Chapter 24: Rekka is Attempting to Kidnap the Aeon of Destruction
The boy stood frozen, his hollow gaze locked onto his own scarred palms.
"I remember now..." The words slipped from his lips, dry as grinding stones. "I was standing in the fire... I was..."
His voice fractured, grinding with a raw, escalating fury. His footsteps dragged across the floor, heavy enough to warp the very gravity around him. Charred, glowing footprints seared into the elegant flooring of the Parlor Car with every agonizing step. Golden fissures webbed across his dark skin, spreading from his cheeks down to his neck and across his torso. Blinding, terrifying heat pulsed from those cracks, radiating a temperature so absolute it made the soul tremble.
"If life is nothing but pain, then it would be better to never exist at all!" The boy's voice cracked, echoing with the weight of a dying world. "If even the very last ember of hope is extinguished... why, exactly... why were we ever born into this universe?!"
The ambient moisture in the Parlor Car flash-fried into steam. The cozy, climate-controlled cabin instantly transformed into the throat of an active volcano. The plush carpet curled, blackening into ash and filling the air with the acrid stench of burning synthetics. Heat waves distorted the air, blurring the elegant mahogany furniture into wavy mirages.
March 7th lunged forward, her protective instincts overriding her common sense, but a physical wall of blistering heat violently shoved her back. She threw her arms over her face, wincing as the scorching draft singed her skin even from several meters away.
"Don't go over there, March!" Welt Yang barked, his usually calm demeanor shattering.
This wasn't just fire. It was the pure, unadulterated venting of cosmic energy. The most primal, raw manifestation of Destruction.
"Why... why must people like us exist..."
The boy continued his slow, agonizing march forward. Magma-like fluid wept from his wounds, sliding down his cheeks to strike the alloy floor. Hiss. Plumes of white smoke erupted as the metal groaned, melting into glowing slag beneath his bare feet.
"Mr. Yang! This kid is going to explode!" March 7th stomped her boots, her voice pitching into a panicked squeak. "Think of something! He's going to melt right through the hull of the Astral Express!"
"I am thinking!"
Welt ground his teeth and slammed the tip of his cane against the melting floorboards.
Gravity Suppression.
The Star of Eden flared.
And then, his cane exploded.
Shrapnel and sparks violently burst from the casing. This was a catastrophic failure, even after Rekka had spent an entire afternoon temporarily modifying the Star of Eden's output limit. Without those chaotic upgrades, the Divine Key would have shattered seconds earlier under the sheer pressure of a nascent Aeon.
"Mr. Yang!"
Amidst March 7th's scream, Welt stumbled backward, his boots skidding against the warped floor as smoking fragments of his cane slipped through his gloved fingers.
The boy—the shadow of Nanook—had already reached the dead center of the Parlor Car.
But suddenly, his glowing footsteps halted.
———
"Where the hell did I end up?"
Rekka scratched his head, blinking at the unfamiliar starscape.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
A deafening, chitinous drone vibrated through the vacuum of space. A massive, writhing cloud of the Swarm materialized right behind him, their mandibles clicking in a frenzy of hunger.
Oh boy.
"Scared the life out of me!" Rekka yelped, instinctively jumping back. "Guard! Protect the king!"
He snapped his fingers to summon the Little Blue Light.
Nothing happened. The air remained stubbornly empty.
"Hyperion! Ai-chan! Save me!"
Silence. The mighty battleship did not warp in. The cabbage-headed AI did not respond.
Well, what now?
'Despair.JPG,' Rekka thought, his face deadpan as millions of giant alien insects lunged at him.
But the panic didn't last. It wasn't Rekka's human consciousness that opened its eyes to meet the Swarm—it was the cold, overwhelming divinity of the Path of Destruction.
The fundamental essence of the Path overwrote his mortal shell. Molten gold replaced the blood in his veins, illuminating his skin from the inside out. Infinite rage. Infinite annihilation. Burn, fuse, and then erase.
He didn't move a muscle. Using his body as the absolute epicenter, a silent, devastating shockwave swept outward, swallowing the endless sea of insects. It wasn't a blast of wind, nor a beam of light. It was pure, unadulterated entropy—the violent, instantaneous transition from order into absolute disorder.
"I come with the storm," Rekka murmured, his voice layered with a cosmic echo, "bringing my wrath to the gods."
The very millisecond the Swarm was erased from existence, the universe retaliated. Rekka felt an invisible, titanic hand clamp around his entire being, violently hurling him into a bottomless, spinning vortex.
When his consciousness finally stitched itself back together, the suffocating, insect-infested star system was gone.
