Moonlit Hearts

Chapter 55: The Predator Awakens

Wangji forced himself to breathe. His heart pounded, but his expression remained unreadable. He had to endure. He had to stall.

Odin smirked. "Still standing?" His voice dripped with amusement as he stepped closer, boots crushing unseen bones beneath them. "You always were stubborn."

Wei Ying's body lay motionless in the blood-soaked dirt, just beside Sizhui's lifeless form. The illusion still held. Wangji could smell the iron tang in the air, could almost feel the warmth leaving their skin.

It wasn't real.

It couldn't be real.

Wangji did not move.

Odin's steps were slow, deliberate, the weight of his presence pressing against the illusion he had forced upon this battlefield of the dead. He crouched beside Wei Ying first, reaching out with almost casual indifference to brush blood-matted strands of hair away from his pale face.

But Odin's voice was a dagger, twisting deeper. 

"You know," Odin mused, "he had fight in him until the very end. Even when he could barely stand, he still tried." He turned Wei Ying's face slightly, as if admiring a broken thing. "Do you want to know what his last words were?"

Wangji clenched his fists.

Odin smirked. "He called for you."

Wangji remained silent.

Odin let out a mock sigh. "But I suppose that doesn't surprise you. He was always like that, wasn't he? Even in death, always reaching." He let Wei Ying's head drop back with a dull thud against the dirt before standing.

Next, he moved toward Sizhui.

If there was any hesitation in Odin's movement, any sign that he felt guilt for the unnecessary kill, it was gone the moment he placed his boot against the boy's ribs and pushed.

The body rolled limply onto its side.

"He was lighter than I expected," Odin commented, as though discussing a weapon rather than a child. "I thought he'd resist more, that I'd have to be—harsher." He nudged Sizhui's arm with the toe of his boot, watching it sway before falling still again. "But in the end, he was just a boy." He turned his gaze back to Wangji, amused. "It didn't take much."

The world was ringing.

Somewhere distant, Wangji heard the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, louder than the wind, louder than Odin's voice. His grip on his sword had tightened, his body so still it barely looked alive.

But inside his mind the beast stirred.

"How much longer will you listen to this?" it asked. "How much longer will you watch?"

Wangji focused on his breathing.

"He has no right to touch them."

Wangji exhaled.

"You know you are not strong enough."

Silence.

"But I am."

That was the problem.

He could feel the anger curling, the deep, ancient force coiling beneath his ribs, something deeper than grief, sharper than rage. His own power alone was not enough. The illusion may have been crafted by Chronos, but Odin's presence made it unbearable. Even knowing it was not real, even knowing what his role in this deception was, Wangji felt the edges of himself fraying.

He was losing his hold.

Odin studied him closely now, curiosity flickering behind his gaze.

"You're shaking," Odin observed, tilting his head. "Is it grief? Or is it rage?" His smirk deepened. "Or perhaps, it's regret."