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DATE:9th of May, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Concord Metropolis
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I thought about what the Changeling said. I am not perfect. I am also not unaffected by this environment. How could I be immune?
I thought about ending it. Just stopping it all, but then... Then it would just be nothing, wouldn't it? All of it for nothing.
That is the truth about life.
But there was no point in being stunned by such a fact. I raised from my bed and got on with the day.
The students were extremely anxious during my hours, talking between each other about what happened the other day. They were even asking me—apparently rumors had spread about my involvement.
But I don't like rumors, nor debating them. With the Dean gone, I could beat up whoever I wanted, so I ordered them to be silent. It's not like I care about our relationship—I only have a week and a half more to teach.
The doctor was right about my condition, though, as I was unusually tired. For a while, I shouldn't use the caffeine supplement.
I talked with the professor, and he was of the opinion that I should do another brain scan to adjust the dosage more, so I borrowed Alice's car and drove there. I said I borrowed, but she insisted on coming with me. Does this girl really not have anything to do except harass me?
At the doctor's, I did another full scan.
He wanted to show me some of his inventions, and although I didn't care, I had a companion insisting my presence was needed.
The professor showed me a lot of different pieces of armor and snarkily remarked how inferior the Hao suit I used was in comparison to his. Personally, I don't really understand his perspective. Surely his weapons may be more powerful, but his armor certainly isn't.
The Hao suit itself can survive caliber up to 50 mm, and the protection is all over the body. The armor the professor designed is more of a classic military style, with a helmet, vest, and reinforced trousers. They may technically be stronger as they have full plates of steel in them, but it is cumbersome and the protection is not all over the body.
I suppose there is a need for definition, as the Hao suit is special ops equipment while the professor's flak armor is more of a normal soldier thing—or perhaps SWAT. It certainly is more resistant to explosives, but I wouldn't want to be in the radius of one with neither of these.
He had a lot of weapons, from rifles to machine guns to rocket launchers, bombs, and other explosives. Apparently, they have been his hobby since he was young. The androids could be armed, but the professor says he doesn't believe in using them for war. I doubt this is the case, though—otherwise, why would he develop them so much?
These things are almost the perfect infiltrators, so I believe there is a 0% chance they aren't used in any war. But there is no need to destroy the fiction that Alice built around him.
After the factory tour, we returned to the dorm, where I remembered I had to meet Sasha.
With the Dean gone, I'm not sure what she would say, or for that matter whatever she even knows about me. There was a matter of clarification.
I stopped by her counseling office.
It is set within one of the academy's oldest wings, with high vaulted ceilings, wooden beams, and large arched windows that let in streams of natural light. The stone walls are lined with ivy creeping in from the outside. I would say this is because of my earlier earthquakes, but I doubt it.
The furniture is a mixture of antique and modern. A large, polished mahogany desk sits at the center, worn smooth by years of use, while a few advanced gadgets and holographic displays provide a discreet technological edge, their modernity at odds with the room's age yet blending seamlessly into the space. There are bookshelves filled with... I'm actually not sure, but old books nevertheless.
The office retains its academic charm, with the walls adorned by portraits of past heroes who once walked the halls of the academy, their silent gazes a reminder of the burden of responsibility. But not for me. The chairs are plush, though aged, and sit atop intricately woven rugs that tell stories of battles fought and won by the academy's alumni. One of them even describes a fight with a dragon. I wonder what villain that was.
Hidden away in the corner is a small alcove with an old fireplace, obviously unused since it was summer, and beside it, a table holding crystal decanters of water, tea, or even stronger elixirs for those with particularly heavy burdens to unload. I didn't expect a counselor to have so many drugs.
But all of that was more or less familiar for this setting. What surprised me was how little I could smell the cigarette smoke. Supposedly, Sasha goes through a pack a day and remains most of the time here, and yet the air is surprisingly clean. She is a really decent person—I like that. Unlike a certain someone... But I should give Alice the benefit of the doubt; her room may have been a mess from depression. I should check it in the future to see.
