The vial was cold in my hand. My own despair, distilled into a storm-grey liquid, seemed to pulse with a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. The question hung in the air, suffocating.
-What do we do now?-
My hand, trembling from the adrenaline crash, twitched.
The vial slipped. It didn't fall to the floor. It cracked against my chest.
The impact was ice and fire. The liquid didn't soak my shirt; it sank into me, flooding the hollow space inside my ribs with a cold that burned. My back arched. A wave of pure, undiluted dread exploded from me in a silent shockwave.
The reaction was instant.
Thomas, the Devileater, scrambled behind the sofa with a psychic yelp. The Wailing Void's featureless helmet snapped toward me, its entire posture shifting to a defensive coil.
And Kephriel—his smug arrogance vanished. His eyes widened a fraction. He didn't step back, but his form solidified, bracing as if against a gale. For a single, shocking second, he looked… ever so slightly intimidated.
The pressure receded, coiling deep inside me like a sleeping serpent. I collapsed to my knees, gasping.
"Interesting,"
Kephriel said, his voice a careful, measured thing. No mockery. Just cold analysis.
"You didn't just spill it. You consumed it. You've made yourself a paradox. A well of despair that is also its source."
—
One week bled into the next. Spring break ended. The world didn't care that ours had been rewritten. School demanded attendance. The rhythm of bells and crowded hallways was a bizarre, jarring contrast to the silent war we now fought.
We adapted. We had to.
Niran's basement became a dojo. The tchi-tchi crackle of the Nakwi gloves and the sound of shattering cinderblocks were his new normal.
Dao's room smelled of ozone and warm soil. She practiced focusing her hope into a beam of light that could revive a dying plant or heat a cold cup of tea.
Preecha sought silence, not as an absence, but as a weapon. The air around him could grow so heavy it made ears pop.
And me? The cold serpent slept in my chest. I could feel the smaller spirits that haunted the school's edges now flinching away as I passed. They sensed the predator within.
Julia was our scribe, our researcher. She followed me between classes, her new red eyes constantly scanning, her phone Notes app filled with observations.
"It's like a pressure," she was saying one day, her voice low as we walked the crowded hall. "Around you. It's not visible, not really. It's more like… people feel a sudden need to look away. To give you space. It's—"
A body slammed into her shoulder, hard, knocking her notebook from her hands.
"Watch it, Four-Eyes."
It was just some random guy... someone who had a lot of self esteem.
--
Rage, cold and immediate, flared in my gut. The serpent in my chest uncoiled.
I didn't think. I just turned.
"Hey."
The word was quiet. It shouldn't have cut through the hallway noise. But it did.
Mark stopped. He turned around, his smirk still in place, ready to deliver another insult.
It died on his lips.
His eyes met mine. And he saw it. Not a quiet, hollow boy. He saw the void. He felt the echo of the bottom-feeder's hellscape, the crushing loneliness, the absolute despair that I had drunk and made my own.
His face paled. The blood drained so fast I thought he might pass out. His smirk twisted into a grimace of pure, animal fear. He stumbled back, hitting the lockers with a deafening clang. He didn't say a word. He just turned and fled, shoving through other students without apology.
The hallway fell silent around us. People stared.
Julia was frozen, clutching her notebook to her chest, staring at me with wide eyes. Not scared of me. Scared for me.
From the shadows near the water fountain, Kephriel materialized. He looked utterly delighted.
"Apt! Very apt!" he laughed, his voice for our ears only.
"You didn't just scare him. You broke the little fantasy of safety his mind constructs to ignore the horrors of existence. You showed him the truth. You broke his mind."
Preecha appeared at my other side, his face grim.
"It breaks your mind, i felt it too..."
he stated, the simplicity of his words a stark contrast to Kephriel's flourish.
Kephriel's grin was a slash of white in the dim hall.
"Precisely! Henceforth, this little gift shall be called Mindbreaker."
—
We needed air. We needed to feel normal. That evening, we fled to the neon chaos of the night market. The sizzle of meat, the shouts of vendors, the press of oblivious crowds—it was a welcome lie. We ate greasy skewers, and for a few minutes, we almost believed we were just kids...
for a second, i even thought i was happy.
We turned down a quieter side street, a shortcut home, the laughter from a stupid joke still fading from our lips.
The sound was wrong.
Po.
A single, wooden click on the pavement behind us. Too clean. Too deliberate.
Po.
Another. Closer.
Po.
We all froze. The market's cheer vanished, swallowed by a sudden, profound chill.
We turned.
At the end of the narrow street, under a flickering lamp, stood a figure. Impossibly tall and thin, draped in a stained white dress.
A wide-brimmed hat shadowed its face. Its head was cocked to the side at a broken angle.
It took a step. Po. It didn't walk. It glided.
Preecha sucked in a sharp breath. "Don't move,"
he whispered, voice strangled. "Don't answer it."
From the shadows, Kephriel materialized. All his bored arrogance was gone. His posture was taut, his eyes glowing with fierce intensity. He looked...alarmed.
"Do not speak," he commanded, his voice a low vibration in our bones.
"Its game has rules. Do not give it a reason to play."
The figure took another step.
Po.
The streetlight above us flickered, died, and plunged us into darkness.
Po.
The sound was right in front of us now.