Icarus's Point of View
"What will I do?" Darcelle cried out in desperation. Her voice trembled with fear, her eyes wide with the weight of the situation. "My father cannot hold on any longer. Please help me," she begged, her gaze shifting between me and her father, a man who was slipping away from the world.
I stood frozen, staring at the ground, my mind racing in confusion and guilt. The image of her stricken face burned in my thoughts.
I would have given him the bite.
Made him into a werewolf, which would have instantly healed him from whatever illness he was suffering from.
The idea of offering him the gift that could save his life had crossed my mind, but I knew the rules—Master's rules—clearly prohibited such actions. I was here for an investigation, and revealing my true nature during this time, under these circumstances, could unravel everything I had worked for.
I clenched my fists, frustration bubbling inside of me.
Helpless.
There was nothing I could do.
Despite the storm of conflicting emotions in my chest, my eyes drifted to Malachi.
Silent, still, cold.
His stoic expression never wavered as he gazed ahead, his focus locked on something far in the distance. I found myself silently pleading with him—help me.
Help Darcelle.
But he refused to look at me. His indifference cut deeper than any words could.
Malachi spoke, his voice calm, almost indifferent to the turmoil before him. "I want to see what you’re going to do about this situation. You, who usually take human life so seriously?" He turned to face me slowly, his gaze unflinchingly.
"I know you’ve been told not to use your Lycan powers out here," he continued, his tone more contemplative than accusatory, "and if you pass, you’ll gain the leadership role Matthias promised you. So, between that role and a human life... which is more important to you?"
His words struck me like a blade. I could feel the weight of his gaze, but it wasn’t just his eyes—it was a challenge. He had put me in a position where I had to choose, and the question hung in the air, suffocating me.
"Which will you choose?" Malachi asked, his voice laced with an almost mocking curiosity. He didn’t wait for an answer before he turned and began to walk away, his back to me, leaving me to stew in my internal conflict.
"Malachi!" I called out, but my voice was weak, desperate, and he didn’t even flinch.
My heart ached as I watched Darcelle.
She was holding her father’s limp body in her arms now, shaking him, her hands trembling with grief.
Her breath caught in her throat as she turned her father’s face toward hers, searching desperately for any sign of life.
"Father?" she whispered, a trace of hope still clinging to her voice. "Father?!" she repeated, her voice rising as the reality set in.
But there was nothing.
No response.
No life in his eyes.
A strangled sob escaped her, and she began wailing, her grief echoing in the silent air. She shook him violently, as if the act might somehow awaken him from his slumber, but the lifelessness in his body said otherwise. I stood there, unmoving, completely still, like a statue caught in a moment of time.
The realization hit me like a thunderclap—this was my fault. If I had acted sooner, if I had done what I knew was right, perhaps things could have turned out differently.
But the role, the power, the promise of leadership— they had all clouded my judgment. I had made the choice, and now Darcelle would pay for it.
As I watched her grieve, something deep inside me snapped. The weight of the decision I had made threatened to consume me entirely. I had chosen ambition over compassion, power over life, and I could never undo that choice.
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Not now, not ever.
I was a coward.
"Father... father... please wake up... where am I going to go? Who is going to be with me?" Darcelle's voice cracked, the rawness of her pain seeping into every word.
She clutched her father's lifeless body tighter, as if somehow, by holding onto him, she could pull him back from the brink of death.
Her tears flowed freely, a constant stream of sorrow that seemed endless.
"You know no one loves me... no one likes me, father. They all say I am bad, and I have no other person in my life other than you... please, father, wake up."
Her cries pierced through the stillness of the night, and I couldn’t bring myself to respond.
I stood there, helpless. My heart ached with guilt and sorrow, but all I could do was look away.
Watching her suffer, watching her fall apart in front of me, it was too much.
Her pain gnawed at my subconscious, the weight of it pressing down on me like an unbearable burden.
Every sob she uttered was like a hammer striking my chest, each one resonating deep within me, reminding me that I could have done something.
I could have saved him.
But I had chosen not to.
