When Damian stepped outside the SFD building, the sky had already begun to darken.
Alaric was waiting near the car, leaning against the driver's side door. He waved once when he spotted his son and gestured for him to hurry.
Damian didn't waste time as he crossed the parking lot and slid into the passenger seat without a word. Alaric got in after him and pulled out into the street.
A few minutes passed in silence before he finally spoke.
"They didn't do anything illegal in there, did they?"
"Not really. Just asked some random questions."
"Hmm... I see."
That was the end of the conversation and the rest of the ride passed in heavy silence. Damian eventually broke it himself.
"…Where are we going?"
"Your uncle's place. Lyandra and Luna are already there waiting for you. You have some serious injuries, and considering the nature of today's incident, it's better to get you treated quietly and away from official records."
The 'uncle' Alaric was referring to was his younger brother – Sebastian Valcor.
A scientific genius in the medical field and an A rank expert with an obsessive love for skills related to healing, biology, and human enhancement.
Sebastian had been behind several recent medical breakthroughs that had quietly saved thousands of lives across the Federation.
In the current world, despite the addition of magic and Aura, science hasn't lost its value. If anything, it has become more important than ever.
New breakthroughs and inventions were happening every day, and humanity's ability to fight monsters depended just as much on technology and research as on individual awakeners.
In short, scientists were the new celebrities.
And… Sebastian was one of them.
Alaric and his younger brother didn't get along well, though there was no real hatred between them. They'd grown apart over the years for reasons Damian had never asked about. In the past fifteen years, they had only met a handful of times.
As Damian was lost in his own thoughts, the car came to a sudden stop.
"We're here. Let's go inside. You must be hungry."
****
When Damian and Alaric stepped through the front door, they found Lyandra and Luna sitting on a sofa across from a lean, bespectacled man with messy dark hair – Sebastian.
"Brother!"
The moment Luna saw Damian, she sprang up from the sofa and ran toward him.
But the moment she got close enough for him to reach –
Slap!
The sound cracked through the room.
Luna's head snapped to the side, as she crumpled to the floor, her hair falling forward to cover her face.
"Damian!"
"Damy!"
Alaric and Lyandra both shouted at the same time, their voices sharp with shock.
From the moment Damian had been old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, he had never once raised a hand against Luna. Not even in childhood arguments and not even in moments of frustration.
And now he had… hard enough to knock her off her feet.
Both parents stared at him, waiting for an explanation.
But… Damian's expression was raw with exhaustion. When he spoke, his voice sounded like it was being dragged out of him.
"Just watch the CCTV footage from the seminar hall. I know you'll have access to it through your contacts."
That was all he said.
He turned away from his stunned family and walked straight toward Sebastian, who had been watching the whole exchange with the awkward, eyes-darting expression of a man desperately wishing he could be anywhere else.
"I'm injured, uncle. Let's get this over with."
"R-Right, right! Yes. Come with me. It's been so long, Damy, look how much you've grown–"
Sebastian latched onto the chance to escape the family drama and led his nephew quickly out of the living room, talking the entire way.
****
"So many wounds… you really did have a rough day, huh?"
"It was alright."
Sebastian's hands moved with practiced precision, his fingers glowing faintly green as healing energy flowed into the worst of Damian's injuries.
The stab wound in his side closed first, then the cuts on his arms and then the bruises along his ribs that he hadn't even bothered to mention.
"...You've changed a lot since I last saw you. But I think it's for the better."
Damian didn't ask what he meant as he was too tired to care.
"Should I clear up the scars too?"
"No. Don't remove them."
Sebastian paused, tilting his head in genuine confusion.
"But it would only take a few seconds with my skills. You've got quite an ugly one across your face, you know. Right side of your forehead, slicing through your eyebrow."
Sebastian held up a small mirror.
Damian looked at himself for the first time since the bombing. The scar was exactly where his uncle described, running from the upper left of his forehead, down through his eyebrow, ending just above his eye. He must have gotten it when the blast threw him into the wall.
It made him look older, harder and more dangerous than a fifteen-year-old should look.
"It's fine... I want to keep this scar. It'll remind me to stay alert."
That wasn't the real reason.
Damian wanted to keep it until he had killed every single member of the organization that had attacked Norrington School.
The scar would be a daily reminder, every time he looked in a mirror, every time he washed his face, every time he caught his reflection in a window.
A reminder that right now, he was nothing more than an ant.
'An ant so small that even the lowest dregs of society could harm me...'
His crimson eyes grew cold.
Ever since regaining his memories, Damian had been growing more vengeful by the day. He could feel it sharpening inside him like a blade being honed against stone.
Sebastian shrugged, unbothered, and brought him something to eat before leaving the room and giving him some privacy.
"Status."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Damian Valcor
Age: 15
Rank: F-
Talent: S
Core Attributes:
Strength: 12 → 15
Speed: 13 → 17
Stamina: 15 → 19
Vitality: 20 → 22
Aura: F
Will: 120 → 129
Skills: —
Shooting: C+ → B-
Hand Combat: B
Aura Control: E → E+
Weapon Arts: —
━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Combat experience was the best teacher.
Looking at the changes in his stats, Damian now understood another path to power.
Each life-or-death moment refined his abilities in ways that hours of training could never replicate.
