I am the Only Son of Nyx

Kai pushed open the gate and walked out.

He closed the door behind him with a firm thud, turned around, and stood there for a moment in stillness. Throughout the entire motion, his eyes never left the floor. As if there was a weight pressing his head down.

It was silent now.

No more haunting sound that kept slicing his heart.

Silence rushed in where the haunting sound had been. Not true silence, but ambience. There’s a whisper of the cold wind. The creak of stone. The flickering of lanterns. Despite the change, despite all those distractions, his mind was still filled with the brew of noises.

Noises that he couldn’t quite get rid of or ignore.

’Normal academies are designed to be hopeful. To prepare you for a better future.’

Professor Hera’s words rang inside his mind loud and clear.

’This place... It’s designed to be hopeless.’

Kai didn’t understand what she meant when she said those words, but now, after the Culling of the Nonentity, he fully understood it. Angels are clogs to the limited divine bloodlines that mankind has access to.

And the academies would search for anything to root them out from the world of the living.

Those who are weak would be executed. And those who are strong... this is their approach.

Kai was the last one to come out of that wretched chamber. As the bearer of the title, Blooded Vanguard, the one with the highest kill count, it was natural for him to be the last. Too many responsibilities for him to handle.

He walked slowly through the corridor.

Fresh blood wept from his dripping hands—tracing a pair of crimson ribbons across the stone floor behind him. It may have been his unstable psyche playing tricks with his senses, but the corridor seemed darker, narrower, and longer.

It felt like he had been walking for minutes before he eventually made the first turn.

One that would lead to the outside.

Kai’s heavy-lidded eyes struggled to look up when he noticed a light.

It came from a room.

The door was cracked open a little, and he heard the sound of water.

He remembered it vaguely, somewhere along the gore—Professor Hera mentioning where to rinse off the lifeblood before returning to the dormitory to Matilda, and this should be it. Kai lightly pushed the door, letting it swing open on its own.

A person was kneeling on the floor inside.

It was Dorian.

Kai was pretty sure Dorian had finished fifteen minutes before him, and yet, here he was.

Nothing else is inside the room other than four metal basins filled with water.

Two of them had their water already turned red—used, and two were still crystal clear.

One of the clean ones belonged to Abigail, as she hadn’t killed anyone during the Blood Rite, so she had no responsibilities at all. Nobody to cleanse. As much of a coward she really was—perhaps, she was the real winner.

Her hand was spotlessly clean.

It was the reason why Professor Hera believed she was the only one who’d be fine.

Kai knelt down in front of the basin and leaned forward.

He stared at his own reflection and saw a stranger peering back. No—strangers. A gallery of the dead. Ghosts. Each second passed; the face layered over where his face should’ve been was replaced by another. People he had ended. People who would not leave his mind.

Kai tore his gaze away and plunged his hands into the water, washing them with fervor.

Scrubbing fervently that bordered on violence.

The water blushed pink, then deepened to red.

In the room’s silence, sounds that had no place to be there crept in. Wet, tearing percussion of a body breaking. The faint splatter of blood hitting stone. Screams and accusatory curses were hurled towards him.

One thing that stuck with him the most was the laughter of the inhuman student.

He laughed throughout the entire process.

Laughed at Kai in amusement and condescension like he was a Lesser Angel again.

Everything came crashing back.

He ripped both hands from the water; blood still wedged under nails. Zeus, the blood is hard to clean. Despite wanting to cover his ears and make the sound go away, he simply closed his eyes and stayed still.

Breathed.

Kai tried to remember the faces, thinking that it might give him peace if he accepted it.

He realized he had already forgotten all of the faces.

Both his brows dipped into concentration as he tried remembering those innocent eyes that made him hesitate the most, almost failing to go through with it, but it was no use. He could not even remember their color.

All he remembered was that they looked innocent. That’s it.

Once he opened his eyes, he could see Dorian had broken down beside him.

Not silently, but violently.

Dorian’s arms were already clean. No trace of blood remained, but he was still scrubbing hard like he was trying to peel his skin off. He then grabbed the metal basin, ignoring the splashes of water, and hurled it to the other side of the room.

A loud clang echoed sharply.

He bellowed at the top of his lungs, letting out everything inside him.

He kicked, punched, and even headbutted the stone wall.

Blood trickled down from his forehead and coated his red knuckles.

It was a violent reaction.

And frankly, Kai felt like doing that would feel freeing. Letting out the excess so that nothing was trapped inside, allowing one to get over the trauma quickly. Dorian was lucky to be able to let it out like that.

