"Argh..."
Crawling painfully through the biting cold was none other than Riley. His blood at this point seemed to be freezing solid, but he wanted to at least reach her. The woman who had ever shown him any genuine love in this world.
"Sobs... Mother..."
There were barely any fingers left on his hands, most of them chopped off in his fight against them. There had been so many opportunities to kill one, two, even three of them, but every single time he found that chance, he hesitated. Something in him still believed they were his friends. Something still told him it didn't have to end that way.
Whenever his eyes fell on Diana, he lost all his will. But when they got their chance, it was swift. Merciless. There was not an iota of hesitation.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry."
With every corpse he crawled past, an apology left his lips. It was a wonder he could still move with just how much blood he had lost.
"Mother..."
There, in the snowy folds, he found nothing but her severed head. Scars marred her once beautiful, flawless face, and all he could see was the pain frozen in her expression before the end came.
"I'M SORRY!!!"
He cried out. It was like a nightmare, one relentless nightmare that kept replaying in his head over and over and over again.
"It's... sobs... my fault. If only I had killed her... I could have gotten help from the system. I could have been far stronger. I could have saved everyone. I'M SO SORRY!!!"
He cradled the severed head lying in the snow. What he felt now couldn't be put into words. A mix of guilt, anger, frustration, hatred, pure self-disgust.
"I'm sorry," he muttered once more, his complexion pale to the point it was no different from the snow around him.
Whoooooosh.
Layers upon layers of snowdrift swept over the mountain. The wind picked up, fiercer than before. Riley's eyelids grew heavy, far too heavy to keep open. The snow kept raining down endlessly, and with time, the young man and whatever stood as evidence of his past was buried beneath pristine white.
"...Di... ana..."
Were his last whispers.
"Haa..."
The young girl with pristine white hair and amber eyes let out a breath that formed a small mist, her gaze fixed on the sword resting across her lap. The ride back to the academy was quiet. Awfully quiet.
Jayden had tried a number of times to lighten the mood, repeatedly insisting they'd had no other choice in the matter. But the grim atmosphere remained unchanged.
"I killed him."
Diana muttered it softly, her vision blurring as a single tear slid down her cheek. The first she had shed since the ordeal began. It was strange. Initially, killing him hadn't been that difficult a decision to make. But now it felt as though a veil had been lifted from her eyes.
For some reason, the reality of what she had done was only now truly dawning on her. She killed Riley. She, with her own blade, killed him. She was the first to run him through, and without a doubt, the one responsible for his death.
"Did we... do the right thing?"
She heard the words and tilted her head to find Arabel sitting with tear-streaked cheeks, trembling faintly.
"I..." Diana began, then fell silent, covering her face with her sleeve. "I don't know. I don't."
"He had to die."
The voice cut through the silence. Jayden, expression tight with irritation.
"You all heard what the principal said. If the Snows aren't wiped out, the prophecy will surely come to pass. We had no choice. He was a disaster waiting to happen. He had to die."
Silence fell over them once more.
"If he had just stayed back, then... maybe..."
William began with a frustrated tone, raking a hand through his hair. "Stubborn bastard." He punched the wall beside him and exhaled slowly. "Now he's dead."
Diana said nothing. She kept staring at her sword, his last moments replaying endlessly in her mind. That look he gave her. The pain in his eyes. The tears.
"Even... you."
Those words, meant for her alone. That look of pure betrayal.
What have I done?