Anyway, Sasha was wearing a heavy, embroidered blouse with a skirt underneath you could barely see. It was almost covered by the blouse. She had a strange resistance to heat, but I could also say that about myself. I'm still in a long-sleeved shirt.
"Willy! You came by." She was very happy to see me, and honestly I was too. She was much more level-headed than the other teachers.
"Yup. I wanted to come by sooner, but it got kind of chaotic."
"You mean the thing with the Dean, yes? Please take a seat." I took one of the chairs and sat across from the counselor. Her gaze wasn't as oppressive as the moon girl's. Sasha said she lived through much suffering, but I couldn't see it. Or was it that she didn't want me to see it?
"So what is it that you wanted to discuss?"
"Ah, yes. It was about your nightmares. I wanted to try something with you. Do you see that bed in the corner?"
"Yes?" She instructed me to lie on the bed, before she raised my head and planted it on her thighs. I found it strange, but apparently it has something to do with her ability.
Sasha instructed me to sleep so that she could try to get to the bottom of my nightmares. I thought it was foolish as it was too early for me to sleep, but Sasha started caressing my head with her soft, delicate hands...
I didn't understand why, but my eyes started to tire. I was already tired, but she was actually making me fall asleep.
"Let me take a share of your burdens—" was the last thing I heard before my consciousness went out.
I was back in the void. I found myself submerged in a pool of black liquid, thick and viscous, clinging to my limbs as I struggled to rise. Each movement felt like dragging myself through tar. A presence wrapped around me from behind, arms encircling my torso. Was it Sasha? I twisted to look, but the figure was stark white—unfamiliar, featureless.
A scream tore through the silence. Father? The sound was distant but raw, reverberating through the emptiness. I could hear something barreling toward me, rapid and relentless, but the mist curled thick around my ankles, obscuring everything. The footsteps—or whatever they were—seemed to echo from every direction at once, disorienting me.
Then it was there. One meter away. My breath caught. Before I could react, pale strings descended from somewhere above, snapping taut as they coiled around the figure. The creature jerked to a halt, restrained mid-lunge. Through the haze, I finally saw its face.
Father.
"There's no need to feel alone anymore." A woman's voice spoke to me. I think it was Sasha's?
"You can come out of that wardrobe, William." What was she talking about? A wardrobe? Wasn't I in a puddle of blood?
"Come outside, Will." What does she mean, outside? I followed the voice through that knee-deep liquid until I reached a door. A... wardrobe door?
I pushed it with all my strength, but it didn't move. Then I started taking some distance to make a run for it. I charged at the door once, twice... Eventually the lock broke and I fell into a room. It was... my childhood home?
Sasha sat perched on the edge of my bed, her gaze fixed downward on me.
"What the hell did you do?"
"You're not alone anymore, Will. Come here." She opened her arms and I instinctively raised myself to hug her. This wasn't natural. No, this whole thing was strange. I sat on her lap, still wet from that black blood, where she caressed my hair.
"You said we were similar. What do you mean by that, Sasha?" Her expression had a sense of maternal love. For who exactly? We don't know each other.
"We lived in quite a similar way... So I know what you're going through. This trauma that you have from your childhood shouldn't burden you anymore."
No, something was definitely wrong. I knew my own mind well enough to recognize when it was being tampered with. She wasn't caressing my hair—she was caressing something deeper. My thoughts. My memories. She was doing something in my mind. To my mind.
I slapped her hand away and shot to my feet, stumbling back.
"Don't resist it, Will." Her voice was soft, almost soothing. "I'm just taking the pain away."
Was that really true?
"Who are you to take my pain away?" The words came out sharper than I intended.
She tilted her head, expression unchanging. "Trauma doesn't define us. We must move forward from it."
"And how am I not doing that? I don't care about it. Not anymore. But it doesn't mean you can just erase it. We are defined by our memories!"
