Zekai's breath caught in his throat.
'Possibility.'
He whispered it. Something shifted behind his eyes — It didn't arrive like an ability, and it wasn't knowledge. It felt older than either — pure instinct, moving ahead of thought.
He'd always understood his gift as finding the path that already existed. The correct one. The lucky one. The road that let him keep breathing.
That wasn't what was happening now. The world around him wasn't showing him another road.
It was building one.
Fenros lunged. He didn't think — he stepped, and the fist meant for his skull passed through nothing. Not luck. Not speed.
The gap between them had gone slightly wrong, off by inches. Those inches were enough.
His eyes locked on Fenros. Something shifted in the creature's face.
It had missed. For the first time all fight, he hadn't chosen where his own body went. Something outside him had simply made a different outcome possible.
"...It missed." The words fell out of him. It shouldn't have.
A strange lightness spread through his chest. Too early to call it confidence. Something smaller stirred instead.
Hope.
Then Ossian struck — the skeletal lash cutting for his throat. He saw it, and his body moved on its own before the thought finished. The whip passed beside him, close enough to hear it split the air.
'I did it again.'
He stepped back. The lash curved, Ossian yanking it back on instinct.
His stomach dropped. 'No.'
The weapon came again. He moved. It missed a second time. Ossian's eyes went flat. "A fluke."
His breathing sped up. The world around him kept slipping in and out of focus — a stone by his boot shifted a few inches from where it should sit, a crack split open in the ground somewhere it hadn't been a second ago. The distance between him and Ossian stretched and shrank, subtle, not fully under his control.
Enough to survive the next second.
Ossian attacked again. He dodged. The whip missed him by inches.
A breathless laugh tore out of him. "You're kidding—" He looked down at his own hands. "Is this—" A smile crept back onto his face. "—my actual power?"
Ossian's face hardened. The whip cracked forward.
He sidestepped. It struck stone instead.
Fenros moved in the same instant. Zekai turned into it — a fist already coming for his jaw — and ducked as it sailed past. He spun clear of a second strike. A third came from the opposite side, and he twisted through the gap it left behind, the blow passing an inch off his shoulder.
Fenros stopped cold. Went still, watching.
He held the stillness too. Neither one moved. Then his mouth twitched, something between a smile and a wince "Guess you can't read me anymore."
Fenros's eyes went sharp. It attacked again, and for several seconds something impossible unfolded between them.
Fenros adapted. Zekai kept changing.
Fenros predicted. Reality kept shifting under the prediction.
He slipped through gaps that had no business existing. Not because he'd gotten stronger, faster, or better trained.
Because he'd become hard to pin down at all.
A punch meant for his jaw grazed past it. A kick aimed at his knee landed a hand's width short. A claw that should've opened his chest caught only fabric.
Understanding dawned slow and cold. It's not making me invisible.
It's making the outcome uncertain.
A chill ran through him at the thought.
Possibility.
Astrael broke his silence again. "Rejected possibility."
He turned toward the voice. The yellow-haired Witness had been watching this whole exchange in total silence. Now his gold eyes locked onto Zekai.
"You aren't choosing an outcome."
His smile faded.
"You're forcing several outcomes to exist at once, for an instant."
His pupils shrank. "Several possibilities—" He looked down at his own hand. "That's why even I don't know where I'll end up."
Astrael's face gave away nothing. "Correct."
A pause. "They can't all remain, though."
He held Astrael's gaze.
Astrael's gaze drifted to the distortion warping the air around Zekai's body. "Reality chooses one."
Zekai's jaw tightened. "Even I don't know which."
"That's exactly what makes it dangerous." Astrael's gold eyes returned to him. "A certainty is manageable. Uncertainty isn't."
His grip closed around Null Drakular. "Then maybe—" He raised the blade—
—except he didn't have it. His eyes snapped to where it lay.
Hella's chains still had it pinned. The realization crushed the moment flat.
Right. He hadn't broken free. He hadn't won anything. The sword was still hostage.
Hella raised her hand. The chains surged for him.
He moved. One chain missed. Then a second.
A third caught his ankle. He stumbled. "Ah—!"
It dragged him backward, dropping him hard onto his spine.
Hella's black hands rose above him. He tried to move.
Too slow. The hands closed around both wrists. A third clamped his throat.
He fought it. The new power flickered.
Once. Twice.
Then it died out.
His breath caught. 'I tried to force it.'
His eyes went wide with the answer. 'That's the difference.'
