CHAPTER 332: TRUTH IS...

Alice whispered to the air and from a palm a shot of thunder appeared, shooting straight toward Noah’s head. The thunder however didn’t touch him as Noah had easily dodge it, his head turning aside, missing the thunder just right before it had completely struck him. The thunder arrived on the ground behind him and when it did, the floor immediately crack and left a horrible black trace over it.

Noah smiled as he continued to raise his hand to the ground whispering, "I can do it too."

Alice clicked her tongue. Of course Circe could do it as well!

She still couldn’t understand how is it that Circe could still remain alive, not only was she alive, she could even enter Noah’s body like a ghost possession!

It must have had something to do with Noah’s own body but Alice had never seen this before, thus she couldn’t find a single explanation on how Noah could move and speak, controlled by Circe who had died centuries ago!

Just as Alice was clicking her tongue and thinking of a way where she could hit Noah with a thunder, Noah had suddenly appeared behind her. His hands shot over Alice’s neck, appearing right in front of her eyes and smoothly, his arms wrapped around her neck and pulled her closer into a tight chokehold.

He had moved in a blur as she could have sworn to see him standing in front of her just a few moments ago before suddenly appearing behind her, capturing her neck!

Noah had pulled her neck close when suddenly Alice turned her head and her face that was once pretty and only blemished by the slight burn mark on her cheeks then swiftly turn toward him, her skin green and her eyes bulging.

Her mouth spread wide open, showcasing her teeth that had appeared jagged like a saw, ready to bite a deep mark into his hand.

Noah frowned and before her teeth had sunk, he managed to pull his arms away, moving backward in a blink of an eye. He didn’t know what kind of trick Alice had under her sleeve but he knew that Alice had a habit of biting people using poison that she knew had no antidote.

Unlike her previous body as Circe, Noah was still a vampire at the end of the day. Poison will affect him and affect was still a bit better than suddenly decomposing which would be a bad idea as Circe had just finally found a body suitable for her after years of searching.

She doubted she could find any body and so soon at that. But she couldn’t disappear yet into the nothingness just because of Alice.

So though she had the chance to pull out Alice’s heart with her position if she had just let her flesh be bitten by Alice, Circe released her hand, pulling Noah’s body away by hopping backward and landing on his left knee like a cat.

He questioned what kind of trick would Alice still have against him at this point only to find out that the real headache followed as suddenly fog appeared from all of his surrounding.

The dense fog began to curl around him, swallowing the battlefield in a choking veil of gray, without a warning, thick enough for him to almost feel as though he wasn’t stepping on the floor no more, rather on the fog and was swimming through it.

It was the kind of fog that slowly numb one’s senses, causing them to panic but Noah remained calm.

Alice spoke, her voice merging with the sound of the fog itself, ethereal and numbing, "I wanted to learn more from you, Circe. How is it that you can cross the boundary between the living and the dead when you were killed centuries ago?"

Noah... no, Circe, didn’t answer.

From a distance, Alice narrowed her green eyes, her expression unreadable.

"Fine. You don’t want to talk about that," she muttered, clicking her tongue in annoyance.

Circe, watching through Noah’s borrowed body, knew Alice too well. She had that strange habit, smiling when angry. So much so that sometimes even she wasn’t sure if she was truly furious or just pretending to be.

But now? Now Circe could tell. Alice wasn’t just angry. She wanted her dead yet despite wanting her to die out of anger, she hadn’t attacked so vitally or viscously. It could be either she was having fun with this and didn’t want it to end soon... or another reason.

Regardless, she was hesitating.

And that was exactly what would get her killed.

Because curiosity, hesitation, was fatal in a fight like this.

Alice couldn’t bring herself to strike first, not without understanding Circe’s secrets. How was she alive? How could she possess Noah so seamlessly?

And that hesitation Circe saw it, taking that as her advantage.

"Then let’s talk about something you do care about," Alice murmured, her voice sharp with mischief as she watched for the slightest twitch.

But Circe’s expression remained stone, unmoved. Her current body, Noah looked equally unfazed, his half lidded eyes dulled with apathy, like a boy trapped in the pews of a midnight sermon he’d long stopped listening to.

"Your castle," Alice continued smoothly. "The one brimming with your precious sorcerers. Don’t pretend you’re not curious about what’s become of them."

