Aron pressed his back against the fractured pillar, desperately trying to stay hidden.
His breathing came in shallow, uneven gasps.
Every inhale burned. Every exhale felt weaker than the last.
The Soulreaver's extraction had taken almost everything. His body felt hollow. Empty. Like something essential had been ripped out and never returned.
His trembling fingers dug into the cold stone.
"What... what's happening here...?"
His vision swam.
Across the ruined throne hall, two figures clashed amidst collapsing stone and black fire.
One was the nightmare.
The Soulreaver creature.
The thing that had looked at him with those impossible white eyes.
Even thinking about it made his stomach twist.
Aron immediately lowered his head, afraid the monster would somehow notice him again.
"What kind of creature is that...?"
His voice came out as little more than a whisper.
"It's terrifying..."
The black flames twisted across the hall.
Every movement from the creature felt wrong.
Not dangerous. Wrong. Like something that wasn't supposed to exist.
Then his gaze shifted toward the other figure.
The man fighting it.
Aron didn't recognize him.
He should have.
Some distant part of his heart felt strangely familiar whenever he looked at him.
But his mind found nothing.
No memory. No name. No explanation.
Only confusion.
"Who... is that man...?"
The stranger moved through the battlefield with impossible speed.
Shattering weapons. Breaking stone.
Fighting the nightmare head-on.
Aron's eyes widened.
"How can he fight something like that...?"
The question left his lips before he could stop it.
Nothing about this felt real anymore.
Monsters.
Black flames.
Floating screens.
Reality bending.
None of it made sense.
"No..."
Aron slowly shook his head.
His voice trembled.
"No... this has to be a dream."
His fingers tightened around the broken stone beneath him.
"It has to be..."
The words sounded less convincing every time he repeated them.
His vision suddenly blurred.
The edges of the world darkened.
A heavy ringing filled his ears.
His body swayed.
"Ah..."
The pillar beside him seemed farther away than before.
Even sitting upright felt exhausting.
The battle in front of him became increasingly difficult to focus on.
The figures stretched.
Blurred.
Split into doubles.
His heartbeat sounded distant.
Slow.
Heavy.
"Why am I so tired...?"
His arm slipped. His shoulder struck the stone.
Aron couldn't stop himself. His strength was simply gone.
The last fragments of resistance left his body.
Slowly, he slid down the pillar until he was lying against the cold floor.
The battle continued somewhere in the distance.
The sounds felt far away. Muffled. Like he was sinking underwater.
His eyelids grew heavier.
"What's... happening to me...?"
The question barely escaped his lips.
No answer came.
Only darkness creeping closer from the edges of his vision.
And the faint silhouette of the unknown man still standing between him and the nightmare.
Then even that began to fade.
Zzzzsup!
[ CRITICAL WARNING ]
Cognitive Split Detected
Stability: Dropping
Control Loss Risk: Rising
Zekai's sense of balance tilted alongside reality, as if his physical form couldn't decide which version of existence it was supposed to follow.
Zekai's knees weakened beneath him. He dropped heavily to one knee, pressing a hand against the floor. His visual field split again, two distinct versions of the throne hall overlapping for a disorienting second before collapsing back into one. His head throbbed with a sharp, relentless agony, and a thin stream of blood began to run from his nose.
"…Not yet," he muttered, his vision swimming.
His body felt as though it was tearing itself apart at a cellular level just to maintain basic control.
"Good," he growled, forcing his jaw tight. "That means I'm still the one in control."
Zzzzsup!
[ SYSTEM STRAIN ]
Output Threshold Exceeded
Backlash: Active
"…So this is the limit…"
His instinct already understood the underlying truth of the condition. This newly awakened power was actively burning away something vital inside his soul just to keep his limbs moving. Zekai's consciousness flickered at the edges, his physical strength fading far too rapidly.
'…Did I push it too far…?'
