Meanwhile, Junior Grey drifted aimlessly through the void.
A shapeless, gloomy expanse with neither top nor bottom surrounded him from every side. There was no direction, no point of reference, only cold silence buried somewhere deep within his subconscious.
The boy couldn't feel his body. He couldn't feel the familiar support beneath his feet. He didn't even know where his feet were.
He simply... drifted. Floated or sank. It made no difference.
In this place, even the concept of time seemed to have dissolved, leaving behind only this strange, detached "now" that had already lasted for... how long? An hour? A day? A week?
Any normal person would have found such surroundings a living nightmare, but Grey had somehow grown accustomed to this state.
The darkness no longer filled him with panic or the feeling of suffocation.
He simply existed here. Alone. Cut off from the rest of the world.
He hadn't even noticed when loneliness had become comforting, even pleasant. There was no pain here, no fear, no difficult choices, no uncertainty about tomorrow. Only silence and absolute peace, disturbed solely by the slow drift of his own thoughts.
'How long have I been here?'
'Is this the end I've reached?'
He tried to remember.
With difficulty.
Like a plant forcing its way through the cracks of a concrete slab.
He had fought.
Yes... there had been a battle.
He had taken control of the body to fight the panther. It had been a good fight, he had to admit.
The beast was strong, but he wasn't weak either. His heart had pounded wildly, adrenaline racing through his veins. He had used everything he had learned in the village.
A leap.
The final strike.
Pain.
A roar.
His arm...
Yes, it had hurt.
He remembered fighting with the last of his strength, but apparently, he had lost.
And then...
A scene flashed before his eyes.
A final moment between life and death, carved into his subconscious as if by a razor-sharp blade.
Screams.
The cries of the villagers.
An explosion.
His mother knelt before him and his sister. She spread her arms wide to embrace them, as though she were embracing the entire world. There was no fear on her face. No panic.
Only tenderness.
Endless tenderness.
And the spear.
The spear that pierced her stomach, as if everything had slowed to a crawl.
Even though her face twisted in pain, Grey felt as though she was still looking at him with that same gentle, encouraging gaze.
He remembered reaching out toward her, trying desperately to touch her, but his body was already flying toward the portal Aunt Albedo had opened.
The last thing he remembered before disappearing was Grace's panicked screams. She struggled with all her strength to reach their wounded mother, yet just like him, she was helplessly being pulled toward the portal.
Grey felt as though her voice still echoed through the darkness, tearing him apart from within.
Again and again, his mind replayed those final moments like a broken record.
Without mercy. Without pause. As if the darkness itself had decided to preserve that instant forever.
He tried to close his eyes, but he had no eyelids. He wanted to cover his ears, but he had no hands. He simply remained there, forced to watch the scene over and over as it tore his heart to pieces.
'It's not real! It's all a lie!' he screamed at himself, yet he couldn't hear his own voice.
'That couldn't have happened! My mother is a Sky-dweller! She can't be killed that easily!'
Though he desperately tried to deny the memories resurfacing before him, something deep inside relentlessly whispered the truth.
It was real.
These were his own memories, not illusions or the product of a fevered imagination.
The longer he drifted, the clearer the events became.
Pompey. Orion...
They had tracked him down even in a village on the outskirts of Nightingale. The elders had chosen to protect him, but the enemy had come prepared. They were too powerful. So powerful that even the aftershock of their battle could have killed a child like him. That was why he and Grace had been hurriedly sent away.
What a cruel irony that the spear had been faster than the portal.
Catherine could have dodged it.
Grey knew she could have.
But then he and Grace certainly would not have survived.
Her choice had been obvious.
Grey realized that he had lost his mother.
Most likely forever...
More than that, the loss had shaken him so deeply that he had chosen to forget those scenes entirely. Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, he had pretended that nothing had happened. He had simply refused to face a reality in which he was powerless.
Was that how the second personality had appeared?
