- 1 A lesson learnt

[Background Music: Michael Jackson – Smooth Criminal]

The young man's face turned ugly, contorted with the pure hatred boiling inside his equally ugly soul. Sheer madness gleamed in his dilated pupils, to the point that one would expect him to throw back his head any minute, his eyes turning white in their sockets and his mouth foaming with rage.

"You witch, you're finally paying for everything you did to me!" he spat the words silently under his nose as anger manifested on his face, while sitting at the writing desk.

His hate was directed towards a woman whose picture he was staring at in these exact moments, his eyes throwing daggers at her while he imagined doing the same in reality.

The picture of the woman who appeared to be in her thirties adorned the cameo like box on the upper left corner of the hard cover of the latest novel printed by a lesser known publishing house. The first webnovel they have ever published: "Oblivion is inevitable" by a no-name author, Marie-Rose.

Her beautiful features were drawn together in a warm smile that emanated peace from the back cover of the book. Yet, for Emilian, peace had never been on the table. War with an imaginary enemy was more important than peace of mind.

'Marie-Rose, I'll teach you a lesson you'll never forget!' he chuckled a bit before continuing his thought: 'though it will be the last thing that you will remember!'

He stared for a couple of minutes at the image of the woman whom he despised just because she dared to use another model for the male lead of her novel. Then, he turned his eyes to look directly at her.

Marie-Rose was dying but she couldn't possibly be any happier. A large smile was plastered on her face, brightening her appearance furthermore. Life will soon come to an end and she will hurt no more.

Yet, she didn't feel any pain, the pain she had felt before with the abuse she was subjected to left her devoid of any senses. And emotions.

'30 seconds until I loose consciousness. One minute until I die. Or more, if I'm unlucky, but it probably won't matter.' she thought as she was now eagerly waiting for that freeing moment.

She ceased to fight for her life, letting go of the pressure she was striving to apply on her back with the entire weight of her body. She had fell on the floor face first but under the impulse given by the adrenaline surge she forced herself to turn on her back, holding her hands tightly over the severely bleeding wounds.

28 seconds and counting.

Blood was draining out of her body with every drop that was leaving her wounds.

She was stabbed in the back, in the dark, several times.

However, waking up again to the reality of the human evil was a knife turned and twisted inside her soul. Besides the adrenaline effect, that was the reason why the stabbing wounds didn't hurt.

26 seconds.

She hadn't seen the face of her killer. But she was dying to.

'No need to. Poor miserable creature will remain bound to me by the ties of the spilt blood.'

He didn't seem to wear gloves, she didn't hear him taking them off, she didn't hear running water. It was impossible that he didn't get into contact with the least amount of it, even if for a split second, which meant DNA mixture. Contamination.

'I swear I'll haunt him.' she fought to preserve her reason while her vision was turning blurry. She was seeing white before her eyes despite they were scrutinizing the surrounding obscurity in search of his face. He was still in the room, somewhere behind her. She desperately wanted to get up on her feet and confront him face to face.

24 seconds.

The mixed feelings of those in agony started to put a hold on her too. Instead of accepting her fate, all she felt was the need to fight back. He had chosen the wrong victim. She was a sorceress, someone that had psychic abilities.

Yet, this was the exact reason being murdered has happened to her. It was not karma. It must have been the work of those who hated them.

"Who are you? I want to see your face, you demon!"

She has heard before of such ordered assassinations. She was not the first one.

Marie-Rose wanted to get up. But her strength has left her minutes ago. She wanted to scream, but no sound left her mouth. She was breathing rapidly, as her heart was beating faster, trying to compensate for the lost blood.

22 seconds.

In the end, the things she loved the most were the ones that put an end to her life, the ones that destroyed it.

Literature and magic.

In fact, it was never writing about magic in itself, it was humans, with their ugly souls.

Anyway it didn't matter anymore.

Her skin felt cool, her body felt colder and colder. She was dying, literally. Her prayers had been finally listened to. It was not the first time. She had prayed before. Just like this time, her prayers had been listened to back then, too.

20 seconds.

Marie-Rose had prayed to meet her soulmate. She eventually did. Her wish had been granted.

With only one look the boy with beautiful deep green eyes sneaked into her heart to permanently reside in there. For the first time in her life, she felt wanted.

For the last time, too.

She knew it was not lust that drew her to him, it was true love for she was not lacking erotic fulfillment. Pure love, that's what it was.

Their compatibility was visible right from the first glance he laid on her with his amazing jade like gaze. Chemistry was crystal clear.

The sweetest moments she had ever lived, yet the most bitter memories that were unreeling before her eyes in these very moments, along with her life. Happiness, doesn't its memory hurt?

She has never known happiness in her life. All she has ever known was the cruelty of the so called humans.

He was the only person that has ever shown her affection.

18 seconds.

Her last coherent thoughts returned to the image of her loved one's face.

'Jayden...'

She had dared to fall in love with the right one and apparently to love was a crime.

Yet she had known it was true love all the time.

16 seconds.

As life was deserting her body, he was the only person that she thought of, the only beautiful thing that happened in her life.

In fact, ever since she met him, her fate has changed, as if he had given it a magic touch. Good luck started to flow into her life. Until she met her end.

Darkness was surrounding her as she laid on her death bed, a rapidly growing pool of her own blood on a warm wooden floor. Soon darkness will come to stay forever. This thought alone was a bliss.

But deep down she knew this was not what was to come next. If she were to be honest, this was not what had to come next. Not what she wanted.

