Chương 233: Chapter 229: Cult Killer

"You think I killed Solan?" Nyxalrai's voice was strained. Her lips twisted, as if amused by the concept, but she failed to hide the lilt in her tone.

"Why?" Considering the possible responses a cult leader killer could have had to being discovered, Dan took the denial with relief. It was much better then instant retaliation. Dan didn't want to die.

"Three is too often to be coincidence," he said. Somehow, his voice didn't waver.

"You snuck out the night of the first Dark Star, when Ari was taken to be sacrificed. Everybody knows you were in the second. You survived, unlike all the Fleshsmiths caught in there with you. And now we hear that there was a third Dark Star involved in Solan's death? The Dark Star Events are involved with the Fleshsmiths' downfall, and you are directly linked to the Dark Stars."

"That's not much to go off," Nyxalrai said. Again, her voice did not carry the confident incredulity she tried to convey. A strange fluttering of her robes caught Dan's eye. When he focused, he could see nothing out of the ordinary, he had no idea what it could have been. Dan trusted his eyes. It was one of the core things that The Cult of the Everseeing Eye taught; never dismiss the subtle details you think are your imagination. The tiniest of flicker can often hide the greatest secrets.

Still, glaring harder didn't reveal what he'd seen.

"It wouldn't be if you hadn't evolved… what? Four times in a month?" Dan couldn't let her brush aside his conclusions. He knew it was true. The world around Nyxalrai didn't make sense and he needed to know why. Why did the rules that bound every other person on Coral not apply to her? He was desperate for a way to escape the need to sacrifice himself. Dan's eyes were already flickering over Nyxalrai's form, so when something moved between her feet, under her robe — a mere shimmer — he picked up on it immediately.

There had been a blend of black and red. Feathers? The thought immediately left his mind.

"N̪ỷx̱̽alr̘a͎i, everything you do is impossible. Overcome a blood curse as bad as yours? Win the Trials without a cult's backing? Survive being sacrificed?" Dan took note of how she flinched at the mention of K'tan's failed attempt. She bit her lip, and for a second, he swore he saw blood.

"I could go on, and I'm sure there are dozens of other Impossibilities I don't even know abou-" Suddenly a thought occurred to Dan. One that came out of nowhere, but his soul resonated with the deduction.

"Wait, you had something to do with the disappearance of Z͐a̟͠n̖͐di̥s͈t̝̾h̃̔́'s faction, didn't you?" It was something the upper creeds had been talking about amongst themselves between lectures and Great Iris worship. A part of the Fleshsmiths had been eradicated only days before Solan herself was murdered.

"Did you wipe out the entire cult yourself?" He'd been so preoccupied with the thought of Nyxalrai killing Solan that he hadn't really focused on everything else she'd done. There were a lot of people in the Fleshsmiths. By sheer numbers, they would have stood with the pinnacle cults. Not all had died, of course, but of a cult with over a million members, a good third of that were now dead. A girl Dan had grown up with had murdered hundreds of thousands of people. Dan's breath caught in his throat. So many lives.

Simply gone. If he had joined the Fleshsmiths over the Everseeing Eye, would he have faced the same fate? Would Nyxalrai have cared for the slight friendship they'd cultivated? There were a lot of horrible practices that occurred on Coral, but murder to that scale wasn't one of them. Forget Nyxalrai killing him for knowing about her secret. The cults would slaughter him for associating with her. As if to make his strangled mind worse, Dan suddenly felt seen in a way he never had before.

His chest had been wrenched open, and someone fiddled around in his innards. Dan's eyes caught Nyxalrai's. And again, there was that shimmer. He saw nothing, but the depth to those mundane black pupils was momentarily endless. Even her common brown pupils seemed to spin. She broke eye contact, and the hole in Dan's soul stitched itself back together. Now that he wasn't caught in that pit, he noticed Nyxalrai's expression had gone blank. That alone raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

She glanced around the private room she'd brought him to, as if making sure there was nobody around to witness the murder she was no doubt considering.

"This is such rat shit," Nyxalrai finally exclaimed after a minute of letting Dan fester in his fears.

"I can't even deny it, because you'll go home and realise you just got a Feat. I wonder if this is how the Soulchasm felt; to not even lose, but have your opposition get rewarded from the encounter."

"The Soulchasm?" Dan whispered, but Nyxalrai continued unabated. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Fine. It's true." Her hardened gaze fell on Dan again.

