Path of the Extra

The taste hit her all at once. Rotten flesh and foul fluid and black blood flooded her senses in a single wave, coating her tongue in something so wholly vile it obliterated every other thought. At the very same instant, a shriek tore from the creature’s throat, a sound so deeply wrong, so utterly aberrant, that no living thing should ever have been capable of producing it from its vocal cords. The pitch of it made Celestina’s ears bleed. She did not stop. She bit down harder, her fangs sinking deeper, and the arm around her responded by constricting with crushing and immediate force, squeezing the air from her lungs in a single brutal compression as more tears streamed freely down her face.

She held on.

She bore down until she felt her fangs had buried themselves deep enough, and then she wrenched her head sideways with every fragment of force left in her body, tearing a substantial chunk of the creature’s flesh free between her teeth. Black blood erupted immediately from the ravaged wound, and at last the grip released her. Celestina dropped to the ground, the piece of flesh still clenched between her teeth.

”Bad... bad... Bad Cele! Broke my trust! Bad Cele needs... needs to be punished!”

The voice that screamed those words was her grandmother’s, yet it was pitched lower than before, distorted and warped and cracked with something that sounded frighteningly close to genuine rage.

And then Celestina did the unthinkable.

With the most profound reluctance she had ever known in her life, and yet with a desperation deeper still, she did not spit the flesh out. She did not run. She chewed. Quickly, grimly, with the rotten taste of the creature’s blood and flesh saturating every corner of her mouth, she chewed and swallowed it whole.

The silence that fell over the creature in the wake of that act was unlike anything that had preceded it.

Even it... had not expected that.

[Conditions have been met]

[The Unique Skill, [Gluttony], has successfully been activated.]

[Second slot assigned: Skinwalker.]

[...]

[Gluttony hesitates.]

[Gluttony recoils.]

[Congratulations.]

[Your appetite is becoming difficult to distinguish from insanity.]

[Please enjoy the consequences.]

[2/3 slots have been assigned]

[1 empty slot remaining]

[To gain more slots please level up your mana core]

In that same instant, panels of her status flashed before her vision, pristine and white, text inscribed upon them as though the system itself both mocked and feared the choice she had made.

Immediately, Celestina, with her entire life staked upon this single gamble, turned her gaze to her slots.

[First Slot: Silver Moon Fox]

[Second Slot: Skinwalker]

[Third Slot: Empty]

She did not hesitate. She activated the second slot at once.

...Something changed.

Celestina could not say what. There was no white light, no searing pain. She remained on her knees, staring at the skinwalker, which stared back at her from all fours, its head tilted with that expression of unnerving and vacant confusion.

...And yet Celestina had definitely felt something shift. It began with the air. More than perhaps anyone else her age, Celestina possessed an acute and extraordinary sensitivity to mana. Her perception of it surpassed any measure that could be called ordinary, and yet even that gift had failed to protect her from the creature before her, the one that had somehow deceived even mana itself.

But now the mana she had always felt drifting gently past her had shifted. It was difficult to find the right word for what it was doing. Perhaps it was dancing. Perhaps it was fleeing. Perhaps it was in the throes of something resembling panic.

The word that finally settled in her chest was simpler than all of those.

Chaotic.

Yes.

Chaotic was the word.

The mana felt chaotic.

Celestina felt strange, lightheaded, her eyelids suddenly and inexplicably weighted.

She looked down at herself.

...Nothing had changed.

’No...’

A hopelessness so vast it threatened to hollow her entirely took hold as the realization settled over her like a shroud. Nothing had happened.

In that very second, the creature shifted and began crawling toward her. Celestina’s eyes flew wide. She scrambled backward, only to collide with Kristine’s body behind her, the impact stopping her cold. When she snapped her gaze forward again, the creature was already there, its face mere inches from hers, its head still tilted at that horrible angle.

Then it spoke, in her grandmother’s voice, though pitched higher than usual, laced with something that almost resembled bewilderment.

”Cele... is... me?”

”W-what?”

Celestina had no idea what it meant.

”How?” it asked.

”What... does this mean..?”

Slowly, the skinwalker drew back from her.

”Scary... Cele scary! Cele is scary!”

It began murmuring to itself, its voice growing more distorted with every syllable.

”Beautiful! Cele is beautiful! Cele is so beautiful!”

All Celestina could do was sit there, utterly bewildered by the creature’s erratic and fractured behavior.

”Cele is me... no... Cele is more... more scary... more beautiful... more powerful!”

It began crawling back toward her shivering body.

