[Morgan Pendragon]
"Did you lose a bet?"
I sighed again. "No, Mordred, I did not lose a bet."
My answer only seemed to increase his skepticism, judging by his narrowed eyes and deepening frown.
I still couldn't wrap my head around my actions a few moments ago.
As soon as I saw him, sitting on the sofa, my body moved on its own, my eyes welled up with tears as my arms wrapped around his slim figure.
As I watched him play with his serpent mechanima, I couldn't help but notice his utter beauty as a human.
Sure, we children of the High King and High Queens are considered among the most beautiful people in the world, with Gawain once even being called the most handsome teenager in the Kingdom by articles and magazines.
But Mordred was an entirely different definition of beauty. His beauty surpassed any man or woman I have ever encountered, even my mother and stepmother, High Queen Morgause.
Mother Morgause was the most beautiful person I had ever met, and Mordred truly inherited that beauty, a truly handsome young man with a slight yet potent feminine allure.
His snow-white, messy hair rested gently against the back of his neck, almost glowing under the soft lights of the room.
His fair skin had become paler with the scars peeking out of his collar, adding an alluring ruggedness to his almost feminine charm.
His eyes held the signature Pendragon shade of crimson, yet they looked more like crystallized blood that eerily shifted as if the color were alive.
Whenever his crimson gaze falls on me, a chill runs down my spine. It felt as if a serpent was gazing at me as its body slowly coiled around my neck.
A gaze that pierces through the most perfectly crafted lies and illusions.
It reminded me of my father's gaze.
However, I noticed something else in his eyes, or rather, the lack of something that many consider very important.
The light in his eyes, the light that blazed deep within him five years ago when he confronted me, was no longer there.
His eyes were dead. It felt like gazing into a sea of broken crimson glass shards.
I had heard about his experience in the Abyss while on the plane, and what I heard shook me to my core.
Looking at Mordred, I felt a cold hand slowly grip my heart and close around my throat.
He's so young, and to experience all of that suffering at such a young age…
"Because of you."
My breath caught, and I froze.
"It's your fault."
An insidious whisper slid into my mind.
It was a familiar voice, cold and sharp.
A voice that I knew well.
Sometimes, it sounded like me, even taking my appearance, as if to mock me while wearing my face.
The frigid grip tightened around me like a serpent as the voice taunted me.
"If you hadn't ignored his existence for most of his life, he wouldn't have been down this path."
My eyes tried to stay on his face, but the voice dragged my gaze downward.
"Look."
I tried to fight it, but to no avail.
"No… look properly."
My gaze fell on the scar peeking from the collar of his shirt.
A jagged, permanent blemish that tainted his form.
"Those scars…" The whisper curled into my mind like a parasite.
"They will never fade away, and you played a role in carving them into his flesh."
No. Stop it.
"He loathes you so much."
Please keep quiet.
As if to mock me, the voice laughed.
It tightened around my thoughts like a noose.
Hearing my very voice, distorted, filled me with revulsion.
"You are already breaking down from mere whispers?"
The voice sounded appalled.
"Look at him. Look into his eyes."
My gaze flickered back to Mordred's face, into those dead crimson eyes.
"His light is gone, extinguished by his suffering. And you were a cause of it."
"If you had not ignored his existence, he would never have been dragged into the Tear."
My breaths became shallow and rapid.
"You think the voices in your head are painful? Imagine what he has to endure."
The whisper said mockingly.
"A mind flayed by the horrors and pain of the Abyss will never know peace."
The frigid grip around my heart and neck tightened, suffocating me.
"The voices in your head…"
The voice softened, cruel and patient.
"…are nothing compared to his."
"Morgan."
Mordred's voice broke through my spiraling mind.
I blinked, breaking out of my daze, and saw him looking at me, his mechanima coiling lazily around his left arm.
The white serpent's emerald eyes regarded me with quiet curiosity.
For a moment, I found myself staring at them.
There was no judgment in that gaze.
No accusation.
Just… innocence.
"The voices in your head can be very annoying."
I froze.
Staring at him, I asked, "How did you know?"
He gave me a faint, cold smile.
A blood tendril appeared behind him. It slowly went over to his mechanima, gently stroking its head.
The serpent's eyes flickered as it enjoyed the affection, and it emitted a contented hiss.