He also needed to get serious about manipulating bullets with his mind. Today's incident had taught him just how valuable a gun could be in this world. The Federation might consider it an outdated weapon, but that perception was exactly the advantage he needed.
Every weapon was, in the end, just a means of expressing power.
And he intended to express a lot of it.
But soon, his thoughts drifted somewhere darker.
To Luna.
'Sigh…'
The reason he'd slapped her earlier was obvious, at least, obvious to him. Standing up in front of tens of terrified hostages, raising her voice against the leader and becoming an intentional target so he wouldn't choose someone else…
He would have been a fool not to figure out what she'd been thinking… She couldn't bear the thought of anyone else dying in her place. So she'd offered herself first.
'How incredibly foolish.'
Others might watch the same footage and see bravery. A girl sacrificing herself for her classmates and teachers. A noble act worth admiring.
But Damian knew her better than anyone in this world. He knew her motivations, he knew her heart and he knew exactly what kind of decision she'd made when she stood up.
'She's too kind for this world.'
His thoughts grew restless, anger bubbling beneath the surface in a way he couldn't focus through. He couldn't even bring himself to start training.
Just as the frustration was reaching its peak, the door of the room creaked open.
And… Luna stepped inside.
Her head was lowered, her eyes were puffy and red.
There was a faint mark on her cheek where his hand had connected, though Sebastian had probably healed the worst of it.
She didn't move past the doorway as she just stood there, eyes on the floor, waiting for him to acknowledge her.
"Come here."
Luna flinched at the coldness in his voice. But she still came, slowly, until she stood in front of him.
"…Sit down."
She lowered herself onto the edge of the bed.
Without warning, Damian reached out, grabbed her by the collar, and pulled her face close to his.
Their faces were inches apart now, close enough that he could feel her breath against his skin and see the tears already forming in the corners of her eyes.
His voice came out low, quiet and stripped of all the heat from earlier.
"You know… ever since I got my memories back, I haven't known how to express what I am. So I've been acting, pretending to be the version of me you all remember… But you saw through it almost immediately and told me I could be my real self around you. That you wouldn't judge me."
He paused. His grip on her collar tightened slightly.
"I don't know what I've become, Luna. But I do know what I'm not. I'm not the kind big brother who would let your stupid mistakes slide. I'm not the fool who would smile and tell you everything was okay when you put your life on the line for strangers."
His voice dropped lower.
"You can see through me, that's fine, but I can see through you just as easily."
He raised his other hand and used two fingers to lift her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes directly.
"So listen to me very carefully, Luna Valcor. I'm only going to say this once. If you EVER again decide to put your life on the line for some fools that I couldn't care less about–"
He paused, just long enough for the silence to feel dangerous.
"I will kill every single one of them myself. Every person you saved by stepping forward and every face you traded your life for.
Any fool can die, Luna! Dying is easy. If you're so determined to be kind, then get strong enough that you don't have to die to save anyone!"
Luna's breath caught.
Her silver eyes searched his face, and her innate skill flared without her meaning to call it. For a brief moment, she could see the emotions pouring off him in waves. It was not anger or the fury she'd been bracing herself for.
But… Fear.
Pure, raw and suffocating fear!
He wasn't yelling at her because he was angry. He was yelling because the thought of losing her was tearing him apart from the inside, and this was the only way he knew how to express it.
She tried to look away, she couldn't bear the intensity of what she was seeing in him, but Damian's hand caught her chin again and forced her back.
Their foreheads were nearly touching now.
"Look at me! Listen carefully, because I will never repeat this… I forbid you from dying for other people, I forbid you from ever putting yourself in that position again. I forbid you from–"
His voice cracked.
"–from leaving me."
He didn't realize that his own eyes had filled with tears until one of them slipped down his cheek.
Luna's lips parted, but no words came out.
She just stared at him, at the boy who had been carrying two lifetimes of weight inside his head since yesterday morning, the boy she had loved her entire life, the stranger he had become and the person he still was underneath all of it.
The room felt impossibly still.
She wanted to say something… Anything.
But her throat had closed up, and the only thing she could feel was the ache of his pain pressing against her own chest like it belonged to her.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then, slowly and quietly, Luna leaned forward.
Her cheek brushed against his as she moved closer, and her lips came to rest just beside his ear.
She whispered, her voice shaky and barely audible –
"…If you ever raise your hand against me again…"
Her breath was warm, her tone was something he had never heard from her before, soft, but with an edge underneath it that made his entire body go still.
"…I'll punish you."
She lingered there for half a second longer... Long enough for him to feel the press of her face against his.
Then she pulled away, her cheeks burning bright red, and turned without looking at him again.
She walked out of the room as quickly as she'd come in, leaving the door slightly ajar behind her.
Damian sat frozen on the bed.
His hand was still half-raised from where it had been holding her chin, his mouth was slightly open and his tears had stopped without him noticing…
His mind, for the first time all day, was completely blank.
'…What the hell just happened?!'
He didn't have an answer as he sat there for a long time, staring at the door she had walked through, the lingering warmth of her breath against his ear refusing to fade.
Eventually, the exhaustion of the past two days caught up to him in one crushing wave. His eyelids grew heavy and his thoughts grew slower.
He didn't even remember laying back against the pillow.
And for the first time since regaining his memories, Damian fell into dreams that weren't full of blood.