Chapter 14

  (𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬)
This story contains dark and potentially distressing themes such as Twisted Religious aspects, Cult indoctrination , Gore, Psychological Horror and Death.

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The luminescent glow of the kerosene lamp spilled umbral arabesques across Theo’s weary face.

A suffocating guilt coiled in his gut, because oh, he felt so guilty for having to resort to this—to resort to betrayal, just to keep you alive. 

Thankfully, no one questioned anything—and they didn’t notice.

Why is no one suspecting anything? I know I am not even slick with it, are they planning something?  Do they already know?

Those were the thoughts that invaded Theo’s hyperactive protective mind when not a single person has questioned him.

But then, he has come to the conclusion that they probably hated you too much—to the point that they wanted you to die—and doesn’t care about you anymore.

God, how did you even end up there—all bitten, crushed beneath a tomb of rubble for days, yet somehow—you miraculously survived all of that?

Theo didn’t understand how inhumane that was.

It’s funny, really; you were a person of logic, someone who would pull out the ‘erm, actually’ nerdy card to dissect every logistical absurdity,
—were now a living paradox.

Because now, you defied logic.

Theo doesn’t know what to think anymore, but maybe—your mind has already fractured beneath the sheer pressure of the cult.

And your body too, had adapted to the insanity—after all, as the saying goes, bad grass never dies.

Who wouldn’t lose their mind when you were in the middle of an apocalypse—and the only sanctuary left was a compound full of cultists who are somehow more dangerous than the undead lurking outside?

Gods, just when will this all end? When will you wake up?

Theo ran a hand through his hair, half tempted to pull all his hair out just to anchor himself, however, the sound of fabric parting caught his attention.

“How is he doing?” A familiar feminine voice reached his ear, prompting him to turn his head around.

“Ah. Sister Lysara.” Theo plastered a strained smile onto his face. “Don’t worry about him. He’s… doing fine.”

She’s probably only here to check up on him, right…? Or does she already know?

Theo’s fists clenched subtly, paranoia seeps from his body language; he feared that Lysara might see what he have so meticulously hidden.

Because Lysara did always have a keen eye—that was something he learned during… all this time with the last remaining survivors.

“Have you fed him yet?” Lysara carried a can of beans and a bottle of lukewarm water in her hands.

“I fed him an hour ago. I don’t think he will be waking up soon because of his injuries.” Theo replied, forcing a casual shrug. 

Lysara nodded slowly. “Good. Rest is the best healer we have left.”

A silence stretched between them, filled only with the faint, ever-present moan of the wind against the makeshift tent. 

“I’ll be going now then. I just came here to check up on him.” Lysara offered a crisp, almost dismissive nod of acknowledgement, her form already pivoting to embark on her exit.

“Wait—!” Theo’s hand shot out, ensnaring her wrist before she could take another step.

There was a question that had been burning a hole in his mind since she’d argued, shouted down the others who’d wanted to leave you for dead.

He couldn’t let the moment pass. He had to know. 

“What is it?” Lysara’s brows corrugate into a crease, a subtle contortion that spoke of both piqued curiosity and burgeoning impatience.

“Why did you help me? When I was crashing out and.. wanted to see Vaelix.” The name was a bitter title that scorched his tongue. It felt disingenuous—and… it definitely didn’t feel like you.

“Everybody was against it, because they deemed him as a heretic and… someone who had sinned so badly… and who.. did such blasphemy to Lord Yzrivis.” 

Theo winced, revulsion churning in his gut at the mere utterance of that accursed god’s name.

Yzrivis is our God, he could almost hear your voice saying it to him. It is so utterly disgusting and revolting, it makes him want to vomit.

He scrutinized her, seeking the faintest fissure in her serene, devout facade.

“Why? Why did you defend him? And why didn’t you just let me…”
He trailed off, his teeth sinking into his lower lip in trepidation.

Why? Why? Why? There were so many questions in his head—so many questions in need of answers, yet he can’t seem to articulate them properly. 

Because he could already feel that searing prickle in the corner of his eyes.

If you were awake, you’d probably start laughing at how much of a crybaby he was—and God, would Theo trade anything just to hear you make fun of him again.

Lysara released a slow breath, her shoulders dropping a fraction. She looked away, into the middle distance, as if watching a memory. 

“Guilt, Théodore. It’s a simple, corrosive guilt that has been eating me alive.” She confessed.

“I was assigned to nurse Vaelix back to health when he first stumbled in from the outside world—half-dead, delirious, and bleeding all over my floor, while his leg was mangled in a beartrap so badly I could see bone through torn flesh. I remember kneeling beside him, checking his pulse, and thinking he wouldn’t last the night. I was upset that they chose me to nurse him back to help, because I didn’t like him at all.”  Lysara began.

