F-Rank Soul Eater-Chapter 164: Pity... [DOS]

Soren remembered that Machos had caught the person, but had pity on him.

Stealing in the league of towns was practically a death sentence.

The peace was usually enforced by the people.

And they did it by jungle justice.

Instead of death, Machos optioned for the person to be exiled from the town.

But the idiot returned. And this time around, the person’s home he tried to rob was Machos’—Soren’s home.

Soren remembered that machos practically defended with his life.

But fate had been unfair, and that event had resulted to machos losing a leg.

When Soren added him why he had spared the thief in the first place, Machos replied.

"Survival makes the worst of us all. And if they is a worse, then they is a best."

Soren sighed.

No doubt, he had subconsciously taken certain attributes from the old man.

But this world.

This place.

This people.

The rules they operated by was different.

It was savage.

Soren ran a hand through his head.

When he was trying to survive, repeating time again and again, the choice was easy.

Do what must be done to survive.

But now, it was different.

They just want to use me. Its not so bad. Its just survival. As long as it doesn’t threaten my life then...

He thought to himself.

But the moment the thought formed, something deep within him rebelled.

A rejection at his core.

A rejection formed bybthe countless death and the suffering that came with them.

Again his eyes fell on the Discipline of Sorrow.

Soren realized that he was caught in between the morals his father instilled in him to look for the good in people when one had the opportunity, and obvious lesson of the cruel world.

And so, does he stick with the idealogy to be kind to a world that won’t mind taking his flesh for themselves, or should he progress a different path.

Soren flashed back to seeing Pencil running before him with no clothes, obviously bullied.

Normally, he would have done something about it.

Why didn’t he do something about it?

Or at least let Cynthia do something about it.

That was so unlike him. He really did not like people touching his family.

Tommy was a lot of things, but still his family.

Why didn’t he stop...?

No. Tommy needs to learn... to know how to defend himself.

That was it. Tough love. He was simply tough on love.

After all he learnt—

Soren felt his thought process freeze.

How he learnt was not a process he would wish on even his enemy.

So how was he going to make Tommy learn?

No. Was it even his place to do that?

People were different in their own ways.

This much he had come to understand. Their choices were their own, based on their experiences.

But could he stand and watch it happen?

Soren had a feeling that he would have to step in again.

Yes. He had to.

Again, he sighed. To many thoughts in his head.

And as things were, he was not anywhere close to learning the second form.

He needed to clear the excessive of his mind.

He leaned in and picked the Discipline of Sorrow to continue from where he stopped.

He turned to the page he had stopped at.

—just when the first pilot had been suspended over the hot pot.

.....

I remember the heat first.

Not the rope biting into my wrists.

Not the smoke.

The heat.

It rose in slow waves from the pot beneath me, thick and patient, as though it had all the time in the world. My shoulders burned from hanging. My arms trembled. The rope creaked each time I shifted.

Below me, the liquid rolled and bubbled.

I could smell it.

And that was when I understood.

I turned my head. Still trying to beg the small stone soul.

I called it friend. But in its eyes, I could tell it only saw a meal.

The small stone soul stood not far from me, its uneven, stumpy legs tapping anxiously against the cave floor. It made sharp clicking sounds, directing the others.

They obeyed.

They began lowering me.

Slowly.

Carefully.

As though preparing a meal with reverence.

Inside me, Chronovore laughed.

Not cruelly.

Not angrily.

It laughed the way something ancient laughs when inevitability unfolds.

"Do you need my help?" it whispered.

Steam kissed my face.

The rope slackened another inch.

I did not hesitate.

I nodded.

The response was immediate.

Chronovore tore free from the fragile parchment of flesh that housed it. It hissed into the world in a rush of white scales and suffocating presence. The cave darkened as though light itself feared to remain.

The stone souls froze.

When they saw the serpent fully unfurled, panic shattered them.

They scattered.

Chronovore moved without hurry.

It did not chase.

No.

The bloody thing— claimed. And it did it much like the predator it was.

One by one, it swallowed them.

