Chapter 36 - The Death Of A Humanity : Part 2

The first time Axel woke up, everything had been blurry.

The world was spinning around him. Winds were brushing through his hair a little. Though someone was cradling him, protecting him from the brutal winds around.

Was he in the air? He did not know.

He could not recall what was happening nor what had happened. There was- there was a fire. Red eyes. Kiaran and Rune. Aster was there too. Adreanna with her raining bullets. Was father there too?

Trying to think only made his head hurt. There was a massive pain in his heart that made Axel whimper a little.

The one that held him cooed, drowning him with soft words of reassurance. Axel found warmth and familiarity in between the words alone. Something was forming in his mind, telling him he knew who the person was.

Axel blinked and tried to stare at the person through his messy black locks. He saw two red eyes. Why were they red? Oh, and a kind smile etched on the person's face.

Axel frowned as he stared at the person. Though he did not realize the person was returning the stare at him.

"Father?" The boy croaked, almost like a whisper. There were wrinkles forming on Cain's nose as he smiled at him.

"I'm here, son. Let's get you home." His father reassured softly, holding him even tighter as if he would break any time soon.

The boy deepened his frown at the big heavy sound that was forming behind Cain's back. Since when did father have wings? He did not know. But those wings were beautiful, though. Was this still Halloween?

"Okay." Axel agreed nimbly, closing his faded blue eyes little by little as the pain became numb to himself.

He missed the dark look on Adreanna's red eyes nor the insane smile that etched on Kiaran's face as he flew right beside Cain.

The head of the Vergessene family just smiled kindly at the sleeping boy in his hands. His family was complete now. It was time to fix everything and restart over.

Before Axel managed to blackout again entirely, he caught the deadly kind smile on Cain's face that somehow was warm.

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The second time he woke up, he had a massive pain from his heart to his head. He opened his eyes slowly, squinting as he tried to take the tall looming figure who stood by his bed.

He looked at the big mirror on the wall to his left in a daze. He realized he was in a bed that looked a lot like the one in his room.

Wait, was this his room?

No, no, it wasn't. This was-

Axel's faded blue eyes darted to his right, his foggy brain tried to pin-point its sudden familiarity, and all he could come up with was the black wings on the figure beside him.

Realization hit him like a train. The black-haired boy promptly drove himself into a full-blown panic as he jolted right up.

Axel went to the furthest side of the bed, away from the man. He could hear his own heart beating rapidly as he sat on the tip of his own dilemma. He did not know what was happening right now.

He was just in some kind of war where made-up demons were scattered around aimlessly, attacking everyone. He just finished a battle with Adreanna, and then he was choking while the red emerald necklace-

The red emerald necklace.

Axel quickly put a hand on his neck, trying to find the necklace. He looked down only to see himself with a red glowing light hovering over his heart. He let out a startled gasp as he touched his own chest in a full-blown panic desperately.

The demon version of Cain took a step forward, and Axel eyed him wearily. The red eyes shined in the room. The boy found himself unmoving as he looked at them. He tried to take a step back, but he was locked on the spot.

His brain screamed for his trembling self to run, but he was too stunned to do anything.

"It's okay. Father's here." The demon soothed as he opened his arms for Axel.

What? Did he kidnap him? What was happening right now? Was all the coming to the family day for him was just a lie? Was he that naive?

Axel gritted his teeth at the feeling of betrayal on the tip of his tongue. "What did you do to me? Why am I here?"

"What do you mean, Axel? You're home. Of course, you're here." A voice chimed in from the doorway, causing Axel to look over at his pseudo brother.

Kiaran and Adreanna were standing there, looking at him like some kind of a lost animal. Kiaran's overly sweet smile formed on his lips while tilting his head at Axel, waiting for an answer.

"What? No! My family is-" The world stuck in his throat as he comprehended the fact that he did not know what happened after he passed out.

"Where are they?" There was a dread latched in his voice as he tried to bravely ask them despite his situation.

"We're here. We're your family." Cain answered with a smile that Axel never got from his real father.