The moment his own consciousness had been swallowed by chaos, something otherworldly had entered his body. Something that had filled the void left behind.
And he hadn't even tried to resist...
He had been powerless, just as he always was.
And the more firmly that realization settled into his mind, the stronger another feeling began to emerge within him.
Deep.
Burning.
Rage.
It churned and pulsed in the depths of his heart, echoing throughout the endless space around him. He knew he was weak. He knew he was pathetic.
And yet a voice lingered inside him.
'You should have done something... you should have.'
Grey couldn't think rationally. No matter how harsh his training had been, no matter how resilient he believed himself to be, he was still just an ordinary teenager.
What else could a teenager do after being forced to watch his mother lose her life trying to save him?
He felt fear and anger drowning out everything else. He didn't care that he was merely a cripple dreaming of killing a Sky-dweller. Logic had been thrown out the window.
'I will tear Pompey apart! I will rip Orion's head from his shoulders!'
'I will make them suffer through a personal hell on earth! Even if I have to become a devil to do it!'
At that moment, he swore to himself that he would spend his entire life hunting down and killing those powerful bastards who had caused him so much pain and become the source of every misfortune in his life.
As though the surrounding space had found resonance with that emotion, it responded.
Grey's consciousness was pulled upward toward something.
=========
Senior ran without paying attention to where he was going. His emotions were in complete turmoil. The conversation with Monica kept replaying in his mind.
The words he had spoken in a burst of emotion repeated again and again like a distant echo.
"You're disgusting to me."
He knew he had been cruel to her. He knew he shouldn't have lashed out like that, yet he hadn't been able to control himself. The moment he understood what that woman had done for him, his detached state of mind had vanished completely.
Worse still, he was painfully aware of his own helplessness. It was because he was useless and weak that he had been forced to rely on Junior during the battle with the panther.
He could ignore it all he wanted, but it remained a fact.
A fact that tormented his heart.
How shameful was it for a grown man to depend on the mercy of a child and a woman?
Grey didn't want to be that kind of person. Just as in his previous life, he wanted to achieve everything through his own efforts. Since when had he become such a pathetic wreck?
Burdened by that tangle of thoughts, he kept running without paying attention to the road ahead. He didn't notice the people he shoved aside with his shoulders or their irritated shouts.
The cool wind struck his face, tousled his hair, and slipped beneath the collar of his shirt.
His mind, scorched by anger, gradually began to clear. With every step, it felt as though the hot haze clouding his thoughts was melting away beneath the pressure of the fresh air.
He wanted to stop, catch his breath, and finally make sense of everything that had happened when suddenly:
"I will have my revenge."
A furious shout rang out inside his head.
Junior's voice was sharp and desperate.
Even from his position as the one in control, Senior could clearly feel the killing intent seeping through those words.
He froze.
"You... woke up? What's wrong with you? Why are you yelling?"
"You..." Junior's voice trembled with rage. "It was you! You took advantage of the moment! While I was in shock, you crawled into my body and just... just took it for yourself! You're no better than those bastards from the damned Empires."
Senior frowned.
"Enough. We've already talked about this. I don't know what happened back then. I died, and the next second I was in your body. Maybe it was a reaction to the shock. Maybe you handed over control yourself. How am I supposed to know?"
"How convenient!" Junior shouted, showing no intention of calming down. "Very convenient that you can't remember anything whenever it benefits you!"
"Shut up!" Senior barked, not caring that he probably looked insane. "Do you think I wanted this?! I wasn't even supposed to be here! I had a life. A peaceful, normal, modern life! And now I'm sharing a body with a kid who has too many emotions and not enough brains!"
Silence answered him.
One second.
Then another.
And then...
A cold, strained breath.
"You know what..." Junior said quietly. "I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I went through. Then you'll understand and stop shouting as if I'm some naive idiot."
Senior felt as though something inside him had been turned upside down. Somehow, his mind became flooded with someone else's memories, tangled and unbearably painful.
