[Dream]
A beautiful river flowed peacefully between a grove of trees. Birds wheeled in a clear sky, and fish darted through the crystalline water. Suddenly, a sound shattered the tranquility.
"Waaah, waaah!" The lonely cry of a baby echoed from the base of a large riverside tree. The infant cried for hours until, exhausted, it finally succumbed to sleep.
For days, the baby remained there, cycling between desperate crying and fitful slumber, weakened by hunger and cold. Then, one day, a group of women came to the river to draw water. By chance, one of them heard the faint, pitiful sound. She followed it and discovered the child beneath the tree's sprawling roots.
She lifted the baby, rocking it gently. A surge of innate compassion moved her, and she decided then and there to care for the child. She waited for the other women to leave before emerging, the baby cradled in one arm, her bucket of water in the other.
But when she arrived home, her husband was furious. They had their own children to feed, he argued; they couldn't afford another mouth. After a long, painful discussion, the woman knew he was right. With a heavy heart, she resolved to take the child to an orphanage.
---
What was that? A memory? I'd heard that people see their past lives flash before their eyes before death, a final prelude to heaven or hell. I wasn't sure I believed in such concepts. The vision left me with a strange, unresolved ache.
If heaven was a reward for the good, why did it allow so many kind souls to perish senselessly? So many good people died because of the actions of others.
I was philosophizing quite a bit for a corpse. But wasn't this taking too long? How could I still be thinking if I had been annihilated by that monster's beam? Was I still alive?
No! If I was alive, what had happened to Cherry? I had to open my eyes! Wake up, body! If I didn't, Cherry would still be lying there, drained and defenseless. I had to protect her in case the monster attacked again! Hurry up!!
After an eternity of mental struggle, sensation began to return. I was still standing. Had my body been paralyzed by the blast? It was a disorienting feeling, one I never wanted to repeat.
Slowly, I forced my eyes open, vision blurry like a newborn's before sharpening. My skin registered sensation again—the wind around me was bitingly cold. Shouldn't it have been scorching hot?
I blinked, my sight fully restoring itself. The colossal monster still loomed ahead, its beam of pure destruction firing relentlessly. How much time had passed since I blacked out?
I watched, stunned, as the blazing energy surged toward me. But the moment it made contact, the impossible happened. The incinerating heat reversed, transforming into a swirling, frigid vortex that enveloped us. The deadly beam dissipated into a shower of harmless, glittering snowflakes.
Cherry was on the ground behind me, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and utter exhaustion. She stared at me, then at the miraculous snowfall gathering around our feet.
"Are you okay?" I asked, my voice rough. I offered her my hand.
She hesitated for a split second, then took it. Her grip was warm and firm. I pulled her to her feet, and she leaned against me for support, her body trembling from strain and relief.
"What... what did you do?" she whispered, her voice filled with awe and confusion.
"I... I don't know," I admitted, the truth as bewildering to me as it was to her. This power wasn't something I consciously wielded; it felt like a dormant wall within me had instinctively risen to defend us. A profound, icy coldness settled deeper in my chest.
Cherry simply nodded, her gaze fixed on the relentless monster, her grip on my arm tightening.
"What should we do?" Cherry asked, still holding my arm. We were safe within this inexplicable bubble, but we were trapped. I was a shield with no sword, and Cherry was completely spent. We could only wait.
"We wait. Backup must be coming. This is one of the walls of Valoria, after all," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
She gave a weak nod. I looked around at the devastated cityscape. Among the ruins, I could make out the still forms of those who hadn't been saved. A wave of grief and guilt, so potent it was a physical pain, crashed over me. My power had saved us, but it had activated too late for them. I had been too weak, too slow. I had failed. The negative emotions from the few survivors—their terror, their anguish—began to press against my mind from a distance, a throbbing headache building behind my eyes.
I looked down at my hands. They looked ordinary, but I felt a deep, alien coldness inside my chest, as if I'd swallowed a shard of eternal winter. It was an uncomfortable, hollow feeling.
