The Cursed Extra: Twin Souls Against the World

Zayn woke for the 9th time.

He did not shout or complain this time. Instead of focusing on others, he started thinking about his decision. His choice to never oppose them.

Even when he gained the chance to get out, instead of running away, he came back. In the end, he risked everything just for some petty revenge.

Wouldn't it have been better if he had walked away after that final betrayal?

Zayn imagined his life away from his family, all by himself, moving around the world, enjoying life the way he wanted.

The numerous possible things he could have done excited him. But as he continued to think more about this imaginary life, he started to feel hollow inside.

He realized that he was not into exploring everything, so he changed, and this time imagined himself starting a family, developing a company, and becoming a leader of the country.

He became like those children who dream of achieving different things in their lives. Only his imagination was more vivid.

With nothing to interfere with his thought process, Zayn started doing these mental stimulations, where each stimulation started on the day he got his freedom.

In each of his stimulations, he explored all kinds of possibilities, but no matter how he imagined his life, in the end, he always ended up with a hollow feeling.

Nothing satisfied him. It was like he just could not leave his family alone.

So he started to imagine that after gaining freedom and gaining power, he would come back for revenge.

In some stimulations, he thought of shooting them, while in others, he thought about torturing them, but the hollow inside him only continued to grow.

This continued for a couple of cycles until he finally imagined himself going back to the basement. As he imagined himself walking into the darkness, a sense of familiarity emerged within him.

Each step in the dark corridor felt like he was coming home. It hit him that he was never alone in his life.

For a very big part of it, he always had this darkness. The silent darkness was always there as his friend.

The fog in his mind started to clear.

He realized that what he thought was right was never correct for him.

It was more due to outside influence. He was never wrong.

Sure, he was not sure what he wanted from life, but at that stage of his life, revenge was the one thing he yearned for. 'A life without revenge just feels hollow.'

It was like someone had pulled the dark curtains from before his eyes.

The stuff he always used to blame on his stupidity suddenly started to make sense.

It hit him that he was always too busy thinking about the future, and in doing so, he forgot to live in the present.

This snapped him out of his thoughts as he looked at the empty void with a new sense of clarity.

The void started to feel more like a deep, endless swamp to him, and instead of struggling, he started to submerge deeper and deeper into it.

The more he looked at the void, the more he felt like losing his mind. A simple question emerged in his consciousness: just how vast was this void?

It was like he got lost in a trance, and he found himself getting sluggish faster and faster.

Instead of the earlier feeling of death, this time, he felt like his consciousness was merging with the void itself.

It intrigued him. He wanted to know if he could fully become one with the void and then control himself back out of it.

It hit him that the key to all of this lay in his thoughts. The only thing that separated his consciousness from this void was his ability to think.

He let his consciousness wander, trying not to think about anything at all.

At the start, all of it felt like just a waste of time, as it was super hard to control himself.

But soon, he started to enter these states where he developed control over the speed of his thought process.

Just a sudden thought was sufficient to pull him out of that state.

Many cycles went by. He continued the same practice, and the time he could stay in that state started to increase.

After a long time, he even lost the sense of sluggishness. It was either him awake with a single slow thought or him blanking out. There was no in-between.

Even the blanked-out time continued to decrease. It was the same with the time it took him to wake up.

He lost count of the cycles and lost the sensation of waking up and sleeping. He was this close to becoming one with the void.

Finally, no thoughts were left in him, and he became one with the void.

Zayn did not even realize that he had succeeded, but this led to a problem of him being lost.

Even after a long time, during which he could go through multiple cycles, he showed no sign of waking up.

After spending about 10 times the length of his first awake cycle, he snapped out of his thoughts, only to be one with the void in the next second.

Though the training reversed now, he started practicing how to get out of the black state, all while maintaining the minimal time he stayed awake.

He was getting further from just imitating the void. Eventually, he succeeded in minimizing the sleeping and waking time to one second.

He stayed awake for a second, then in the void the next, and awake in the third, and so on.

He gained full control over when to sleep, though there was still a maximum limit after which he could not stay awake, no matter what he did.

Zayn did not stop there, as he now started practicing to be with the void while thinking.

He did not care if that was possible or not; he just started doing it.

…

While Zayn was lost in his darkness, outside, a hex master in a green robe looked at the boy in the bed in sympathy.

It had been 1 week since this boy had been sent here with a hole in his chest.

She tried her best with her abilities and even called her master, after all, this boy was from the House of Zenaris.

She did not want to drag the academy into some unwanted politics.

As she looked at the skinny, skeleton-like guy, she sighed. Even though she had managed to save this boy's life, his chances of getting up were super low.

There was just nothing anyone could do about the mind. She clicked her tongue in frustration, lamenting the loss of resources.

Not thinking much, she turned to a couple of her apprentices. At least she could use this perfect specimen for her students.

With that, she started explaining the patient's condition to her students.

The apprentices just noted a few things, and then they moved to other patients to see how the progress of their recovery was going.

…

On the other side, Xane also opened his eyes, only to find himself in the void. It was extremely quiet, but then he heard a voice. "I told you not to waste time."

He looked around. There was nothing but the empty void around him. But he felt this voice was a little familiar.

Before he could say anything, he heard another sound, filled with madness. "Please, help me."

"Bitch, you should just destroy and kill everything."

The third voice joined in with sleekness. "What's the point of life? Better kill yourself."

The fourth screamed in anger, "You! How can you let that guy control you? No one is better than you."

The fifth voice said with passion, "Forget about everything and focus on hex art."

The last voice shouted in desperation, "When will the fun begin?"

This stunned Xane as he recognized each one of them. The tone of their voices and the way they spoke, each of them was him at different periods.

The first voice begged the others. "Someone, please save me. Dad, Mom, I did nothing." The way this one was begging his parents, he recognized it as himself when he first got arrested.

The second guy shouted at the others. "Stop, all of you! There is no point in anything. Come here, let me kill you." This was him acting tough to protect himself from others. The time when already realized no one was coming to help him.

The third guy spoke in a low but heavy voice. "Why are you alive? Just snap your neck and end all of this." Xane recognized this as the depressed version who had almost tried to commit suicide.

The fourth screamed at him. "How could you let that bastard beat you like that? You have to make that bitch pay." This was him at 20, daring to stand against the prison system.

The fifth one said to him with excitement. "Hey, you'd better learn hex art to torture others. You can't miss this chance." That was him when he became addicted to learning about the human body and psychology.

"Haha, what if you hit your teacher? Wouldn't it be fun?" Finally, the psycho, the one who wanted nothing but thrill.

Xane heard six past versions of himself in shock. He did not know what was going on when all six of them started shouting at each other.