The bitter sea wind roared through the shattered, gaping windows of Warehouse 564, carrying with it the putrid reek of dead fish, brine, and fresh iron. But to Leornars, the howling gale was nothing short of a deafening chorus—hundreds, perhaps thousands of overlapping voices whispering, screaming, and sobbing directly into the lining of his brain.
> *"We trusted you..."*
> *"You were supposed to protect us!"*
> *"Murderer."*
>
His hand trembled violently as he slammed his palm against the heavy oak door leading into the inner storage hall. It wasn't the creak of rusted metal hinges that greeted his ears upon entering—it was the high, thin, agonizing wail of a terrified child.
The first Black Acer rushed him from the shadows, a heavy steel broadsword raised high overhead.
Leornars didn't see a mercenary.
In the flickering moonlight, he saw *her*.
Dark hair tied in frayed silk ribbons, tears streaking her dirt-smudged cheeks—the young girl whose throat he had brutally crushed during a raid five long years ago. She was staring right through him, screaming his name with sheer agony.
> *"Leornars! Why?! Why did you do it?!"*
>
The enemy's blade came crashing down, but it was far too slow. Moving purely on fatal instinct, Leornars ripped his trench dagger upward directly through her—no, *its*—sternum. Hot, arterial blood sprayed in a scalding wave against his pale face.
When he blinked through the crimson haze, the girl vanished; it was merely a burly man staring back at him in sheer terror before collapsing into a wet pool of his own spilling entrails.
Another Acer lunged wildly from his left flank, spear thrusting forward.
This time, the illusion warped into his brother—the one who had perished before Leornars could even fully recall the resonance of his voice. His chest was grotesquely caved in, his punctured lungs wheezing for air, yet he stumbled relentlessly toward Leornars, his glassy eyes overflowing with absolute betrayal.
> *"You survived... but you left me behind to rot."*
>
Leornars let out a guttural roar and plunged his dagger straight through the hallucination's lower jaw, the dark steel erupting with a sickening crunch from the very crown of its skull.
When the bloody vision flickered and dissolved, only another lifeless Acer remained pinned to the splintered floorboards.
Five more mercenaries charged at once, their steel glinting in the dark.
But in Leornars's shattering mind, they were all ghosts dragged from the depths of his past—his mother, her face deathly pale and her jaw hanging open in silent, eternal accusation; his childhood friend, whose gentle smile was warped into a sadistic sneer; the nameless, broken captives who had bled out in his arms during those nine agonizing years of endless dungeon torture.
Every brutal strike he dealt landed on specters. Every bloodcurdling scream that left their dying lips was one he already held memorized in his nightmares.
His breathing turned ragged, tearing at his lungs. The edges of the world dimmed into pitch black, his vision tunneling into violent, flashing pulses of pure red.
> *"Kill them all."*
> *"End it."*
> *"We'll finally be quiet if you kill every single one of them..."*
>
With inhuman, dark-mana-infused strength, Leornars seized a charging man's arm and tore it completely from its socket, using the severed, heavy limb like a club to violently strike another until his skull collapsed inward into wet ash.
He drove his knee straight into a third mercenary's ribs hard enough to shatter the bone structure and pierce the heart within.
He lunged like a wild beast at the fourth, ripping out the man's throat with his bare teeth.
The wooden floor was slick, his heavy leather boots sliding in the pool of thickening blood.
Only one Black Acer remained alive, backing away in utter horror, his hands shaking as he held a trembling dagger.
And in Leornars's burning crimson eyes... it was himself.
Not the feared White Plague he had become—but the young boy from before. Small. Wide-eyed. Fragile. Still completely human.
The child stared up at him through tears.
> *"If you kill me... there's nothing left of you. You lose forever."*
>
Leornars's white-knuckled grip shook uncontrollably around the hilt of his blade. His vision swam wildly back and forth between the helpless boy and the sweating mercenary—back, forth, back, forth—until his skull felt like it was actively splitting down the middle under the pressure.
> *"Do it!"*
> *"DON'T do it!"*
> *"FINISH HIM!"*
> *"PLEASE, STOP!"*
>
Leornars screamed—a raw, terrifying, animalistic sound that shattered the glass remaining in the high windows—and plunged the black dagger forward with every ounce of force left in his body.
The young boy's eyes widened in shock. Thick blood bubbled over his lips as he gasped for air.
And then, with a heavy exhale, the illusion dissolved into mist—leaving just a nameless mercenary corpse lying flat at his feet, eyes glassy, hollow, and unseeing.
The chaotic voices inside his head suddenly fell completely silent.
They were not gone—just... waiting in the deep shadows of his mind.
Leornars slowly turned and stepped out of the slaughterhouse into the pouring rain, every cold drop feeling as though it were desperately trying to wash something dirty away. But the crimson stains on his hands—and the jagged cracks running through his psyche—were far deeper than any storm could ever reach.
Somewhere deep inside the cold dark, the little boy was still screaming.