When his mind had let go, reality had bent on its own. The second he tried to command it directly, the possibility collapsed.
It just stopped answering. His breathing turned frantic. No.
The chains cinched tighter. He couldn't budge.
Hella crouched over him. "You found something."
He stared up at her. "Don't—" His voice came out thin.
She crouched lower. "But you haven't learned to use it yet."
Her fingers touched his forehead. "You're a child holding a storm."
His teeth clenched. "I'll learn."
She smiled. "You might not get the time for that."
She rose. Ossian lifted his weapon.
His pupils shrank. The whip came down. He rolled.
It caught his shoulder instead. Pain tore through him and a scream ripped loose.
Frost Heal fired instantly. The wound sealed shut.
Ossian struck again. He barely shifted in time — the lash opened a line across his chest.
Frost Heal again. The wound closed.
The whip found his leg.
Frost Heal, again.
Then the light under his skin changed color.
He went still. The familiar blue glow flickered — then bled violet.
Zzzzsup.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ARCANA EVOLUTION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Frost Heal → Mythic Heal
Evolution Condition: External Interference
Status: Unstable
Effect: Regeneration greatly enhanced.
The body will reconstruct itself from any surviving physical remnant.
Fatal damage may be reversed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He blinked at the notification. "...What?"
The text stuttered once.
Cause: UNKNOWN
Then it vanished.
His eyes dropped to his own hands. The pain was already gone. "...That's new."
He climbed to his feet, healed but hollowed out. He looked at the Witnesses. 'This isn't a fight.'
The weight of it settled over him. 'They're testing how long I can survive.'
His confidence started leaking away again. He looked at his hands — shaking, and not from fear of dying.
From understanding that dying wasn't even the worst part waiting for him here.
The worst part was knowing he'd survive whatever they did next. They'd hurt him. He'd heal. They'd hurt him again. He'd heal again. And nothing about that cycle had a natural endpoint.
He swallowed hard. 'How long can this actually keep going?'
He looked down at the wound already gone from his chest. No relief came with it this time.
Only fear of the answer waiting behind the question. 'What did the Snow Monarch actually give me?'
A thought crystallized. This was never ordinary healing. His eyes widened slightly. No.
He ran back through every time Frost Heal had pulled him off the floor — every broken bone, every moment he should've stopped breathing and hadn't. He'd always treated it as convenient. Powerful. Something to lean on.
Now he understood it differently. This isn't a healing skill. His gaze lifted slow toward the six figures surrounding him.
'It's the only reason I'm still alive at all.'
That realization should have steadied him. Instead his stomach turned over.
Because if that power ever failed him—
he'd have nothing left underneath it.
His head dropped. His breath came uneven. When his voice finally surfaced, it barely rose above a whisper. "...I don't want to die."
Nobody answered. He shut his eyes. "I don't want to die here."
His fingers dug into the stone. "I haven't finished anything."
His voice cracked apart. "I haven't even—" He swallowed hard. "—seen Aron again."
The name slipped free before he could stop it.
A voice answered from behind him.
"Mr. Zekai."
His whole body locked. His eyes flew open. That voice.
He turned, slow.
Aron stood a few meters off. His lips parted. "Aron—?"
The boy smiled. Something sat wrong behind it — his eyes held nothing at all. "You said you'd come back."
Zekai stared. The world around him dropped away into background noise.
"I—"
Aron stepped closer. "You promised."
His breath shook. "No."
"You promised you'd see me again."
"Stop."
"You didn't."
"Aron—"
The image's smile turned sad. "You always say you're going to save people."
His eyes started stinging. "That's not—"
"But look at you." Aron's gaze crawled over his battered body. "You can't even save yourself."
He shook his head. "No."
"You sacrificed everyone else."
"No."
"Again and again."
"No—" His voice cracked into something desperate. "I didn't."
Aron tilted his head. "Then why am I standing here?"
He had no answer. The illusion drifted closer.
"You have the power to heal."
His breath stopped in his chest.
"But remember—" Aron pressed a finger to his own lips. "—healing only fixes your body."
His smile widened. "It doesn't fix your mind."
His eyes trembled.
"You've always been a fool, Mr. Zekai."
A tear slid loose.
"Stop."
"Oh." Aron's expression went cold. "Sorry. You're not just a fool."
He stared at him.
"You're a betrayer."
"Stop."
"Why don't you feel ashamed?"
"Please—"
"Look at yourself."