Suddenly, the monster was struck by a simultaneous barrage of countless arrows and high-caliber rounds. Each impact tore massive chunks from its form. The attackers had to be immensely powerful to strike from such a distance. I could feel their formidable strength even from miles away. One was firing from a far-off skyscraper—a sniper—and another was attacking from the distant city walls. I had a strange intuition about the archer's identity, and the city's silhouette looked hauntingly familiar.
The monster writhed under the relentless assault. After a prolonged bombardment, it finally ceased moving. But instead of collapsing, a dark rift撕裂 open in the air and swallowed the monstrous entity whole. It vanished without a trace. If I were stronger, I would have pursued it to the depths of hell, but for now, the immediate threat was over.
"Let's go," I said to Cherry, who was still staring at the empty space where the giant had been.
She nodded, leaning on me for support as we began our trek home. I could sense the immense power of the heroes who had aided us receding into the distance. A premonition told me we would meet them soon.
The journey home was a grim, silent procession through a broken world. The streets were choked with dust and rubble. The air was thick with the acrid smell of smoke and the constant, mournful wail of sirens. Other Magi and rescue workers were already on the scene, using elemental magic to douse fires or telekinesis to shift concrete slabs in search of survivors.
Everywhere, people were crying, holding each other, their faces masks of shock and loss. Their collective fear and grief was a heavy blanket smothering my mind, amplifying my headache and my own profound guilt. Some survivors pointed at us as we passed, whispering, their eyes wide. I caught fragments—"boy," "beam," "miracle"—but I was too exhausted and numb to care.
---
[News Channel]
The reporter on the television spoke with breathless excitement. "The attack is over! The Void creature has been driven back! Thanks to our hero, Silent Death, and the unknown archer! But we are receiving incredible reports of a miracle—a young man who stood against the annihilation beam and survived! Who is this unknown hero?"
---
[A bustling street]
On a nearby street, a crowd had gathered around a large public screen, watching the breaking news.
"Haha, you're working yourself too much, old man," one man joked to his companion.
The other man, wearing a thick coat with a massive sniper rifle slung across his back, grunted. "I'm not that old yet! Besides, I'm pretty sure we didn't kill that thing. It must still be alive somewhere."
The first man shrugged. "Oh well, I did my job. Let's head back."
His companion nodded, and the two of them melted into the crowd, completely unnoticed.
---
[Dark room]
In a dark room, a man watched the same news report on a magical screen. His face was a mask of fury, but he didn't lash out physically. His hands merely clenched into white-knuckled fists.
"How... amazing," he whispered, the words a venomous hiss. He had dismissed the boy's earlier immunity as a fluke, a one-time anomaly. But this... this was on a catastrophic scale. To neutralize a Void entity's primary attack? "It seems I was focusing on the wrong prize. That girl is a juicy fruit, but you... you are the entire orchard." A slow, predatory smile stretched his lips. "I'll be watching you very, very closely, boy."
He reached for a glass of blood-red wine on the table beside him, draining it in one long, deliberate swallow, his mind already weaving far grander and more sinister plans.
---
Cherry and I finally reached our home. I unlocked the door, and we stumbled inside. The moment she reached the living room, she collapsed onto the sofa, completely spent.
"Thank you," she said, her cheeks flushed. A flicker of warmth cut through my inner cold. I had finally saved someone—the person right in front of me. But to save more, I needed to understand this power.
"So, you were hiding something from me?" Cherry asked, looking at me with a playful pout.
Huh? Did she think I'd been concealing this ability? Why would I hide something so crucial instead of using it to protect us from the start? It made no sense.
"I didn't know about it myself," I explained. "It's something I noticed when that professor attacked me before. His magic just... didn't work on me, and then he vanished."
It was all so confusing. I already had my empathic ability, and now this? What was happening to me?
"I see," Cherry said. A determined grin spread across her face. "Well, it will be incredibly handy if you can learn to control it, right? I'll help you train and figure it out."
I saw no issue with that. Training with her to explore my abilities sounded like the perfect next step.
"Oh, by the way," I added, "we're going somewhere tomorrow. To meet an acquaintance who helped us."
"Where?" she asked, her puzzlement returning.
"To meet an ally," I said, perhaps with a hint of pride. After all, they had saved us. But more than that, a deep intuition told me our meeting would unveil many important truths.