Perhaps this stolen authority had always possessed a strict limit. Perhaps he had crossed the safety margin blocks ago.
But Zekai wasn't done.
Not yet. He forced himself to stand and opened his eyes.
"No matter what happened—Aron had to survive this."
"I promised him."
Then one last time. Just once more.
"I'll protect him."
"No matter what it costs."
If he permitted his body to stop here, every outcome ended in their erasure.
"Whatever it takes."
He stood fully erect, his gaze locking onto the struggling knight.
"Yeah…" he breathed. "We're leaving this place… alive."
He could still force his muscles to move. That was enough. He launched forward, pouring every remaining drop of his life force into the charge.
"AHHH—!"
Zzzzsup!
[ OVERRIDE ]
Limiter: Ignored
Stability: Critical
Proceeding...
"I don't need to win," Zekai snarled, taking a heavy step forward.
"I just need you to stop existing."
Zekai's fists slammed into the dark armor again and again in a relentless cadence. Each hit landed before the previous impact could fully dissipate through the metal, stacking the kinetic force faster than the armor's integrity could recover.
He targeted the visor, the breastplate, the vulnerable joints—wherever his knuckles could reach. Each strike broke a piece of the vessel, cracking the black iron apart until the entire structure began to collapse inward.
"Break."
Zekai's vision blurred into dark vignettes, but his arms refused to halt. He was entirely relentless; he couldn't afford to pause. His fist connected one final time, the massive impact running completely through the knight's torso, and the black armor shattered entirely into worthless shards.
The vessel collapsed into dust.
The Soulreaver burst out of the broken armor.
It tried to reform—but couldn't hold its shape anymore.
Still reaching.
Still trying to exist.
Then, a raspy, collective voice echoed directly inside Zekai's mind.
"Return… what was never yours to hold."
Zekai frowned, his gaze cold.
"…Return what?"
The Soulreaver didn't offer a response. Its jagged head slowly tilted, its white gaze locking onto a coordinate directly behind Zekai's shoulder. A faint red glow reflected within its hollow eyes.
It was staring at the black stone cube lying on the floor.
Of course. That's what it wants.
Zekai took a deliberate step to the side, completely blocking the monster's line of sight with his own body.
"…Whatever that is..." Zekai's voice dropped into a frozen baseline.
"You're not getting it."
But Zekai wasn't finished with the execution. Not yet.
He reached out and grabbed the shadow essence. He didn't grasp its physical form; he grabbed something infinitely deeper.
"I'm not destroying you," Zekai whispered, his grip tightening until the air hissed.
"I'm removing you."
The space around his hand began to tremble violently. The creature's form broke apart, scattering into the air, only to be forced back into his grip by his sheer authority. Again and again, he crushed the essence, until there was no left for the predator to return to.
Zekai removed its right to exist. He stripped it away piece by piece, until the rules of existence itself rejected its presence.
No body. No shadow. No outcome where it exists.
"There is no second result for you," Zekai said flatly.
He struck the core one last time, until absolutely nothing remained of the threat. There was no regeneration protocol to execute. This time—it was truly gone.
Zzzzsup!
[ CONFIRMATION ]
Target: Erased
Residual Presence: None
The final fragments of the entity burned away. The black form disintegrated into harmless grey ash, scattering into the cold drafts of the throne hall.
Silence returned.
Like the world corrected itself.
Zekai stood alone among the debris, his chest heaving as he drew shallow, burning breaths into his lungs. He stared at his trembling hands, the crimson blood still dripping from his cut palm onto the stones.
"…What comes next…?" he muttered to the quiet room.
No answer.
Of course there wasn't.
His fingers slowly curled into a tight fist. But his mind understood one absolute truth now. This terrifying encounter wasn't the conclusion of the fate.
"…Then I'll just keep moving forward," Zekai whispered.
If anything—this nightmare was only the beginning of a much larger ledger.
✦ Ch23 - Even If I Break II ✦