Ashes of the Elite-Chapter 19: All Consuming Hate

It hit me all at once. Like a blade drawn across my skin, sharp and undeniable. The whispers slithered into my skull, curling around my thoughts, tainting them black. And in that moment, deep in every corner of my broken self. I knew.

Hate.

It wasn't pain. It wasn't focus or willpower. It was hate. Burning, festering, all-consuming. A force that twisted my insides, that made my teeth clench and my muscles coil. My trigger was born of something sinister, something that would carve its place into me like a parasite. A weapon forged from my loathing, from the bitterness I carried like a second soul.

Regret gnawed at me. I knew what this meant. What it would cost me. There was no way to control something like this without it controlling me in return.

Then the whispers surged, their voices coiling through my head like vipers.

"They fear you. They tremble. A touch, a whisper, and you could make their nightmares real."

I swallowed hard, fingers twitching at my side as every shadow seemed to stretch toward me, feeding off the storm raging in my chest. The fear in the air was intoxicating, thick enough to taste. My skin buzzed, my body a live wire of power aching to be let loose.

"You could show them. You could make them kneel in truth, not in false reverence. Make it real child of light. They deserve it."

I turned my head, and there they were.

Standing just beside me, close enough to touch. Close enough to unravel me.

Mother. Father.

Their black eyes bore into mine, empty voids swallowing light, swallowing reason. Their faces were stretched into those same haunting smiles, the ones from my nightmares. Not warm. Not kind. Just... wrong. Twisted. Like marionettes held up by invisible strings, bent into something grotesque, something that wasn't them.

"Make them suffer."

Their voices weren't theirs. They were the whispers. That slithering, curling chorus of rot and venom that had followed me since the Rite of Manifestation. Urging me. Coaxing me.

"Like we did. Like you did."

I staggered back, barely aware of my own movements. My hands trembled, but not from fear. No, something worse. Something dangerous. The hate boiled inside me, fed by the sight of them, by the way their eyeless faces seemed to peel away at the walls I'd built inside my own mind.

The whispers dug deeper, threading through my thoughts like a disease.

"They bow to you, but they don't understand. Show them."

The crowd stirred in restless nervousness.

Shuffling feet as people stood up in instinctive fear. As if their 6th sense was warning them of a predator. The faint rustling of fabric as people shifted, uncertain, feeling the evil in the air. They sensed it that something was wrong but they didn't try to leave, its like they knew better to turn their backs.

I could hear their breath hitch, the murmurs barely contained behind clenched teeth. The tension coiled around us all like a vice, squeezing tighter with every passing second. They were afraid, even if they didn't understand why. They could feel it in their bones, in the way the shadows stretched just a little too long, in the way the air itself felt heavier.

The inquisitors, however, remained still. Watching.

Even through the haze of my spiraling thoughts, I could see it the way they knelt unwavering, their heads still bowed eyes casted up staring at me.

They weren't afraid.

No, they were waiting.

Waiting to see my power.

My breathing came rough, unsteady. I felt sick. They thought I was battling my gift, that this was some divine struggle of the Chosen. They had no idea how right they were and how close I was to giving in. To becoming exactly what they wanted me to be.

A weapon.

And they get their wish.

The moment cracked like ice underfoot.

A man in the crowd, a nobody, a face lost among the sea of bowed heads, twitched. His foot shifted back, barely an inch, but it was enough. He wanted out. He could feel the wrongness in the air, the weight of something pressing down, thick and suffocating. He wasn't thinking just moving, letting that primal urge take hold, to run.

But the whispers found him. And they burrowed into my head with sick glee.

"He killed his brother Liam at age seven."

My breath hitched in shock and repulsion. The words slithered through my mind with a sinister happiness.

"He harbors guilt, so much guilt—he lied about what happened."

I clenched my teeth, but the whispers only purred, feeding, multiplying enjoying the show.

"He fears someone will take his wife, his children, drag them into the dark where he can never reach them again what a pathetic fool."

The man took another step, his head lifting, sweat gleaming at his temple. He felt it. He knew something had locked onto him.

I didn't mean to raise my hand.

I truly didn't.

But before I could stop myself, my fingers twitched, curling just slightly—and the man froze. A strangled gasp escaped his lips, his limbs jerking as if caught in invisible chains. His eyes went wide, his breath quickening into ragged, uneven bursts.

And then he was there.

The day his brother died.

Trapped in it, over and over, each moment stretching into eternity. The blood, the tiny body falling, the horror, the panic, the lie spilling from his lips. Again. Again. A thousand times in the span of a single breath.

His heart seized.

He crumpled.

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"Ahhh," the whispers cackled the voices merging together in glee, "there he goes, maybe he'll meet his brother in the afterlife hahahahahaha."

I rip my hand back as if burned, my breath sharp and frantic.

The crowd recoiled, gasps and shouts breaking through the hush, but the inquisitors they looked from me to the man crumpled in the crowd with a glint in their eyes. Then they smiled as If I had confirmed everything for them.

And I stood there, my pulse hammering, my skin cold, the whispers still writhing in my skull like maggots urging me on.

I had killed him.

Without even trying.