"Are you really moving away from it? This apathy that you live through and this disconnection from reality stem from that trauma. Do you not even realize? How can you be aware of your present if your mind is stuck in the past?"
This was very bad. I hadn't expected her to do something like this. It wasn't even about the trauma—I could live with the nightmares. I'd lived with them this long. But what would happen to me if she actually made me moral? How could I live with myself after everything I'd done? After a lifetime of choices that had turned me into exactly what I was—a criminal.
"I don't want this."
"That's a lie." Her tone was maddeningly calm. "The truth is you think you don't deserve it, isn't it?"
No. That definitely wasn't it. At least now I knew she couldn't actually read my thoughts.
Or... could she?
"Come back, Will~" Her voice slithered through my mind, wrapping around my will like silk threads tightening into a noose. The words pulled at something primal inside me, drawing me toward her like a siren's call. I slammed my hands over my ears, but it was useless—this wasn't sound. It bypassed my senses entirely, speaking directly into the core of my thoughts.
I wanted to resist. I had to resist. Even with all my experience dealing with this kind of manipulation, I was powerless. My body betrayed me, feet shuffling forward against every screaming instinct, carrying me back toward the tsarist girl.
"Please don't misunderstand—I'm not forcing you." Her smile was gentle, patient. "The simple fact that you come to me means you want to let go."
"No, that isn't true!" The words tore out of me, desperate.
"Some part of you wants to." She tilted her head, studying me like a specimen under glass. "Something deep inside that broken mind of yours."
"What do you even know about me?"
"It's not the first time I've entered your mind." She said it so casually, as if she were talking about visiting a friend's house. "This place is a palace of hurt and suffering, and it saddened me very much that you go through it so often... Take a seat, Will."
I didn't want to. Every fiber of my being screamed against it. But I was way out of my league. My legs buckled, and I sank back onto the bed. The moment I did, I could feel something loosening—like a thread being pulled from fabric. My mind was slipping away. Or was I slipping away?
A terrifying thought crystallized: What if this broken self wasn't even the real me? What if it was just a shell I'd built to survive the pain—a callus grown over raw wounds? It sounded absurd, but I'd read enough psychology to know it was possible. Not a split personality or some dramatic persona. Just... desensitization. Layer after layer of scar tissue built up through years of suffering.
And this girl wanted to strip it all away.
I'd lived like this for so long. This darkness, this numbness—it was who I am. So what did she think she was doing? Freeing a soul? No. She was killing me.
I couldn't do anything to stop it. I felt my sense of self dissolving, edges blurring like ink in water. Would I be a totally different person when I opened my eyes? Would the person who woke up even remember being me? Would he look back on my memories like they belonged to a stranger?
At this point, it was over. I'd already lost. Why prolong this strange, nauseating sensation—this feeling of being unmade from the inside out? I should just close my eyes and let go. Stop fighting. Let whatever came next simply... come.
I wanted to surrender. To sink into the void and be done with it.
But then...
Sasha screamed. It wasn't a gasp or a cry—it was a scream of pure agony, raw and piercing, so intense it sent shivers racing down my spine. Strange red energy erupted from her body like lightning tearing through storm clouds, crackling outward in violent arcs. The force slammed into me, hurling me backward. Where it touched my skin, it burned—searing, blistering heat that made me cry out.
I scrambled to look at her. Her eyes were glowing that same crimson, but brighter now—blinding, like twin suns about to go supernova. She clutched her head, still screaming. Why? What was causing her so much pain?Then I heard it. A single word, repeated over and over in a cacophony of voices—some young, some ancient, some human, some not. Languages I recognized and languages I'd never heard before, all layered on top of each other in a horrifying chorus:
{No. No. No. No. No.}
The walls of my room buckled and collapsed outward, chunks of plaster and wood tumbling away into nothingness. Beyond the shattered remains stretched an impossible void—empty space dotted with distant, cold stars. It was as if Earth had vanished entirely, leaving only fragments of my room suspended in the vacuum. Gravity released its hold. My feet lifted off the floor. I was floating.