She tilted her head, eyes glinting. "Don’t play the stoic card with me, Circe. I know better than anyone the lengths you’d go to protect your coven. You were always different from the rest. While most witches used their followers, you treated yours like family. That’s why Morpheus got it in his head he could rule over others, forgetting he wasn’t a witch at all."

Circe’s eyes narrowed. "You talk too much," she said coolly. "And you’ve always had a habit of meddling where you don’t belong. Shouldn’t you be worrying about your own

coven?"

Alice threw her head back and laughed, a sharp, manic sound that echoed like breaking glass."My coven is peaceful, darling. I ruled them the proper way, fair, strict, and effective." Her grin twisted. "Unlike you. Yours are still rotting in that castle of yours because you were foolish enough to trust a human."

Circe pressed her fingers to her temple.

She was already dead, and yet Alice’s laughter pierced through her skull like a migraine clawing its way out.

"It’s tragic, really," Alice mused, her tone now almost pitying. "You sacrificed everything for them. Even sold your soul to a demon just to protect your kind. You wanted power so they would never be stepped on by humans again."

She leaned in.

"But your coven was strange from the start, wasn’t it? You took in the weak, the helpless, while the strong walked away. And what’s left now? A castle full of broken things. Useless sorcerers who couldn’t even save themselves."

The fog around Noah quivered, then laughed.

"If I were you," it whispered, voice rippling with amusement, "I’d die of embarrassment all over again. Now your own people despises you! They think that you have abandoned them with a curse. How pitiful... should I have told them?"

Circe twitched.

For the first time, something flickered across Noah’s borrowed face, an expression that wasn’t just annoyance but raw, seething rage. His jaw clenched. His eyes, once dull with indifference, now burned with fury.

Alice saw it, and her smile widened.

She practically shimmered with delight as her voice rose, sing song and venomous."Should I have told them?" she cooed. "Told them how much you loved them? That to spare them from a curse worse than death, you took all their pain into yourself? How you let it tear through your body like a thousand beasts gnawing at your flesh, just so they wouldn’t suffer?"

She clicked her tongue.

Tsk.

Alice had always tried to provoke her. And failed, time and time again.

Circe, unlike the other witches, had never indulged in cruelty or chaos. And Alice? She was a curse in the shape of a woman, one that had haunted Circe ever since their first meeting, clinging to her like a shadow, smiling whenever she stumbled, pouting whenever she overcame.

Was it curiosity? Or just that twisted pleasure some people feel when watching something pure fall apart?

Whatever it was, Alice had never succeeded in truly making Circe break.

Until now.

Today was different.

Today, she had struck a nerve.

"Yes, yes, no one actually knows the truth other than you and me," Alice hummed, at first she wanted to provoke Circe to the bone but suddenly she had dropped the idea and mused with her own words, reflecting on what she was speaking. "Even Morpheus doesn’t know the truth right? Yet he completely despises you. We are working together now, you see, and whenever I brought up your name, hell you would have cringe seeing how ugly his face would turn!"

"Stop talking, Alice."

Noah’s voice cut through the air, low with danger. But perhaps because it still carried the timbre of a boy, Alice didn’t register the weight beneath it. She only focused on her words, continuing her cruel little monologue.

"It’s funny, really..." she said, voice sweet as venom. "The curse, it wasn’t even your mistake. Morpheus will never know, will he?"

She leaned in, whispering like a confidante sharing a secret. "You didn’t take it on to save that dying human King poisoned by his enemies. And it wasn’t because of some grand promise you failed to keep, like the stories say."

Her grin widened. "The truth is—"

But the sentence was never finished.

A sharp gasp escaped her lips as something pierced through her torso.

She looked down, eyes wide.

A silver spear jutted through her body, blood blooming like a crimson flower around the wound.

The hand holding the weapon was Noah’s.

His expression was no longer boyish, no longer dull it was ugly from rage. The rage of someone who couldn’t hear a single more word coming from Alice’s mouth.

"I told you to shut up," he said.

And then the spear began to glow, light swelling from its core, brilliant and white-hot, charging with violent energy.

Alice’s smile finally faltered.

"Ah..."

That was all she could manage before the light erupted, engulfing her face, blinding and absolute.

BOOM!

The explosion tore through the fog, splitting the silence with a sound like the heavens cracking open.