The nerves pulsed again, stretching out like endless highways of suffering, each contraction wet and alive. Their glow painted the realm in nauseating flashes of crimson-white, a heartbeat too loud, too close, like the entire world was the inside of a chest cavity. The sound wasn't mere noise; it was a throb that rattled his bones.
Jair's chuckle came again, though weaker now. "Well… it's official. My brain is gross." His words bounced around the chamber, swallowed up by its pulsing walls, returning to him like a mockery of comfort.
Then the voice cut through.
"Pain. Do you know pain? What is pain? Hahaha…"
The laughter reverberated as if the nerves themselves were speaking, writhing in time with the syllables. Jair spun, fists clenched, forcing his voice to stay steady. "Who's there?"
"You doubt me, Jair," the voice hissed, familiar, intimate, terrible.
Recognition slammed into him. His breath caught. "Omega… Devia."
The air thickened, heavy with the name. The ground beneath him flexed like muscle, recoiling at his realization.
"I'm ready," Jair whispered, though the words tasted hollow on his tongue. "Whatever trial you've got lined up, I'll face it. Just… keep it gentle, alright? Heh."
The chuckle died in his throat when the world shattered.
A whirlwind of images engulfed him, dragging him backward through memory.
He stumbled into the narrow hall of his childhood home, where peeling wallpaper and stale air pressed in on all sides. Familiar yet suffocating. The sound hit first—the echo of rage. A slap, sharp and final, followed by his mother's scream.
Jair froze. There she was again, in that nightmarish tableau, caught in the iron grip of the brute who called himself a man. Muscles like stone, a presence that filled the room with violence. His mother bent beneath it, powerless, her strength consumed by years of control disguised as love.
The small boy huddled in the corner of the room came into focus—his past self, trembling in silence, knees hugged to chest, drowning in the echoes of despair. Tears carved lines through a young face too soft for such grief.
Jair's adult self staggered forward, heart cracking. "Why did you… send me here?" His voice splintered, barely holding together. "Why show me this again?"
The reply came smooth, like silk soaked in poison.
"Because you must remember why you are here. This is your seed of clarity, Jair. The wound that carved you. You should have been protected. Instead, you learned to endure. And from that endurance, you built strength."
Jair gritted his teeth, his chest shaking. "Strength? I was a kid! A kid who couldn't stop it! I thought I escaped this… Lis took me to the Free Abyss, I thought I outgrew it…" His voice cracked into a bitter laugh. "But here I am again, crying like I never left. Are you proud now?"
The voice softened, but the softness was its most dangerous trick.
"You fear me, child. You fear that I am only illusion, a chain disguised as wings. But listen—your humanity is not weakness. It is the forge. Your suffering is not just history; it is weapon. Let your tears fall. I see them. I see you. And I will mold this into something more than survival. You will ascend."
Jair's tears slipped freely, hot rivers cutting across his cheeks. He whispered into the nerves around him, "I doubted you because I thought you'd trap me. That you'd make my pain into comfort instead of clarity."
The world shivered. For a moment, the nerve-walls pulled taut, glowing brighter, vibrating with some truth unlocked.
"Good," Omega Devia hissed. "Doubt me. Doubt is not rejection—it is connection sharpened. You must learn to hold both, Jair. Your mistrust, and your longing. Your fear, and your faith. It is in the fracture that the real power dwells."
The memory melted. The living room, the brute, the weeping child—all dissolved like ash in water. The nerves re-formed, more violent now, beating faster, their throb a war-drum.
From the shifting crimson grew a shape.
It rose like a shadow stitched from broken anatomy: horns spiraled in jagged twists, teeth too many to count, arms splitting into tendrils that bent like knives. Its body flexed and snapped as if it had no fixed form, each shift uglier than the last.
Jair's stomach turned. His knees nearly buckled.
"What… what the hell is that?"
The voice thundered with terrible delight.
"This is the body of your trauma. The form your fear has chosen. Do not seek to slay it, Jair. Slaying is denial. Instead—transform it. Bind it to you as you bind your doubts. Let it become the spine of your clarity, not the weight that breaks you."
The creature bent forward, its horned head tilting, jaws splitting into a grin made of writhing teeth.
Jair inhaled, every breath shallow but deliberate. His hands shook as he raised them, fingers curling into fists. "Alright… you want me to face it? Then I'll face it."
The beast lurched, nerves screaming, the chamber vibrating like a living wound.
And Jair stepped forward.
The battle with himself had begun.
