Sebastian felt something he'd never felt before in his life.
His mind reeled. His body refused to answer him for a second. Pain spread through his skull like something had physically forced its way inside and left a footprint.
He pushed himself up slow, breath uneven, thoughts still scrambling to catch up with what had just happened. A hand went to the back of his head, trying to steady himself against the throb.
He staggered.
"Damn it."
The door burst open.
A young officer rushed in, moving straight to his side and helping him sit up.
"Captain — you were thrown?"
Her eyes found Zekai next.
Surprise crossed her face first, then something softer, something she couldn't quite name.
Not fear. Not hostility.
Something else entirely — the kind of thing that made it hard to look away, because nothing about him fit inside a category she already had.
Sebastian let out a slow breath. "I'm fine."
His fingers trembled once before he willed them still, like the tremor had been noted and dismissed on the spot.
He got to his feet after a few seconds, control settling back over him.
Then he looked at Zekai again. Not calm this time. With interest.
"...Oh, this is interesting." Quiet, almost to himself.
"Iris. Bring the Grave Lens."
She nodded and left at a near-run.
Sebastian returned to his seat but didn't speak right away. He pushed his glasses up with one knuckle, slow, deliberate — and studied Zekai like a puzzle that had rearranged its own pieces mid-solve.
Iris came back a minute later carrying a small object, which she set on the table in front of Zekai. Her eyes lingered on him a beat longer than the task required.
A crystal sphere, faintly clouded, dark motion swirling somewhere inside it. A thin metal frame held it upright, engraved with markings too fine to read at a glance.
It looked dead. Inert.
It didn't feel that way.
The dark inside it wasn't drifting at random. It moved like it was watching something. Not the room.
Him.
The swirl tightened, then recoiled, like whatever lived inside the glass refused to get any closer to him.
Zekai eyed it, unimpressed. What is this. A party trick?
The sphere didn't glow. Didn't hum. It just sat there, waiting.
Sebastian's voice dropped lower, measured.
"It measures how reality responds to your existence." A pause. "How much of you still belongs to it, and how much doesn't."
His eyes stayed locked on Zekai's face. His head tilted, slight.
"It tells me what you are… without asking."
Silence.
"Put your hand on it."
Zekai hesitated. His fingers hovered an inch above the surface, a faint tremor running through them before he forced it flat.
Something about it pushed back before contact even happened, like the object was reacting to him before he ever touched it.
Suspicion flared instantly. Everything about this room had gone wrong from the moment he'd sat down in it.
"Why should I touch that." Flat. "What's the point?"
The surface wasn't cold. It resisted, the way a locked door resists a hand that already knows better than to try the handle.
Not pain. Something worse.
Confirmation.
"...You first."
Sebastian's brow drew tight at that.
"You're a suspect. You don't get to make demands."
Zekai didn't so much as blink. "Ever heard of give and take?"
"You want something out of me. Give something first."
His stare didn't waver.
"You already tried shoving your power into me once."
A thin smile pulled at his mouth.
"And you still walked away with nothing to show for it."
That did it.
Sebastian's anger flared, sharp and visible for exactly a second. Instead of exploding, he stepped in, controlled, deliberate. Lit a cigarette with one hand, exhaled the smoke straight into Zekai's face — and in the same motion, drew his sidearm and pressed the barrel flat against his forehead.
The safety clicked off.
Zekai didn't flinch. Didn't move at all.
Not because he was calm. Because somewhere underneath everything, some part of him already knew this wasn't how it ended.
"You're breathing," Sebastian said, quiet, "because I haven't decided otherwise."
The air between them turned thick.
"Don't mistake that for safety."
Before it could go any further, Iris stepped between them — every instinct in her body screaming not to.
Not fear exactly. Something worse. Like stepping into the gap between two things that had no business occupying the same room.
"Please — stop!"
Her voice cracked the tension in half.
"Captain. Please. If you'd just explain, he'll cooperate. Please."
She didn't know why she believed that. Some instinct just told her he wasn't the threat in the room.
Sebastian didn't lower the gun right away.
"If I thought he was the enemy—" a beat, "—this would already be over."
His eyes stayed on Zekai's.
"But you don't read like any case file I've ever worked."
