How to Make a Sinner Sleep

130 | solace; our blood waters these lands

The madness snaked into the soldiers' minds like little tendrils of something sinister and slithering. They were a little group of five, trapped in the cages of stretching dark branches.

Before them, a man stood calmly with a hand in his pocket, a smile twisting and twisting on his face until it consumed the entire surface—his eyes, nose, lips, all twisting.

His hair hung loosely in pale pink strands, like a blood stain washed and faded, and a pair of silver earrings hung from his lobes.

A pulse of green throbbed in his eerie eyes, a second heartbeat of chaos buried within the gem-like pupils.

One soldier collapsed to his knee in fear, ignoring the grate of dead leaves that embedded into his skin. His eyes darted wildly, seeing shadowed figures, long and slender, looming among the trees.

Were those trees, or creatures slinking in the dark?

He could not tell the difference anymore.

Another clutched his head in immense pain, bugs and larvae squirming in dense piles at his feet and slowly wriggling up.

Eventually, one after another fell.

Only when they all were unconscious did the pink-haired man stagger, clutching his chest tightly and bunching the fabrics of his shirt.

He coughed, a wretched sound that seemed to tear at his organs, blood seeping from his lips.

The peering shadows did not leave him.

Kaden chuckled bitterly as he glanced at the shadowed creatures lurking up high in the trees, down low in the weathered bushes, all peeking at him. The eyes carved in the grooves of the bark, in the cracks that ran along the ground until they bled into every corner of his vision.

His body felt cold and his heart hammered against his chest cavity.

He hadn't expected to run into five at once—that was his bad luck. He'd threatened them at first, slicing through cuts of flesh, nimbly avoiding their attacks.

But they did not falter.

He hated to admit it, but Reed was good at finding loyal pets to fight by his side.

And yet, Kaden felt no urge to kill—not these soldiers with burning eyes, loyal to the Crown, fighting for no other reason besides duty and need.

He saw their changing gazes as determination twisted into fear and recognition, a knowing that they would die in that moment.

For some reason, he wanted to betray that assumption.

He wanted to say, in some manner, that the Chauvet's mad dog was not only capable of killing. That it was all a lie—it wasn't him, although it was.

As soon as the thought slipped into his mind, the madness seized it. And there it spilled, dripping from his fingertips into the environment.

Kaden was losing control of his ability.

He gritted his teeth and heaved, steadying his breath as he looked at the skies. His wrist throbbed, still red with bite marks and Kaden's fingers curled, pressing it to his forehead. He felt the distant pulse of pain, nearly nothing when brought beside everything else.

Was Noah watching, forced to do nothing but watch as he held these lands together?

As he thought that, a protruding root stretched towards him, snaking up his body.

He looked down with surprise but did not move.

Then, it tapped thrice on the back of his hand—the last tap more fierce, as if scolding and displeased.