“When he finally came to, that was when the trouble started. He didn’t thank me. He looked straight at me and demanded answers—who I was, where this place was, and other more… rude things. Our first interaction didn’t go well. I’ve never liked being questioned—especially not by a stranger bleeding out in my home. But worse than his tone was his gaze. Every time Lord Yzrivis was mentioned, his eyes hardened.”

“And of course, as a loyal devotee of the Lord, It was my first instinct to morph him into one of us.” She crouched down on the ground, amber eyes looking at your unconscious form with pity.

“But the longer I spent time with him, the more I realized he was just a frightened boy. For a moment, I forgot the insolent, questioning man he insisted on being. He became like a child to me. His insolence… It was a light. A harsh, glaring light that showed the dust in corners we preferred to keep dark.”

“He helped me see the line, Théodore. The one between righteous purification and… and crime. You could say I began to think like him too, and have begun questioning everything. I…I thought I was going insane because I started questioning Lord Yzrivis. So I was scared… and…” 

Lysara’s voice faltered, her gaze plummeting as if a sudden deluge of shame had engulfed her.

Theo stared, stunned by her candor. 

 “So you see, I could not.. just leave him there, especially if the possibility of him living… is still there. My guilt has two hands: one that helped dig him out, and one that helped push him in. You were someone special to him, this is the least I could do to atone for my sins.”

Theo found himself bereft of words. The gnawing unease in his gut receded, mollified by an abrupt, overwhelming surge of sorrow—for her, for himself, and for his broken best friend.

“Sister Lysara…” Theo’s lips trembled, feeling the sting of tears welling in the corners of his eyes.

Lysara’s face suddenly hardened into a rigid mask, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. “That’s all I can say. Now, get some rest and eat, Théodore.”

Lysara suddenly commanded, tossing him the dented tin of beans and the tepid bottle of water.

“Dawn service comes early. And the dead do not wait for our remorse.” 

And with that, she left.

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You’re alive. You’re alive. You’re alive. You can’t just leave me like this.

Those were the thoughts running through his mind for days as he  watched the fever consume you. He had pressed trembling fingers to your pulse every few minutes just to be certain it was still there.

He had counted your breaths in the suffocating dark. He had memorized the sound of them.

He had whispered apologies to a God he didn’t even believe in just so you could live.

Because he swears, if your eyes opened again but you weren’t you anymore—

Theo didn’t know what he would do.

Because you weren’t just another survivor. You were his best friend.

The last piece of the world he had left.

And the thought of losing you — of watching you become one of the things wandering the streets outside — felt like the end of everything.

So he kept counting your breaths.

And he kept his hand wrapped around your wrist.

As if holding on tight enough could keep you human; the world may have ended when the apocalypse happened, but losing you would end his in a second.

After all, to Theo—the most terrifying monsters are not the ones outside, but the future without the people he loves.

Though, Theo suppose that the end of civilization revealed a simple truth: that love was never safe, but it was always worth the risk.

Because this was the price of caring about someone in a world like this.

This was what it meant to stay.

You fought together. You survived together. And sometimes… you paid the price together.

His fingers tightened slightly around the cloth as he pressed it gently against the wound.

“I’m sorry for not being able to save you, for being useless.” he whispered, even though you couldn’t hear him.

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There is a quiet tragedy in loving someone at the end of the world, because every moment together feels both infinitely precious and unbearably temporary.

You weren’t supposed to be the one lying there.

You were the careful one.

Theo was the reckless one. The idiot.
The one who should’ve gotten bitten first.

His chest tightened painfully.

It should’ve been me.

The thought had been repeating in his head for days, over and over, like a broken record.

It should’ve been me.

You were the one who kept him alive. But now—now you lay there shaking with fever while he sat useless beside you.

Wake up, please… But if you ever wake up, please don’t turn into one of them. I don’t know what I would do to myself if I ever lose you once more.

I know that we walk in a fragile line, but please… A tear slipped from his swollen eyes.

Don’t let me see it break.

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A sickeningly moist sound, a visceral squelch that hinted at steel rending yielding flesh, brutally tore Theo from the depths of slumber.

What the fuck is that sound?

A low groan rumbled from his chest as he instinctively lifted his hands to knead his eyes, pushing himself upright from the unforgiving slab of rock that served as his makeshift bed.

“Did… did the undead..—I- Ugh.”