Meanwhile in Eve's Inner realm
Eve floated in the expanse of her inner realm, weightless, suspended amid clouds of soft cotton and drifting sedatives that shimmered faintly in muted greens and silvers. The air was fragrant with calm, the kind of comfort that whispered safety yet carried the faint tang of unease, like a lullaby that might strangle you in its gentleness.
She wanted to reach out, to sink into the softness, let it wrap her in its deceptive serenity. Yet something inside her recoiled. There was a thrill to resisting, a thrill tinged with horror. The comfort wasn't real—it was an echo of a life half-lived, half-denied.
Sheets floated past her, translucent and alive, each one carrying fragments of memory. One flicker showed her father, stern and commanding, gesturing at the warriors in the Ghana Combat Arena. "Support them," he had said. "Don't step forward. Don't risk what you're not ready to claim."
Eve's chest tightened. She had obeyed, always obeyed. She was the healer, the medic, the comforter. Always behind, never leading. Never claiming her own story. And that, she realized with a shiver, was the reason the Ghouls had so easily taken her—because she had long surrendered to roles assigned, not earned.
She turned her gaze inward, seeing flashes of Ian. He believed he had to save her, but she saw the truth: she had already arrived where he needed her. She had already been saved by herself, by choices she had made for her dreams. She loved him, yes—but she loved herself, and her path, more. That realization surged like a shockwave through the gentle realm, unsettling the sedative clouds around her.
And then, the voice came, slicing through the hum of comfort, velvet and jagged all at once.
"Eve… Do you choose to sleep in doubt… or wake up?"
Her body stiffened mid-float. The voice was patient yet penetrating, ancient and intimate. She swallowed. "Omega Devia… my whole thing is Sedation. I… I don't know if I've woken up yet. I came here to be better than I was back on Earth… to get away from everything. I chose you, but I can't stop thinking… what if I'm asleep? What if I'm being used as a puppet? What if Ian was right? What if…"
A soft chuckle rippled through the cotton clouds. It was at once soothing and sinister. "Then you put your doubts to sleep… and keep your certainty."
Eve's heart thrummed against the restraint of the realm. Her lips quivered. "I… I don't know if I can do that. It feels… too awake."
The air thickened. A single sheet drifted past her, folding and writhing as it took shape. Slowly, a figure emerged from its folds—a puppet of her own form, eerily exact, down to the nervous tilt of her head and the habitual frown she carried when doubts overran her mind.
"She's asleep," the voice intoned, low and knowing. "Wake her up… only then will you be free from your doubts."
Eve stared, frozen. The puppet mimicked her every hesitation, its eyes reflecting her fears like mirrors made of shadow. The soft clouds that had seemed so inviting now pressed against her, like the walls of a bedroom sealing shut while the moonlight turned cold. She wanted to collapse, to sink, to be cradled by sedation… yet she also knew she could not.
The realm itself responded to her hesitation. The cotton swirled violently, wrapping around her legs, climbing her arms, trying to lull her into passivity. The sedative shimmer intensified, brightening like an insistent firefly, attempting to hypnotize her mind into obedience.
But Eve clenched her fists, drawing a line in the metaphysical air. "No," she whispered, her voice trembling yet firm. "I… I wake her. I wake myself. I won't be someone asleep in their own life anymore."
The puppet of herself shuddered, its form rippling, vibrating with an eerie resonance as if the inner realm itself were testing her resolve. The cotton clouds recoiled, scattering into motes that floated like dying stars. The sedative haze began to evaporate, revealing the room around her in sharp, crystalline clarity—the truth she had buried for so long.
Omega Devia's voice softened, no longer jagged but still hypnotic, still commanding. "Good. You are awake. You see now… the path forward is yours, not borrowed. Your power lies in your choice, Eve. Your certainty… your clarity… it is yours to wield, and only you can take it from doubt to reality."
Eve's chest heaved as she exhaled, every breath feeling like a shard of air too long denied. The puppet dissolved into threads of light, leaving nothing but the essence of herself behind—alive, awake, and unbroken.
For the first time, she understood the paradox Omega Devia had offered: seduction of comfort was the trap, fear of action the cage. And in stepping past them, she had truly woken.
The inner realm pulsed gently now, no longer threatening, no longer attempting to sedate. It was a space of potential, a canvas of clarity, awaiting the choices she would make next.
Eve floated there, trembling, exhilarated, terrified… but finally, wholly herself.
Back to Jair's inner realm.