He clapped both hands over his ears. "Please stop."
"Your arrogance."
"Stop."
"Your overconfidence."
"Please."
"Your detachment."
"Stop!"
"That cynical little smile you wear whenever someone else is the one suffering."
His breath broke apart. "That's not true."
Aron leaned in. "Then why am I the one who ends up dead in every version of your story?"
He couldn't answer. His vision blurred, Aron's face smearing at the edges.
"I wanted to save you." He whispered it.
"What?"
"I was overconfident because—" His voice shook apart. "—I wanted to save you."
The illusion smiled. "You failed."
His head dropped. "I know."
"You promised you'd come back."
"I know."
"You said you'd see me again."
He closed his eyes. "Yeah." Barely a sound. "Sorry, Aron."
The illusion started cracking apart at the edges. He opened his eyes. "Yeah—" A smile broke through the tears. "I was overconfident."
The illusion shattered.
"I wanted to save you."
The last of it scattered into dark.
He stayed on his knees. His body had healed completely. His mind hadn't. For several long seconds he didn't move at all.
Then he wiped his face, slow, his hand shaking. "Sorry."
Nobody reacted.
His eyes drifted to Null Drakular. Still pinned. He looked past it to the six Witnesses. Then to Hella. Then to the empty space where Aron's shape had stood a minute ago.
Something had changed in his face. The arrogance was gone. The fear was still there. Underneath it, though, something new had settled in.
A decision.
'I can't win.' His fingers pressed flat against the ground. 'I can't lose either.'
'So I'll survive.'
Astrael's eyes sharpened. Jerom leaned in slightly.
Hella lifted her hand. The chains rushed him.
He didn't run. He waited. The first chain arrived — he moved, and it missed. The second — he twisted, and it missed too.
The third—
He stepped through a gap that shouldn't have been wide enough to fit through.
The chain passed behind him. He reached out, fingers closing on empty air.
Nothing. Then—
Clang.
Null Drakular tore itself free of the broken chains and shot across the stone straight toward him.
His hand closed around the hilt. The blade shuddered once, like it was answering him personally.
He stared down at it. "...You came back on your own."
No reply. Just a low metallic hum vibrating up through his palm.
The sword shuddered again. Black-red energy tore loose from the steel.
CRACK!
Hella's chains shattered outright, the black hands still gripping the hilt blown clean backward.
Null Drakular flew into his grip. He caught it clean. For a moment, nobody in the sanctuary moved.
He stood there — clothes torn, blood dried across his face, body fully healed, eyes still wet.
The air around him kept flickering, faint and unstable.
Fenros stared. Ossian lowered his weapon. Nihil's Grimoire stopped turning pages on its own. Astrael's eyes narrowed to slits.
Jerom finally stepped forward.
He looked down at the blade in his hand, then up at the six of them. His voice came out flat, quiet.
"I don't know how to use this power." His grip tightened. "I don't know how long I can keep surviving."
The distortion around him thickened.
"But—" His eyes lifted. "—I'm starting to understand it."
Something shifted across Jerom's face. Fear hadn't reached him yet. Interest had.
He stepped forward. The stone under his boot shifted, his whole body flickering for an instant.
Fenros moved. He vanished from the spot it had aimed for.
He reappeared inches to the side. Fenros's fist tore through nothing but air.
He studied the empty space, then let a faint smile surface. "Reality—" His grip closed tighter around the hilt.
"—doesn't seem all that certain anymore."
Far off, inside the hidden throne room, Lucien watched the whole exchange through the crimson surface hovering in front of him.
He'd stayed quiet through the entire fight. Now one finger tapped once against the armrest.
His eyes narrowed. "So you finally noticed."
The faint smile crept back onto his face, gold eyes narrowing further.
"You were never meant to find the path."
His smile deepened. "You were meant to build one."
His gaze settled on Zekai. "And you're learning."
His eyes flicked briefly to the black-red blade, then back to the young man standing beneath six beings that outmatched him in every way that should have mattered.
"That's going to make this considerably more interesting."
On the battlefield, Zekai took another step forward. Reality flickered around his frame with every footfall. For the first time since this fight had started, the Witnesses stopped looking at him like an insect trapped under glass.
They looked at him like a problem.
And Zekai finally understood the first real rule of staying alive in this place.
He didn't need to find the path that saved him.
He only needed to build one that had no right to exist.
✦ End of chapter 67 - How Long Can I Survive? ✦