A smaller one tripped over its own clumsy legs. It fell, scraping against the stone floor. It let out a shrill cry — high and terrified.

It sounded like it was calling for its mother.

Chronovore devoured it mid-sound. Crunching sounds as it broke in the serpent’s mouth before it even fell in the beasts tummy.

I watched.

I could not look away.

Only last night, I had sat among them. I had smiled. We had spoken— not in words, but in gestures, in shared warmth, in that strange understanding that only lost things share.

They were souls trying to survive a painful world.

Like me.

It felt like watching a family of dogs being slaughtered.

Not monsters that wanted to consume me.

Maybe it was because of my morals or earthly mindset. But it felt wrong.

Aftrr all, these were just beings trying to survive.

The cave grew quiet.

Too quiet.

Chronovore finished the last of them and slid back toward me, its body brushing against the wooden frame suspending me. The structure cracked. The rope snapped.

I fell.

I hit the ground hard and rolled, barely missing the boiling pot. Pain tore through my shoulders as I dragged myself away from the steam.

The home — their cave —it was silent now.

Empty.

I forced myself to stand.

My legs trembled.

Perhaps it is because I once lost a family too that the silence hurt as it did.

They had meant to cook me.

They had fed me their own kin.

They were my enemies.

And yet...

They had been alive. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

They had only been trying to survive.

"I am wicked." I muttered.

Chronovore moved forward, coiling around me. "This world is wicked. We are but an expression of its honesty."

Still i sobbed. No, I mourned them.

(Soren turned the brittle pages.)

I did not leave immediately.

My legs trembled, yes. My chest still felt hollowed out, yes. But grief has a way of sharpening the mind once it finishes blinding it. I forced myself upright and began to search the cave.

If souls survived here by consuming one another, then those little ones—those small, desperate things—must have kept something. Survival leaves tools behind.

At first, I found nothing but filth. Dirt layered upon dirt. Scraps of brittle plant fiber. The faint, lingering scent of something sweet and rotten.

Then I noticed the carvings.

They were etched clumsily into the stone walls—crooked lines and uneven circles. Some resembled tall figures with too many limbs. Others showed a larger shape surrounded by smaller ones. A family, perhaps. Or a god.

The lines were shallow. Childlike.

Most likely done by the little ones who now digested within Chronovore’s endless stomach.

There were clay toys scattered in a corner as well—lumpy figures baked poorly by some inner heat of the cave. A four-legged creature with exaggerated ears. A tiny bowl. A figure holding hands with another.

I swallowed.

They had not only been sentient. They had been... living.

Further within the cave, past a narrow slit in the rock, I found something else.

A room.

And inside it—

Parts.

Not bones. Not flesh.

Fragments of something far stranger.

A cloak woven from layered grass that shimmered faintly green despite the darkness. The blades did not wither; they moved gently, as though stirred by a breeze only they could feel.

A helmet shaped like a smooth dome of liquid metal—no, not metal. It flowed like water contained in invisible glass, its surface rippling with slow, thoughtful currents.

A chest plate that appeared to be made of compressed air. It was almost invisible, save for faint distortions in the space behind it, like heat rising from stone.

Gauntlets formed of polished bark that flexed like muscle.

Boots crafted from darkened mist, solid only where I focused my sight.

A belt of braided sinew that pulsed faintly, as if remembering a heartbeat.

I stood there, uncertain whether to feel reverence or revulsion.

"These," Chronovore murmured within me, its voice lower now, contemplative, "are remnants."

"Remnants of what?" I asked.

"Other souls."

The words unsettled me more than the boiling pot had.

Then I understood.

These were not crafted. They were extracted.

Other souls had been fed upon. Devoured. Broken down. And what remained—what could not be consumed—had been shaped into use.

The little ones had not only eaten.

They had harvested.

I exhaled slowly.

"So that is how it is beyond the Gate," I said quietly. "Pain becomes resource. Loss becomes material."

Chronovore did not deny it.

It seemed cannibalism was not an aberration here.

It was the foundation.