The fake kind smile.

"What's with your obsession with me being a part of your family?" Axel ventured, ignoring the darkened look the three gave to him.

"I know you three were weird since the day I met you. But I'm not your son nor your brothers. Where is your real Axel? I'm not him."

"I mean, thank you for replacing my family in Family Day back then. But you three are clearly not my family and will never be." Axel confessed, trying hard to avoid the deadly silence in the room.

"You are ours, and no one can say otherwise." Cain's kind smile was gone now, looking at Axel with possessiveness surrounding him.

"Ours? I'm not a possession! I'm a human." Axel began to scream. The panic just rose more and more as time passed by.

"Well, we can easily change the last part." Adreanna finally spoke up, walking over to him with two possessive cold blood eyes. "You will look good with red eyes."

She reached her hands, trying to ruffle Axel's head, only to be dodged by the human boy.

"Are you-" something clicked in Axel's mind as his eyes formed a terror look. "Are you trying to turn me into those mindless demons?!"

"No. You won't be mindless. We've taken a precaution with the necklace we gave you. It worked pretty well." Said Kiaran as he walked closer to Axel too.

"No!" Axel threw a pillow to Kiaran, jumping over him. The boy slid down and tried to reach the door but suddenly-

"Axel, stop," Kiaran commanded with an echoing voice, making the boy froze in his place. Axel's breath hitched when he realized he could not move at all, trembling in his place when he had no control of his own body.

"Obey." The demon added, thrilling Axel with his commanding power as the human swayed in his place.

The head of anarchy made his way to the frozen boy slowly and snatched his body up to his hands, staring at him with a kind smile again.

Cain cradled Axel like a baby, like porcelain that would break the second he let go. He put Axel's head on his chest. The man hummed as he stroked the boy's head. It was as if the demon was trying to remember the day his Axel was born.

Because when his Axel was born, he never wanted to hold him. He ignored his son completely. Cain despised him like how he despised the king.

Axel could hear the rumble on his father's chest as he closed his eyes, listening to the man's humming in a daze. His brain was screaming to run away, to get away as far as possible, yet he could not move a muscle.

He wanted to be scared. He wanted to be angry. He tried to scream for the man to let him go. He tried to push the man away, but he didn't. A rise of conflicting emotions he hadn't had before stopped him from doing so. He needed to obey.

His mind seemed to recoil at the thought, even though the idea was completely off his own fruition. It made part of his conscious brain terrified as the unconscious part of him leaned to the man's hug.

"It'll only hurt for a moment, my son." The demon warned slightly in a sickeningly sweet gesture as he spoke to him. "I'm making you better."

Axel did not get enough time to adjust the words in his brain before there was a scorching pain sprouted in his chest, and he screamed.

Ear-piercing and pained scream adorning the air as his throat grew hoarse from it. His teary eyes looked down to see a hand plunged inside his chest. His breath became ragged as he unconsciously screamed even louder.

He tried to yank away from the demon, but the hand in him was like a rock. It held him tight and locked him in his place. He let out a deafening cry as he failed to escape his pseudo father.

He could feel the hand getting even deeper that he was sure the tip of it touched his heart. He felt something pushed down into his heart. It fueled his chest, something that was spreading like fire but acting like water.

He did not realize it was Cain's blood that the demon himself cut right before the hand went in inside Axel's chest.

His ears were ringing. He could not hear his own scream. Hell, he did not even know if he was still screaming or not. There was warm water falling from his chest like a river, staining the floor red as he noticed it was his own blood.

Axel was crying now. A helpless kind of cry that followed with a whimper. There was no explaining for the pure agony he was feeling. He froze in place with pain swarming his chest.

Numbness crawled upon his fingertips as he felt his body give in. Cain's blood inside his chest spread to his veins now. He could feel the strange feeling all over his body.

His feet trembled as the man caught his almost lifeless body with his other hand. His father gripped Axel in reassurance.

