The darkness was absolute. Not the kind that comes when you close your eyes, but the kind that feels alive.....like a weight, like something with hands, pressing against your skin, testing the edges of your breath.
The cell wasn't made of stone. It was smoother, colder,an obsidian-like surface that reflected nothing, drank everything. Even the faint, pale light that leaked in from somewhere overhead seemed to dissolve before touching the walls. There were no bars, no hinges, no visible locks. Just a seamless, silent box.
Odorome hadn't just captured me. He'd bottled me.
And maybe that was right. Maybe that was where I belonged.
The dragon's last words lingered in me like a tumor, an echo that never decayed.
Finish it.
It was a command, a curse, a plea. I couldn't tell anymore. I'd tried to imagine what "finishing it" even meant, but the more I thought, the more the words seemed to twist, to turn back on themselves. Finish what? The war? The suffering? Me?
I sat there, knees pulled to my chest, staring at the floor that wasn't a floor. The air itself hummed faintly, a low vibration that made my bones feel like tuning forks. My body felt fine unnaturally fine. The dragon's gift, or his Wish. Semi-immortality, they called it. But it didn't feel like living. It felt like being trapped in survival.
Like breathing after drowning, only to realize the water never left your lungs.
I lost track of time. Or maybe time lost track of me.
What's happening out there? Is Mom worried? I had homework too. That's enough tension for me now. This.... Why the hell.... No. It doesn't matter. Cursing wouldn't change my pathetic self and luck.
The cell had no sound except for my thoughts .Tiny, pathetic things bouncing around like insects. I wondered if Riruru had made it. If Pippo had escaped. I wondered if the Metropians still fought, or if everything had gone quiet out there too.
Maybe the war had ended. Maybe I was the only one left alive, rotting in a perfect, polished grave.
Then, without warning, the door that wasn't a door opened. No creak, no mechanical click,just a whisper of air moving, and suddenly there was light.
Tch.... What now?
A silhouette stood framed in the gap.
Not a guard. Not a soldier.
A crow.
Its feathers shimmered faintly, as though dusted with oil. Its eyes gleamed with the kind of intelligence that wasn't human but understood humans too well.
I always tried forgetting his disgusting smile since childhood. I nearly did... But guess fate was unsatisfied with my peace.
"The Dark King requests an audience," it croaked. The voice was brittle, grinding,like someone had poured gravel through a throat. "He is… curious about the specimen that broke his general's focus."
I didn't move. I couldn't.
The crow tilted its head, slow and deliberate. "He wonders," it continued, "if you still dream of a cat."
The world froze.
That word,cat,hit me harder than any magic, any blast, any memory. It cut through everything. I didn't even know I was shaking until I heard the faint scrape of my nails against the glassy floor.
My blood ran cold.
It knew. Somehow, impossibly, it knew.
Does that mean the memory wipe didn't affect the mirror dimension?
My throat worked, but no sound came out. The crow's beak curved...not quite a smile, not quite mockery. Something colder. Something pleased.
I stood up. My legs moved like they weren't mine. The dragon's echo inside me pulsed once, faintly. The debt wasn't over. It was just being called in.
---
The throne room was a cathedral of nightmares.
It stretched endlessly upward, a ribcage made of metal and bone. The air thrummed with energy—a low, psychic frequency that made my teeth ache and my thoughts stumble. There were no windows, no torches. The light came from the walls themselves, bleeding out like infection.
And at the center, sitting on a throne built from fused blades and skeletal remains, was him.
Odorome.
He wasn't a monster. He wasn't a towering demon or a grotesque god. He was… a man. Tall, lean, unnervingly still. His face was sharp, his features clean, his expression bored. That was what terrified me most—the boredom.
He looked at me like I was an insect that had unexpectedly learned to speak.
"Nobita Nobi," he said, his tone calm, measured, almost conversational. "The false swordsman. The hero who isn't. You are an interesting statistical anomaly."
The sound of my name in his mouth felt wrong.
He lifted a finger, and a shimmer appeared between us—a holographic image, vivid and cruel. My house. The crater. My childhood distilled into ruin.
"You see," he said, pacing slowly around the projection, "most pests are exterminated. But you… you persist. You break patterns. You generate new variables."
He smiled faintly. "My war is not against the Metropians. They are simply… collateral. My war is with the very concept of their hope."
He stopped in front of me, eyes glinting with something ancient and amused. "And you, boy—you are hope that has given up. A weapon that refuses to fire. A paradox made flesh."
His words slid into me like needles. I hated how much sense they made.
He leaned closer. "Join me," he said. "Not as a soldier. As a specimen. Let me study the emptiness where your courage should be. In return, I will let the refugees in the caves live—just a little longer."
He wasn't offering power. He wasn't lying.
He was offering me a purpose for my uselessness.
And in that moment, it felt like the most honest offer I'd ever received.
And.... It felt wrong. Obviously it was. I've been here, haven't I?
"So, what will it be?" He stared at me, as his lip curled up in a creepy grin.