Read Novel Full Chapter 476: Unbecoming [III]
Chapter 476: Unbecoming [III]
Cold.
Everything was so goddamn cold.
Viktor’s teeth were clattering uncontrollably, his body shuddering. The back of his head was bleeding. He could tell because that was the only warm spot on his body.
His vision was a gauzy blur, everything in sight smudged and smeared. He was being dragged through ice.
A hoarse voice was all that filled his otherwise buzzing ears. It was reciting a poem. Something Viktor had read somewhere before, though he couldn’t remember where.
“But iron grows so heavy,
When it houses hollow bones.
And love is a lonely road,
When built on borrowed stones.”
They stopped. Viktor tried moving his body, but it refused his command. He wheezed softly, then a little louder as a foot stomped down on his gut.
“Now I’m lighter in the wreckage,
Now I’m basking in the applause.
The finest thing I ever did,
was unbecome the man I never was.”
The pressure on Viktor’s gut eased enough for him to roll onto his side. He coughed and convulsed, vomiting up river water, mud, and dark, clotted blood.
Eventually, his vision cleared and Ivan’s towering figure looming over him slowly shifted back into focus.
Viktor stared up at him. For a moment, he didn’t recognize the person standing there.
Ivan hadn’t changed.
The boy above him still had the same messy brown hair, the same familiar eyes, the same stupidly gentle face.
But there was something missing.
Something that made him look so much bigger now because it was gone. Something that had always been there before.
The hesitation, the insecurity. The constant need to make himself appear smaller so everyone else could stand taller.
That Ivan was gone.
Or maybe…
Maybe he had never truly existed.
People don’t change, after all.
“…Why?” Viktor’s voice came out as little more than a broken rasp. “Why… you traitor?”
Ivan took a moment to reply. “Me?” He raised both brows. “I’m the traitor for siding with the boy that saved our lives in that massacre instead of trying to curry royal favor?”
“F-For… betraying your friends!”
The accusation hung between them, heavy with history and words better left unsaid.
Ivan again took a long moment to find his answer. This time he found it in a scoff. “Friends? Really?”
Viktor’s expression twisted. “What the… hell is that supposed to mean?”
Ivan shrugged, more amused than anything. “You always say that word like it means something simple. Like being someone’s friend means you automatically own them.”
Viktor’s jaw tightened. “I n-never… never said that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Ivan looked around. For hundreds of meters in every direction, the river had frozen into a glacier.
On the side of Ivory territory’s riverbank, a few Cadets were present. But they were blocked off by a towering wall of ice — an enormous tide that had flash-frozen mid-surge.
Directly above Ivan, a supply crate was descending through the grey sky, its deployment parachute fluttering against the cold wind.
Ivan’s gaze lingered on the falling crate for a moment before dropping back down to the broken boy at his feet. “You know the problem with you, Vik? You’re so charming and handsome, so generous and confident. You shine so bright that you allow no one else to share the spotlight. You’re like the protagonist of a story. But if you’re the protagonist, then everyone else has to be either a side character or a villain to exist around you. And maybe I was tired of being your fucking extra.”
Viktor was still making an effort to summon his Origin Card, but he was so spent that he was barely breathing anymore.
“Every time I accomplished something, you spun it into a story about how you helped me get there,” Ivan continued, leaning down slightly, the tip of his silver-blue trident resting lightly against the ice right beside Viktor’s ear. “Every time I made a mistake, you kept a receipt so you could hold it over my head months later under the guise of reminiscing. You didn’t want a friend, Vik. At best, you wanted an audience. A cute little sidekick to make you look like a hero by comparison. And Irina, that dumb bitch, would always bend over backwards to defend you even when she claimed she loved me.” He sighed. “So, yeah. I was tired pretending we were friends. You’ll find it in your heart to forgive me.”
A silence escorted the last of Ivan’s words away — the kind of silence that settled in when someone inseparable was finally broken.
Viktor stayed there, blinking the moisture from his eyes. His jaw trembled, mouth opening and closing a few times… until a rough chuckle clawed its way out of his throat.
“Wow, you really believe that, don’t you?” he heaved, coughing again. “And… your solution for getting out of my shadow was to crawl into someone else’s? You think Samael Kaizer Theosbane sees you as a friend, as an equal? You’re a pawn to him, you fool…”
“Careful, you’re starting to sound jealous.”
“Maybe I am!”
The answer came so fast it surprised Ivan.
A bitter smile spread across Viktor’s bloody lips, pulling at the split skin of his cracked mouth.
“Maybe I am,” he repeated. “Maybe I am not good at expressing how grateful I am for the good things in my life until they slip away from me. But I still… I tried to be a friend to you. I never considered you beneath me.”
He let out a weak, wheezing laugh that ended in a cough, spitting dark phlegm onto the pristine ice. “And then some arrogant bastard snaps his fingers, gives you a shiny stick, and suddenly you’re a king? You didn’t grow up, Ivan. You just found another monster to hide behind so you wouldn’t have to feel little in my presence. You think you’re standing on your own two feet? You’re just a dog on Theosbane’s leash, waiting for him to tell you who to bite next! People! Don’t—”
He never got to finish.
Ivan lifted his trident and brought it down.
The weapon plunged deep into the spot in ice where Viktor’s head would’ve been if not for an Instructor whisking him away at the last possible moment.
Ivan didn’t move. He stayed hunched over, weakly clutching the shaft of his trident.
The overcast sky above opened up into a soft drizzle.
The raindrops pattered against his singed back and deep wounds, washing away the mixture of silt and blood from his face.
For a long time, the only sound was the howling of the cold wind through the mangroves in the distance and a muffled THRUM of the supply crate’s parachute finally settling onto the ice behind him.
Only then did he allow himself to fall forward and drift into a dreamless sleep.