Night in Astral City always had a strange silence, like the whole world held its breath after sunset. Inside the quiet guest wing of Astral Academy, Ethan lay on the bed Aren Vaylen had arranged for him. The lights were off. The room felt too large, too empty, too clean—nothing like the small, warm dorm room his sister used to stay in.
He stared at the ceiling, eyes open, unblinking.
His fingers were still trembling.
He couldn't feel his heartbeat. He couldn't feel anything.
But in the emptiness, something started to move—slow, heavy, like anger rising from somewhere too deep to name.
They killed me once.
They killed her this time.
And the world still moves like nothing happened.
Ethan sat up slowly. The window was open, letting in the cold night wind. The moonlight fell over his face, making the shadows under his eyes even darker.
And for a moment… he didn't look like a student anymore.
He looked like someone who had lost everything twice.
Someone who was starting to understand what hatred felt like.
A soft knock came at the door.
Ethan didn't respond.
Aren Vaylen entered quietly, carrying a steaming cup of tea in one hand and a folder in the other. He placed the tea on the side table without speaking. The man who used to be the second-ranked hero of Solara—someone who had stood on battlefields where entire cities shook—looked strangely calm.
He didn't approach Ethan at first. He waited.
Only after a minute did he speak.
"You haven't slept."
Ethan didn't answer.
Aren continued, "I pulled the case files myself. The Hero Association is trying to shut everything down. Government wants the same. And with Aric returning soon… things will get worse."
Ethan's eyes flicked toward him for the first time.
Aren's voice dropped. "They're afraid of him. He's not like other heroes. Once the strongest human steps back onto the board, all of them want the mess cleaned up before he arrives."
Ethan's jaw clenched.
"So they want to erase her."
Aren nodded once.
The room felt colder.
Ethan's breath shook—not from fear, but from something darker curling inside his chest. Something sharp. Something alive.
He whispered, "Then I'll never forgive them."
Aren looked at him carefully, like he already knew where Ethan's path was heading. "Hatred is heavy," he said softly. "It takes you places you don't come back from."
Ethan's voice almost broke. "They took everything from me."
Aren didn't argue.
Maybe he couldn't.
He walked to the door, but before leaving he paused.
"Ethan," he said quietly, "if you choose a dark path… walk it with your eyes open. Don't let anyone use your pain."
Then he left.
The door closed with a soft click.
The shadows in the room grew.
Ethan sat in the darkness, hands slowly curling into fists.
....
The sun had barely risen when Ethan stepped back onto academy grounds. The morning light washed Astral Academy in soft gold, but to him everything looked colorless—muted, distant, hollow.
No one stopped him.
No guards.
No teachers.
No students.
It was as if the entire academy already knew he wasn't coming back.
Ethan walked quietly through the familiar halls, the ones he'd taken every morning for a month. Each step echoed. Every corner felt colder than it should. He passed classrooms where muffled chatter leaked out, but he didn't look inside.
He wasn't here for the academy.
He was here for one last thing.
Elara's dorm.
The door looked the same—clean, neat, a small sticker of a white cat she had placed on the top corner because "it looked cute." His throat tightened. He reached out and pressed the door gently.
It opened.
The room was exactly as it had been that morning.
Too quiet.
Too empty.
Too painful.
Ethan stepped inside slowly, as though the air itself might shatter. The scent of lavender—the one Elara loved—still lingered. Her blanket was folded neatly on her bed, untouched. Her notebooks were stacked on the small table. A hair tie lay on the floor, probably dropped in a hurry days ago.
Everything screamed "she was just here."
Ethan closed the door behind him.
For a long moment, he didn't move.
Then he walked toward her bed, his fingers brushing the soft blanket. A memory flashed—Elara complaining she was cold, Ethan handing her his jacket. She had laughed, and he'd flicked her forehead.
He sat on the edge of her bed.
The silence felt heavy.
He whispered, barely audible, "Elara… I'm sorry. I wasn't enough."
His voice cracked, but no tears came. He had cried everything out already. Now there was only numbness, a hollow ache that ate at his insides. He placed the documents the police gave him on her table.
Her name on the top page stabbed him like a blade.
Cause of death:
Suicide.
His jaw clenched until it hurt.
"No," he muttered. "This isn't the truth. And I'll find the real one—no matter what it costs."
He stood up and took one last look around.
Her slippers beside the bed.
Her half-finished sketch on the wall.
A small note she had pinned:
"I hope tomorrow is a good day."
He swallowed the tremor in his chest.
Ethan stepped out of the room and closed the door softly—almost tenderly. He rested his forehead against the door for a moment, breathing in deeply, letting the last piece of him break.
"I'm leaving," he whispered.
No more academy.
No more routine.
No more pretending.
He turned away from the dorm and began walking.
Past the garden.
Past the library.
Past the main gates.
The guards glanced at him, confused, but no one dared stop him. Outside the academy walls, the city stretched endlessly before him.
Ethan didn't look back.
Not even once.
The city felt unfamiliar as Ethan walked through it. The noise, the people, the passing cars—everything blurred into a dull hum. His feet moved on their own, guided by memory rather than thought.
Eventually, he reached the small, quiet neighborhood where he and Elara had once lived.
The old house stood at the edge of the lane, untouched. The paint was slightly faded, the windows still smudged from the last time Elara had tried—unsuccessfully—to clean them. The garden behind the house was overgrown with weeds, but it still held the one thing Ethan had come for.
He stepped through the broken back gate and into the garden.
The ground, as always, pulsed faintly with a hidden glow.
There—beneath the soil, beneath dead leaves—shimmered pieces of the Obsidian Sapphire. A stone with a strange dual nature: cold to the touch, yet humming faintly with energy. Ethan had found it years ago in his past life and never understood its origin. Now he knew better.
Fragments grew from it.
Fragments formed because of it.
He knelt and pushed aside the soil with a steady hand. The stone was smaller now, shrinking from the overwhelming energy it released the night it shattered. But around it, three small fragments had formed—dark, oval-shaped crystals that shimmered like captured shadows.
Ethan picked them up one by one.
They vibrated lightly in his palm, reacting to his Dominion.
Light shouldn't have resonated with darkness.
Yet they reacted to him.
He didn't care why—not now.
He closed his fist, and light flickered across his fingers. The fragments melted into his skin, dissolving like ink spreading through water. The sensation was cold, burning, and strangely soothing at the same time.
When the last fragment sank into him, Ethan exhaled shakily.
Something inside him had shifted.
Not physically.
Not emotionally.
Something deeper.
A quiet, dangerous intention.
He stood up, turning away from the garden without taking a final look. There was nothing left for him here—not memories, not comfort, not warmth.
Only a path.
And he knew exactly where that path led.
Beyond the old house was a forest—thick trees, twisting trunks, tall shadows. He had walked it many times in his previous life, when he needed space, when he needed to think, when he needed to escape.
Now he walked with purpose.
The forest greeted him with a cool breeze that rustled the leaves overhead. Light filtered through the branches in thin strips, but Ethan barely noticed. His steps were steady, deeper and deeper into the woods.
He remembered this place well.
In his past life, this forest had been where he trained…
Where he hid…
Where he first realized he was alone in the world.
The deeper he went, the quieter everything grew. Birds silenced. Wind stilled. The forest seemed to hold its breath as he walked.
Finally, he reached the clearing—a small, open space surrounded by tall trees.