Chapter 8

The world would be a much better place if there were just less people in it.

That thought must have crossed through Caleb's mind at least five times a day. None of these parasites deserved to breathe the same air as him. They may have smiled whenever he passed by them in the halls, offered a halfhearted greeting and a wave of the hand. And indeed, he might have smiled and waved back at them, plastering on some semblance of humanity day in and day out. But not one of them, not one of these nameless faces, could possibly understand the profoundly grim reality of their own existence.

None of them could see how they made this world such a cruel and ugly place.

As the inheritor of his father's will, Caleb was determined to find a use for these mindless wastes of flesh. He chose them by the simple definition that they were all miserable people who made the world around them an equally miserable place. Rather than look for an explanation for why they felt the need to spread this misery to others, Caleb was content to simply continue using their deaths as an apology. As he had done so for years, as his father once did before him.

In his eyes, at least, this is what it truly meant to be a cultist. The other members of his former order might have disagreed with his views, but he found peace with that some time ago. After his father was murdered by their hands, forcing both himself and his mother into hiding, any thoughts of engaging in debate with his fellows left the port and set sail quite abruptly.

They were now at the top of his list in terms of lives that would be used as an apology.

The Kin of C'thadra needed to be wiped from the face of existence. What they did to his father, to his family, was a dishonor that could only be repaid in blood. For now, he was content to hide, to wait it out and grow stronger until the day all debts could be repaid in full. That was his one ambition in life, his only motivation for getting out of bed each and every day.

Of course...all of that changed the day he met her.

For the first time since his father's death, he felt something other than his hunger for vengeance. A longing. A yearning. A desire beyond his own ambitions. She opened his eyes to whole new possibilities in what it could mean to live a full and fulfilled life. Caleb used to believe quite fervently that any sort of string of fate truly connected no lives. The world was better off with some people simply gone, that whole crock of interconnected souls was something he never took seriously. Most humans truly did not need to be here, that was what he ardently believed in.

She changed that, at least a little. For the first time in his life, Caleb began to ponder if perhaps fate did exist in some capacity. She was his greatest muse, a passion he did not think someone like him capable of achieving in this life. He loved her. He loved her more than he even loved himself.

Which is why nothing will ever hurt his precious kouhai ever again.