Chapter 4: Requiem for the Fallen

POV: Rudolf Goldstein

The silence in the room was deafening. It was as if the very air had been sucked out, leaving only a hushed stillness that clung to every corner of the shattered ballroom. Amid the dust and the ruin, the broken bodies of my classmates lay scattered like discarded pieces of a forgotten game. The ceiling above groaned under the weight of the building's collapse, the cracks in its structure signaling the impending doom that had become inevitable.

And yet, despite the carnage, despite the blood that pooled at my feet, I couldn't move. My body was frozen, my mind numb. There was a certain emptiness inside me, as though every shred of my will had been drained away. I couldn't even bring myself to look away from the devastation. The screams of the trapped students had died down, leaving behind only the soft, guttural sounds of the dying.

Tristan... Greg... Brian... the others—gone. Crushed under the rubble, or worse, discarded without a second thought. They had been the ones who had stood beside me, who had fought for survival, who had believed in the cause. But Angela... Angela had turned it all into a macabre spectacle. She had decided that their lives meant nothing.

My heart thudded painfully in my chest as the weight of that realization struck me.

What was I supposed to do now? What was there left to fight for? The moment Angela had turned on us, everything had shifted, like the world itself had been tilted on its axis. I couldn't even find it within me to grieve for them yet, for the loss was too vast, too incomprehensible. There were no tears left, just a coldness that seeped through my very bones.

I knew I had to escape. I had to get away. But where could I go? The building was crumbling, and every path I could think of was blocked. The destruction had spread too far. It was hopeless.

And then, I saw her.

Angela.

She stood at the edge of the ruin, her figure silhouetted against the destruction like some cruel deity come to pass judgment. The smoke billowed around her, but she remained untouched, as if the chaos could not touch her. Her calm, steady presence contrasted sharply with the pandemonium she had unleashed. She had vanished for only a brief moment—just long enough for the room to fall into chaos—but now, she had returned with the same indifference, the same chilling detachment.

It wasn't just that she had orchestrated the violence, the chaos—it was that she had done it with no remorse, no hesitation. For her, it was a game. A game with rules that only she understood.

"Rudolf," Angela's voice rang out, slicing through the silence like a blade. Her tone was cold, devoid of any warmth or empathy, as if she were speaking to a mere inconvenience. I flinched, but I didn't move. There was no point in running. No point in pretending. "Are you afraid yet?"

I didn't answer. What could I say? How could I defend myself, my friends, my choices, when the very core of everything had been shattered? What was there left to hope for? Even now, as the crushing reality of our fate settled in, I couldn't bring myself to feel anything but the hollow weight of defeat. Angela had already won. She had always won.

She took a step forward, her boots clicking against the jagged shards of glass that littered the floor like deadly confetti. Each step was deliberate, and with each one, I felt the air grow thicker, heavier, as if her very presence was warping the reality around her.

"Do you understand now, Rudolf?" Angela's voice was almost gentle, but there was no kindness in it. No softness. It was the voice of a predator toying with its prey. "How little your resistance matters? How insignificant your pathetic alliances were in the grand scheme of things?"

I wanted to protest. I wanted to scream that this wasn't the end, that there had to be something we could do to stop her. But the words didn't come. Instead, I stared at the bodies of my fallen friends, the blood staining the floor, and I realized the painful truth: we were nothing to her. Nothing more than pawns to be sacrificed without a second thought.

"We were nothing to you," I whispered, my voice barely more than a rasp. It felt like a bitter pill, one I had been forced to swallow. "Just pawns to be discarded."

Angela's smile was almost... amused, and she tilted her head, as if studying me like a specimen under a microscope. "Aren't we all just pawns, in the end?" Her eyes glinted with something darker, something far more dangerous than anything I had ever encountered. "You're no different from anyone else, Rudolf. You live and die by the whims of those more powerful than you."

Her words stung like acid, and I could feel my resolve crumbling with each passing second. How had we come to this? How had I allowed things to get this far? I had underestimated her—no, we all had. Angela was never just another student. She was something more. Something beyond our comprehension.

"Look at them," Angela continued, sweeping her arm across the room in a gesture that took in the fallen bodies, the wreckage. "Look at the mess you made. These people thought they could control me. They thought they could break me. They thought I would bend to their will. But I'm not like them. I never was."

The building groaned again, the entire structure threatening to give way as she spoke, but Angela remained calm. She seemed untouchable, invincible. As though the very laws of physics bent around her.

And in that moment, I realized the truth. Angela was no longer human. She was something else entirely—something unstoppable, something that no one could hope to control. We were ants beneath her feet, insignificant, weak.

"You've all made your choices, Rudolf," Angela whispered, her voice almost like a lullaby. "And now, you will pay the price."

The air shifted, becoming heavier, more oppressive. It was as if the weight of her power was pressing down on me, suffocating me. A sharp pain erupted in my chest, and I gasped for air, but there was none to be had. I could feel my lungs fighting, desperate for oxygen, but her magic—her presence—squeezed the very life out of me.

"Rudolf, you were always too weak to stop me," Angela murmured, her eyes narrowing in contempt. "You and the others. Nothing more than distractions in my path to power."

And with that, she flicked her wrist.

The crack that followed was deafening. My arm snapped, my leg twisted, or maybe both—pain exploded through my body like wildfire. The agony was unbearable, but it was nothing compared to the realization that Angela had done this so effortlessly, so casually.

She stepped back, her eyes gleaming with amusement as I crumpled to the ground, my body wracked with pain. "There's nothing left for you here, Rudolf. Not anymore."

I could barely hold on, my vision swimming as blood trickled from my mouth. The room around me began to darken, the edges of my vision blurring into oblivion. Angela's figure loomed above me, tall and menacing, as if she were the very embodiment of death itself.

"This is only the beginning," she whispered, her voice like an echo in the distance. "I'm not done yet."

And with that, darkness claimed me.