The Last Esper [BL]
Chapter 22: Breaking point

Chapter 22: Breaking point

The voting was about to begin when a deep, piercing sound echoed off the concrete walls. The entire city seemed to vibrate with its echo. For a second, everyone fell silent, paralyzed by what the alarm meant. And then, the room erupted into motion.

"A Rift!" someone shouted.

"Everyone get to their positions!" Milo raised his voice above the chaos. "Make sure everyone gets to the shelters!"

As if they had rehearsed it hundreds of times, the rebels acted on instinct. Chairs were pushed aside, backpacks of supplies were placed on their shoulders, and weapons hidden in crates were distributed among the most trained. Some were old; others were stolen from Blackwood’s soldiers.

"Come on," Rhys muttered, turning toward the exit with Caelan. "We have to find Jae and Eun-woo."

But before they could take a step out of the room, Gunnar intercepted them.

"Listen," he said. "If this is a Rift, Blackwood soldiers will be there soon. Be careful."

"We know," Caelan responded quickly.

"Then prepare for the worst," Gunnar said.

When they stepped out into the hallway, the transformation of The Burrow was evident. The space that had once seemed like an organized hive had become a hive of chaos. The people who had once been sorting supplies were now running, dragging boxes, guiding children, and supporting elderly people who could barely walk. Orders rang through the air, fast, sharp, and desperate.

"Jae! Eun-woo!" Rhys shouted.

For a few agonizing seconds, they saw no trace of them, until Jae’s solitary figure appeared next to some overturned crates, his head spinning in all directions.

"Jae!" Caelan shouted, running toward him.

"Are you okay?" Rhys asked when he reached him.

Jae looked up, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"No... I don’t know... We were just sitting here and the next thing I knew, he... he was gone. I lost him! I lost sight of Eun-woo!"

Rhys’s chest tightened as if the air had been knocked out of him, and without a word, and without looking back, he ran toward the main exit.

"Rhys!" Caelan shouted behind him.

"Rhys, wait!"

But Rhys didn’t stop.

The world could come crashing down, the city could burn, but all that mattered was finding Eun-woo.

Outside, the sky was tinged with metallic hues and the wind smelled of damp and disaster.

***

The creature was colossal. A monster that towered over the buildings as if the city were nothing more than a cardboard model. Next to it, the skyscrapers looked like dollhouses.

One of its tentacles slammed down hard onto the ground. The impact was so brutal that entire streets crumbled. Concrete flew through the air. Structures collapsed in a matter of seconds. A deafening roar shook the foundations of buildings.

Eun-woo fell to the ground like a leaf blown by the wind. The shockwave tore a scream from him and slammed him back against the cracked pavement. He coughed. A trickle of blood slid down his lips. He was terrified, but frozen in place.

Or rather, something inside him didn’t want him to run away.

There was an invisible force calling to him from the heart of the Rift. He felt the trembling in his skull, the aching throb inside his temples, the nausea rising in his stomach. He could barely see, through the cloud of dust, the broken shapes of what had once been the neighborhood. Everything was a harsh, gray veil.

The dust scraped at his throat as he gagged. His skin ached, his teeth ached, and his eyes burned. His body was hot with fever.

Just like last time. Like when he touched the Butcher... and he fell dead at his feet.

He tried to calm down and breathe, but he couldn’t. The trembling in his body wouldn’t stop.

Then, through the cloud of dust, he saw another tentacle rise. Gigantic, glowing with the remnants of light that pierced the mist.

It was going to fall right on him.

Eun-woo closed his eyes.

He didn’t struggle.

He didn’t scream.

He just waited.

But death did not come.

Instead, a monstrous screech tore through the air. A shriek that made his skin crawl. He opened his eyes just in time to see the tentacle explode into a thousand pieces in front of him.

Flesh, bone, and blood rained down around him in a red storm. The ground was covered in slimy fragments, and the smell of iron made him vomit.

Eun-woo gasped, not understanding what had just happened.

An explosion shook the sky.

He looked up.

On the rooftops, human shadows fired guns and homemade explosives. They must have been rebels from The Burrow.

Then the creature responded.

He swung one of his tentacles and lashed it furiously at the buildings from which he was attacked.

With a dull roar, the structures collapsed.

Eun-woo screamed in horror.

"Are you going to keep acting like a fool or are you going to do something?"

The voice came from within him.

That voice was his, but firmer and more monotonous.

Eun-woo shook his head, sobbing.

"No... I don’t... I don’t know how."

"Yes you know." The voice insisted cruelly, almost amused. "You did it when you were a kid. When they tried to hurt you. Do you remember?"

