LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL-Chapter 171: You See The Face of Hopelessness

Elias had not intended to come here. His feet had simply... brought him. Perhaps some part of him had known that this was a wound that needed tending. Or perhaps it was simply a habit.

He had passed this way often during the six years he had stalked his prey, memorizing every detail of Josef’s life, and for a while he had come close to this family, as he learned about how to live a normal life... the Stoneward Asylum was not a place where you find normal people, and all of his teachers were far from normal men and women.

The door to the house was closed, and the windows were dark, but movement in the garden caught his eye.

A woman knelt among the flowers, her hands working the soil with mechanical precision.

She was young, younger than Josef had been, with dark hair pulled back in a hasty knot and a face that might have been beautiful if not for the hollows under her eyes and the gaunt set of her cheeks.

This was Josef’s wife, and Elias knew her name, though he had never spoken it, even when she encouraged him to; she was called Liana.

She was a seamstress by trade, a mother by devotion, and a woman who had loved her husband with a sincerity that Elias had documented in six years of observation. She had never known what Josef did in the shadows. She had never suspected that the man who kissed her goodbye each morning spent his nights hunting children.

Elias may have understood Josef’s act of hunting others for power; he was well aware of the price they needed to be paid in order to become powerful, but he had gone with the inefficient route and hunted children, suggesting that the man was not killing for power, but for something darker.

Two small figures sat on the doorstep behind her. Girls, both under the age of ten, with their mother’s dark hair and their father’s sharp cheekbones, there was a third eldest daughter, but she no longer stayed with the family and worked as a maid in the palace.

The two girls huddled together, their faces pale and tear-streaked, too young to understand why their father hadn’t come home, but they knew that something had gone wrong; these kids understood inside their hearts that they would never see him again.

Elias felt something twist in his chest. He did not name it, but he knew it was not remorse. His hunger needed to be fed, and Josef was the right choice.

Then he saw the men, who had been covered by the bushes as if they were instinctively hiding from the evening light.

There were four of them, standing in a loose semicircle around Liana. They wore the uniforms of the City Guard, the same uniform Josef had worn when he patrolled the streets as he used his authority to hunt and bring children to places where no one could hear them scream.

One of them was speaking, his voice carrying just enough for Elias’s enhanced hearing to catch,

"—really should come inside, Liana. We can’t have you out here like this. The neighbors are talking."

Liana did not look up. Her hands kept working the soil, pulling weeds that did not need pulling. "I’m fine, Aris. Please. Just leave me be."

Another guard, younger, with a scar on his chin, shifted uncomfortably.

"We’re just trying to help. Josef was... he was one of us. We want to make sure you’re taken care of."

"Taken care of." Liana’s voice was flat. "Like you took care of him? Like, you protected him from whatever happened?"

The guards exchanged glances. The one called Aris stepped closer, his voice dropping to a murmur that Elias’s hearing still caught perfectly.

"We’ve told you. He must have run into trouble on his patrol. We’re investigating, and trust us, we will find whoever did this."

"Lies."

The word was not Elias’s. It came from somewhere deeper, somewhere older that had been silent for a while now.

"Lies, lies, lies. They know. They all know. They helped him. They watched. They took their turns."

Elias’s blood went cold. The voice in his head had been quiet for so long that Elias had almost forgotten its weight. Almost. But now it returned, and it was not a single voice, but as a chorus, dozens, hundreds of children’s voices speaking in unison, their words overlapping and intertwining into a symphony of accusation.

The fact that these were children screaming in his head in the voices of the dead only made it worse.

"They were there."

"Aris. The one with the scar. The fat one in the back. The tall one with the crooked nose."

"They watched."

"They laughed."

"They took their turns."

"They buried the bodies."

"They know where the graves are."

"They know where we are."

"KILL THEM."

"KILL THEM ALL."

Elias’s hands tightened on the wooden box. For a moment, the hunter in him surged, demanding action, demanding blood.

These four men were not innocent bystanders, and they were not merely Josef’s colleagues; they were most likely his partners, accomplices, and brothers in depravity.

The Passenger’s voices were clear now, individual children speaking one after another. Elias hated when they did that.

"Aris took me to the basement. He said it was a game."

"The scarred one, Corin, he held me down while Josef..."

"The fat one, Mikel, he laughed the whole time. He laughed."

"The tall one, Derrick, he was the one who found me. He smiled when he took my hand."

And then for the first time, Elias saw it all through the eyes of the Passenger’s memories, and understood that these were the stolen memories of the dead, passed to him through the voices that haunted his mind. He saw the basement, the candles, the faces of the men as they...

The realization that the Passenger had always been sending him these visions, but as a mortal, his Will was far too weak to bring up these visions from the dead, and now that he could see the act of barbarism committed against these children, there was no way he could just look away.

He stopped the thought; he would need that rage soon, but not yet. Not while Liana and her daughters were watching.

Liana spoke again, her voice cracking, "Please. Just go. I can’t... I can’t look at you right now. Any of you."

Aris’s expression flickered, something that might have been guilt or maybe irritation, but it was quickly suppressed. "We’re just trying to help. If you need anything—"

"I need you to leave."

The four guards exchanged another glance. Then Aris nodded slowly, stepping back.

"Alright. We’ll go. But we’ll check in tomorrow. Make sure you’re okay."

They turned and walked away, their boots crunching on the garden path. As they passed within ten feet of Elias’s position, the Passengers’ voices rose to a fever pitch, as hundreds of children kept screaming in his head.

"NOW. KILL THEM NOW. THEY’RE RIGHT THERE. YOU CAN TAKE ALL FOUR BEFORE THEY SCREAM!"

But Elias did not move, and it was not because he lacked the desire or the ability. They were all Fury Forge and he could kill them faster than their mind could process their deaths, he now had so many tools under his belt to cause carnage that it was almost ridiculous to consider, but he had stopped because Liana had looked up as the guards departed, and her eyes had met his for just a moment, and those eyes were haunted, broken, and hopeless.

She did not see him as her gaze passed right through, but in that moment, Elias understood something he had not allowed himself to consider.