thief of fate-Chapter 58: Just a gift

Silence filled the place heavy, suffocating. No light penetrated the walls, no breeze slipped through the cracks. The room that Irkalos had taken as his shelter wasn’t a room in the usual sense; it was more of a den, a clay cave specially prepared by the organization to contain his untamable instincts.

His body was sprawled across the cold ground, twisted in a strange shape, limbs wrapped around himself like a primitive beast. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, barely audible, while his breath cast faint vapor in the darkness.

Irkalos doesn’t sleep... he floats in states between slumber and wakefulness. His sleep is not rest it’s dormancy. His mind never rests, even when his body does. The echo of blood spilled by his hands still rang in his head...

Suddenly... something changed.

He opened his right eye first. It glowed with a thread of flame, shining beneath the lid. He didn’t move, didn’t utter a word, just listened.

The atmosphere had changed.

The air... became heavier. But not a physical weight it was something different. Subtle. Crawling beneath the skin, whispering in the nerves. It wasn’t a sound, nor a motion... it was as if something had slipped into the heart of the place.

He moved his long claws slightly on the stone floor the sound like a soft whistle... but deliberate. Irkalos never moved without reason. Every cell in him had entered a state of alert.

Then, footsteps.

Light... but steady. Confident.

He opened his other eye. Now, hell blazed from his gaze. He rose slowly, like a beast waking from a disturbing dream only to find it real.

And then he saw him.

That being... now stood before him, at the entrance of the chamber. He did not speak. He did not breathe audibly. But he watched. Eyes the color of soot, still, unblinking, without a shred of emotion.

Irkalos said nothing. He just stood.

The aura burst from him suddenly, as if something tore through his chest and forced it out. It was like a sweeping flood, a dark aura drenched in the scent of blood, pain, and the hunt. The predator’s aura.

The room trembled.

Even the stone walls gave a faint creak, as if pleading for help.

Irkalos made a strange sound not a roar, nor a murmur, but something like death’s sigh... then lunged.

But

"Stop, Irkalos."

The voice was like a blade. Sharp, clear, uncompromising. It came from an unseen corner for a moment, before the leader appeared.

Irkalos stopped... not out of fear.

He stared at the leader, then at the being standing firmly.

The leader said in a calm but decisive tone: "This person... is the true master of this place."

The room fell silent.

The true master? This... thing?

Irkalos’s gaze shifted slowly toward the other... His eyes didn’t flinch. His face didn’t change. No reaction appeared on him. As if he hadn’t heard anything or heard it all and didn’t care.

But what he did next... made Irkalos’s heart slow for a moment.

Aksel raised his hand, with a deadly calm... and in his palm, there was something... something pulsing, something that looked like...

A heart?

But it wasn’t a human heart... no, it didn’t resemble any heart he’d seen in his victims.

Irkalos didn’t know what it was, but some deep part of him his raw animal core felt danger.

Irkalos kept staring at the pulsing object in the hand of the one standing before him. He didn’t move, but the air around him began to tremble again. That heart or what looked like a heart was not just a piece of flesh; it was something that screamed from within, sending out pulses that stirred a shiver inside him. With each beat, he felt a part of him... turn.

How long had it been since he’d felt fear? Or something like curiosity? He couldn’t remember. He’d long lived with the idea that he’d reached the limits of what his senses could perceive, of what his body could endure. But now, in this exact moment, his body was reminding him he was not the only predator in the world.

Aksel finally spoke, in a low voice,

"A gift."

Irkalos blinked slowly, took no step forward, but his muscles were taut, as if screaming to move.

Aksel continued, lifting the object higher, as if offering it to a starving creature:

"A gift for your return... from the Mother of Curses."

Irkalos’s eyes widened slightly. The name wasn’t unfamiliar. None in his class were unaware of it. "The Mother of Curses"... that name rarely spoken not out of reverence, but fear.

He looked at the heart again. It began to glow with a dark violet hue, emitting soft pulses like fluttering wings.

"A core," Aksel said in the same quiet voice, "It holds one skill... but it’s enough for you."

Another moment of silence.

Irkalos didn’t wait.

He lunged forward in a flash not like an attack, but like a creature driven to the edge of madness from hunger, finally finding its first prey in ages. He seized the core from Aksel’s hand... then raised it to his mouth.

And sank his fangs into it.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t hard. It was something in between. As soon as it entered his mouth, it began to dissolve, flowing down his throat like liquid saturated with energy.

The swallowing sound he made was like the growl of a creature being born anew.

His body jolted for a moment, then leaned forward, one hand on the ground to steady himself. His breaths quickened, and every fiber of him seemed to ignite... or grow.

He began to feel it... the skill.

Not just a sensation of fear in others. But a taste of it.

Like catching the scent of blood in the middle of the night... and finally tasting it, feeling it, knowing its texture, its hidden scent... fear was now tangible, like the dampness before a storm, like the final breaths escaping a dying victim.

He raised his head slowly, eyes still glowing with that flame. Then looked toward Aksel... that being standing motionless, as if nothing had happened.

Irkalos spoke, voice rough with curiosity and confusion:

"You’re not supposed... to be able to leave."

He meant beyond these walls... past the layers no one of "his kind" was permitted to cross.

But Aksel didn’t smile. Didn’t boast. Didn’t explain.

He simply said:

"I’m different."

His tone was lifeless, as if the truth needed no ornament. As if he took no pride in being different, didn’t see it as an accomplishment. Just... reality.

Irkalos went silent.

It wasn’t the words that disturbed him but the certainty with which they were spoken.

There was no tension in Aksel’s body. No defense, no caution, no aggression, no readiness. He was a being without survival instinct because he... didn’t see the other as a threat.

And that alone... was what terrified Irkalos most.

Suddenly

It happened.

Irkalos didn’t feel the core digest... he felt it seep. It didn’t enter his stomach it entered his depths. It slithered like fire through dry threads of fabric. Started from his heart, then his veins, then his brain.

One moment was enough.

Then something broke.

Something inside him like a wall he never knew existed. A wall placed the day he was born, now... shattered by the core.

He opened his eyes wider.

Then closed them.

Then... he saw them.

One... two... three... ten...

More than fifty flames appeared in the darkness of his mind. A flame for every person in range. Each flame was different colors, pulses, shapes but he wasn’t looking at their bodies, he was seeing something much deeper... their fear.

Fear was not just a feeling. It was a glowing point, radiant, tense, dancing in the dark.

He extended his senses... and they stretched.

A two-hundred-meter radius... a full circle surrounding him.

He saw fear in every corner of that circle: A guard pretending confidence at the door but hiding terror from his name, a doctor writing reports quickly in dread of being summoned, a girl below crying quietly after nightmares about them, a human crawling through the tunnels trembling at the thought of encountering Irkalos again.

He saw them all.

Every point of fear... was like a flickering candle under a storm, waiting to be extinguished... or devoured.

He finally opened his eyes.

And slowly... without moving, and without a hint on his face... he smiled.

But it wasn’t an ordinary smile.

Not even the smile of a creature that recognizes limits.

It was the smile of a starving being... who finally discovered where the feast was hidden.

His lip curled slowly, revealing fangs long, slightly twisted. But his eyes... were the most terrifying. They glowed with the ecstasy of one who tasted something he never knew he’d been missing.

He whispered in a barely audible voice, as if speaking to his own heart... or to the beast awakened within him:

"I can smell it..."

"Every single one of them..."

Then he looked at Aksel again, in silence, then at the leader, who made no comment only looked at him as if saying: "Now... it all begins."

Irkalos smiled once more...

A smile his victims would come to know.