So she swore a silent curse through her teeth, almost like the hiss of a feline.

14 seconds.

Deep inside, she didn't want to let go of Jayden. She had to find a way to stay.

'I will stay focused. I must not loose consciousness.' she recited the words like some sort of affirmations. She knew it was difficult to resist the strike of death's ray. But she has trained for the entire 35 years of her life for this moment. Well, not exactly for such a bloody end of life, but for the moment of her own death.

" You should have played by my rules..." the words resounded in Marie-Rose's ears as if from far outside of the room.

She made a last conscious effort to look in the direction of the voice. Her eyes were barely distinguishing any facial features in the dark.

To her contentment, when seeing her turn her head over, the man got up on his feet. With his large steps he strode towards her. When he got close, she couldn't contain her shock. Her eyes opened widely, the horror appearing in them as the sight shook her body back to life in no time.

12 seconds.

She knew the face. Emilian.

'Rules?' she asked herself.

His rules were odd, though. He used to make his appearance wherever she went. Was he obsessed with her or something?

Emilian had always thought that he was the one who inspired the male lead of the novel, yet he couldn't accept the reality. Until reality hit him hard. He saw the male lead's depiction.

"How could that nerd have inspired the character? What's his name?"

Wasn't Emilian the one who owned a motorcycle? That mum's boy couldn't even own a scooter, how come he was the source of inspiration for the male lead?

"Jayden!" she tried to make her voice sound grave using her love's name as a shield even though it appeared more of a sigh.

Emilian still wondered whether there was some kind of misunderstanding. That guy looked almost the same as him. He had blonde hair, too. Well, Emilian's color was two shades darker than his, but still, he was light-haired, too, just like that guy, whose character name was Jayden. Emilian had wondered if he had the same name in reality too. Turned out that yes, the boy was named Jayden indeed.

10 seconds.

In one of the paragraphs she wrote sometime in the beginning, in the online version of the novel, Marie-Rose made it clear that the ML's eyes were green like the ocean. A pretty rare hair-eyes combination which excluded Emilian. He had brown eyes.

Besides, Jayden was not as tall as him and the boy in the novel was not described as tall either. Jayden was only one head above Marie-Rose, but she was quite tall herself, only a few centimeters short of having a standard model height.

She was tall enough even though, when he had the chance to stand close to her, Emilian dominated over her thin, fragile figure.

The writer was on a train station platform when they intersected in their ways. She ignored him whistling the tune of a song. He might have whistled for it, that's what she retorted. Of course, not in his presence. However, her comeback reached to his ears in the end. She said he was singing sorrow overthrowing his mockery. 'What a complete b***!' Emilian thought.

But she ignored him on a regular basis, anyway. Just like that time when he followed her on the bike when she was on her way to the train station.

Or that time on the street when he was standing by his motorcycle trying to draw her attention. She had shared a petition requesting to donate blood for a female motorcyclist who had an accident. To Emilian this was the signal indicating that he had to stalk her on the streets. Or whatever way his alpha boy instinct interpreted it in his twisted mind.

He was just too busy in his imagination to acknowledge that she didn't care for him. Too full of himself, thinking he had all women at his feet.

He could have Marie-Rose at his feet only if he killed her. She was in love with the other one, the green-eyed guy.

"Look at... the image... on page 1..." she whispered with her shaking voice.

8 seconds.

Green eyes. Just like in the ML's picture he found while turning the book's pages, which clearly showed a young man with emerald eyes that resembled Jayden. AI generated picture. Stated height: 1.72 cm. Damn robot, where from did he know about Jayden?

"Oh, you're in love with that looser?!! Fifteen years younger than you?... A loser in short pants... Is he into old and ugly hags?..."

What Emilian failed to admit to himself was that he himself was almost ten years younger than Marie-Rose. And Jayden was not much younger than him. Two years only.

How did she have the audacity to erase him as though he didn't exist? Wasn't she writing about Emilian? At least in the beginning? Emilian was sure that she was narrating about him in one of the notes she kept in a document on her computer.

It was true that she wrote down the happening, but not for the reason his expectations were leaning on.

6 seconds.

Marie-Rose was fighting for air, breathing with more and more difficulty as her body was jolted by tremors. Death was imminent, Emilian was expecting for it as he returned from the desk and was now looking into her eyes.

The expectation was giving him intense satisfaction. In a way, a carnal satisfaction. The type of satisfaction that he wasn't getting somewhere else.

4 seconds.

Emilian already found his soulmate, sexual fulfilling was not the problem.

When Marie-Rose returned in their home town to continue her studies with the master's degree, the woman showed up at the uni, as if she and her boyfriend owned the town, with the apparent reason to scare Marie-Rose away. At the end of the bridge closest to the university, the latter was met by the psychopathic stare of the blonde. Her big round eyes were wide, her stare, fix.

Since his girlfriend was this weird, she wondered what kind of satisfaction was he getting. But this was not her problem.

His hurt ego was the problem. Bloodlust was unmistakably displayed on his face.

With that thought, he firmly gripped the hunting knife.

2 seconds.

All of a sudden, an idea stroke her mind.

'I must hurry.' she thought. After she will give her last breath, she needed to find a host body herself, quickly, before she was assigned one by random chance or a new one. Returning to life as a newborn was not the perspective she happily envisaged.

A cold shiver shook her body. It suddenly got warm.

Then, she saw the light. It was time.