What happened next was even stranger.
I saw an eye outside. Propped against the semi-destroyed wall, I crept forward and glanced out of what remained of my room. A figure was watching us—but "figure" was too generous a word. It was a malformation of flesh studded with dozens of eyes, each one utterly wrong. They weren't human eyes. One belonged to a goat, its horizontal pupil dilating. Another was feline, slit and predatory. A crocodile's cold, reptilian stare. The eyes of hounds and bovines and horses, all embedded in writhing tissue that defied anatomy. The creature wasn't shaped like anything earthly. It resembled a star—radial, symmetrical, pulsing—and it glowed with an eerie, sickly luminescence that hurt to look at.
Then Sasha screamed again. This time, the shockwave obliterated everything. The rest of the house exploded outward in a burst of splintering wood and disintegrating matter, leaving us suspended in that alien void. We weren't alone. All around us, massive shapes loomed—creatures the size of ten-story buildings, their forms barely comprehensible, drifting through the darkness like silent leviathans.
The thing's many eyes shifted, tracking between Sasha and me. I heard words—distant, echoing, as if shouted from kilometers away across an empty plain. But they came from the creature in front of me, I was certain of it. The sounds weren't any alphabet I understood. They weren't even sounds meant for human ears.
Wait. Were they the ones affecting Sasha? Someone so much more in tune with the soul—with the fabric of consciousness itself—would be able to hear them, wouldn't she? To understand them. And that's exactly why she was losing herself right now, drowning in their voices. I was sure of it. The language of an eldritch abomination had to be beyond what a human mind was capable of processing. Perhaps that's why my ears felt deaf to it, muffled and distant—some primal defense mechanism shielding me from madness in the face of this thing.
But was this creature even foreign? An invader from some other realm? Or could it be... me?
Sasha had said she was searching through the depths of my trauma. What if she'd gone too deep? What if this grotesque, cosmic horror was the real me, and I—this thinking, feeling thing in a human body—was nothing but a false amalgamation of flesh? A mask worn over something incomprehensible.
It would explain things. Why wouldn't it? Why else would I not age in a decade? That wasn't a property the human body had. It wasn't normal.
But if that thing really was me... then I wouldn't be here in this body, would I? I wouldn't be the one watching it from the outside.
Would I?
"Who are you?" I called out to the monster, but no sound left my lips. My voice died instantly in this place. Of course—mirroring the vacuum of space, sound had nothing to travel through. So were its whispers also telepathy? Had they been inside my head all along?I thought my words had been ignored. Then it opened its mouth.
The flesh split down the middle—not like jaws unhinging, but like a seam tearing open. Inside was a human tongue, but it too was split, bifurcated like a serpent's. And from between those halves emerged more tongues—dozens of them, thin and writhing, unmistakably snake tongues, flickering in and out. My stomach lurched.Then my whole body began to vibrate. Not just my chest or bones—everything. My cells felt like they were rattling apart.
"By word and whisper, one is not entitled to mine name."
The voice was distorted static, like someone speaking through a radio with a dying signal, every syllable crackling and warping. Even translated into something approximating language, it was agony to hear. I felt warmth trickling down my face. Blood. Both my eyes and ears were bleeding from just a single sentence.
What was this thing? Some kind of demon? I hear they don't want their names to be know. Or is it something older? Something worse?
But I persisted.
"What is happening to Sasha?"
"What doth the witch hope to gain by thrusting her nose where it hath no place? What fortune or folly drives her to meddle in matters beyond her ken?"
"Why doth the witch strive to unveil that which she hath no cause to uncover? What hidden purpose or mischief compels her to pry where her reason falters?"
There weren't just one or two voices—there were many. Hundreds, maybe thousands, layered over each other in a cacophony that threatened to split my skull. Voices of men, deep and rasping. Voices of women, lilting and sharp. Children's voices, high and innocent. And beneath them all, impossibly, voices that weren't human at all. The shrill cries of birds. The low, guttural moans of bovines. The howls of hounds and the hissing of cats.Why could I hear animals speaking? Why did they sound like they were forming words?
