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shoulder blades. She clutches his shirt in one fist then yanks him closer, shoving the
knife in deeper. Adelina pulls him close and bends toward his ear.

“This is for him,” she says. For a moment, their eyes lock - Adelina’s, pale, pulsing,
mad; Enzo’s, dark, scarlet, dying. The previous grin on her lips curls into a snarl as
she pulls her blade out. He blinks rapidly as he tries to say something, but blood froths
at the edges of his mouth. Then his life fades away. Just like that.

“Father, I have done it! I have avenged Nate,” Adelina exclaimed as she entered her
house, only to be met with utter silence.

However, a low conversation could be heard in the distance as Adelina steadily crept
out into the hall. A hooded figure kneeled before the framed photo of her family
embracing each other, the last moment of pure bliss before the tragic plague.

“May the Gods forgive me for I have sinned. I have been abandoned by my wife, my

beloved daughter and my son,” He choked out, cut by broken sobs. “I took his life
away too.”

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even scream.

And that’s when Adelina realized, in horror, that she had just murdered an innocent
man when the monster plaguing her nightmares was living with her all along.

“B-Blake, it was you?”

Adelina let out a terrible gasp as her father’s shaking hand reached out for her,
stuttering as he tried to explain himself. The words ‘accident’, ‘killed to take money’
and ‘alcohol’ had reached her, but it was all a blur. She trembled; her hands flattened
against the ground, then dug against it like claws. The sky above her flickered, then

turned a furious shade of scarlet, a vision of blood deep and dark.

“I wish the fever had just taken you instead,” she said with gritted teeth and her knife
raised. She watched as her father whimpered beneath her, muttering incoherent
apologies.

But the framed photo catches her eye, dissipating the ugly whispers that plagued her

moments earlier, and the gates holding her tears break down. An illusion forms around

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