Evolving Classes In The Apocalypse-Chapter 6: A Refusal To Accept The Death Sentence

So many things unsettled me about this class as the armored transport carried me home. The engine vibrated through the metal bench beneath me, low and constant, and I barely noticed it. Following the description closely had brought pain and joy to my heart at the same time, and that contradiction wouldn’t settle. It just sat there, pulling me in two directions at once.

I could use another person’s class on top of having my own. Of course, the sad part was that I had to kill that person to gain their Definition, and hence, their Class.

The little joy I’d felt when I saw there was a chance for me started slipping through my fingers the moment I actually thought about what it required. Killing someone. Taking what defined them as a person and making it mine.

But instead of letting that thought swallow me whole, I forced my mind to hold steady. Pushed the horror of it down and re-oriented myself.

My entire life had paused eight years ago. It was strange that in a moment like this, sitting in the back of a rumbling transport staring at nothing, I felt like things were about to get really interesting.

But that wasn’t the only thing eating at me. There was another reason for the weight in my chest, and it was far worse.

There was no way to hide the sadness on my face when I thought about Ysor.

No one deserved to become a monster. I believed that as a general truth. But I also held the opinion that some people genuinely deserved to be cruelly put to death.

However, not Ysor.

Ysor, Rin, Esmer and I had all known each other for a long time, back when my mother was still around. I lived on the outskirts of the Center ring, right before the border of the middle ring of Area C. The other three didn’t live far off, so we were all close friends. Our parents were comrades.

After I lost my mother, they all stood by me. But time had its effect on everyone. While I drowned in grief, Rin became more of an asshole and Esmer became the model student.

But Ysor refused to change.

It was like she held the memories of all four of us in herself alone. I knew she’d always been attracted to me since we were kids. She always loved to follow me around, always found some excuse to be wherever I was. I just never expected that she would stick this close to me after how pathetic I made myself to be.

I tried to make her go several times, said the meanest things I could think of, words I chose specifically because I knew they’d cut her. She came back every single time, demanding that I apologize to her.

I’d been an asshole undeserving of her, and yet she still defended me when the time arose, without hesitation or conditions.

Ysor did not deserve to become Undefined. She didn’t deserve to be put to death just like that. And the rage that built inside me at the thought that this was the normal thing to do, that this was just how the world worked, it burned through my chest like something corrosive.

We were taught to accept this life.

But in this moment of truth, I couldn’t.

I couldn’t accept that the one person who made life worth living for me, who made it all bearable, was going to die because the Axiom refused to define her.

My hands pressed down against my thighs. My palms were slick with sweat, and I clenched them so tight my knuckles ached.

’Unacceptable... I can’t accept it!’

After a while, the transport pulled over at the decrepit castle. Since there were no servants left to keep up its appearance, the castle, just like me, had seen better days.

The sun was descending by the time I arrived, spilling golden light across the skyline of Area C. I could see the tall buildings that housed people in the Inner Ring, their windows catching fire in the last of the light, while the Middle Ring seemed to sink and disappear down the terrain.

After getting inside, I searched through the leftover ingredients I could scrape together and made myself an edible meal. There was not much around. The Fracturing affected the growth of plants too. If you weren’t careful, you could be eating a leaf as sharp as a blade, or a flower that would bite its way out of your intestines.

There were engineered and carefully grown plants, of course. I didn’t even need to spell out the ranks of people who could afford to cultivate some bunch of leaves just to fill their stomachs.

I sat at the long dining table. The same one my mother last sat at.

It was dusty now. The chairs too. Everything in this room had been slowly burying itself under a film of grey since she left, and I had never once wiped it clean.

I sat down in the seat adjacent to where she had sat that day. Looked down at my plate: neatly sliced potatoes, a drizzle of honey, and a small piece of meat no bigger than my pinky finger and about as appetizing as a stone.

I had this much to eat only because Ysor had helped me shop for it from the main market in the Inner Ring. But this was the last of it.

I wasn’t sad about it, though. I was going to be leaving here tomorrow. My gaze drifted to the seat beside me. I hesitated.

"I’m going to leave Area C... no one will ever find me again... I will never return until I find you."

Now that I awakened a Mundane rank Class, it was stupid to wait around to be disposed of. I would make life easier for them and dispose of myself before anyone could do it for me. I would leave Area C.