My vision blurred. My knees buckled. I felt myself tipping forward, consciousness slipping like sand through fingers. Just a few sentences, and I was already on the edge of blacking out.
The girl before me—Sasha—her skin was unraveling. Peeling away from her body in thin, translucent strips, as if it had lost all purchase on the flesh beneath. She was dying. Right in front of me.
"Let her leave this place."
The thing paused. Slowly, deliberately, it closed its grotesque mouth, those serpent tongues retreating into the darkness within. It didn't respond—not with words. But its many eyes, all those mismatched, alien eyes, turned in unison toward me. The weight of that gaze was suffocating.
"Æn Të?"
The sounds barely registered as language. Syllables that scraped against my mind, half-formed and incomprehensible.
"I am already here, am I not?"
Then—My eyes snapped open.We were back in her office.
Sasha collapsed onto me, her weight sudden and limp. Blood poured from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes—everywhere. It seemed the wounds she'd sustained in my mind had manifested on her real body. Was that her ability's limitation? The price she paid for diving too deep?
I summoned what little strength remained in my trembling arms and fumbled for my phone, dialing John. My hands were slick with her blood. I propped her upright against the headboard, the bed now soaked crimson beneath us. Leaning close, I pressed my ear to her chest. Nothing. Her lungs weren't moving. She wasn't breathing.
I tilted her head back and started compressions, then rescue breaths, cycling through the motions like the training videos had drilled into me. Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Repeat.
When John finally burst through the door, his face was twisted in panic. He was half-dressed, still tangled in his pajamas. His shirt had Mick the Chipmunk grinning cheerfully across the chest. Was this some metaphor to the 'bear with a big heart formula'? So stupid...
I slid my arms beneath her as carefully as I could, finding the position that would put the least tension on her unraveling skin. Every movement had to be deliberate—one wrong shift and more of it could peel away. I lifted her toward the entrance of the Academy, my muscles screaming in protest. John had decided my touch was more delicate, which might have been true, but I could barely stay upright. I didn't appreciate his opinion.
He'd already prepared the backseat of his car, laying down a thick, soft cloth to cushion her body so her fragile skin wouldn't tear further when we moved her. I had to give it to him—when it mattered, John moved fast.
We sped through empty streets, every pothole making me wince. By the time we screeched to a halt outside Central Hospital, nurses were already waiting. They whisked her away on a gurney, disappearing through double doors marked Immediate Intervention.
Seeing me sway on my feet, nearly collapsing against him as we stumbled toward the elevator, John gave me a firm look. "Wait in one of the free patient rooms," he instructed, his voice leaving no room for argument. "I need to restructure her skin first. Then I'll take a look at you."
I nodded weakly and shuffled down the hallway to the room he'd pointed out. It looked identical to every other hospital room I'd been stuck in—sterile white walls, the faint smell of disinfectant, a single window with blinds half-drawn.
After about ten minutes of sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing, exhaustion crashed over me like a wave. I didn't care that my clothes were soaked with blood. I didn't care that I'd stain the sheets.
I hate hospital beds. The stiff mattresses, the scratchy linens, the way they make you feel like a specimen waiting to be examined. But somehow, the moment I lowered myself onto it, my eyes slid shut.
I fell asleep before I could even finish the thought.
I found myself in a small, wooden room, probably in the void, but the creature was gone. Father was sitting across from me, placing a small table between us.
We were sitting on some wood—I am not sure what material it was, but I remember seeing it in Asian houses. It was a kind of mat. Father took out a chess set and laid it out.
And for the rest of the night... We played chess?
It was very strange...
There was a clock on the wall behind him, and I was sure it was the actual hour in the real world. I thought there would be a catch—that perhaps it never moved and I would be here for an eternity, or that Father would break out of this game and return to his normal routine...
But that never happened...
For the whole night, the whole 8 hours I slept...
We played chess...
***