The thing in the nerve-field did not howl; it rattled—a sound like bones arguing with themselves. Each blow that met Jair's body was not flesh being split but control being unwound. The strikes came in ragged rhythms, relearning the map of him, tearing away any neat edges he'd stitched onto his name.
Pain didn't drip red. It thinned his patience, unclenched his logic, leaked away the careful sentences he used to explain himself. He staggered, cradling something that felt less like muscle and more like a fragile treaty with his own sanity.
"Stop," he croaked at last, ragged breath ripping through the nerve-light. "Please… stop. Okay? Just—stop."
The thing hummed with delighted recognition, a mockery that tasted like metal. Its voice was layered: his voice, older and diluted, and another that smelled of oil and distant thunder.
"We are not meant to be slain," it said, slow as winter. "You do not kill what you are. You do not burn the wound that taught you how to bleed and survive."
Jair's knees shuddered. "Then what am I supposed to do?" His voice broke like glass.
"Remember," the entity replied. "You named me. You gave me this face." It stepped closer, limbs folding in on themselves. "You called yourself Jairak when you walked into the Free Abyss. A new letter, a sharper edge. A coat of armor to wear in crowds. You thought it was style. You thought it was rebellion."
The admission landed like an icestab. Jair tasted it—his name, his new brittle signature—something he'd picked up because it sounded like power. The room tilted. The realization unspooled into horror: the name had not been an invention at all. It had been inside, patient as a seed.
"You were me," Jair whispered, hollow. "You—were—me?"
The thing laughed, an expression made of static. "I am Jair. I am Jairak. I am the stitch between who you were and who you pretend to be. I carried the slaps, the nights, the small boy in the corner. I watched you swap your fear for swagger. I learned that swagger could bite."
Jair swallowed the dry aftertaste of memory—his mother's scream, the cold rooms, the way the world had been loud and then suddenly silent around him. The echoes of those rooms had taught him how to shrink, how to hide, how to hold a fist without swinging. Those echoes had been useful until they were not.
The creature's grin was pity masquerading as glee. "You can fight me. That is the old path. Or you can fold me into yourself. Make use of what aches. Make the wound a lever, not a chain."
He staggered back, a laugh bubbling up that might have been a sob. "So that's it. You want me to… embrace you? Take you in?"
"Embrace," it said. "Acknowledge. Reclaim the language of your fracture. Let it be a spine, not a shackle. Pain sharpened into method."
Jair felt the hunger of it—a not-entirely-wrong promise. He had been taught that pain revealed. He'd been taught to chase that revelation like a scholar chasing insight. But this felt different: not revelation for its own sake, but a calibration. Omega Devia's whisper threaded through the chamber—soft, coaxing, rooted in cold kindness.
You do not have to be less, Jair. You have to be more ruthless with your survival. Use the hurt. Use the name.
His breaths came quicker. The thing advanced like a lover closing the distance. Jair's hands clenched—at himself, at the air, at a history that smelled of iron. He could feel the edges of the new name—Jairak—like a blade at his throat. For a second, clarity flashed: power was not about erasing scars; it was about wearing them so they sharpened you.
"Fine," he said, voice small and certain at once. "Then do it. Merge. Make it a weapon. I—accept it. I will not be ashamed."
The entity hesitated a moment, surprised by the absence of shrill pleading. Then, as if obeying an apparatus of destiny, it unfurled and folded—no explosion, no cinematic collapse—merging into Jair like tide sliding into shore. It was intimate and utterly final: a dissolving that felt like warm oil seeping into bone.
Something inside him sealed. Not healed, not painless. A newly blunt edge set along his spine. He tasted iron and the cold clarity of someone who had decided what to do with a life they did not ask for.
Omega Devia's voice threaded through the nerve-field then—near, approving. "Good. Suffering can be tempered into strength. Doubt cedes to leverage. Wear your names. Use them. Bend the world or be broken by it."
Jair laughed—half incredulous, half feral. It startled even him. The sound had teeth.
"And suffering is what makes me stronger," he said, the sentence a stone dropped in a quiet pool.
Around him, the nerve-light steadied. The throbbing slowed, no longer a hammer but a metronome. He felt the new weight of the name on his tongue and the old wound reshaped into intent.
"Thanks," he added, to no one and to everything. "Thanks, Omega Devia."
The chamber did not cheer. It did not need to. The acceptance was small and absolute.
He breathed. The world—thick, trembling, and dangerously bright—waited on the other side of that breath.