The air in Ruby's room hung heavy, saturated with the iron tang of blood and the suffocating weight of betrayal. Shadows writhed across the walls, cast by a flickering lantern that sputtered as if gasping for life. David knelt on the cold stone floor, his trembling hands cradling the severed head of Ruby, his student—his sister in spirit, the one soul he had sworn to protect. Her dark curls clung to her pale, lifeless face, matted with blood that dripped in slow, viscous streams, pooling beneath his knees. Her eyes, once bright with defiance and dreams, stared blankly upward, their accusation piercing his soul. The silence screamed louder than any cry, broken only by the wet plop of blood hitting the floor.
Across the room, a figure stood cloaked in darkness—a twisted mirror of David himself. This other David, born from a fractured timeline, grinned with sadistic glee, his eyes glinting like twin voids. His voice slithered through the gloom, smooth as poison. "Now you see how it felt, don't you, David? I hesitated, oh yes, but then I remembered—she looks like my Ruby, but she's not my Ruby. Not the one from my timeline. You understand, don't you? The pain of losing her?"
David's chest heaved, his breath ragged, each inhale a shard of glass. Grief and rage coiled within him, a tempest threatening to tear him apart. He pressed Ruby's head closer, her cooling skin a cruel reminder of his failure. "I'm sorry, Ruby," he whispered, his voice breaking, thick with anguish. "My mistake—my carelessness—cost you everything. If I hadn't slept, if I'd been here…" Tears carved tracks through the blood on his face, falling to mingle with the crimson tide below. "I failed you."
The other David laughed, a sound like nails on a chalkboard, sharp and mocking. "Oh, how touching! But let's be honest, original timeline David—you've lost her, and now it's your turn to die. I'll take your creator's power, and you know what? I'll let this pathetic world live. Call it mercy." His laughter swelled, a grotesque crescendo that filled the room like a living thing, pressing against David's skull.
David's gaze dropped to Ruby's face, her features frozen in eternal betrayal. His heart shattered anew, but beneath the grief, a spark ignited—fury, raw and unrelenting. He spoke to her softly, his voice a vow carved in steel. "This is the last time, Ruby. I'll never let a single scratch touch you again." His fingers tightened around her head, as if he could will her back to life through sheer desperation.
Then, with a snap of his fingers, reality fractured. The world shuddered, time itself recoiling as Ruby's head fused back to her body in a grotesque reversal. Her neck knitted together, the blood retreating like a tide, her eyes fluttering open with a gasp. She sat up, alive, unharmed, her chest rising and falling in the dim light. The other David staggered, his smug grin dissolving into confusion. "What—what just happened?" he stammered, his voice trembling. "I cut her neck. I saw it! How is she alive?"
David rose, his robe trailing through the fading bloodstains, his eyes burning with a cold, merciless fire. The room seemed to darken, the shadows deepening as if drawn to his wrath. "You made a terrible mistake," he said, his voice low, a predator's growl. "But you also showed me what it means to lose her—the one I swore to protect. For that lesson, I'll grant you a death… but not a kind one."
With a gesture, the room dissolved. The walls melted into a pitch-black void, a domain of endless night where the air pulsed with dread. The other David froze, his breath catching as the darkness seemed to writhe, alive with unseen horrors. David advanced, each step deliberate, his boots echoing like a death knell. The camera of the mind's eye zoomed in tight on his face—his eyes, once warm, now twin infernos of rage and sorrow. A low-angle shot captured his silhouette towering over the cowering doppelgänger, the shadows twisting into clawed shapes that loomed behind him.
"You thought you could take her from me?" David's voice was a blade, slicing through the silence. "You thought you could show me hell and walk away?" The other David's scream shattered the air as his body convulsed. From within, a writhing mass erupted—hundreds of centipedes, their segmented bodies glistening with ichor, burrowing through his flesh. They tore through skin and muscle, spilling organs in a grotesque cascade. One insect burst from his eye socket, its mandibles clicking as it devoured the orb, leaving a hollow socket that wept black blood. The camera panned across the carnage, lingering on the twitching limbs, the glistening insects, the sheer brutality of the act.
The other David's screams grew hoarse, his body collapsing into a writhing heap. "Please—mercy!" he gasped, but David's expression remained stone. "Mercy?" he spat, his voice dripping with venom. "You killed her. You showed me what it feels to hold her lifeless head, to feel her blood on my hands. You don't get mercy—you get hell."
The camera pulled back, revealing the full scope of the domain—a boundless abyss where the centipedes multiplied, a living carpet that consumed the other David entirely. His final scream was swallowed by the void as his body disintegrated, leaving only silence. David stood alone, his chest heaving, the weight of what he'd done settling like ash in his lungs. The domain dissolved, and he found himself back in Ruby's room. She slept peacefully, her dark curls splayed across the pillow, her breathing soft and steady. The blood was gone, the horror erased—but the memory burned, a scar on his soul.
