Unknown Pause

My hair had fallen over my eyes, veiling the tears that hadn't yet fallen—but not the weight. Not the fracture ripping through my chest like a faultline splitting stone.

Elena died because of me.

No matter how hard I fought for them, how much blood I shed, death had its own balance—and it never accepted debt. I knew that too well.

And yet—he told me to run.

To live.

To save myself.

And called me his son.

Of everyone, only Galien ever treated me like that.

And in that moment, something inside me ruptured. My head turned. My gaze found Elif. Aelar. Elena.

And then… the flood broke.

Galien's final breath—charred flesh curled like burnt paper, his chest hollowing with a death-rattle that wasn't breath, just the soul evacuating a corpse.

Fin's laughter—once bright, now severed mid-note by Elektra's blade. The village children—screams swallowed by fire. Irena—her head rolling in the ash, wide-eyed even in death.

Groon's last stand, voice breaking—"Run, kid!"—before the beast shredded him. Frontas—her skull flattened beneath a monster's step.

And now Elena.

Elena, who had embraced me while I reeked of blood. Who had smiled like frost-kissed sunlight—fading as she bled out in my arms.

The weight of them crushed me. A mountain of corpses dragged behind every breath I took. My knees should've buckled. My spine should've cracked.

But I was still standing.

And for the first time since I was born into this world, I asked myself what it all meant.

What was the purpose of surviving?

Why me?

Why was I still breathing when none of them were?

I didn't choose their deaths. But I didn't have the strength to stop them either.

And now Elena's blood was on my hands too.

"I didn't want to see you die," she'd said.

But I'd seen her die. I'd felt it. White Sense had forced me to experience every second—her heartbeat stuttering, her mana dissolving like smoke, the exact moment her soul tore free.

I wanted to scream. Rip my chest open. Dig out whatever was still keeping me alive while better people decayed beneath the earth.

But I didn't.

I just trembled. Silent. As the voices of the dead whispered:

"You survived. Again."

And the worst part?

They were right.

Her face surged through my mind again—

And pain shattered behind my eyes. A memory not mine—not yet—erupted.

White hair.

Crimson lips.

A room of white surrounded by abyss.

A voice—inaudible.

Words—just out of reach.

Then—

The tears I tried to hide fell.

Not silent. Not weak.

But endless.

And beneath them, something stirred.

Not grief.

Something older.

Sharper.

Waking.

I looked at Valier. At the crogs. At Lonor.

Then Aelar.

"Maybe the chief was right," I thought. "Maybe I really am cursed."

And I spoke—not with reason, not with caution.

But with truth.

Truth stripped raw.

"Elena saved me twice today. Not just when she sacrificed herself. But when she hugged me—after I killed. When I was lost in blood, and she brought me back. She saw me. She gave me peace."

My voice cracked open like a wound.

"I wanted to run. Again. Like I did when the village burned. I told myself it was because I had no power. That surviving was enough. But now... I do have power. And I still wanted to run."

I stared at my hands. What they had done. What they'd failed to do.

Maybe something in me was always broken. That thing that clung to life, no matter the cost. That fear. That desperation. But now—it snapped. Not with a sound, but with silence.

The weight I'd carried all this time had always been there.

I just never looked it in the eye.

But now I did.

Because I had carried it all. In silence. Like a coward.

Buried it in shadows.

Pretended I was whole.

But there was no space left to hide it.

So my mind—fractured.

It started as madness—wild, hot, senseless.

But then… came clarity. A colder thing. A crueler thing.

Like the fragments of who I was realigned into something unfamiliar.

I turned.

Aelar's eyes widened.

"Maybe I'm just garbage…"

My eyes burned. My voice quaked.

"Teacher, I'm really a piece of trash, aren't I?"

His face twisted. "No—!"

But it was too late.

I didn't decide to jump.

My body did.

Like it remembered something my soul had tried to forget.

I dove—headfirst into the storm. Toward Lonor. Toward Valier. Toward death.

I struck Valier mid-air with everything I had. My body hit his like a meteor. The impact knocked the breath from him.

Behind me, Lonor shouted. "Boy?!"

Valier grinned. "Good. You've come."

But his smile died in his throat.

He saw something in my eyes.

Something no longer human.

"YOU WILL DIE!" I howled.

I soared higher. Everything below—crogs, enemies, war—it blurred.

Aelar screamed my name. I heard him begging Lonor to stop me.

But it no longer mattered.

Not regret.

Not consequence.

Only truth.

The chief was right.

I was cursed.

Not by gods. Not by fate.

By me.

Everyone who ever reached for me had been buried. The village. Elena.

Every last one.

My fingers trembled—not in fear.

But revelation.

Maybe I wasn't just broken.

Maybe I was rot.

Maybe I was never meant to survive.

Maybe I wasn't evil.

Maybe I was hollow.

A husk stitched together by terror and will.

And now?

Even that was gone.

So I chose:

If I am cursed—then let the curse be complete.

If I am wicked—then let me burn.

If this is the fate I fled from—then let me meet it, bare-chested, eyes open, heart numb.

When I said it—when the words left me—Valier flinched. He saw what had been born behind my eyes. Not vengeance. Not wrath.

The last ember of whatever had been holding me back flickered out—it was cold now, gone.

The wind stopped.

The world paused.

And then, just before I struck again, something slid into place within me.

Not fury.

Not mourning.

Something I'd always known. Always heard—at the edge of sleep, beneath every breath. My closest companion.

Death.

But this time, it wasn't terror.

It wasn't resistance.

It was understanding.

I knew what it meant to fail.

To bleed.

To try and lose.

You don't always win.

Sometimes you don't even know if anything will ever work out.

But still—you endure.

People fight for different reasons. They claw through agony. They hold their bones together with spit and suffering.

I thought I fought to live.

To endure, however ugly.

To survive no matter the cost.

But then—Elena.

Aelar.

The return of that blinding memory.

The white room inside my skull.

And in that moment, for the first time in my life—

Even if only for a heartbeat—

Survival vanished.

Not fear. Not instinct. Not trembling breaths aimed toward the next second.

For once, I didn't want to endure.

I wanted to let it out.

I wanted revenge.

Revenge on the bastard who impaled her like she was nothing.

Who pierced her stomach and tossed her aside like broken cloth—

As if Elena's smile meant less than air.

As if her light had never mattered.

As if she wasn't the only reason I hadn't turned to rot already.

I wanted to end him—not to protect, not to survive, but to make him suffer.

To make the world burn for her absence.

Only this moment.

This anguish.

This fire.

This clarity.

I felt a hatred older than my name. A desire to let go of everything—fear, doubt, the version of me that trembled.

I didn't want to live.

I wanted to destroy the one who stole someone like her from a world like this.

With every wound. Every breath. Every fragment of soul left unburned.

And I possessed a spell—unyielding, unerring, and unending. It would not fail. It would not falter. And it would never stop.

One the Voice had forbidden.

"Never use it."

But now?

Nothing mattered.

Not fear.

Not warnings.

Not consequences.

Only this.

I pointed downward.

My hand steady.

My soul hollow.

Two words left my lips.

The last thing I had left to give.

"White. Lightning."