The bear-like officer stood behind a woman whose Aura made it hard to breathe in her presence.
She was restraining herself... At least most of it. But every now and then, traces of her power leaked through and pressed against everyone in the room like an invisible weight.
Her name was Ashley Blackheart, S Rank awakened, one of the most dangerous officers in the Special Forces Department.
The Norrington incident had triggered massive outrage among the higher authorities of the Federation, and Ashley had been dispatched immediately to handle the situation personally.
"…Is that all?"
"Yes ma'am. Every testimony we've gathered points to the same conclusion. Damian Valcor was acting alone."
Brian Oleaf, the bear-like officer, finished his briefing.
"Any criminal records?"
"None. He has a clean file."
"Hmm."
Ashley wasn't satisfied with that answer. The way the bodies had been found, the methods used, the precision of the kills, none of it matched a fifteen-year-old who'd never held a weapon before today.
The boy fought like someone who'd been doing this for years.
"Is the CCTV footage ready?"
"Yes ma'am. One moment."
Brian gestured to his subordinates, and the large monitor in the room flickered to life. Footage from every camera in Norrington School began playing simultaneously across the screen.
And the horror of Damian Valcor was revealed.
The officers watched in tense silence. They saw each fight, each kill and each near-miss where Damian should have died and somehow hadn't. The footage was slowed down, replayed and examined from every angle.
Whisper
Hushed whispers spread through the room.
The officers were surprised, awed and most of all… afraid.
This was a fifteen-year-old boy, a kid who hadn't even joined an Academy yet. None of them – trained and experienced veterans of the SFD – could have replicated what they were watching. It was simply too clean, too efficient and too practiced.
What set Damian apart wasn't his power or his skills. It wasn't even his ruthlessness.
It was the way he fought.
"…He used everything as a weapon."
"His first kill was made with a set of damn keys... Who does that shit?!"
"Look at how he kept stabbing that one… He didn't stop until the body went still."
"No matter how I look at this, this is clearly not his first time killing someone."
Ashley and Brian exchanged a meaningful glance, the same conclusion was forming in both their minds.
The footage continued until it reached the moment in Luna's classroom… the pile of bodies, Damian methodically checking each one, and the terrorist behind him moving in for the kill.
"That's his sister's classroom."
Brian's quiet observation made everything click for Ashley.
'So… he's not completely emotionless. He still has feelings... Just for his family.'
The footage shifted to the torture of the terrorist who had stabbed him.
Many officers in the room began shifting uncomfortably as the gore escalated. Damian's face throughout the entire process remained eerily blank. He was clearly not enjoying it or hating it, just doing it the way someone might cut wood or sharpen a knife.
Ashley narrated what she was seeing aloud, profiling him in real time while a junior profiler beside her wrote everything down.
"His approach was driven by logic, not emotion. He didn't ask any questions at first. Instead, he stripped his enemy of dignity through controlled violence, making the victim feel that his life had no value. Once that was established, the terrorist offered more information without being asked. He even falsified parts of it slightly, hoping to remain useful enough to be kept alive."
"…Classic SFD interrogation tactics."
Brian's voice was quiet and the other officers nodded slowly.
The methods Damian had used were all standard SFD doctrine. But there was a problem.
Those tactics weren't taught for use on humans.
They were taught for interrogating captured monsters, sentient creatures from beyond the portals who couldn't be reasoned with through normal means. Using them on people was forbidden.
The footage continued as they watched Damian cut off the man's head without a flicker of expression.
Ashley's lips pressed into a thin line.
She was starting to realize she didn't like this kid at all.
His every behavior, every method and every choice…. They were criminal through and through, the patterns of a man who had spent his life on the wrong side of the law.
The footage shifted to the seminar hall, the eight-on-one slaughter.
And then –
The torture.
"…"
Silence spread through the room as nobody spoke for a long time.
They had already seen the half-dead leader in person earlier, so they knew what was coming. But watching it happen in real time, watching a fifteen-year-old methodically dismantle a grown man piece by piece, with the cold patience of someone who had all the time in the world, was different.
Ashley's face cycled through several emotions before settling into something carefully controlled. She drew in a slow, shuddering breath and turned her gaze toward the observation glass.
Inside the interrogation room, Damian was still asleep. Slumped in the chair, his head tilted slightly forward, his bloody uniform stuck to his skin.
'Never mind. This kid's a nutjob… Definitely a psycho!'
She glanced at the officers around her. Several of them couldn't keep their composure.
