Iris slowly forced herself to stand before taking a deep breath and slapping herself across the face as hard as she could.
“Get it together.”
She couldn’t afford to keep crying.
Not here.
Not when her mother was still somewhere within the Black Ocean, and certainly not when the bastard who had killed Michello was still wandering around.
Iris wiped the remaining tears from her face and looked down at her right hand.
Her Sigil had finally awakened, and with her Curse restored, she could properly fight again.
Magic would no longer require her to draw circles with blood, and she finally had access to the power she’d spent twenty years learning to control.
The only problem was that her body was still sixteen, meaning she couldn’t rely on the same strength or endurance she’d possessed at her peak.
Iris bit down on her nail as Alexi’s face returned to her mind.
‘That bastard…’
“The King,” she muttered.
“Who the hell is this King he kept talking about?” Her expression tightened as she considered the possibilities.
“Could be one of the Seven Sins, if I’m really unlucky. They’re all trying to kill each other, after all. It’s obviously not Pride, Lust, or Envy. I know where those three are right now.”
She paused.
But if the Blood Moons are happening at different times now…
The thought made her stomach sink.
Then there’s no reason the Sins couldn’t appear on Earth earlier than they’re supposed to.
Iris slapped herself once more before forcing her legs to move.
She headed in the opposite direction from the path she’d taken in the previous loop.
There was no point repeating the exact same mistakes when she already knew where they led.
She needed to explore more of the Black Ocean, find her mother, and figure out how to destroy the King before Alexi could revive him.
And, more importantly, she wasn’t ready to see Michello again.
Not yet.
A small black flame appeared above her palm as she walked, its light pushing back the darkness surrounding the crimson bridge.
“Hey, imaginary friend,” Iris muttered after a while.
“I think I might actually be losing my mind.”
She sighed.
“I got attached to that psychopath.”
The words sounded ridiculous even to her.
“Michello. The fucking Executioner. The man who’s killed so many A.E.G.I.S. agents that the organization has a life insurance policy specifically for anyone unfortunate enough to run into him.” Iris shook her head, glaring at the flame burning above her palm.
“He’s a monster. He’s killed countless people, ruined countless lives, and I spent twenty years wanting to personally send him to hell.”
Her hand slowly tightened.
“So why?”
She looked down at the black flame.
“Why did he have to be so nice to me? Why did he have to protect me like that? Why do I care so much that he died?”
Iris bit down harder on her nail.
“He’s an awful person. A terrible, horrible person who deserved to die.”
Her voice grew quieter.
So why did it hurt so much to watch him die?
Iris continued walking, allowing the small flame to guide her through the endless crimson maze.
There was no point trying to answer a question she didn’t understand herself.
Michello was alive again, somewhere within the Black Ocean, and that should’ve been enough for now.
She would deal with her feelings toward him once everyone was safe.
Assuming she ever managed to make sense of them in the first place.
Eventually, she noticed a structure standing between two of the towering crimson walls.
It was a small house, built from the same red bricks as everything else within the Black Ocean, with faint light spilling from its windows.
Iris stopped.
She stared at the house for several seconds before sighing.
“This better not be another fucking trap.”
Iris cautiously entered the house, keeping a small black flame burning above her palm as she examined her surroundings.
Everything inside appeared to be made from the same crimson stone as the rest of the Black Ocean.
The tables, chairs, and even the smaller decorations were carved from red brick.
Stranger still, the house seemed much larger on the inside than it had appeared from the street.
Iris looked down the hallway before sighing.
“Of course. Why would anything in this damn place be normal?”
She continued exploring until she reached the bathroom, only to immediately scream when she noticed something lying on the floor.
“Fuck!” Visit g.com for the full chapter.
An elderly woman lay beside the bathtub, her body completely still.
Iris approached cautiously before crouching beside her.
There were no visible injuries, no signs of a struggle, and nothing to suggest what had killed her.
The only abnormalities were the thin streams of blood that had flowed from her eyes and the enormous grin stretched across her face.
Iris stared at the corpse.
“What the hell happened to you?” she muttered.
“No wounds, no obvious cause of death… and that horrible smile.” She sighed before slowly standing.
“I doubt a Remnant did this. Figures this place would have more than one kind of monster wandering around.”
Her gaze moved across the bathroom, searching for anything that might explain the woman’s death.
Then she noticed the mirror.
It was the only thing in the entire house that didn’t appear to be made from crimson stone.
A perfectly ordinary bathroom mirror hung above the sink, looking strangely out of place among the red brick surrounding it.
Iris approached cautiously and looked at herself.
Her reflection stared back.
Pink hair.
Golden eyes.
Broken glasses.
The same exhausted expression she’d been wearing since her last death.
Iris took a deep breath.
Then her reflection smiled.
She froze.
Iris wasn’t smiling.
Yet the girl in the mirror continued staring at her with an enormous grin, stretching wider and wider until it looked almost painful.
The exact same grin as the corpse lying behind her.
Iris’s eye twitched.
“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not fucking kidding you,” her reflection replied cheerfully.