Its pristine white scales shimmered as its body morphed, becoming smaller and smaller until it bit its tail, forming a bracelet that fit snugly around Mordred's wrist.
"I could tell from your expression," he said as the emerald eyes of his mechanima dimmed. "I see that face most of the time in the mirror."
A chill settled deeper than I expected.
"How do you cope with it?" I asked.
"By piercing my eardrums."
He said it without hesitation, his tone flat and devoid of emotion.
For a moment, I couldn't tell if he was joking.
The look in his eyes told me he wasn't.
He frowned.
"Although it is quite concerning to know that the future ruler of the Kingdom is hearing voices."
I shook my head. "It is not a certainty that I would become our father's successor."
"Oh, I've heard," he waved his hand dismissively. "Gawain can get quite… competitive."
Then his eyes met mine again.
"You'll be fine," he said.
"As long as you don't let the voices run free."
"Like insanity?" I asked.
"There is a difference, Morgan."
Mordred's expression remained unchanged.
Cold and neutral.
"Your voices are born from the guilt that was eating into your very being."
A brief pause.
"Mine come from the horrors that I've experienced."
When he spoke, his voice carried no hatred, no anger, just an empty sound escaping from his lips.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
"Fourteen years."
He straightened, not breaking his gaze. "I experienced a lot in fourteen years."
The words I wanted to convey were stuck in my throat. He continued before I could say a word.
"For four years, I faced the horrors of the Tear."
"Daemons… are an efficient, brutal bunch. I've seen them kill people in a variety of different ways."
He gave a humorless chuckle. "I almost became a resident of the Tomb many times because of them."
He tilted his head slightly.
"And when they die…"
"They leave behind wraiths."
"I've heard about them," I said quietly. "They possess people."
"They do more than that," Mordred replied, a faint, humorless smile appearing. "They twist their hosts into something else entirely."
"Nightmares."
His eyes darkened. "Nightmares that we are forced to burn away."
A cold weight settled in my chest.
"The only salvation for a Deathwalker transformed by a wraith…" he paused, as if to process the words. "...is to burn them alive."
He raised a finger and tapped his ear lightly.
"You get used to the burning of skin, flesh, and bones."
He paused again before lowering his voice to barely a whisper.
"It's the screaming that stays with you for the rest of your life."
My breath caught when I heard it.
"Four years of this…" he chuckled. "I would be surprised to hear a Deathwalker maintaining their sanity after leaving the Shield."
His smile faded, and his gaze sharpened.
"And then I fell."
The air seemed to grow heavier.
"For ten years, I was nothing more than the plaything of a sadistic, mad creature that wore the face of a human."
A tremor passed through him, and his voice cracked.
"For ten years, I was ripped apart by the daemon commanders and sewn back by Lilith, only for her to torture me with the Agony Thorn."
He hunched over, a shadow of horror passing through his expression.
"I couldn't even die."
The vice grip around my heart tightened.
I thought I understood what he went through.
I was wrong.
Utterly wrong.
"As you've probably noticed," he said, gesturing faintly at himself, "I've been hollowed out."
"So the voices…"
"…just exist in the background."
I swallowed. "So our voices are different."
"Very much so," Mordred nodded.
His gaze locked into mine.
"My voices can even influence my actions."
"Like right now, the voices are telling me one single thing."
My body tensed as the air shifted.
The look in Mordred's eyes was… unsettling.
"What?" I dared to ask.
He held my gaze, unblinking.
"To kill you."
My heart skipped a beat, and not for a good reason.
He spoke with an eerie calm. "They're telling me to jump over this table and rip your throat out."
Tilting his head, he said. "They said it will add a dash of color to your sweater."
My instincts immediately went on high alert. "They're telling you to… kill me?"
Mordred smiled, and my body tensed on instinct, ready to battle.
"Don't worry. I'm controlling myself rather well."
"However…" he tilted his head slightly. "I do wonder."
His crimson eyes held mine.
"Will I be able to kill you now that we are on par with each other?"
Clenching my fists, I couldn't help but wonder.
Mordred is now an S-ranker, and I could tell that we're more or less equally powerful.
The utterly weak boy I had ignored all those years ago was now looking at me as an equal.
No.
