“Can you tell me how it feels?” I asked a bit curious about her perception of what was about to happen.

“What?” She didn’t understand at first but seemed to realize something as my hands gripped her shoulder so tightly that my nails dug into her flesh. The smell in the air got even sweeter as I chuckled lightly. I barely held back from digging into her neck right then, but only a few seconds. Arthur dragged the cloth to the side in an instant, just like we agreed upon.

“Death.” Her face must have been truly exhilarating as I dug my teeth inside her neck and began to drink a fluid that tasted even better than my best food creations. The woman, exhausted by the hours of torture didn’t even struggle, but rather accepted her fate right away. She was going to die within a few seconds for my and Arthur´s enjoyment. And by the gods, it was enjoyable.

Arthur must have had a great sight of how the positive emotions like hope and thankfulness all vanished in an instant, replaced by despair and acceptance. I desperately wanted to switch with him to see how the colour behind her eyes changed and so, I let go of her shoulders and turned her head around. She was just seconds away from death at this point and gazed at me with empty, emotionless eyes. And yet, the thing behind her eyes changed colour again into a very dark brown.

It all vanished in an instant as she died and slumped to the ground. I still haven’t solved the mystery yet, but I did have a slight idea of what it was.

“Arthur … sit in front of me.” At first, he was unwilling to sit in front of a monster in underwear, covered in blood. But he did change his opinion rather swiftly as I showed him my teeth. Now I was threatening him, just because I was so impatient to confirm what I saw in her eyes. As soon as he knelt down in front of me, I placed my hands on his cheeks and pulled his head as close as possible.

I smelled his ragged breath as our lips nearly touched each other and I stared deep into his eyes. Red. It was another colour I saw in there, but I couldn’t quite discern what it meant. Love? Rage? Hatred?  Fascination? There were so many possibilities that I found it rather difficult to discern his emotions, especially because he always hid them rather well.  There was another problem I instantly noticed. If green was the colour of hope for the dead person, meant green the same with Arthur? Or was it different from person to person?

“What do you see in my eyes?” It was questionable if others saw this phenomenon as well, but it was necessary to confirm it at least once.

“Nothing? … They are green …” He couldn’t even see behind my contact lenses, let alone my real eye colour. Instantly, I let go of him and leaned back again, disgusted by how close we were. He breathed out rather heavily as if a huge weight was taken from his shoulders.

“Do you have a mirror?” I asked, curious about my own eyes.

“Yes … wait a moment.” Arthur came back with a handheld mirror within a few seconds and handed it over. I immediately stared into it, focusing solely on my eyes. Arthur was right, I could see my green contact lenses, but also a very different colour behind them.

An ominous black seemed to devour everything as it fluctuated beneath the surface of my eyes. I grinned as I realized what I saw there. It was my own soul, fluctuating just like the others in purgatory, visible through a gift Aska gave me.

Within everyone, there resides a soul, as distinctive as always. And yet, the humans try to hide their soul to the best of their abilities. Be it skin, flesh and bones, everything hides the soul deep within them. But there is one place where this isn’t the case. The eyes, the gate to the soul always let me see it. I only needed to gaze deep inside them. And if I did so, I could see souls. Even on Solaris, I never lost the ability to do so.

In purgatory, it was pretty useless to see souls, but Solaris made this ability a lot more valuable. Souls change. I didn’t notice at first as I never really tried to look so deep into another eye so far. They change depending on the state of the owner or simply put, their emotions. All souls in purgatory were blue, meaning that they probably were in equilibrium, or completely calm. I had absolutely no clue what the slightly different blue the woman showed me meant though …

I didn’t know what the different shades of what colour meant or if there was even a system behind it in the first place. But I did know what my black soul meant.

Black isn’t a colour per se, but rather the absence of everything. I chuckled as I noticed just how different I was from the others. Even when someone just died because of my actions, I didn’t feel anything. True, I was interested in the different colours, but that interest was born by logic and not out of a feeling. For the most part, I was devoid of any emotion, just like then. There were some exceptions to this rule though.

One example of this was how I reacted so strongly to the hand that touched my shoulder earlier. Rage immediately drove me crazy and I could barely control myself. Only after some time did I finally calm down enough to burn the evidence to the ground.

Another example was strangely how I behaved around children. It was a weird euphoria that always led me to be friendly around them. I didn’t know when this happened, but apparently, I changed since I met the first child in purgatory. Even when it would be beneficial, I wouldn’t hurt a child for any reason except when there was no other way. I had to thank Aska for that one …

I didn’t know what to think of my findings that acted up from time to time. No matter what, my feelings were mostly detrimental to my objectives, and yet, I didn’t want to fight them at all. Just as I thought about the reason for this, the colour behind my eyes turned slightly pink, although the darkness still persisted for the most part. I smiled as I thought about Aska and swore to myself that I wouldn’t keep my feelings in check for the most part. I couldn’t bear losing this feeling of obsession, of wanting to control him so badly, so there may be other feelings I didn´t want to miss out on.

The all-devouring darkness soon returned as I still smiled into the mirror. Meanwhile, Arthur probably wondered why the heck I was looking into a mirror like a complete idiot.