"Who would have thought... a few years have passed in the blink of an eye."
Lunas let out a wide yawn, wiping away a stray tear from the corner of his eye before looking toward Quân.
"...So, this is the junior disciple?"
Lunas reminisced. It had been a few years since the last time Ron took anyone in to help cultivate their potential.
Even Lunas himself was only reluctantly considered Ron's disciple, and he had only ever been taught a few strange martial arts techniques.
The last time he knew Ron taking on disciples was back in 2993, when he took in Moris and a blonde girl.
Looking back at Quân, Lunas only felt an odd sensation—like looking at an invisible phantom who possessed no magic whatsoever.
Lunas had carried Quân from his previous room into this new one. After all, Quân was the only one who had been injected with a sedative, unlike those other two.
Ron had already prepared several vials of medicine here to guard against any unforeseen complications, so Lunas merely had to adapt to whatever situation arose.
Lunas scratched his head, casting another glance at Quân, who possessed an unusually stark white-silver hair.
Plucking a strand of his own hair, Lunas examined it closely and compared it to Quân's.
If one paid close attention, Ron's hair was a muted brown, Quân's was a stark silver-white, while Lunas's own hair—once a vibrant red—had drained entirely into a pale gray.
It wasn't just Lunas's hair, but the entire city as well. Everything had transformed from colorful to completely bland, painted in a single monochrome gray.
Yet Lunas couldn't care less about that; after all, he was far too lazy to bother over such things.
His top priority was sleep. He desperately needed to catch some rest first before dealing with any of this. Besides, Ron usually handed him the answers before he even had a chance to ask.
Rubbing his tired eyes, Lunas took one last look at Quân before stepping out of the room and pulling the door shut.
...
Ten minutes later.
Quân's arm twitched violently. His breathing gradually slowed, and his eyes slowly fluttered open, revealing milk-white, vacant pupils...
He gasped greedily for air, breathing heavily before a sharp, agonizing burn shot through his chest.
"AGGHHHHHHHHH!"
Quân launched himself upright off the bed, collapsing forward as he tried desperately to steady himself.
He clutched his head and gagged violently, straining to suppress an invisible, suffocating blockage.
An intense, unrelenting itch flared up across his body. He slammed his hands against his neck, scratching frantically like a madman, tearing at his own flesh with wild desperation.
His pupils darted around erratically, his dark brown irises suddenly becoming completely submerged in blood-red veins.
"Aghhh!"
Quân suddenly hucked up a clump of phlegm, then began dry-heaving and vomiting all over the soft duvet. His entire body caved in as he began slipping back into unconsciousness.
His frame convulsed repeatedly, with his body violently stripping away the last remaining shreds of his lucidity.
BANG!
"What the fuck?!"
Lunas slammed the door open and burst into the room, holding a syringe of sedative alongside a medical kit.
"Easy! Relax, don't tense up!"
Lunas grabbed Quân's arm, swiftly searching for a viable vein to administer the sedative and bring him under control. However, Quân's violent thrashing made the procedure dangerously erratic.
Lunas pinned Quân down, attempting to stabilize him.
"Drugs?! ACE-3 stuff?! Did Ron give this to you?! Listen to me! Hey?!"
Lunas tried to pry Quân's hands away from his neck to prevent further self-harm, but panic seized him when he noticed that Quân's fingers were already broken, bent backward at sickening angles, and his neck was completely crisscrossed with deep, ragged claw marks.
A few of the gashes were as deep as knife wounds. Fortunately, the carotid artery remained largely uninjured, meaning the bleeding could still be managed.
Promptly springing into action, Lunas released Quân and reached for the adjacent bedsheet.
Leaning his weight forward, Lunas firmly seized Quân's arms and wrapped the cloth around them with a swift, powerful movement to bind his wrists. He then pinned Quân down with his leg so the boy could no longer thrash around.
"Dammit!"
Dropping one hand, Lunas grabbed the syringe and decisively plunged the needle right through the thin layer of fabric he had deliberately left exposed.
Pfft!
"Calm down! I'm doing this as gently as I possibly can!"
With that done, Lunas tossed the spent syringe aside, holding Quân still to keep him calm while carefully checking whether the boy was stabilizing.
However, upon noticing Quân's jaw, Lunas gritted his teeth and lifted him up slightly...
"Dammit! Stop biting your tongue!"
Lunas placed Quân back down on the bed in a recovery position, unbuttoning his shirt and propping a pillow beneath him to keep his neck tilted sideways.
Suddenly, Lunas froze. It wasn't because Quân's condition had worsened, but because Quân's mouth was moving again, feebly mouthing words.
"...W-Wh... are you?"
Though no coherent sound escaped his lips, looking into those completely drained eyes caused Lunas to instinctively state his identity.
"Lunas, One Line Branch 1 Chief. Relax, you're not dying. I'm here to help you!"
Lunas had assumed his words would reassure Quân and bring him back from the edge. But contrary to his hopes, Quân only grew increasingly aberrant.
The blood vessels along his neck began to bulge noticeably under the skin, and green veins flared across his face.
Blood trickled from Quân's mouth, spilling a dark crimson stream laden with shreds of torn tissue onto the pillow.
"Fuck!"
Lunas pulled the pillow out from beneath Quân's head and adjusted his position so that his head tilted downward, preventing blood from choking his airway. Reaching into the medical kit, he pulled out a roll of gauze and bound it around Quân's neck to stem the arterial bleeding.
Yet, the moment he lifted Quân's neck to wrap the first loop of bandage, he froze in utter horror at the grotesque sight beneath the white gauze.
It felt as though countless worms and ants were writhing and surfacing right beneath the skin—so vivid that Lunas briefly doubted his own sanity, wondering if he was suffering from a hallucination.
He instinctively glanced at Quân. Quân was staring right back at him, tears welling in his eyes, his glassy glaze betraying what little conscious thought he had left.
"...RO-N?"
Quân's lips parted feebly, desperately attempting to convey something, but Lunas's face only twisted into a strained grimace, drenched in sweat and sheer helplessness.
Finally, Quân's eyelids fluttered shut, and he sank back into the deep, suffocating darkness, entirely oblivious to whatever was to come.