I reaffirmed that much to myself as I ate the last food I had at home.

After eating, I decided to step out, to go to the Wintertide estate and check on Ysor.

Getting to the castle was not so difficult. There was a fenced barricade between the Middle Ring and the Center Ring, but a long time ago, when we were all still kids, Esmer, Ysor and Rin had dug a little pathway for me so we could always hang out together.

That pathway still existed. The only difference was, we had sort of outgrown it.

I stood before the barricaded wall of reinforced wires. At a particular spot near the base, there were barrels of dirt arranged against the fence. I strained to push them aside, then dropped to my stomach and crawled under the gap we had dug beneath the wall.

It used to be easy. Now the wire foundations scraped across my back and tore at my sides as I dragged myself through, gritting my teeth until I came out on the other side. From there, it was a smooth jog to Ysor’s place.

By the time I got there, I was sweating like a goat. Granted, a goat truly never sweated.

I slipped past the back estate wall. It was late enough that patrol was focused in front, and besides, this was all just security for the kids. The Center Ring was the safest region in an Area.

After a few minutes I reached Ysor’s building, found the ladder that ran up the outer wall past her window to the roof. I didn’t stop at her window. I climbed straight to the top.

The moment I reached the flat roof, I sprawled face-down on the ground. My entire shirt was soaked through and I was breathing hard, lungs burning from the climb. I took control of my breath before bothering to turn my head toward Ysor.

She sat at the edge of the roof, hugging her knees.

I exhaled one last time and pushed myself up, looking at her for a moment before looking away.

In all my life, I could count the number of times I had seen Ysor sad on one hand. And none of them came close to how she looked right now.

Her eyes were sore and swollen. She had bawled herself empty, and whatever was left of her just sat there at the edge of that roof, small and folded in on herself. For a long moment, I just sat there with her, not knowing what to say.

’Hell, why do I suck at this so much...’

All the times she had consoled me, all the right words she always seemed to have, and I couldn’t find a single one.

After a few moments, she was the one who broke the silence.

"Did you eat tonight? The comestibles I got should be all finished by now, I should be able to find more for you tonight..." Her voice was thin, almost breaking apart as she spoke.

Something cracked inside my chest.

She was dying. She knew she was dying. And the first thing out of her mouth was whether I had eaten.

"Stop... stop... stop it!"

Ysor’s voice cut off the instant I raised mine. I hadn’t meant to shout. I regretted it before the sound even finished leaving me.

I looked at her, and the pain on my face must have been obvious because she didn’t flinch. She just waited.

"Why are you doing this? You’re dying, Ysor. They are going to kill you." 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

She smiled at me. It was a bitter smile, a forced one.

"I know... I’ll be laid to rest painlessly, brother said. But you’re still alive after tomorrow. You need to eat and fend for yourself." She looked away. "It’d be great if I could help you survive a few more weeks even after my death." She smiled again, quieter this time. "I’ll be very glad."

I couldn’t look at her straight. My face was scrunched with disbelief. I had always known Ysor to be a selfless person, but this was just absurd.

’What’s the use fighting over something like that right now.’

I lowered my head and grabbed fistfuls of my hair, wishing I could tear it out from the pain and frustration of everything. I sighed heavily, still looking down.

Then the words somehow left my mouth.

"I... I... don’t want you to die, Ysor. I can’t let it happen."

I grabbed her hand, looking into her eyes with the desperation of a man reaching for the last thing keeping him above water.

"You still have time, don’t you? It can happen anytime between now and two years. Let’s leave together, Ysor. I will get stronger, I promise you, and I will find a way to make you a Defined."

She looked at me like I had lost my mind, but a bitter smile broke through almost immediately.

"I’m glad..."

I stared at her.

’Has she gone crazy?’

"Glad? Why?"

Her smile bloomed, warm and real for the first time all night, bright enough that it almost hurt to look at.

"You don’t want me to die. It makes me feel really good that you don’t want me to die."

The smile faded. She turned away from me to hide the pain on her face, but I could still hear it in her voice.

"But this is my fate, Axel. This is the will of the Axiom. We all must live with it. I can’t run away with you."

***

[A/N]

Please add to your library