He could vaguely hear Kiaran's words of reassurance. Axel was too preoccupied with the pain to actually notice. He noted the coldness that slowly raced upon his body.

In the unexplainable pain he was feeling, he could not help but think, was this how it felt to die?

When he thought he knew what pain was when he passed out the first time on the cold floor as Kiaran and Adreanna ignored him, he was dead wrong.

It hurt more when the necklace cracked and formed red lights around him.

But now, it hurt like hell. He did not even know if the pain could get even worse than this.

Amidst the blur of tears on his dull eyes, Cain looked proud for some reason, the kind of proud that Axel never had and never seen before. Though, he was too busy taking the pain to actually think about it.

It felt like hours to Axel. Every second of it was a living nightmare.

The boy suddenly gasped. He could feel something being pulled out of his chest slowly. An emptiness shot through his veins at the sudden loss.

He felt empty and relieved. The pain stopped. Well, not really, he could feel the leftover pain, but at least it ended. He was far too lightheaded to try to do anything.

The poor human could not grasp his surrounding. He was trying to breathe. He was aware, oh, he was really aware of the hole in his chest. He was trying to ignore it as he rested on the man's hold unwillingly. At least it ended now, and he could finally relax.

And, of course, Axel could not have a nice thing. The thought of him finally resting was immediately crushed as a wave of anguishing shock ran through him in an unrestrained state.

His body felt like broken glass that was thrown away and slowly getting patched up together. Something seemed to eat him inside out, making him stumble away from Cain's grasp.

He was losing his grip and crashed onto a mirror on the wall. The mirror clattered, bouncing on his feet.

He looked at himself from the shattered glass. There were black lines slowly forming from his chest to his shoulder, spreading at a constant speed. Blood was like paint on his body, colouring all over his chest.

He gagged when he saw the hole in his chest, slowly, achingly closed itself. He stumbled back and fell on the floor. He could see his pseudo family's feet on the corner of his eyes.

He clenched his fists as he tried to stand up again in a spiral of confusion, pain, and agony altogether. He stood up just to stumble back and crash his back onto the ground.

He fell over his own knees, gripping his own head in frustration and hurt. He did not understand what was happening to him. All he knew was that he wanted it to stop. His body was desperately trying to get rid of something out.

Axel closed his eyes tightly as he felt a substance bubble on his throat. Laboured breaths danced around the air as he shook violently and withered on the ground. He was trying to stop the pain and calm down, but it did not seem to work.

He gagged a couple of times until painful nausea hit him hard. He immediately lurched, coughing hard that he could feel his throat being ripped off. He tried to gulp down, finding what was going on with his throat.

He felt a bitter taste coming out as it lingered in his mouth. He lurched forward again, expecting a gag but instead, a ridiculously amount of red liquid poured down on the floor, making a tiny pool in front of him.

He kept puking his own blood as he felt a familiar hand on his back, rubbing circles, trying to calm him down. He heaved up and down as he froze, looking at his own blood in horrified silence.

"-getting rid," He vaguely heard Kiaran speak, he tried to make out his words. "-replacing your blood and-" He was trying his hard to listen, but he just could not.

He met his own reflection in the puddle of his own blood. All worn-up, hair was messy like Kiaran's. He squinted as he saw his right blue eyes start to get darker.

In a big wave of dizziness, he looked at his own hands and saw how black lines adorned them. He was trembling in fear as he watched the scene happening on his own hand and immediately noticed the same thing happening to all his body parts.

Shock stroke him again as he could feel his panic attack building in. He was starting to feel himself succumb to exhaustion as a hand caught him. Black dots formed in his eyes as he saw the red eyes loomed on top of him.

Before he fell into the darkness, his consciousness flickered like a worn-out lightbulb. He saw himself and Rune on his mind. She smiled brightly at him as she gave him a silver arrow necklace.

His thoughts diverted into Aster somehow. His bully's arrogant face was there, and his words rang in his ears right before he succumbed into the darkness.

Axel could see the memory playing in his mind. He watched Aster scoff playfully and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't die."