She cried the entire night, her grief spilling into the quiet hours as she clung to her father’s cold, unmoving form. The moonlight cast eerie shadows around us, and in those shadows, I could almost see her heart shattering piece by piece.
And yet, I did nothing to ease her pain.
There were no comforting words, no actions I could take that would make this right. She had lost the only family she had, and I had let it happen.
When dawn finally broke, painting the sky in hues of pink and orange, I knew it was time. There was no one else to help. No one from the village came to offer condolences or assistance. The villagers had all abandoned her, just as they had abandoned her father in his time of need.
It was just us.
Just the two of us now.
I helped Darcelle dig a grave for her father.
The earth was hard, unforgiving, and the task seemed to take forever.
It felt wrong, so wrong, to be the one to bury him.
His body should have been surrounded by those who loved him, those who cared for him.
But no one came.
Not even the villagers.
They stayed away, as though his death was some sort of curse to be avoided.
I didn’t speak as we worked.
What could I say?
Nothing I could say would make her feel better.
I was too consumed with guilt, too far gone in my own self-loathing to offer her any real comfort.
Darcelle didn’t speak either.
She didn’t need to.
The silence between us was deafening, filled with the weight of everything that had happened.
Maybe she was angry with me for not helping her, for not intervening sooner.
Maybe that’s why she wouldn’t look at me.
Or maybe it was the overwhelming sadness of losing the one person who had been a constant in her life.
Perhaps it was both.
I couldn’t tell.
The hours passed slowly; the task finished with a heavy, reluctant finality. Once her father was buried, Darcelle walked away, her shoulders slumped, her steps hollow as though she carried the weight of the world on her back. She went to the dam, a quiet, isolated place where the water’s soft murmur seemed to reflect the sadness in her eyes.
I waited for a while before I gathered the courage to approach her. The air was still and thick with grief, and the sun had barely risen, casting a dim, gray light over the land.
"Darcelle," I began quietly, my voice barely above a whisper. "I have a question to ask… Why do the villagers hate you so much?" The question had been nagging at me since the night before, since the flames had threatened to swallow her cottage, since I had witnessed the hostility in their eyes. I couldn’t understand why they treated her so cruelly, why they saw her as a danger.
She didn’t look at me.
She kept her eyes trained on the water, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Her voice, when it came, was hollow, devoid of emotion, like she had said these words a thousand times before.
"Because it is said that my mother died as soon as I was born," she explained, her voice flat, detached. "My blood and aura kill plants and animals, and I am the only werewolf in this village. Somehow, my smell attracts the vampires, so the villagers say I am a witch."
The words came slowly, as though they were heavy with the burden of years of rejection and pain. "That is why we lived on the outskirts of the village... I am a bad omen... I also bring bad omens to anyone who gets close to me. Bad things will definitely happen."
She paused, and for the first time since her father passed away, I saw her look up at me. Her eyes, usually so full of life, now seemed empty, hollowed out by everything she had endured. "That’s what they say," she added, the bitterness evident in her voice. "That’s what I’ve been told my whole life."
I didn’t know what to say.
How could I respond to that?
How could I offer words of comfort when the truth of her words stung so deeply?
"I see," was all I managed, the words falling from my lips without any real weight behind them.
Darcelle gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug, as though trying to brush it all off. "It’s okay. I’m used to it by now," she said, but I could hear the lie in her voice.
She wasn’t used to it.
She couldn’t be.
No one could.
The pain of being rejected, of being ostracized by an entire village, was something that no one could simply grow accustomed to.
Her words were a shield, a defense mechanism, something to protect herself from the raw hurt she was feeling. But I could see through it. I could see the pain in her eyes, the hurt that she didn’t want to admit, even to herself.
I didn’t push her any further.
I didn’t need to.
We both knew the truth.
But the silence between us grew heavier, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take for the weight of everything that had happened to crush her completely.
Would she ever find a way to heal from this?
Or would the cruelty of the villagers, the weight of her father’s death, and the burden of her own loneliness slowly drive her to the edge?
And as I stood there, watching her stare out at the dam, I realized that the same darkness that consumed her was beginning to seep into me as well.