"I killed Solan. I tossed that bitch into the black hole and ate her soul. Now, what does that mean to you?" What did that mean to Dan? He knew he should never have given credence to the suspicion, and now he had the Fleshsmiths' killer glaring down at him with more venom than he ever thought was possible from the once reserved girl. He had wanted to change his future. But as he stood petrified before Nyxilrai, Dan couldn't find the courage. He was too much a coward for this world.

Even with the opportunity to ask how she had sliced through fate so easily, he couldn't do it. More than his fear of the murderer herself, he was terrified of what she might say. Dan was too cowardly to live without the cults.

"We have to kill him." A new voice had him spin on his heels.

"He belongs to the Eye cult. If he knows, then they will know." The new girl had appeared out of nowhere, in a previously empty corner. He recognised her. But … why was a Bodytwister working with Nyxalrai, a Technocultist? Were their cults involved at all?

"You're the girl from the Trial." He couldn't help himself.

"Ly͚sy͚rã."

"I'm the roach-spawn," she spat as she glared at Nyxalrai. The other girl averted her gaze, looking far too amused before the expression slipped and she was inspecting Dan again.

"Dan, does anyone else know what you have discovered?"

"No!" he rushed to say before he could realise his mistake. If they knew he was the only one to know, then there was no reason to keep him alive.

"Good," she said, then twisted her head back to Lysyra.

"Can you give us a moment, Alͦy͚sy͚rã?" The Bodytwister, Alysyra apparently, looked disgruntled at being asked to leave, but she did.

"Now, Dan, I don't want to hurt you, but you realise the position you've put me in, don't you?" she asked.

"Even if I trusted you explicitly, it will only take an interrogation from someone who knows what they are doing to learn what you know. The cults cannot know. Not yet." Once again, Dan choked on his words. Nyxalrai sighed.

"I'm not going to kill you, Dan. I should, if I want to be a hundred percent sure of my own safety. But that's what the cults would do. I won't." She brought her hand up and rubbed her pinkie finger… or what was left of it. Only now had he noticed it was gone.

"What was your plan? Why did you ask me directly, instead of taking this to your grave?"

"I needed to know." His reason was weak even to his own ears.

"How did you kill her? How do you make the impossible possible?" For a long moment, Nyxalrai let the silence hang.

"That's not something I can tell you." She wanted to tell him. He could tell. It was obvious in the way she deliberated. But she didn't speak, and it made him curl his lip in frustration. Dan's gaze found the missing finger again.

"You sacrificed it, didn't you?" He hadn't meant his words to be so accusatory, but she seemed like she had so much more freedom than anyone else he knew, and yet she still subjected herself to such a disgusting practice. Honestly, he was disappointed. Nyxalrai glanced down and scowled at her finger.

"I did, and I regret it. The… entity I summoned was a coward that stole my flesh for nothing in return." Her hand curled into a fist.

"I intend to learn everything there is to know about rituals if for nothing else than to punish the one that stole from me." Well, at least she wasn't advocating for the sacrifice. He could understand the frustration. Dan was almost certain it would be how he would feel when he had sacrificed his eyelids.

"I don't think it's a good idea to mess with those entities on the other end of those rituals," he said.

"You should just leave what you've already lost and not tempt them further." Though, for the girl that shattered everything impossible, who was he to say anything. For all he knew, she could do what she did because she was from one of those hidden realms. Nyxalrai assessed him. At least it wasn't the serious, venomous glare from earlier.

"You should leave the Cult of the Everseeing Eye while you still can," she said.

"I can introduce you to the Cultless. Anywhere else, I can only imagine you'll be miserable." If only that was an option.

"What is a life spent in filth? Misery will be waiting wherever I go, so I might as well live a life worth living, rather than waste away in the forgotten annals of Coral." The room fell quiet once more as Nyxalrai continued to watch him. It was an uncomfortable silence. He had his theory confirmed, question denied, and now he just wanted to be anywhere else. He had just learned there was so much more he didn't know about her than he thought. Nyxalrai was a stranger.

"When are they making you sacrifice your eyelids?"

"Two months and a bit," he said, numbed.

"It'll be a massive ceremony up in the Observatory. Thousands of acolytes will lose their lids. Hundreds of cultists will lose their eyes."

"Looks like I'll have to change my target," Nyxalrai said. Dan should have asked what she meant. He didn't. He was sure he wouldn't like the answer.