Scorched earth.
Ash and ruin stretched out to the absolute limits of the horizon. The sky above hung in a sickly, dark red hue, looking exactly like a filthy rag soaked in old blood and left out to dry. The atmosphere was thick with the taste of soot. Every breath Rekka took felt like swallowing a handful of razor blades.
"Cough, cough... what kind of hellhole is this..."
Rekka patted himself down, hacking up a lungful of ash. The towering, bronze-skinned Aeon physique was gone. He was back in his own original body, wearing his ordinary, dust-caked casual clothes.
"Was I... kicked out?"
He rolled his shoulders, testing his limbs. Everything moved normally. More, the overwhelming, maddening urge to blow up a planet had completely faded from his mind.
"Phew—finally back to normal."
But the relief was short-lived. The silence of this world was deafening. It was a dead quiet, the kind that only existed when an entire planet had been thoroughly scrubbed of all biological life.
A few dozen yards away, a thin, fragile figure squatted on the cracked earth, his back turned to Rekka.
Rekka narrowed his eyes, peering through the drifting ash. That silhouette looked entirely too familiar. Messy white hair. Tattered, burnt rags. And... faint, glowing golden cracks webbing across narrow shoulders.
"...No way, right?" Rekka muttered, his breath hitching.
He took a slow, careful step forward. His sneaker crunched loudly against the baked, brittle soil.
The figure flinched, then slowly stood up and turned around. Golden eyes. Brownish-black skin. A jagged, glowing scar cutting across his cheek. Rekka stared directly into those golden irises, watching a storm of violence and despair churn within them—an emotion far too heavy for a child's face.
Three seconds passed.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
"...Who are you?" The boy's voice was raspy, ruined by smoke and screaming.
"I am a Trailblazer."
"A Trailblazer?" The boy's eyes widened slightly, a desperate, frantic energy seizing his small frame. "You're a Trailblazer? Then have you seen Akivili?"
Rekka felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. He was absolutely certain now. This wasn't just a dreamscape. This was the consciousness of the Aeon of Destruction—or perhaps a lingering Memory Echo trapped on the ruined world of Adiph. But right here, right now, standing before him was just a battered, bleeding child who still had a tiny, fragile sliver of hope clinging to his eyes.
"Akivili..." Rekka kept his voice steady, softening his usual chaotic edge. "I haven't seen Him."
The desperate light in the boy's golden eyes instantly shattered, plunging back into a dead, hollow void.
"However," Rekka continued smoothly, "I am a Trailblazer. And I've boarded the Astral Express." He dug into his pockets, rummaging around for a second before pulling out a crisp, rectangular card. He held it out. "Here. This is for you."
The boy stared at it, not moving his hands. "What is this?"
"A ticket," Rekka explained, offering a small, easy smile. "Once you're on the Astral Express, you're a Trailblazer. And being a Trailblazer means... well, following the Express everywhere. Going to all sorts of planets you've never been to, and meeting all sorts of people you've never met."
"Everywhere?"
"Yes."
"Akivili..."
"Akivili is no longer here, but the Express is still running." Rekka stepped forward, gently but firmly pressing the ticket into the boy's scarred palm. "It's people who Trailblaze, not Aeons. I don't think Akivili ever liked being seen as a god anyway; He probably just wanted to be seen as a person. When I boarded the Express, Akivili had already been gone for a long, long time. Right now, the Astral Express is managed by Conductor Pom-Pom and Navigator Himeko."
"Gone for... a long time?" The boy repeated the words, his raspy voice dropping so low it was barely a whisper against the wind. "So... did He still abandon us?"
"It wasn't abandonment." Rekka cut him off, his tone leaving no room for argument. "He just... reached the end of His journey. Or rather, He started a new one."
"I think..." The boy looked down at the ticket, his voice growing softer, thinner, as if the remaining fight was draining out of him. "If Akivili could have come to Adiph... everyone could have survived." He paused, his small fingers tightening around the card. "I've been waiting."
A sudden, mournful gust of wind swept across the scorched earth, kicking up a cloud of gray ash and dusting it over the two of them.
"How long have you been waiting?"
"I don't know." The boy slowly shook his head, his white hair catching the dull red light of the sky. "A long time."
Rekka stood in silence for a few long seconds, listening to the howling wind of a dead world. Then, he reached out his hand, palm up.
"Then don't wait anymore. Let's go."
The boy looked at the outstretched hand. He looked down at the golden ticket clutched in his own scarred fingers. Finally, he tilted his head up, meeting Rekka's eyes.
"What is your name?"
"Rekka."
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