real thing to do in your mind — you’d make it real in reality beyond the confines of your mind."

A pause.

Jonathan realized he’d stopped breathing.

"You believe it," Phei continued softly, "because the alternative is unbearable. The alternative is admitting you were doomed to fail from the start. That you were always going to end up exactly where you are. That nothing you did ever mattered. That fate had already written your name in a book you were never allowed to read... Now empowered with the whispers of Hope, you set assail through the endless sea of Fate to rewrite your fate."

His voice dropped even lower.

"But hope is a liar, Jonathan. The most beautiful liar there is. More seductive than any succubus. More convincing than any truth. It’s not fate. It’s not destiny. It’s not some cosmic force bending in your direction."

Another step closer.

"It’s just something your mind creates. A story it tells itself to keep moving forward. A comfort. A motivation. A reason to keep fighting when surrender would be so much kinder."

Jonathan tried to push himself through the wall behind him. Tried to phase through solid matter like the monster in front of him probably could.

He couldn’t. He was just a man. Weak. Terrified.

Phei was inches away now.

Close enough that Jonathan could see the void swimming in those eyes — ancient, bottomless abysses that had witnessed the birth and death of stars, that had drunk entire civilizations dry and still hungered for more.

The warm amethyst was gone, replaced by something primordial and merciless: sclera swallowed by perfect, light-devouring black, irises burning with glacial blue-white fire that pulsed like dying galaxies.

Razor-thin vertical slits stared into him — not eyes, but doorways into something older than gods, colder than oblivion itself.

They didn’t reflect light. They consumed it.

"And the cruelest part?"

"You won’t know it was a lie until the very end," Phei said, voice low and calm, each word sinking into Jonathan’s bones like frostbite. "When you’ve done everything. Given everything. Believed with everything you had. When you’ve played every card, begged every ally, exhausted every option — and still found yourself exactly where you were always going to be."

Those ancient void eyes held Jonathan’s. Pinned him. Devoured him. They looked through flesh and bone and straight into the pathetic, trembling soul cowering inside.

"Then you watch, completely helpless, as what you thought was hope reveals itself to be nothing but wishful thinking. A story your mind crafted so beautifully, so convincingly, so perfectly... that you forgot it was fiction."

Jonathan’s legs were shaking uncontrollably.

Actually shaking — thighs trembling violently, knees buckling, muscles that had never failed him before turning to water beneath him. Hot tears blurred his vision, spilling down his cheeks in humiliating streams.

When was the last time he’d cried? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter anymore.

"Hope doesn’t change fate, Jonathan."

Phei smiled. It didn’t reach those terrible eyes.

"It just makes the fall hurt more."

A low chuckle escaped him — dark, cold, completely without warmth, the sound of something ancient that had already decided how this ended.

"I know what you’re doing right now. Hoping against everything. Against all logic. Against what your own eyes are showing you."

The final step.

They were face to face now — or rather, face to chest, because Phei was taller, broader, more in every way that mattered.

"Hoping you can Houdini out of this room. Or that I’ll just take Roxanne and leave. That stubborn, desperate part of your heart convincing you that she won’t hold anything against you. That I won’t either."

His voice dropped to a whisper, intimate and terrible, those void eyes never blinking, never releasing their grip.

"That subtle hope. Those quiet prayers. Protecting your pride. Telling you that somehow, someway, you walk out of here without paying for what you did."

Jonathan’s vision was swimming. Tears streamed down his face in hot, shameful rivers. His bladder threatened to betray him completely. He could feel the wetness already spreading.

"Let me tell you something, my friend."

The word ’friend’ landed like a blade pressed against his throat.

"Hope is the cruelest thing there is. Even for bastards like you. Especially for bastards like you."

He leaned closer, breath ghosting across Jonathan’s sweat-soaked face like the whisper of coming death, those ancient void eyes swallowing every last scrap of light in the room.

"And while it might have helped you before — while it might have carried you through situations you had no right to survive, while it might have whispered that tomorrow would be different, that your sins wouldn’t catch up, that men like you could beat women in the dark and never face consequences —"

His eyes held Jonathan’s with absolute, soul-crushing certainty.

"Today..."

A smile. Cold. Final. Absolute.

"Today, my friend, it’s your retribution."