Eun-woo didn’t want to remember it, but he did.

He remembered the Guides’ hands holding him, their rough, cold skin, the voices telling him to stay still while they laughed at his fear.

And then...

The blood on the walls.

The bodies imploding.

Eun-woo shuddered. Tears blurred his vision.

"They were going to hurt me... It was an accident..."

"No. That was your nature." The voice whispered. "You’re a weapon. You always were. Why do you keep running away from yourself?"

Eun-woo squeezed his eyes shut, trembling, surrounded by blood that wasn’t his, by death he hadn’t asked for.

In the sky, the creature continued to scream and the city continued to burn.

Eun-woo brought his hands to his head, clenching his fingers in his hair as if he could tear away the pain.

"Shut up!" he shouted.

But the voice did not stop.

"You suck." The voice continued."Everyone will die because of you."

"I don’t know what to do..." Eun-woo stammered.

"You don’t know how to do anything. That’s why your parents abandoned you. Do you remember their faces? Do you remember how relieved they were when you were taken away from them?"

Eun-woo gritted his teeth, but the memories came flooding back. He recalled his parents’ tense faces. His mother, trembling, flinched every time he raised a hand, unable to offer even a touch. His father stared at him with a blank stare, devoid of all affection.

And he also remembered that damn relief.

The relief that crossed his parents’ eyes when they took him from the house. The one who said, without words: We finally got rid of him..

"And that’s why Rhys won’t love you either, because you’re a burden and you’re useless."

Tears flowed uncontrollably.

He remembered Rhys’s careful touch and the gentle way he spoke to him. But the absences returned too, the shifty glances, the awkward silences, the times Rhys would withdraw without explanation. The doubts floating in his eyes, as if he didn’t know what to do with him.

"Shut up!" Eun-woo shouted at the top of his lungs.

And Eun-woo’s scream wasn’t just a shout.

It became an explosion.

A blast that ripped through the air like an invisible wave, pure and brutal, so powerful that everything around it shattered. The debris didn’t fly; it shattered into a fine cloud of particles, swept away by a silent expansion.

Eun-woo, trembling and breathless, cried so hard that his whole body ached.

And then...

Something inside him woke up.

It was as if something clicked inside him. As if an invisible door had opened and let him in. Time seemed to stop. The city stopped screaming. Eun-woo no longer smelled blood, dust, sweat, or fear. He couldn’t even feel the pounding in his chest.

There was only absolute silence.

And beneath that calm... a buried rage began to well up from deep within his heart.

Eun-woo stood up. His movements were heavy. He looked up at the creature, and there was no fear on his face. Only weariness. A grimace of annoyance at the presence of an intruder.

The monster looked at Eun-woo, her primitive instinct alerting her that something was different.

Eun-woo moved forward with his chin held high, as if nothing could stop him. Each step he took turned the rubble into dust, leaving the path clear. He stood in front of the creature, so close that he only had to reach out to touch it.

That’s when the creature reacted: it raised a tentacle and extended it towards Eun-woo with the intention of crushing him.

But when he put it down, Eun-woo was gone.

A second later, Eun-woo was standing on one of the suction cups, his eyes glowing red with a supernatural intensity.

Eun-woo tilted his head in an almost lazy gesture, as if what he was facing wasn’t a threat, but a minor annoyance.

And a disdainful sneer appeared on his lips.

"A kid like you shouldn’t be trespassing on someone else’s territory," Eun-woo said cruelly. "Tell the rest to stay away."

The creature roared furiously. The deep, ragged sound shook the broken buildings and kicked up dust from the ruins. Its tentacle thrashed violently in an attempt to throw Eun-woo into the air.

But Eun-woo didn’t fall.

Leap.

He remained suspended in the air, right in front of the monster’s misshapen eyes. His eyes glowed a red so intense they seemed to burn.

Eun-woo smiled.

It wasn’t a friendly smile.

It was a warning.

And then he threw a punch. The air split in two with a sharp sound. The impact struck the creature full in the face, and it screamed with a piercing shriek as its massive body was thrown backward, twisted by the force of the blow.

The monster fell heavily, rolling into the Rift.

The portal flickered, unsteady.

Eun-woo reached out toward the beam of light, which writhed like a creature desperate to break free. Under Eun-woo’s will, it began to close in.

The light trembled before pulsating one last time and then going out.

At that moment, everything went silent.

Eun-woo descended slowly and landed lightly on the destroyed ground. He remained motionless in the middle of the shattered street, enveloped in the suspended dust and the creature’s blood.

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