However, sothing was wrong. The wrongness struck even before the mind could place it. An aesthetic error in a portrait. A note in a hymn that had been scraped thin and stretched to fit the line.
Her sister had lost the porcelain, invulnerable skin of the Angels. This confirms how The Witch herself regained it. Instead, it was replaced with sothing that seed to mimic life. The surface caught light, but not in the right way. It was too eager, too hungry, as if reflecting were a job rather than a nature. Why did that happen? How does she even have sothing like that? An imitation of life isn’t sothing that can be naturally made. It needs the power of sothing that refuses to die no matter what. The power of an Usurper themselves. But here, there were two of them.
The Envious Death, who seed to have her hair turned blood red, and within that very usurper, another one dwelled. The color rode her like a fever. Even from afar, the Witch could see the way it bled at the roots and then deepened, shade by shade, toward the tips, as if every strand were inked in temper that would never dry. Beneath the hair, the veins showed in black traceries that mirrored the roots, dark lines working outward from a center the eye could not quite find. And spread all over the berserking Envy.
A heart that took over. The Heart of Wrath itself. She knew that presence. She had felt it once when the sky over Solania turned ugly and old for the first ti... a lenia ago before she was locked up.
Wrath encroached upon Envy and made it regret ever trying to covet it. That was what was inside Ludwig. The guardian of Solania, as the mortals called it. But in fact, it was a monster that defied Necros himself. And seeing that Ludwig had that heart, it was he who brought that monster down, only for him to lose the heart to Envy. She must have wanted it; she must have envied it. She took it. The simplicity of the thought made it worse. It was a child’s logic with the reach of a god.
The Witch’s rage grew unbridled. It rose so fast it made her lightheaded, old battle-habit stirring that she had thought cut from her. Worthless to rage at the empty. Worthless to shake the bars of a cage made of rules. She steadied herself by the old, small things. Count the breath. Count the finger bones. Count the teeth. She cannot make it all the way to the desert in ti. Even with her link restored, the path would take longer than a heart can beat twice. Ludwig had lost his life to this abomination in exchange for returning the Witch’s skin back to her. Envy can only have one stolen aspect at a ti. She must have given up the Evangelic Exoskin for the body that Ludwig had. The arithtic of theft left no remainder.
She wanted to help, but she knew she couldn’t and won’t make it even if she were to depart right now. She could only watch with fury, promising that she would do all she can to avenge the man who helped her recover. The promise set neatly in her chest. She was good at keeping neat things. It did not cool the anger. It simply gave the anger a shelf to rest on.
Yet, sothing seed to go wrong, awfully so. The wrongness developed edges. It stopped being a feeling and beca a sequence that the eye could follow. Unlike what Envy was used to. To fully integrate whatever she envies into herself and make it a part of her. This ti, she was struggling. No, struggling was an understatent, she looked like she was being tortured alive. The mouth that had always curved into exquisite contempt twitched in small, involuntary pains. Muscles under stolen skin fluttered and seized like fish thrown onto sand.
Her body was full of black veins, her eyes were turning blood red as her hair was raging on with power that was never ant for a living being. The veins thickened and then thinned as if so pulse ran too strong, faded, then surged again. The irises took on a red so bright the pupils seed knives. Heat rolled off her in visible shudders, not the heat of fire, but the heat of a forge left open in a room ant for sleep.
The Heart of Wrath that she envied so much was consuming her. It was actively eating away at her.
Unmaking Envy into Wrath.
The Witch watched it with a knowledge that did not comfort. She had watched rot take wood the sa way. There is a day when it is still a beam, then there is a day when it only looks like one. If this continues, Envy will be no more, but Wrath will take place; it will be born again, after its passing. How did she not think of it? How did she not realize it? The question had too much pity in it for her taste. Pity was not a tool. It did not brace a door.
That the Usurpers, though mighty and powerful, there was a reason they never ever fought against each other. She examined the mory like a jewel in bad light and found the cut that had always been there. Maybe because she was the youngest one. The Usurper of Envy had manifested into her sister the last and latest; she never realized that there was a reason why the Lustful Death never ca at her with mortal intention, no matter how much carnage and destruction she caused in the Lustful Death’s territory. Because two Usurpers cannot be in the sa place at once. Not to ntion the sa body. You do not pour fire into a jar already full of oil and then act surprised when the house goes up in flas.
And Wrath among all of the Usurpers was the most dangerous. Because, unlike the others, it not only corrupts but also transforms. No emotion is stronger than Rage. And this one ca without limits. Rage does not understand thresholds. It treats walls like suggestions. It eats every room it enters, then complains there were not enough rooms.
Did she not realize that she didn’t have the proper vessel to contain rage? The question tasted like dark humor now. Angels are vessels that carry light as a function and decorum. Their bodies are hymn and architecture. Envy had stolen architecture, and thought she had learned the hymn. Did she simply think that since an Undead harbored and hosted Wrath that she too could do it? What foolishness.
For the Dead feel nothing.
The Dead can set feelings aside the way a smith sets aside a hamr, not because the hamr is harmless, but because the smith is finished using it. Wrath is but a re emotion that can be stowed away in the back of their minds. Without ever needing to sense it or suffer from its corruption.
The dead do not forget.
They simply do not burn the sa way.
She dared consu what only the Dead can contain. And right now, she is paying the price. The Witch watched for one more breath, long enough to be sure that what she saw would not reverse itself by the ti a ssenger could be sent.
The sand shifted under the Envious Death’s feet as if refusing to hold her weight. The air hiccuped around her in short, sharp pulses. The Witch closed her eyes once, drew in the sll of damp leaf and dark soil, and set her will in the direction of consequence. The gratitude in her chest had teeth now.
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