Kai couldn’t.

He only sat there, scrubbing the blood in silence.

Moments later, Kai walked out and stood in the dormitory’s backyard. He walked out alone as Dorian was still inside, and he didn’t bother asking to go out together. There, as expected, Professor Hera was waiting for him.

She could see the tiredness on his face and the scar in his heart, but she didn’t comment.

At a moment like this, she knew it was best to let Kai process what happened.

"Go rest." Professor Hera produced a small square parchment from her pocket and pressed it into Kai’s hand. The drawing stared back at him; a red halo circling a vertical, almond-shaped eye. It was the mark of a Blooded Angel of Eventide Academy. "Engrave it on your uniforms. You’re now officially a Blooded Angel."

Kai’s fist closed around the parchment.

Despite an increase in rank, he doesn’t feel triumphant. Just hollow.

He slipped through the back door of the dormitory without a word.

After what happened underground, walking through the corridors felt like being in a limbo.

Slow steps and vacant eyes.

Kai snapped back to reality when he stood before his own room.

It hadn’t even been a month since he was away, but so much had changed in that small amount of time. He entered the room—and closed the door behind him, pausing to look down the stairs leading to the basement.

Soon, he would probably get his own room as he’s no longer a Lesser Angel.

And with so many students dead, he wouldn’t need to worry about not having his own room.

Just as he reached the bottom, his eyes widened at the sight of another person. Maybe he was too distracted, but he didn’t sense this person. But his utter confusion was settled when he sensed no mana coming from her.

A normal human.

"Master Kai," the girl pressed her right hand into a fist—and then bowed. "My name is Talitha. I’m sent here by the academy, as you are the most excellent student from the Blood Rite. The one who carries all three titles. From now on, I will be your personal servant."

No answer.

For a second, Talitha stayed in a bowing position, confused as to why Kai was silent.

She hesitantly lifted her gaze and was startled when she saw Kai’s eyes.

Murderous eyes.

"Get out," Kai said sternly.

"Master Kai, I ca—"

Before she could even finish, Kai grabbed her wrist and dragged her up the staircase.

"Master Kai, please! Did I do something wrong? If you tell me about it, then I’ll make sure to correct it!" Talitha resisted being dragged out of the room, but couldn’t do much. Against the strength of a Supernal, her strength is nothing.

Kai opened the door, about to throw her out.

He doesn’t want any reward after everything that he has done.

He wouldn’t let the academy’s tricks get to him again.

"Master Kai, if you don’t let me serve you, then I’ll be killed!" Talitha screamed.

It was then that Kai stopped.

"If my presence disturbed you, then I will not stay in your room. I’ll find another place to stay, but you have to let me serve you," She pleaded desperately, even going to her knees. "I beg you. Please don’t abandon me."

Kai gritted his teeth.

He stared at Talitha with rising anger, but eventually slammed the door shut again.

Both of them went down.

"Sit there," Kai pointed at a cardboard box, and then sat down on the mattress.

Talitha did as she was told and quickly wiped away her tears lest it would displease him.

For a second, Kai stared at the woman across from him. She looked young. Looked younger than him. Her long blue hair nearly reached her shins—and her light blue eyes held a strange calm. She wore a collarless white robe that exposed her vulnerable neck, where a metallic gold collar wrapped tightly around it.

The bottom six inches of the white robe are stained with a muted ash-grey.

One that caught Kai’s attention the most, however, was her face.

She looked familiar.

"How did you get here with Angels?" Kai asked probingly.

"I... My little sister became an Angel, so I was also brought here with her. Family members of the Angels were placed to work, and I was picked to be a servant," Talitha explained with the truth. "I will be discarded if I can’t become your servant."

"Discarded?" Kai’s brows furrowed in confusion. "An Angel’s family wouldn’t be killed until the Angel’s death. Is your sister dead?"

"I... I don’t know," She shook her head. "But even if she’s still alive—the academy can simply blame me for something bad and kill me anyway."

Kai laughed inwardly.

He had already realized earlier that the academy would find any excuse to dispose of the Angels themselves. So—why did he not think the same would be applied to their families? Killing those they loved would shatter the Angels’ will to live.

It’ll make the Angels lose hope faster.

As for why the academy needed a justification to do this? Kai didn’t know why.

"Is your sister new Angel, or is she a senior?" Kai raised a brow. "If she’s a senior, I can make an exchange with her if she also has a servant."

"She’s new..." Talitha answered in a whisper.

"New? What’s her name?"

"Abigail."