He sank to his knees beside her bed, his hands trembling as he reached out, stopping short of touching her. The camera lingered on his face, capturing the torment etched into every line—the grief, the rage, the crushing guilt. "I felt it, Ruby," he whispered, his voice raw. "The moment I held your head, the moment I thought you were gone… it broke me. I've never known fear like that, not in the darkest pits of magic." His fists clenched, nails biting into his palms. "I'll never let that happen again. I'll become the devil himself if it means keeping you safe."
The scene shifted, a slow pan across Ruby's room, the lantern casting golden flickers over her serene face. But the shadows seemed to linger, heavier now, as if tainted by the night's horrors. David's vow hung in the air, a promise and a curse. He rose, his silhouette framed against the window, the moon outside bleeding red through a veil of clouds. The camera zoomed out, pulling through the glass, past the Academy's jagged spires, into the night sky where stars flickered like dying embers.
Inside, David's mind churned. The other David's words echoed—"Every David before he dies, I'll kill their Rubys, then I'll kill them." The threat was a blade at his throat, a promise of endless cycles of loss. He saw it now, vivid as a nightmare: countless timelines, countless Rubys, their blood staining countless hands. His hands. The thought clawed at him, a visceral ache that twisted his gut. He'd felt her death once, and it had shattered him. To feel it again, to fail her again—it was a fate worse than any death.
He turned back to Ruby, her sleeping form a fragile beacon in the dark. The camera closed in on her face, soft and vulnerable, then cut to David's eyes, haunted yet resolute. "I'll carry the sins," he murmured, his voice barely audible. "Every one of them, for you. I'll burn the world to ash before I let anyone touch you." The words were a vow, but they tasted of despair, a man teetering on the edge of damnation.
The room seemed to pulse with his resolve, the runes on the walls flickering as if responding to his magic—or his pain. Outside, the wind howled, a mournful wail that carried the weight of his promise. The camera panned upward, through the ceiling, into the heavens where the red moon loomed, its light casting the Academy in a crimson glow. The scene faded to black, but the echo of David's words lingered, a haunting refrain: "I'll become the devil to protect this angel."
David's chambers were a crypt of shadows, the air thick with the scent of old parchment and spent magic. He sat at his desk, a single candle casting a feeble glow that barely reached the walls. His hands, still trembling, traced the scars on his knuckles—marks of battles fought, lives taken, and now, a failure that cut deeper than any blade. The memory of Ruby's head in his hands played on a loop, each replay a fresh wound. Her eyes, her blood, her silence—it was a torment he couldn't escape.
He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the stone floor, and crossed to a mirror hung on the wall. His reflection stared back, but it wasn't his own face he saw—it was the other David's, twisted and mocking. "You can't protect her forever," the phantom hissed, its voice a needle in his mind. "Every timeline, every Ruby—she'll die, and you'll break." David's fist slammed into the glass, shattering it into a spiderweb of cracks. Blood trickled from his knuckles, but he didn't flinch. The pain was grounding, a tether to reality.
He turned away, his gaze falling on a locked chest in the corner. Inside lay artifacts of power—relics he'd sworn never to use, their magic too volatile, too dark. But now, with Ruby's life hanging in the balance, the line between right and wrong blurred. The camera zoomed in on the chest, its iron bands glinting in the candlelight, then cut to David's face, his expression hardening. "If I have to wield the abyss to keep her safe, so be it," he said, his voice a low growl.
The scene shifted to the Academy's spires, their jagged tips piercing a sky bruised with storm clouds. Thunder rumbled, a low, ominous pulse that seemed to echo David's heartbeat. The camera swooped down, weaving through the halls where students slept, unaware of the darkness stirring within their teacher. It settled on Ruby's room, where she stirred in her sleep, a faint frown creasing her brow as if sensing the weight of his vow.
David stood at her window now, a wraith in the night, his robe blending with the shadows. He placed a hand against the glass, his magic weaving a protective ward that pulsed faintly, invisible to all but him. "Sleep, Ruby," he whispered. "I'll carry the nightmares for you." The camera lingered on his hand, the ward's light fading, then panned to the horizon where dawn crept forward, its golden rays tainted with streaks of blood-red—a harbinger of the horrors yet to come.
The chapter closed with a final shot: David walking away, his silhouette swallowed by the dark, the echo of centipedes skittering in the void a faint, chilling underscore. His vow was sealed, his path set—a descent into damnation to protect the one light in his world. And somewhere, in another timeline, another David laughed, sharpening his blade for the next Ruby.