Zekai was still the primary suspect in a disaster with forty-three bodies attached to it. Sebastian knew that. He let out a breath anyway, easing his stance back a fraction.
Something close to mockery flickered in his eyes as he studied Zekai.
He lifted his hand. Dark energy gathered around the palm again.
"You can see this. I know you can — you saw it the moment I pushed it into you earlier. Am I wrong?"
Zekai gave a slow nod.
"Good. Then listen."
Sebastian leaned in slightly.
"This is called Grave Energy."
Zekai's eyes narrowed. "—and that's supposed to explain something?"
Sebastian paused, actually considering the interruption for a second.
"More precisely," he continued, "it's Residual Absence."
His fingers tightened around the shape of it.
"When life gets erased from reality, it leaves a scar behind. A permanent one."
"Grave Energy is born out of those scars."
"It behaves like something that should no longer exist."
Zekai's mind moved fast.
"If something's removed, what's left behind is—" his eyes narrowed further, "—pressure. Not energy." A frown. "Something else entirely."
Sebastian gave a small nod. "Closer than most guesses I get."
A pause before he added, "...somewhere something refuses to stay gone."
Zekai said nothing back. Not because he didn't follow. Because he already understood something worse hiding underneath it.
Sebastian's eyes sharpened.
"And reality doesn't agree with that refusal."
One question sat there, unanswered, in the back of Zekai's mind.
If that's true — then what the hell is burning inside me?
His gaze dropped to the faint dark energy still curling around Sebastian's fist. He hesitated.
I never cared about power before. Now not having enough of it means losing people.
"What decides who gets it," he finally asked.
Sebastian didn't answer right away.
Zekai kept going, voice low and even.
"This Grave Energy. How does a person even get it?"
Sebastian studied him for a beat, then leaned back.
"You don't get it." A pause. "Some inherit it. Some awaken it. Some survive it."
"And some should never have touched it at all."
"It doesn't choose fairly."
Another pause, shorter.
"And it never explains why it picked you."
"If you'd come by it the normal way—" his gaze hardened, "—you wouldn't be sitting in this chair breathing right now."
His eyes never left Zekai's face. The dark around his hand flickered, incomplete, like it was trying and failing to settle into a shape.
Zekai's eyes narrowed. He tapped one finger against the table, working through it in silence.
"So it's not something humans made."
"No." Sebastian shook his head. "It's something humans interact with — if they're built for it."
A pause.
"Most aren't."
His expression flattened out into something unreadable.
"Grave Energy isn't the only force out there past the edge of what we understand."
"It's just the only one humanity's figured out how to survive."
"So there's nothing to be afraid of." His eyes sharpened again. "But you—"
He glanced toward the sphere.
"You're not reacting like someone hearing any of this for the first time." Quiet. "So tell me. What did you already touch?"
The question landed and the memory surfaced instantly — the Fool card ritual, Zero's voice, the deal struck in the white space.
What if they already know.
His face didn't move. His thoughts did, fast.
No. Anything I say now just makes this worse.
He stayed silent. Gave nothing.
The silence didn't help him. It only fed Sebastian's suspicion.
"Let's see what's actually inside you."
That was the real test. Zekai's fingers twitched — not from fear of the sphere.
What did Zero put in me.
He stared at the crystal.
...or what did I turn into.
The dark inside it tightened, then began to spiral — building toward something.
Not reading him. Not reacting to him.
His hand tightened — not against the table.
Against a memory.
Aron's voice surfaced from somewhere in the back of his skull.
"...don't leave me behind."
CRACK.
Iris stumbled back on instinct.
"...Captain..."
"...I've never seen one of these fail before."
A sharp sound split the chamber in half.
The Grave Lens cracked straight down its center — before Zekai's hand had ever touched it.
Silence dropped over the room.
Zekai didn't look at the wreckage.
Sebastian did.
For the first time since walking into this chamber, Zekai actually considered something seriously.
If this place had rules, those rules could break just as easily as anything else in it.
His cuffed fingers twitched.
"...then they were wrong from the start."
A breath.
"And I don't follow rules—"
His eyes lifted, cold and steady.
"—that couldn't save him."
✦ End of Chapter 32 — No Escape ✦