Then her eyes settled on Brian.
"Let's go meet him. His father didn't seem like a simple man either. We can't keep him here for long."
Brian nodded, his expression solemn.
He hadn't forgotten the way that man had immobilized him with a single touch on his shoulder. Whoever Alaric Valcor was, he wasn't just a concerned parent.
****
While the officers watched and analyzed and profiled him from behind one-way glass, Damian was somewhere else entirely.
He was dreaming.
It was a dark alley… The kind of place where light forgot to reach.
Two children huddled together against a brick wall, both of them painfully thin and both of them filthy, the kind of malnourished that only came from years, not months.
They were fighting with rats over food.
The older of the two, maybe six years old, finally managed to snatch a scrap from the rats. He held it carefully in both hands, then turned and pressed it into the smaller child's palms.
"Eat it."
The little one looked up at him. The older boy was smiling with a tired and genuine smile that didn't belong to a child his age.
The smaller child smiled back and started eating.
Damian watched from outside the dream, an observer who couldn't be seen.
He had grown up in a warm house with loving parents and a sister who adored him. He had never gone hungry, he had never feared the dark and he had never had to fight rats for food.
Watching this, watching whoever these two starving children were, made his chest hurt in a way he couldn't quite name.
Then… he saw the older boy do something else.
He waited until the smaller one was distracted by eating, then he reached down to the alley floor, scooped up a small handful of dirt, and ate it. Just to make his stomach feel less empty.
Days seemed to pass in the dream as the alley shifted and the light changed.
Then, one day, a black car pulled up at the end of the alley.
A rich man stepped out, surrounded by bodyguards. He was middle-aged, well-fed, and his eyes lit up the moment they fell on the older child.
"Oh, this one's perfect. Fits my taste completely… hehehe."
He gestured and his bodyguards moved.
They grabbed the older child and dragged him forward as the smaller one was thrown roughly to the side, hitting the wall hard enough to make him cry out.
The rich man took out a knife.
And began to play.
He started with the eyes, slowly and methodically... Enjoying every second of it as the older boy screamed and begged.
"AHHH! Please, p-please stop–"
The screaming irritated the rich man, so he cut out the boy's tongue and threw it onto the dirty pavement.
Then the ears.
Then the tendons in his hands so the fingers couldn't move.
Then the fingers themselves, removed one joint at a time.
Damian felt something cold settle deep in his stomach.
Every single thing this man was doing, every cut, every choice, every method…
It matched what Damian had done to the terrorist leader!
'How is this possible?!... What is this dream?! Who are these kids?! How did I–'
His thoughts spiraled.
'I acted based on my past life memories... I wanted to make my enemy suffer as much as possible! That's all this was! It has to be a coincidence–'
But the longer he watched, the more he knew it wasn't.
The rich man finished what he wanted to do. He laughed, wiped his hands clean on a handkerchief, and climbed back into his car. The bodyguards followed, the vehicle drove away into the dark, leaving the alley silent except for the wet, ragged breathing of a dying child.
The smaller one, barely three years old, his face streaked with tears, slowly crawled out from where he'd been thrown.
He didn't understand what had happened, he couldn't possibly understand… But he saw his big brother lying on the ground in pain, and that was enough.
He crawled closer.
"Bwother? Why you not move? Why dat man hit you?"
His tiny voice trembled.
"Don't cwy… It's awlight… I'm hwere noww."
Damian's eyes filled with tears.
The older boy heard his little brother's voice and something flickered across what was left of his face, recognition, love and desperation.
He raised his right hand, the hand with no fingers left as he tried to reach toward the sound.
He couldn't see his brother anymore, the man had taken his eyes!
He couldn't speak to his brother anymore, the man had taken his tongue!
He couldn't feel his brother anymore, the man had taken his fingers!
But he tried… God, he tried...
His ruined hand searched the air, trembling, reaching for the only person in the world he had left.
"Aisio… schay aiive… Ive happiiy… Gee power... Gee moiiie… I yow–"
(Alessio… stay alive… Live happily... Get power… Get money… I love–)
The little boy didn't understand, the words were too broken, too wet, too distorted.
He only caught one word out of all of them.
Power.
And the hand fell.
Damian was already crying, tears streamed down his face as the pieces locked together in his mind, one by one, and the truth he didn't want to see became impossible to ignore.
He knelt down beside the smaller child.
And… for the first time in the dream, he looked at the little boy's face properly.
"…It's me."