Breed and Burn: Faceless

Chapter 17- Dark End Of The Street

Someone was dead. Dead like stars by day. Only Axel didn't know this and the unknown was killing him. Every muscle in his body tensed. Mind seizing up, he felt his breaths become shallow and further apart which only panicked him further. Finally, something inside him snapped and Axel couldn't take it any longer. He'd come up with the argument that even with Seven being watched over they weren't going to be safe. The world would find its way to rip them apart and throw them around even if they were just paper stretched across bone hanging on by a very thin thread. It would always find a way.

As he approached the trapdoor, the sounds of fearful uproar became indistinct like the thickening fog had muffled their voices as well as their vision. They became unclear and sounded like echoes of past phantoms. Hesitating, he pressed his lips together. Axel's jaw locked down and seemed like years before he was able to brace himself to call down. He couldn't go down. Not now.

"What's going on?" His voice shuddered with the cold. No reply came, only a quivering silence.

"Isn't this excit'ment? I wond'r who is't t couldst be. Trent. Thorne. Roman. Haven. Ares. Or haply someone hath decided to putteth yond dog Sage out of his mis'ry."

Its voice sounded hard and metallic. It made him feel scraped out and empty. He just had to brace himself for the truth and no care too much. Who was he kidding? Of course, he cared. He cared so much his face was drawn and pained with years he hadn't lived yet. The atmosphere was so overpowering it took Axel a second to realise that he could now hear rapid footsteps running towards the trapdoor. He dreaded the answer that would follow the footsteps. Who was it?

Taking a deep breath, Axel closed his eyes for a few moments. Stiffening, Axel heard wails of utter horror like a wind change before a storm. Without sight, his senses multiplied to a point in which they became an undefinable weight he never wanted or deserved to carry. Unbearable. When he reopened them, his vision became clear.

A younger boy stood there, with black tousled hair, carrying an oil lamp. Too young to be here. No more than fourteen years old. He looked familiar but not familiar enough to know his name. What if he didn't know the name of...

"He did it himself," he whispered, his eyes as grey as ash in a dying fire. They were glaciers keeping his emotions frozen.

Taking a little gasp of air, Axel stammered. Desperately searching the boy's eye for another parallel meaning to his words, Axel's thoughts crashed violently into his skull until there was nothing.

To think someone resulted in the forever term solution. To be left alone until those dark thoughts buried them alive so they were already practically dead. To be in so much pain with so many others but feel so alone. To have taken the easy way out even though it was probably the hardest thing they'd ever done.

It was the cruelty of life that a heart should continue to beat even though it was in thousands of pieces and struggling against the Will of its owner.

Admittedly, he wasn't surprised.

A glove of ice encased Axel's heart. The heaviness was in his limbs as much as it was in his mind. "Who?" He could hardly give the word breath.

"Haven."

Sad had always sounded so childish and flimsy like it was something that could be cast of with smoke and mirrors. But that's not what Axel felt. His dry face was an insult to his memory, especially since Haven was made fun of more than what should have been allowed. Whilst Axel's mind filled with leaden and his body grew colder, his features remained frozen. Confused as to why he felt this way since he had never even spoken to the kid, he blinked.