“Now then, do you have any questions?”
Iris stared at herself in the mirror, her expression slowly changing from irritation to suspicion.
Mirror-type supernatural entities were relatively common, though their abilities varied wildly.
She doubted this was anything as infamous as Bloody Mary, but that didn’t mean it was harmless.
For now, playing along seemed like the easiest way to figure out what it wanted.
Iris bit down on her nail as she considered her options, watching as her reflection copied the gesture without losing its unnatural smile.
“Tell me the name of the King of this place,” Iris demanded.
The reflection’s grin widened.
“The Future King of the Abyss, the one destined to free us from Superbia’s crimes, is Avaritia. Son of the late Demon King and the messiah who shall deliver us from our suffering.”
Iris froze.
Avaritia.
The Devil of Greed.
Suddenly, several pieces began falling into place.
“Of course…” Iris muttered.
“The only one of the Seven Sins who never appeared in the original timeline.”
The Seven Sins could only descend upon Earth during a Blood Moon.
Once they arrived, however, they became permanent residents of the human world.
Iris had encountered nearly all of them during her previous life, but Avaritia had remained a mystery.
Not once in twenty years had she heard of the Devil of Greed appearing.
Unless he did appear.
Her eyes widened.
“Michello…”
One of Michello’s signature Grade 0 Artifacts had possessed a release word Iris remembered all too well.
Greed.
“Did that bastard kill Avaritia before I even knew he existed?” Iris muttered, biting down harder on her nail.
“If Avaritia appeared during the original Blood Moon, Michello could’ve killed him early in the night, before he had time to establish himself on Earth.”
It wasn’t impossible.
Michello was one of the original survivors of the Applecrest Massacre, and even twenty years later, Iris had never learned everything he’d done during that night.
For someone ranked first on A.E.G.I.S.’s priority kill list, he had always been frustratingly good at keeping secrets. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
She slowly looked down at her hand.
“But this time…”
The Blood Moon had arrived three days early.
Michello hadn’t appeared in the same location as Avaritia, assuming her theory was correct in the first place.
Iris let out a bitter laugh.
“Wonderful. Absolutely fucking wonderful.”
She’d wanted to remove Michello and Nikolai from the board, steal a Grade 0 Artifact, and save her mother.
Instead, her interference might have allowed one of the Seven Sins to survive an encounter that had originally ended in his death.
My greed might’ve saved the Devil of Greed.
There was something almost hilarious about that.
Iris certainly didn’t feel like laughing.
“Would you like to ask another question, Miss Iris Blackwell?” the reflection asked cheerfully.
Iris slowly looked back toward the mirror.
Her reflection was still smiling.
“Tell me about the man named Alexi. White hair, skin pale as snow, incredibly annoying personality. What the hell is he?”
The reflection’s smile weakened.
“Alexi Wallachia. A vampire nobleman,” it answered quietly.
“Unfortunately, that is all I am at liberty to say. His master frightens me far too much for me to go around revealing his secrets.”
Iris’s eye twitched as she watched her reflection begin trembling.
Seeing her own face twisted with fear was somehow more disturbing than the enormous grin it had been wearing moments earlier.
‘Alexi Wallachia.
I’ll have to research House Wallachia once I join A.E.G.I.S.’
Iris bit down on her nail.
‘But this master of his…’
She had one possible idea of who could inspire that much fear in a supernatural entity, someone even the Seven Sins would have reason to be wary of.
‘Please don’t let it be that bastard.’
The reflection suddenly stopped trembling.
Its cheerful expression returned almost instantly, the grin stretching even wider than before.
“Your next question, Miss Iris Blackwell?”
Iris stared at it for a moment.
There was plenty more she wanted to know, especially about the Nine Miracles and Superbia’s interference with her regression, but right now she had a much more pressing problem.
If she could locate the anchor of the Black Ocean, she might be able to destroy the entire Devil’s Footprint before the massacre claimed any more lives.
“Where is the anchor of the Black Ocean?”
The reflection froze.
Then its grin widened.
And widened.
Iris’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, don’t tell me—”
An arm shot through the mirror.
Before Iris could react, her reflection’s hand wrapped tightly around her throat and pulled her toward the glass.
Its fingers dug into her skin as the enormous grin on its face twisted into something almost inhuman.
Iris grabbed the creature’s wrist, desperately trying to keep herself from being dragged into the mirror as her heels scraped against the crimson floor.
‘Fuck!’
The corpse lying behind her suddenly made a lot more sense.
‘Three questions.
That was its gimmick!
It answers three questions, then tries to kill whoever asked them!’
She’d been so focused on Avaritia and Alexi that she’d completely ignored the possibility that the questions themselves were the trap.
The old woman hadn’t died from some mysterious disease or an invisible attack.
She’d simply made the same mistake Iris had.
The creature tightened its grip.
Iris’s right hand began to burn.
Her Sigil glowed.
‘Unfortunately for you…’
Black flames gathered around her fingers as Iris slowly smiled back at the thing wearing her face.
‘You picked the wrong Witch to fight.’