”I loveeeeeeeee Cele!” Its voice had become so distorted by now that it no longer bore any resemblance to her grandmother’s.

”Cele loveeeeeeeee me?”

Those words stirred something different inside Celestina. She found the strength to grit her teeth.

”I... I do not love you,” she hissed quietly, her voice still trembling. ”I hate you..!”

The creature’s head tilted further.

”Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?”

At that same moment, the mana in the air grew aggressive, crashing against her in great waves, making it feel as though the very atmosphere was pinching and biting at her skin.

”W-hy?” Celestina echoed its word, drawing it out, indignation rising thick and burning in her chest.

”You... you killed everyone! I hate you!” She shouted it then, her voice cracking apart. ”I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I-I would never love you! I do not want your l-love! I hate you!”

”Hate...” the creature murmured, and it sounded genuinely sadder now.

”I do not want... Cele... to hate me.” It dipped its head slightly, as though offering her a glimpse of its grief, and the sight only stoked the fire raging inside the little princess.

”Forgive me... pleaseeeeeeeee... Cele... how... will you forgive me?”

This time, when Celestina’s voice shook, it was not out of fear alone. It trembled with sheer and unrestrained hatred.

”Die... If you die... I might... forgive... you.”

The words came out with tremendous difficulty. It was a foolish conversation, and she could not entirely account for why she had allowed herself to engage in it at all.

But the creature shook its head, and what came out of its mouth next was something she had never anticipated.

”Nooo, I can never die... Cele is me... I am Cele... if I die... Cele dies! Cele cannot die! So I cannot die!”

”I am not you! Stop saying that!”

”You areeeee!”

It lurched forward frantically.

”You are meeeeeeeeeeee!”

”No!”

”Yessssss!” It drew even closer, and Celestina held her breath, the fear ratcheting upward with every inch it gained. ”But Cele does not understand... Cele is now me... it is alright, Cele... I love you... so I forgive you.”

It attempted to soothe her. Then it said the unthinkable.

”Cele will live... with me... forever!”

Before she could deny it, the skinwalker rose onto its two feet, looming over her small and frightened body with its full and terrible height.

”Cele, my sweetheart. We will be together forever!”

Its voice had taken on a quality of her earlier status panels: warm and mocking in equal measure.

And then it was the skinwalker that did the unthinkable.

It raised both hands to its own head.

And it began to tear.

It was fast, and it was disgusting, and it was shocking, and it was horrifying. The neck began to split, blood erupting outward in violent arcs, and Celestina could only remain there, frozen, her eyes refusing to blink as the skinwalker tore and tore and tore and tore until...

Its head was severed from its neck entirely, held aloft in its own hands, detached from the body still standing beneath it.

For a few seconds, only the dense silence remained. The revolting smell. The skinwalker standing there cradling its own torn head while blood poured freely downward. And Celestina, watching it all, unable to look away.

...Then it fell to the ground.

...And it did not move again.

”———a...?”

A sound escaped Celestina that she herself could not quite identify.

But her eyelids felt heavy. Something wet traced a slow path down from her right eye, and her hand rose without thought to wipe it away. She looked down at that same hand.

Blood.

Black blood. The same as the skinwalker’s.

Before she could begin to comprehend what that meant, her eyes closed, and she too fell to the ground.

And unlike the skinwalker, she was alive. Whatever she had done, whatever she had said or become in those terrible minutes, she had lived. She had simply lost consciousness while the skinwalker destroyed itself.

Yet from that day forward, until the present, its words and actions would never cease to haunt her.

Later that same day, Ragnar Frost and Lyraelle Frost would arrive to find Celestina, their daughter, as the only living soul remaining on the grounds.

Aside from them and Thomas...

The entire Frost Clan had been wiped out.

The truth of what had truly transpired made no rational sense, and revealing it would have served only to invite chaos and confusion neither the estate nor its survivors could afford. So they buried it beneath a lie.

Ragnar Frost had slain the skinwalker, saving his daughter in the process, while tragically losing his own parents, the Frost King and the Frost Queen.

It was a cruel lie, and a hollow one. For had Ragnar Frost truly stood before that skinwalker, he would have been cut down just as readily as everyone else.

No one would ever know that the reason the North Asia Sacred Capital still stood at all was because of the Frost Princess.

The Frost Princess. The heiress of the Frost Clan. Celestina Frost. Seven years of age. She who would carry a scar upon her back that no healer could ever mend, who had eaten the flesh of a skinwalker and bled black as one, was the only true survivor of that day.