Aether's outfit began shifting—not changing in appearance, but the padding and plates around his body hardened slightly.
Mirakos watched, wide-eyed, amazement etched into his every breath.
But Aether's face? Disgust. Pure, unmoving disgust aimed at Altan. Ever since meeting the man, Aether had felt it—an aura that needed no words. Strength. You simply knew.
And yet, here Altan was, hunting a man to death for fun. A man who had already killed Mirakos' mother. Now he pursued Mirakos' father—for what? For the fragile thought of—he paused. Why did Altan keep Mirakos alive?
There are some types of people you understand before they ever speak directly to you.
It's in the way they talk to others—the tone, the words, the pauses. You can feel their entire being the moment they open their filthy mouths.
Like that boy, for example, shouting across the room, "Oh yeah! My bad, I do have the latest console!" He said it with a prideful smugness, the kind of tone that practically demanded attention. But he was lying. He didn't have it.
Some might dismiss it as a harmless exaggeration, a boyish attempt to impress his friends and soak in their fleeting admiration.
But don't be fooled. That kind of lie isn't so innocent. It plants roots. The boy will grow, learn, experience—and yet that habit will linger, evolving with him.
"Are you serious?" he'll say one day, laughing with his friends. "Dave's a total psycho. Always spouting gibberish. Let's ditch him, guys." And he'll laugh louder, his voice rising above the others, his ego inflating subtly with every chuckle.
It's petty, yes. But pettiness builds. Their insecurities bloom into something darker, something they carry forward.
People like that always grow into something worse. As children, they seem harmless—just inexperienced, maybe immature.
But they don't grow out of it. They become overworked coworkers who belittle others to feel in control.
They turn into friends who disguise cruelty as humor. All of it feeds their egos, a desperate attempt to mask their own fragility. Their lives revolve around hurting others so they can forget their own weaknesses, even if just for a moment.
Aether had seen it too many times before. He knew these people. Their patterns. Their progression. And the sickly way they twisted humanity into something selfish, something hollow.
He threw Mirakos onto his shoulder effortlessly, a blur of motion breaking the stillness. His amber-lined form vanished into the distance—leaving nothing but wind and silence behind.
Aether ran quickly, as fast as he could, passing streets as Mirakos guided him.
He didn't know if he'd see Altan there. That thought alone was enough to make him angry, his frustration bubbling up, desperate to spill out onto anyone.
As he ran, breath ragged, his eyes caught movement—a woman? No, a young girl. He turned his head slightly, watching as she darted across the zebra crossing.
The traffic lights were still red, yet she weaved between the cars with precise, fluid movements that defied logic. It was art, Aether thought. And then she was gone.
She rushed past him, a blur of motion, disappearing into a store ahead as if the air itself had swallowed her whole.
"Hospital gown," Aether muttered, confused. But before he could make sense of it, his eyes widened. Creatures. Four eyes. Four limbs. Their skin a grotesque blend of snake scales and lizard hide.
They moved unnaturally, like nightmares given shape. And they were chasing her.
He watched as they passed her, uninterested.
Without thinking—yet again—Aether moved, Mirakos at his side.
Mirakos pointed toward another street, but it didn't matter.
They didn't need to run anymore. His house was already in sight—or what was left of it.
Burned down. A ruin, charred black and smoldering, as though someone had ripped his past apart and left it to burn. People passed by the wreckage without a second glance, as if it wasn't even there.
His aura spiked, anger rolling off him like waves crashing against the shore.
"He really did it..." Aether muttered under his breath, the words slipping out involuntarily.
"Ah," Mirakos echoed, almost absently. And then, "Dad."
"Mirakos, your life is your own. I won't use you. So now, I'll tell you—what do you want to do in this situation?" Aether said, his voice low, almost hollow.
"I've told you a dozen times: wait for Altan. But for some reason, you just can't stop yourself, can you?" Aether continued, his voice calm.
"I want to kill him," Mirakos admitted, his voice shaking with short rasps, barely restrained rage.
"Listen carefully," Aether interrupted, his tone shifting to something sharp, deliberate. "Aim for his neck or his eye—those are the only spots without armor. Got it? One precise strike. I'll try to handle the rest." He finished, his hands—even the prosthetic—shivering as he flexed his fingers, the energy thrumming beneath his skin like barely contained fury. It was alive, raw, pulsing with power.
