Nocte Yin: Anti-Villain, Anti-Hero and Anti-Everything Else

Chapter Thirty

The Fates knew how to play a good game of chess. They knew where Their king stood at all times, and Their queen even better. They knew when to draw out Their knights, pull back Their bishops and wall in Their rooks. They knew how many pawns would survive the battle, and how many They were to part with — and willing too. They knew exactly how to ensnare, trick and destroy.

They knew just how to make her fall.

Paine was nothing by comparison.

They were devious, and wicked, and crippling.

And immortal.

They knew how to make her trap herself.

Even now, several miles below sea level and walled in by countless layers of ice — Hell Dragons acting as jailers from above and their damned hearts as dying candlelight — They were relentless in their pursuit of the Game. At the last flicker of life and light, the Sisters had to cast one last merciless hand over the board. They had her watch as They plucked her most valuable piece from the field: a singular, off-handed gesture and her strongest combatant was swiped into Their withered clutches.

Her queen.

Her heart.

They took the piece dearest to her heart.

And as she knelt there, in the ice and snow, breathing and choking at the same time, she could do nothing but stare as her pieces fell — one after another — like sick child’s play. Her ranks tripped over themselves in an attempt to save their king, tripped over themselves at the man whose appearance was like that of her father’s, the one man and secret who could wipe the board clean and leave nothing behind save running rivers of broken hearts and torn fingernails.

And tears.

So many bloody tears.

She blinked hard as the world faded into a blur of white and shadows. She could hardly focus at the sight of him, of his white hair and white eyes, of his white complexion and white shirt. So bright — pinpricks of white that seared lines across her vision and intersected at various points — a mathematical web as cool and distant as he was. An equation of letters and numbers unsolvable by the likes of her.

His eyes were empty and stoic: genius at its height of innovation…

She swallowed uneasily — grasping.

…and detachment.

She gasped, trying to get a hold of her nerves. She knew, logically, that he could not be him, could not be her father — he was dead. But he was so sturdy and solid, finite and fixed — real, that she struggled to reorient both him and herself in this reality. This man’s likeness to her father was undeniable, an uncanny resemblance underscored by his flawlessly pressed suit — black, pristine angles that emphasized his almost unforgiving posture and firm hand.

She hated herself for wanting him to be true.

For there was nothing there save a blank, white slate. No flicker of warmth or spark of recognition. Only a coldness that held nothing for her.

Nothing.

And yet…

 He turned away when she spoke no further, his white tresses like silver in the muted dead-light.

It felt like someone had knifed her.

And yet, she felt something from him, something far away, but intimate.

Something that touched her soul.

She made to rise from the ground, to reach and hope for him, but a firm hand pressed upon her shoulder, staying her movements. She paused, shifting her eyes to look at the newcomer and stiffened at the sight of the man: his shaven head and black cloak — the dot-within-a-dot demon mark at the base of his neck. Seeing him, here, in the midst of nothing but death and the dying, brought her up short — reminded her of daisies growing along the edges of a white house, flour-dust in the air and manga scattered over the floor.