Aron pressed his back against the fractured pillar, trying to make himself smaller than he was.
His breath came shallow, uneven. Each inhale burned a little more than the last, and each exhale gave back less.
Whatever the Soulreaver had pulled out of him, it had taken almost everything with it. His body felt hollowed out, like something essential had been scooped free and never put back.
His fingers dug into the cold stone.
"What... what's happening..."
His vision swam.
Across the wreckage of the throne hall, two shapes tore into each other through falling stone and black fire.
One was the nightmare — the creature with the impossible white eyes. Just thinking about it turned his stomach.
He ducked his head lower, afraid it would somehow feel him watching.
"What is that thing," he whispered. "It's terrifying."
The black flame twisted and curled across the ruined floor. Every motion the creature made felt like an error in the world's code — not dangerous so much as wrong, like something that had never been meant to exist here.
Then his eyes drifted to the other one. The man fighting it.
He didn't know that face. He should have. Something in his chest pulled toward him anyway, some thread with no name attached to it, no memory to explain why it mattered.
"Who... is he..."
The stranger moved through the fight at a speed that shouldn't have belonged to a human body — breaking weapons, cracking stone, meeting the nightmare head-on without flinching.
Aron's eyes went wide.
"How is he even fighting that."
The question slipped out before he could stop it. None of this made sense anymore. Monsters. Black fire. Screens made of light hanging in the air. Reality bending around two fighting shapes like paper folding.
"No." He shook his head slowly. "This has to be a dream."
His grip tightened on the broken stone beneath him.
"It has to be."
The words sounded thinner every time he said them.
His vision blurred at the edges. The world darkened at the corners like a lens closing. A heavy ringing filled his ears, and his body swayed without his permission.
"Ah..."
The pillar beside him seemed to drift further away. Even staying upright had become its own kind of labor.
The fight in front of him smeared into blur — figures stretching, splitting into doubles, his own heartbeat sounding like it was arriving from somewhere down a long hallway.
"Why am I so tired..."
His shoulder hit the stone. He hadn't meant to fall. There was simply nothing left in him to stay upright with.
He slid down the pillar until the cold floor caught him.
The battle kept going somewhere in the distance, sound muffled like it was reaching him through water.
His eyelids weighed more than they should have.
"What's happening to me..."
No answer came. Just the dark, closing in from every direction, and somewhere past the edge of it, the blurred shape of the stranger still standing between him and the nightmare.
Then even that faded out.
Zzzzsup!
[ CRITICAL WARNING ]
Cognitive Split Detected
Stability: Dropping
Control Loss Risk: Rising
Zekai's balance tilted along with the room, his body unsure which version of reality it was supposed to obey.
His knees buckled. He caught himself on one hand, palm flat against the stone, and for one disorienting second the hall doubled in his vision — two overlapping versions of the same ruin — before folding back into one. Pain split through his skull, sharp and relentless, and blood began running warm from his nose.
"...Not yet," he muttered, vision swimming.
His body felt like it was tearing itself apart from the inside just to keep his limbs answering him.
"Good." He forced his jaw shut, teeth grinding. "Means I'm still the one driving."
Zzzzsup!
[ SYSTEM STRAIN ]
Output Threshold Exceeded
Backlash: Active
"...So this is the ceiling."
His body already understood what his mind hadn't caught up to yet — this power was burning something out of his soul just to keep him standing. His awareness kept flickering at the edges, strength draining faster than he could account for.
Did I push too far.
Maybe this stolen authority had always come with a hard limit. Maybe he'd blown past it several hits ago without noticing.
Didn't matter.
He wasn't done.
He forced himself upright and opened his eyes.
"Whatever else happens — Aron survives this."
"I promised him that."
One more push. Just once more.
"I'll protect him."
"Whatever it costs me."
If he let his body stop here, both of them ended the same way — erased, no second draft.
"Whatever it takes."
He straightened fully, locking his eyes on the knight still struggling to reform.
"Yeah." A breath. "We're both walking out of here."
His muscles still answered. That was enough. He poured whatever life force he had left into the charge.
"AHHH—!"
Zzzzsup!
[ OVERRIDE ]
Limiter: Ignored
Stability: Critical
Proceeding...
"I don't need to win." He closed the distance in one heavy step.
"I just need you gone."
His fists slammed into the black armor, one blow chasing the last before the shock of the previous hit had finished traveling through the metal, stacking force faster than the armor could absorb it.
He went for the visor. The breastplate. Every joint his knuckles could reach. Each hit cracked another piece loose, black iron folding inward, the whole structure beginning to give.
"Break."
His vision blurred at the edges into dark, creeping vignettes. His arms didn't stop moving anyway — he couldn't afford to. One last impact drove clean through the knight's torso, and the armor shattered completely into worthless fragments.
The vessel dropped into dust.
The Soulreaver tore free of the wreckage, trying to reform — and failing to hold any shape at all.
Still reaching. Still trying to exist.
A raspy voice, layered with too many throats, echoed straight into Zekai's skull.
"Return what was never yours to hold."
He went cold. "Return what?"
No answer. Its jagged head tilted, white gaze locking onto something past his shoulder, a faint red reflection catching in the hollows of its eyes.
The black stone cube. Still lying on the floor.
Of course. That's what this was always about.
He stepped sideways, putting his own body between the creature and the cube.
"Whatever that thing is." His voice dropped flat, final. "You're not touching it."
But he wasn't finished. He reached out and closed his hand around the shadow essence — not the shape of it, something underneath the shape.
"I'm not killing you," he said, grip tightening until the air around his fist hissed. "I'm removing you."
The space around his hand shook. The creature's form scattered apart, tried to flee outward, and got dragged back into his grip every single time. He crushed it down, again and again, until there was nothing left for it to reform around.
He stripped its right to exist. Piece by piece, until reality itself stopped making room for it.
No body left. No shadow left. No version of events where it still existed.
"No second outcome for you," he said.
One last crush of his hand, and there was nothing left of the threat at all. No regeneration protocol to trigger this time. Just gone.
Zzzzsup!
[ CONFIRMATION ]
Target: Erased
Residual Presence: None
The last fragments burned away into gray ash, scattering into the cold drafts moving through the ruined hall.
Silence came back like the room had corrected itself.
Zekai stood alone in the wreckage, chest heaving, dragging in shallow, burning breaths. He looked down at his own shaking hands, blood still running from the gash in his palm and dripping onto the stone.
"...What now," he murmured to the empty room.
Nothing answered.
He hadn't expected it to.
His fingers curled slowly into a fist. One truth had settled in him with total clarity. Whatever this had been, it wasn't the end of anything.
"...Then I keep moving forward."
If tonight had proven one thing, it was that the ledger had barely started opening.
✦ End of Chapter 24 - Nightmare Beginning ✦