He paused, his voice dropping lower, colder.
"And after that?" Aether's eyes gleamed, catching the light in an eerie, deliberate way. His hand clenched tight, the power coiling tighter, ready to erupt. "How about you come live with me?"
They began walking. The house was barely a street away, insignificant in the vastness of their thoughts.
"How good was your relationship with your dad, anyway?" Aether asked suddenly, his tone casual yet cutting through the air like a knife.
"It was above average," Mirakos replied flatly, his voice almost mechanical. Then he paused.
"It was above average." He repeated, eyes dulling as if he had lost his grip on the present.
"It was above average." Again, he said it, the words dropping like stones into a bottomless well.
"It was above average."
Again.
"It was above average."
And again.
Aether's brows furrowed as he turned to look at Mirakos. Something wasn't right.
"It was above," Mirakos's form flickered, faint distortions rippling across his body.
It wasn't just him. Aether's breath hitched as the street around them seemed to quiver—faces and bodies blurring, as if the district itself was a reflection in a disturbed pool of water.
For a moment—no, a second—he saw Altan. Aether couldn't mistake that wild grin, the unrestrained joy of someone unbound by the weight of reality. Altan jumped and screamed as if nothing else mattered.
"No way! Anna was lying! The son is alive!" Altan's voice tore through the distortion, his excitement raw, uncontained.
Aether blinked hard, trying to ground himself, but his feet moved on instinct.
He raised a hand. "Five hundred," he muttered, seeing repeating visages of his hand—about five hundred times. The words were cold, deliberate. In his mind's eye, he saw himself seeing himself—continuously. And Mirakos? He saw it too.
For a moment the street existed in perfect, terrible clarity. A recursive loop of perception that threatened to consume consciousness itself.
"Oh, that's my sister's attachment skill. Sorry about that! Turn it down, Sarangerel!" Altan shouted suddenly, his voice breaking the skill.
The flickering stopped, but Aether's vision still swam. He felt it before he heard it—a roar.
A sound so primal it dragged fear from the marrow of his bones. A dragon? Was it a dragon? Did dragons even sound like that? He didn't know. All he knew was that it was terrifying.
Purple. He saw purple—a striking, vivid shade—burning like a beacon atop a distant skyscraper. The color pulsed with life for just a moment before vanishing.
And then Mirakos collapsed.
Aether followed, his knees slamming against the pavement as the world tilted on its axis.
The world snapped back into focus—a jagged, nauseating shift. Aether gasped, vertigo clawing up his throat. The weight of five hundred fractured perceptions didn't vanish; it collapsed inward.
Ghost-images of his own hand—raised, repeating, endless—flashed behind his eyelids like afterburn from a star.
His skull felt split, packed with shards of glass grinding against thought.
Every nerve screamed from the overload, the sheer wrongness of seeing himself see himself, an infinite recursion that left his mind raw and bleeding static.
For a heartbeat, the street seemed to pulse with the echo of it, reality itself feeling thin, bruised.
A gasp rippled through the crowd of brisk pedestrians, some recoiling, others stopping to gawk. Aether tried to catch his breath but noticed it too late—the world had turned purple. Not entirely, but tinted with an eerie hue that seeped into everything.
"You're actually alive!" Altan's voice broke through the haze again, unrelenting in its enthusiasm.
People were staring now, their gazes sharp, questioning, as if they weren't sure whether to intervene or flee.
Sweat poured down Aether's face as he released his fists, his pulse pounding in his ears.
Ah, yes. I take back what I said earlier, he thought bitterly.
This isn't the sort of person he's accustomed to.
These weren't the broken ones who cloaked their egos under the guise of kindness, the ones who hid their arrogance behind a mask of virtue.
No, these people… they were the dangerous ones. Their egos weren't concealed in jests or veiled in politeness. He paused—would you even call this ego?
The burnt-down house loomed in front of them, the ruins staring silently into the void.
These people are the ones everyone should avoid. Who did he think he was, trying to fight them?
It suits them, really.
Dragon personified.