Perhaps even looking down on me.
If we were to clash…
My body shuddered at the thought.
One of us would die.
As if reading my thoughts, Mordred leaned forward, his hands clasped, his eyes boring into mine.
"Morgan," he said calmly. "Do I exist?"
It was a simple question.
Yet it shook the very foundations of my beliefs.
Respect the strong, help the weak, abandon the weakest.
That belief is crumbling at the mere mention of a question.
As I looked at him, the image of our family insignia came to mind.
A serpentine dragon biting its tail.
Except now, the serpent was white.
Its eyes were the color of blood.
And it stared into my very soul as it bared its fangs.
Waiting.
Judging.
As I stared into its eyes, I had my answer.
"Yes, Mordred," I said, keeping my voice even despite the cold paralysis threatening to consume me whole.
Looking him square in the eye, I repeated. "You exist."
And then the guilt followed.
"And…" I lowered my eyes.
"I am sorry, Mordred."
Silence.
"Your guilt is tearing you apart, isn't it?" Mordred finally asked.
I nodded.
"Just like how immolation is the salvation of Deathwalkers…" he narrowed his eyes slightly. "Forgiveness is yours, no matter how painful it is."
"No."
He paused, slightly taken aback by my answer.
"It is up to you, Mordred. If you want, you can forgive me."
Getting up, I moved closer to him.
Mist swirled around me as a dagger of ice materialized in my hand, its surface freezing over as I held it out to him.
"If you cannot forgive me…" I said, my voice trembling slightly. "I will accept that as well."
"If my death is the only way to appease you…"
My lips formed a faint, bitter smile.
"Then I will offer my neck."
Mordred's gaze didn't waver.
He looked at the dagger, and then at me.
Then, he moved.
I saw it.
The shift in his posture, the tightening of his fingers, the angle of his arm.
My instincts reacted instantly.
He's not going for my throat, but for my hand.
I could easily stop him.
That realization came and passed in the same breath.
I didn't move.
The next second, a sharp, freezing pain bloomed in the back of my palm as the dagger drove through it, pinning my hand to the table.
My breath hitched, but I didn't make a sound.
The cold spread through my hand, piercing deeper into bone.
I've suffered worse injuries, but the pain from this was somehow even more intense than those.
I bit my lip, tasting blood, and held still.
"I don't need your throat, Morgan," Mordred's calm words coiled around my neck like a snake.
"Hm."
The dagger twisted, driving it deeper into my hand. A tremor ran through me despite myself.
His lips curled into a smile.
"I see your resolve, Morgan. You could've easily avoided that and countered me."
His eyes locked onto mine. "But you didn't."
"I was prepared to have my throat slit," I replied through clenched teeth. "This is nothing."
"I believe you," he said, glancing past my shoulder. "Otherwise, your Phantom Knight would've intervened."
With a final twist, he pulled out the dagger, splattering the table with my blood.
My hand trembled as I lifted it.
I didn't freeze it to numb the pain or preserve the wound.
I just stood there, looking him in the eye.
"Sorry about that," he said.
He didn't sound sorry.
I wasn't convinced, and he knew it.
He sighed lightly. "I'll personally ask Doc to come here."
Another silence stretched between us.
"Your apology," he said at last, his broken gaze still fixed on me. "You were sincere."
A brief pause.
"So I'll be the same."
"Morgan. I understand the guilt tearing inside you, and you want to fix things between us."
"However, what you did has already done its damage."
He leaned back.
And for a moment, I saw it clearly.
The scars.
The missing arm.
Everything.
"Morgan," he said.
"I will not forgive you."
There was no hatred, no anger in his voice. Not even hesitation when he spoke those words.
"But I am ready to forget."
Those words…
They weren't words of forgiveness.
But they eased something inside me, even if it was just slightly.
It felt like a sort of closure.
I closed my eyes. "That… is more than I could ever ask for."
"It's more than what you deserve," he added bluntly.
Then.
He smiled.
This time, it was different.
Not warm.
But no longer as cold.
"I'll call the Doc."
Getting up, he asked. "When shall we leave?"
Temporarily covering my wound with ice, I replied. "As soon as you are ready."
"Hm."
He paused, lost in thought for a moment before turning back to me.
"There's one more thing I need to do."