The sound of knocking echoed dryly, severing the oppressive silence of Zelus’s office. He did not look up; his ash-colored eyes remained fixed on the ancient documents where ruthless plans were scrawled in ink the color of dried blood.
"Enter."
His voice was devoid of ripples, cold as if forged from tempered steel. Zelus did not need to look to know who stood behind the heavy wooden door.
"Why are you there, Kales? What business do you have with me?"
"My Lord," Kales knelt respectfully, not daring to twitch even a fraction. "I have just created a new product."
"A product...?" Zelus muttered.
"Yes, indeed. I have come to request your permission to utilize the human trash down in the laboratory," Kales replied, his face filled with eager anticipation.
"Hm... that sounds acceptable, but..." Zelus’s gaze suddenly turned sharp, cold, and heavy. "Let me accompany you."
"My Lord...?" Kales flinched, his shoulders trembling slightly.
"I said, LET ME ACCOMPANY YOU," Zelus growled, an invisible pressure crushing the space around them.
"Y-yes, my Lord," Kales stammered, panicked. "Then I shall take my leave now."
"Fine. Go." Zelus waved his hand, dismissing him.
The door slammed shut, restoring the suffocating silence. Zelus remained in his seat, the darkness of the room thickening with his presence. He stared into the void, his fingers interlaced, his index finger tapping against the desk in a rhythmic, dry cadence.
"A new product..."
Zelus repeated the words, a cold smirk curling his lips. To Kales, this was an achievement, a step forward in his deranged research. But to Zelus, it was merely a diversion to fill the tedious voids of the dark empire he ruled.
He stood up, his long cloak sweeping across the floor. Zelus walked toward the corner, where a black overcoat hung suspended. He threw it over his shoulders, concealing not just the physical scars, but the ones on his soul that he had hidden for years.
Why did he want to follow?
Perhaps not out of curiosity for Kales’s "product." But because Zelus wanted to witness the despair of those below with his own eyes. He wanted to see the moment the light in their eyes flickered out, to hear that sound of hollow begging—the only thing that made him feel he still existed, still held control in a world that refused to acknowledge him.
Zelus strode out of the office, each footstep striking the corridor with a cold, oppressive weight. He needed something to stir the silence that was strangling his mind.
Those "pieces of trash" in the lab... they were just tools to serve his solitude.
He walked toward the basement, where the stench of chemicals and stagnant blood assaulted his nostrils. Zelus was ready to witness how Kales would mold this new agony.
Upon arriving, his hand clinging to the wall suddenly stiffened as Kales approached reverently:
"GREETINGS, MY LORD! IT IS A PLEASURE TO RECEIVE YOU!"
"Yes... yes," Zelus replied, momentarily stunned. "So, what is this 'product' you speak of?"
Zelus raised an eyebrow, his gaze sweeping over the slender, gleaming needle held in Kales’s calloused hand. He felt a sense of absurdity creeping into his mind. He had expected a machine, a weapon of mass destruction, or a poison capable of forcing a kingdom to its knees. Yet, what this fanatic subordinate brought was a tool so trivial it was laughable.
"You... why are you taking out a needle?" Zelus’s voice dropped, laced with utter skepticism. He stepped forward, his dark cloak brushing the cold tiled floor. "Do you intend to use this tiny toy to turn those pieces of trash into my army?"
Kales did not falter under the pressure radiating from Zelus. On the contrary, his eyes glowed with a frenzied light, his hand holding the needle trembling with excitement. He moved toward an iron cage, where a prisoner was cowering.
"My Lord, you are mistaken. This is not a weapon of slaughter," Kales whispered, his voice sounding like a snake crawling over stone. "This is a bridge of connection. Have you ever wondered why a 'shadow' cannot create its own light?"
Zelus froze. Kales’s question touched a wound that had never healed in the depths of his mind. The invisibility, the lack of recognition, the feeling of being an outsider in everyone else’s life... it all resonated in this cramped space.
"Explain yourself," Zelus drew his gaze back, tilting his head slightly, his usual coldness replaced by a dangerous curiosity. "If this brings no power, then what does it offer me?"
Kales chuckled, tracing a long line in the air with the sharp needle before plunging it into the trembling arm of the prisoner. A trail of dark purple liquid began to seep from the needle, soaking into the wretch’s flesh.
"It brings absolute obedience by sowing the depths of existence, my Lord. When their agony becomes one with yours, you will never feel... alone again."
Zelus stood there, watching the liquid spread beneath the prisoner’s skin. The silence returned to the room, but this time, it was no longer empty. It carried a dark, bewitching sense of ownership.
The prisoner began to go insane, foaming at the mouth, convulsing, and writhing violently. Occasionally, a sound like a starving dog’s bark escaped his throat. Zelus watched down with icy detachment. Kales continued:
"The function of this needle is to grant the subject any random ability, but they will be driven mad for a period of time. If they survive, their power will awaken; if not, they will simply die."
Zelus did not blink. His gaze was that of someone peering at an inanimate scrap of trash, not a human enduring bone-crushing pain. The victim’s screams were choked in his throat, leaving only ragged groans as his body was torn apart from within by strange, foreign energies.
"Granting power..." Zelus repeated, his tone terrifyingly calm.
He walked closer to the cage, observing the prisoner’s veins bulging, turning the same dark purple as the fluid Kales had injected. In the dim light of the lab, Zelus’s face was composed to the point of extremism. He felt no pity, no disgust, only a bitter, hollow void.
