Villain Hiring: Help! Author Wants Me Dead-Chapter 221: Fallout (7)

My eyes turned smaller as my surroundings started blurring, a low shout escaping my lips, I did not even realise what happened until my head hit the cold, stone debris. Blood escaped my lips but all I could do was stare at the blue sky as a small dot could be seen flying from afar.

A shadow cut across the light.

It was that blasted Dario.

He descended like a hawk ready to prey, his body flashing, and aura spiking.

A breath later, he wasn't above me anymore.

He was right in front of me.

The world bent for him, folded into space. That was his gift.

Teleportation.

Speed beyond comprehension. And now, it brought him here, so close that I could smell the sweat and iron clinging to his skin.

Cold steel pressed against my neck.

A dagger.

His hand was steady, eyes bloodshot with rage as I mock grinned up at him, my lips split and bleeding, tasting copper. "Do it," I whispered, voice like glass shattering.

"Kill me, Dario. Kill your best friend."

His jaw clenched.

I saw it, the conflict, the fury.

But then it came, the pain.

It spiked inside my skull so harsh that my vision whited out.

A thin, burning line ran from the base of my head all the way through my eyes. It wasn't just pain, it was almost splitting. Tearing me apart.

Like my very soul was being dragged apart by hooks from inside.

I screamed. Not a laugh this time, but madness.

A painful, animal scream that ripped itself out of me and left my throat raw.

My hands clawed at my temples, nails raking my skin like sandpaper. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't breathe. It felt like someone had poured molten knives into my brain and twisted them, pulling threads loose and unraveling me.

I felt myself slipping. The control, the dominance I had stolen, it was fading. Something else was dragging me down, back into the black pit I'd crawled out of.

"Wha-what is this?!" I shrilled, my words breaking into half-sobs, half-mad giggles. My body trembled, every nerve lit on fire.

Dario froze. His dagger didn't cut, his rage faltering as his eyes narrowed.

"Noah…?" he whispered, his voice trembling.

I tried to sneer, to taunt him again, but the expression twisted into something worse. My face betrayed me. Muscles jerked, spasmed, stretched into a grimace of agony I couldn't control.

I heard myself murmur, broken words spilling without meaning. "Not me…not me… cage…cube…kill him…"

Dario's dagger trembled at my throat. His expression changed.

Confusion, doubt and a shard of fear appeared on his face.

He stepped back suddenly, his eyes wide as he looked not at me, but through me. "Wait!!Something's wrong. This…this isn't Noah. This isn't him!" His voice rose into a shout, sharp and desperate. "Everyone! Stop! We've been wrong, he's possessed! He's not—"

Darkness poured out of me.

Thick, choking air, black as pitch, seeping from my mouth, my eyes, my nostrils. It rolled out like smoke but heavier, dragging the air into silence.

The ground trembled beneath me.

Dario stumbled back in shock, covering his face as if the darkness itself clawed at his skin.

And Damien…oh, sweet Damien. I felt his presence quiver, his calm composure cracked.

for the first since since the time since I'd been controlling Noah's body, he didn't look at edge.

If anything, the blue blob of soul seemed excited and worried.

"…Impossible…what is happening to me?"

I choked on the darkness, my vision blurring between the outside world and a black cage inside my soul.

Looking inside mine and the weak Noah's shared soul space, I saw a huge cube sized relic covering my soul, trying to restrain it.

That cursed cube shone around me, it's six sides monstrously huge, twisted into a cage of blackness.

Its sides ground against each other endlessly, trying to further press against my soul, blades of shifting geometry, scraping against the very walls of my soul.

And it was attacking me.

Not the boy. Not Noah.

Me.

I staggered inward, back into the void where I'd been. And there I was, staring at it, the cube, splitting me apart piece by piece.

"No…" I wailed, falling to my knees in the soul space. My voice echoed in the surroundings. "No, no, no, you can't…you can't do this to me!"

The cube pulsed.

A soundless thrum that tore through my chest.

Thin strands of soul peeled away, trying to contain me in a cube like coffin with me at the centre.

I screamed and clutched at myself, but my hands passed through. My form was melting, breaking down.

"I AM HIM!" I shrieked into the void, my voice breaking into laughter and tears all at once. "I AM NOAH! Not him—ME! This body is MINE!"

The cube did not answer.

It only kept crushing, pressing inward, grinding my essence against the burning walls until pieces of me splintered and snapped off like brittle bone.

And outside, I could still feel it. My body convulsing, the black smoke spilling, my voice babbling broken nonsense while Dario shouted for the others.

But it didn't matter.

Because inside, I was dying.

Not by sword. Not by blade. But by erasure.

"PLEASE!" I begged now, sobbing in the dark, holding at my fading arms. My laughter was gone, replaced by raw desperation. "Please...I'll be quiet! I'll hide! Don't kill me, don't–"

Another pulse.

My world went white, voice split into static.

My form collapsed inward, shredded by the crushing weight until all that remained of me was a smear of sound, a shadow of madness.

And yet…before the final piece of me was locked away, I understood.

The weakling.

That pathetic Noah.

He had done this.

He had dared to pull this cursed cube into our soul and use it against me.

Rage, hotter than fire, bubbled through my dissolving form. My voice, broken and warped, clawed its way out of the emptiness one last time.

"You think this is victory?" I hissed, my laugh cracking into sobs and snarls. "You think you've won, Noah? You miserable coward… you've only killed the one part of you that could have saved you."

I could feel my soul slowly being further sealed into the cube but I continued.

"You'll lose it all. Your friends, your family, your precious bonds? ALL GONE.

And when the day comes, when the world burns around you and you're on your knees begging for strength…you'll remember me."

My jaw split, laughter bubbling with blood.

"You'll remember the devil you caged and regret it.

Because I was the only one who ever had the guts to survive!"

The cube squeezed one final time, making the world around me close from the shared soul space, but my words echoed, louder than the perpetual state of death I'd been put in, searing themselves into the soul I once ruled: 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"Mark this, Noah.

You may have killed me today…But one day, when the sky bleeds and the earth screams, you'll crawl back to me in tears.

And when you do…I'll be waiting."

***