He had no idea how Junior had managed to create such an effect, nor did he spare any thought for it.
He simply watched like a spectator as fragments of memories were forcibly merged into his own.
"When I was three years old and underwent the Awakening Ceremony, my father betrayed me and ordered my magic core to be destroyed. I was called the Child of Prophecy and an offspring of darkness. Only my mother stood up for me. She fought her way out of the acropolis and escaped with my sister and me.
We fled to a village on the outskirts of Nightingale and cut ourselves off from the world. There weren't many of us. My mother, my sister, Cassia, and the elders. They wanted me to live a peaceful life. But because no mortal is destined to live longer than fifty years, my mother never stopped searching for a way to heal me.
I tried everything, but I remained a cripple. And then, just when I had accepted my fate and only wanted to spend my life with the people I loved, they appeared...
Orion and Pompey, the rulers of the Roman Empire and the Magic Empire. They tracked me down even at the edge of the world. My mother sacrificed herself to teleport my sister and me away. I saw with my own eyes as a spear pierced her body."
Junior's voice broke with pain as he spoke the final words.
Senior fell silent. For the first time, he didn't know what to say.
Junior's words overlapped with the scenes flashing through his mind. He could feel the boy's pain and despair as though he had experienced it himself.
At that moment, he was confused.
He didn't know what he was supposed to feel.
All of it...
It seemed absurd.
Too cinematic. Too personal.
Too... unreal.
As if he himself had lived through the plot of a blockbuster movie.
Things like this didn't happen.
"...I don't know what I'm supposed to say," he admitted quietly.
"You don't need to say anything," Junior cut him off sharply. "I'm not going to sit around doing nothing anymore. We're leaving tomorrow. We'll find Grace. And we'll try to learn what happened to my mother. She's a Sky-dweller. I'm not sure, but I want to believe she survived. This isn't up for discussion."
Senior closed his eyes.
His mind had regained its composure once more.
But Junior's voice sounded like steel.
"If you don't want to be my enemy," he continued, "you'll help me. Or at the very least, stay out of my way."
Senior let out an ironic laugh in response.
As if he had just heard the funniest joke of his entire life.
"Are you serious? You want to search for your mother and sister?" He shook his head. "Fine. Great. Let's fantasize for a moment. We leave Thorn's Cloaca. Right now. And where the hell do we go, hero? Where exactly are you planning to look for them? Do you have a map? Do you know a single name? A single street? Do you even have the slightest idea which direction they might have gone?!"
He paused, but didn't give Junior a chance to speak.
"You're a cripple. No power. No connections. You want to buy information? You'll get robbed in the first alley you walk into and left to die in a ditch the moment you start asking questions. And don't remind me that you're 'strong.' We both know that's nowhere near enough."
His voice nearly rose into a shout.
"So where do you want to start, huh?! Where are you going? Who exactly are you planning to ask for help?"
Junior remained silent. His mind was boiling with emotion, but at that moment he felt as though he had been crushed beneath a steamroller.
Senior was right.
"Then what do you think we should do?" he exhaled hoarsely, like a wounded animal refusing to give up.
"Follow the original plan," Senior replied firmly. "You understand yourself that it's the only option. We have neither strength nor connections. We're nobody. And if you want to change anything, you'll have to accept that."
He stopped and drew a deep breath.
"I admit that I've been treating everything... too lightly. Looking at this world as if it were some kind of set piece or a game."
"That's why we're changing our approach," Senior continued, his voice growing colder and harder. "No compromises. No naivety. We'll become ruthless. We'll look at the entire world as an enemy. And we'll act accordingly."
He clenched his fists.
"You want revenge against Pompey and Orion? Fine. Welcome aboard. But first, we're going to take over the Cloaca. Every street. Every soul. We'll start from the very bottom and climb our way up. Through lies, pain, and filth if necessary. But we will climb."
=============
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