No… I would probably hear gunshots and battle cries if the undead got in. Moreover, There are people on the lookout; I doubt the undead will be able to break in.

Theo’s vision sharpened by degrees, the blur dissolving into fractured moonlight and the fragile outline of your body only a few feet away.

Wait… Is that?

“Wait… [Name]..? Y-you… you’re awake!” Theo gasped, relief almost flooded his veins as he felt his heart ache with joy.

Finally.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he whispered, voice thick. “You don’t get to do that. Not to me. Not when I—”

Not when I love you.

Fuck, he had been so utterly convinced of your demise, certain that the insidious infection had already begun its rapid, merciless march through your veins. 

He had imagined your eyes clouding over, your voice dissolving into that guttural, starving snarl he despised; he already pictured the grotesque transformation, the horrifying metamorphosis into one of those shambling, soulless abominations.

But… you are alive. 

And you.. are not going to become one of those things… right?

Theo surged to his feet with such abrupt force, a tear slipping free before he could stop it, carving a quiet path down his dirt-streaked skin. 

“[Name]…y-you’re…” His voice collapsed into a broken whimper.

Yet, even as that fragile hope blossomed, an unexpected, bone-chilling dread suddenly seized his very core.

What… were you doing? Why…? Why are you poised like that…? No… Maybe you’re still delirious. Maybe you don’t know what you’re doing…

But.. is that..

Is that blood…?

“[Name]…? What are you—What the fuck happened—”

You were posed—spine unnaturally straight, shoulders pulled back as if invisible hooks were strung through your bones. 

His arm!—W-what the fuck happened? Why is he holding an axe?! Theo’s irises widened. 

“[Name]…?” 

Your mangled limb dangled, a gruesome pendulum, held by a glistening, sinewy tether that stretched taut, barely clinging to your shoulder. 

The flesh around it was rent asunder, flayed open like tattered crimson silk, revealing the raw, pulpy depths beneath.

Thick, viscous blood sluiced down your torso in glossy, dark ribbons, painting your skin a morbid, glisteningred.

And still, you kept lifting the axe from your hands—where in the hell had you even gotten that? Was it his? 

“STOP! [NAME]” Theo’s voice splintered, cracking into something raw and utterly boyish, laced with a desperate, primal fear. “

What the hell are you doing?! This isn’t you!”

The heavy blade rose again, then descended with a sickening, heavy thud before Theo could even interfere. The final, tenuous connection parted with a wet, tearing sound.

Your arm slumped sideways onto the stone with a nauseating slap.

Theo gagged, a wretched, desperate sound tearing from his throat.

“Oh God—oh God—no—no—no—You fucking bastard, what are you doing to yourself?! WHY DID YOU CUT YOUR OWN FUCKING ARM OFF?!”

He lunged forward, boots slipping in the hot slick beneath him. He grabbed you by the shoulders and shook you hard.

“Look at me! Look at me!”

Your head lolled slightly from the force, but your eyes—your eyes weren’t seeing him.

They were rolled upward so far the whites glistened in the dim glow, threaded with broken red veins.

Your lips were parted, teeth smeared crimson and something moved beneath the skin of your throat.

What was that? Is he hallucinating or did he genuinely see it?

Theo’s stomach twisted.

“You’re not infected. You’re not. You’re not! You didn’t have to cut your own arm off—because… You are not infected, you hear me?!” he insisted desperately, like saying it enough would cement it into reality.

“This isn’t how they turn. I know that you are still conscious, otherwise you wouldn’t have done that but—This isn’t—this isn’t right!”

Theo was sure of that. Infected do not turn into the undead this way—he swears, they do not.

So.. What the actual fuck is even happening to you?

“[Name]…look at what you have done. Have some mercy on yourself; please, snap out of it. This isn’t you.”

Theo sobbed as your body began to—what? are you…? vibrating?

A low, wet rattle suddenly crawled up from your chest, the sound of liquid choking an airway.

Blood began to spill from your mouth—not in a trickle, but in a thick gush that splattered against Theo’s shirt.

Disgusting, but Theo could careless.

“Shit—shit, okay, okay—stay with me,” he babbled, panic fraying his composure. “Breathe. Just breathe, okay? I’m here. I’m here.”

Your torso suddenly snapped forward violently, forehead nearly cracking against his collarbone. Theo recoiled instinctively, then grabbed your face between his hands.

What the fuck?

“Snap out of it!”

Your jaw unhinged wider than it should have and then you vomited again. It was blood, yes — but streaked with something metallic and shimmering, viscous threads of molten gold weaving through it like veins of ore in fresh rock. 

