With her father's memory failing and her mother gone, Soraya Thenayu enrolls in distant Darkwood Academy and immediately becomes enemies with the richest kid at school. Between hiding her father's gift of illegally harvested magic, befriending socia...
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"Y-you've spoken with Mülock?" Soraya asked, her heart stopping for a moment within her chest.
"Unfortunately, yes," Jon almost sounded bored. "His ego is astounding. I'd love to kill him, but he's in a different dimension, out of my reach."
"Yours isn't any better!" the second voice interjected.
Within the orb, Soraya saw the perspective change. Jon was now looking down towards the floor. Two light blue eyeballs were jutting out, like blisters, from the palm of his left hand, and a long, thin slit ran from his ring finger all the way down to his wrist. As the flap of skin raised and lowered, the girl spotted six yellow, bloody teeth poking out from the makeshift lips.
Without replying, Jon's thumb came down hard on one of the eyes until it popped like a blueberry. The flap of skin on his hand screamed while blood mixed with the white from the cracked eye dripped down like the runny yolk from an egg.
"There goes one spare eyeball," Marlot clicked his tongue. "Would you like to lose the other one, or are you going to shut up?"
"I-I'll stay quiet, I swear!" it whimpered.
"Good," Jon placed a black glove over his hand. "Sorry for that rude interruption. Continue, Soraya."
"Um..." the girl could hardly believe what she had just seen and her stomach curdled in disgust. "Well, Mülock told me you killed your own family by accident... is that true?"
The man was silent for a moment. "Have you ever seen the life drained out of someone else before?"
Flashes of two dead bodies filled Soraya's vision, and her blood ran cold at the sight of the memory. Their pale skin was wrinkled like dried fruit, their bones jutting out and ripping through paper thin flesh. Four shrunken, unseeing eyes stared at her through two misshapen skulls.
"Atohi and Che Marlot were their names," Jon said with a hint of sadness in his voice. "It was truly an accident that I killed my own parents, this is true, but I also have an incurable bloodlust. It turns out I'm part demon, and you being able to contact me in this way proves you are as well, though your voice and aura seem much gentler in nature than Mülock's."
"I know them!" Soraya exclaimed in shock. "Mama called them my aunt and uncle!"
"Yes, and your father is Tishva Thenayu," Jon continued. "He wrote a letter to my parents before that incident. He asked if they were also having memory loss issues, and they were..." he paused and let the weight of his words settle in the still air. "I'll tell you more of what I know, but in exchange, you have to tell me about yourself. Deal?"
Soraya bit her lip and pondered his offer. "Well, um, are you going to kill me because Mülock told you to?"
"I don't want to, but I can't guarantee that I won't change my mind."