"A trade-off," Zelus muttered, his hands clenched into fists inside his cloak pockets. "Either become powerful, or dissolve into nothingness. A fair game... to the point of cruelty."
He turned to look at Kales, his ash-colored eyes boring into the subordinate:
"You say they awaken if they survive? What are the odds? Or is this just a pastime for you to observe which wretch is strong enough to survive in this gutter?"
Zelus paused, his silhouette casting a long, lonely, yet commanding shadow across the damp floor.
"If they die, it is natural selection. But if they survive... Kales, you must ensure that this power is tethered to me, and to no one else. I do not wish to create more monsters I cannot control."
He touched the cold iron bars, watching the prisoner convulse with a dark, melancholic pang. Perhaps, if such a needle had existed in the past, could I have escaped my own shadow? Or would I just have been another one of these failures writhing on the ground?
"Proceed," Zelus commanded, his voice like a death sentence. "I want to see what this one can do, or if it will just be another hollow corpse to be discarded."
The screeching from the cage shifted, transforming from ragged, agonizing sounds into something more grotesque—a dry, raspy growl, echoing like a beast trapped within a human frame. Zelus stood his ground, his shadow looming over the blood-stained floor, framing a scene of decay and dominance.
Kales stepped back, his eyes never leaving his prey, fanaticism written all over his gaunt face.
"My Lord, the odds..." Kales laughed, a twisted expression on his face. "Odds are just numbers for the weak who need hope. For me, this is a filter. Whoever survives, they not only gain power but also lose their old 'self,' becoming a perfect weapon, loyal exclusively to you."
Suddenly, the wretch on the floor went still. Silence enveloped the room, a stillness more terrifying than the previous screaming. The prisoner’s skin turned from dark purple to an ash-gray, identical to the color of Zelus’s own eyes.
"He... he is changing, my Lord!" Kales whispered, hysterical with excitement.
The prisoner’s body began to expand, muscles twitching and stretching unnaturally. Cracking sounds echoed as if his skeletal frame was being crushed and reformed. A hot, dark aura rose from his body, blurring the flickering lab lights.
Zelus narrowed his eyes, leaning forward slightly, a rare spark of curiosity flashing in his icy gaze. He raised a hand, and a thin, magical barrier wrapped around him, repelling the aura radiating from the transforming creature.
"Watch closely, Kales," Zelus said in a low voice, his fists tightening. "If he survives, this power must be bound to my presence. I do not need an army; I need shadows... shadows that obey without a single word of complaint."
At that very moment, the prisoner’s eyes snapped open. The hollow sockets were empty of pupils, replaced by two glowing red sparks of death. He stood up, reaching out not to beg, but to hunt for something to tear apart. He slammed into the iron bars with such force that the entire room shuddered.
Zelus stood still, not retreating an inch. He stared directly at the newly formed monster, a bleak, yet authoritative smile touching his lips.
"So, this is the result of despair..." Zelus whispered, as if speaking to himself. "Kales, open the cage. I want to see what this monster can do when facing its master."
"EAT---EAT... EAT!!!" The creature continued to wail like a ravenous, deranged beast.
Zelus chuckled, a smile that held seven parts mockery and three parts contempt. He slowly raised his foot, his polished brown leather shoe resting gently against the iron bars. His eyes hardened, and he exerted force. CRASH! A shrill, metallic screech echoed as dust and debris clouded the air. Zelus pulled his foot back, looking down at the mangled, unrecognizable remains of the victim, tilting his head slightly.
The dust cleared, leaving a haunting silence in the dungeon. The monster—or whatever remained of it—lay curled and motionless among the jagged metal fragments. Zelus’s kick had not only destroyed the cage but had seemingly extinguished the spark of life that had just ignited in that pathetic creature.
Zelus stood there, his tall figure looming over the ruined corpse, his expression as calm as if he had just crushed an insect rather than a "creation" that had just been born. He gently brushed the dust from his leather shoe, his ash-colored eyes looking down at the remains with profound disappointment.
"A failure," Zelus muttered, his voice echoing in the cold dungeon. "You could not withstand the pressure of your own power, or perhaps... your existence was too insignificant to contain the energy Kales bestowed upon you."
Kales stood cowering to one side, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably, cold sweat streaming down his forehead. He did not dare breathe, simply bowing his head to the ground, his hands clutched tightly at his robes.
Zelus tilted his head, a gesture that looked curious but carried a sense of lethal menace. He walked toward the corpse, using the tip of his shoe to lightly flip over the deformed hand of the fallen. Dark purple veins still crawled beneath the skin like the mark of a curse.
"Kales, you see," Zelus turned slowly, his piercing gaze stabbing into his subordinate. "Attempting to create an army from this trash is like trying to gather broken mirror shards to see one's own reflection. They are too fragile; they shatter too easily."
He paused, staring into the dark abyss at the end of the corridor, where other cages held other "tools."
"I do not need monsters that wail without control. What I need are those who can endure the agony, those who can transform their despair into a sharp blade to serve my dominion."
Zelus turned on his heel, heading toward the exit, his voice lingering coldly in the thick air:
"Clean up this mess. And if the next product still knows only how to wail like a rabid beast... then the next one to be pierced by the needle... will be you, Kales."