It steamed when it hit the cold cavern floor, and the smell was unbearable. Theo stumbled back, gagging hard.

“What the fuck is that?!”

You lurched again, hacking violently.

“Stop—just stop— What are you doing to yourself?! This isn’t you!”

Desperate, Theo stepped forward and drove his fist into your stomach, and your body folded around the blow.

A guttural, inhuman noise tore from your throat as another torrent erupted from your mouth—thicker now, heavier. 

The golden ichor clung in ropes, dragging something solid with it. Something round slid wetly onto the stone between your knees.

An eye.

Not yours.

Not human.

Theo froze.

It was too large, iris a swirling white marbled with veins that pulsed faintly, as if it had its own heartbeat. The pupil contracted sharply under the lanternlight, then expanded, dilating with horrible awareness.

Theo staggered backward until his spine hit the cave wall. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. 

What the fuck is that?

Theo swore these things only happen in horror movies; he could not believe that it’s happening to him in real life.

[Name]… What is happening to you?

This is the worst nightmare anyone could go through; seeing their best friend suffering, and being strange. 

Gods, Theo wants to vomit. He should, the bile was already churning his stomach but he swallowed it down.

He wanted to ask for help, but was frozen in place—his tongue felt too thick in his mouth.

He can’t move, even if he wants to.

Ask for help, call for them, call for sister Lysara, call for them, scream, just do it Théodore. Stop staring and doing nothing. He thought desperately. 

“…You…” Theo breathed out shakily. 

The eye rolled and focused on him.

Your body went slack completely, as if you were a puppet that had its strings  cut.

You collapsed forward into the blood and gold mess with a heavy, final thud. 

The moment the eye lay still, its faint pulsing ceased and the alabaster sheen dulled to something muddy and inert.

Theo stared, chest heaving, hands trembling so violently they knocked against the stone behind him.

Move. Move. Fucking move Theodore before that thing—whatever that monster is, does something to him. Move.

“[Name],” he said weakly. “Hey. Get up.”

He forced himself forward, each step feeling like wading through tar. The eye tensed, but Theo forced himself to not look at it, and just stepped on it.

Disgusting, Oh so utterly disgusting. What even is that thing? But he forced himself to not mind it.

He grabbed you and rolled you onto your back. Your face was pale—frighteningly pale—lips tinged faint blue beneath the smear of gore.

…Your face seemed as though it had been drained of life. No.. No… He refused to accept this.

“Don’t you dare,” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t you fucking dare.” His hands hovered uselessly over your chest.

Theo didn’t even have time to pull his foot back because the moment the eye collapsed beneath his boot, the gore around it changed.

What had been viscous and warm — clotted, gelatinous, streaked with molten gold—suddenly seized like a muscle locking in rigor. 

The slurry tightened around the tread of his sole, suctioning, fusing, turning from liquid to something crystalline and sharp.

Huh?

He felt the temperature shift. Heat—then an unnatural, biting cold.

“What—what is—” Theo hugged you closer to him.

The pool beneath him convulsed and a sudden spike burst upward with violent, explosive force, not clean or symmetrical but jagged—a grotesque stalagmite of solidified blood and gold-veined marrow. 

The tip was uneven, serrated with splintered calcifications like broken glass fused together.

It punched through the sole of his boot, there was resistance for half a second until the leather tore and his skin split.

Then it drove through the soft flesh of his foot. Theo felt it in unbearable clarity — the way the spike parted muscle fibers, shredding them in red ribbons. 

Tendons snapped with tight, elastic pops. The arch of his foot split around it as his bone fractured under the pressure, the calcaneus cracking with a wet, granular crunch that vibrated up his leg.

The spike tunneled upward through his ankle, grinding through cartilage and pulverizing it into paste. His heel burst outward in a spray of blood and white fragments as the spike forced its way through. 

His viscera exploded outward as the spike punched through his abdomen, ligaments tearing with violent snaps.

Theo collapsed backward instinctively, but the spike held him in place—impaled, weight suspended grotesquely on the pillar of his own hardened blood.

And you weren’t spared from it as well because Theo was holding you; hot fluid flooded your peritoneal cavity as you had your organs skewered as well.

Ah… is this really how it’s gonna end? But why? Why? These deaths only happen to those horror movies we used to watch and criticize….

I should’ve protected you;  You always protected me first. Theo’s thought as his vision began to blur.

But I suppose… if there’s anything after this. …wait for me.

I love you forevermore.

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a/n: yzrivis did actually kill theo along with mc in this. the answers on the “plotholes” — especially regarding mc’s character is in the ending at chap15.