Night after night, Hayato's nightmares grew more vivid, more violent, and more suffocating. What began as fleeting whispers in his sleep had now evolved into haunting visions that clawed at his consciousness long after he woke. Each time he closed his eyes, he was dragged deeper into a realm of shadow and dread, where the cold voice of the old lady echoed with chilling clarity. Her words—cryptic, venomous, and laced with ancient malice—wrapped around his mind like a vice. They lingered even in the daylight, gnawing at his sanity, her laughter curling in the recesses of his thoughts like smoke from a distant fire.
He could still hear her: "The light in you will flicker... then vanish. Just like all the rest." That single line had etched itself into the deepest corner of his psyche, a scar that refused to fade.
The more he struggled to forget, the more the memories returned with brutal force. Each day bled into the next, a monotony painted in shades of fear and doubt. Hayato, once bright and full of resolve, began to dim. His once-enthusiastic training sessions became brief, then sporadic, then nonexistent. Where he had once soared with power and purpose, he now drifted in silence, a ghost of the boy he used to be.
His powers—those strange and beautiful gifts that once filled him with awe—now felt alien. Dangerous. A reminder of the destiny he had never asked for. He flinched at the smallest sparks of energy that pulsed from within, repelled by his own potential. Every surge of power reminded him of the old lady's eyes—those lifeless orbs that had stared straight into him, as if already mourning his fall.
With his retreat from power came an inevitable withdrawal from those around him. He avoided his instructors, abandoned his mentors, and most painfully of all, shut out his own family. Meals became silent affairs. Conversations became one-sided. His parents, once his pillars of strength, now stood helplessly on the other side of a chasm that widened with each passing day.
His father, always the stoic protector, tried to reach him first. A hand on the shoulder. A question asked gently but firmly. "Hayato, what's going on?" But the boy only shook his head, unable—or unwilling—to answer. His mother followed, her voice trembling with emotion as she pleaded for a glimpse into his thoughts, but his silence remained steadfast. They could see the fear in his eyes, the torment that gnawed at his soul, but every effort to help was met with quiet resistance. The harder they tried to pull him back, the further he seemed to sink.
The once-harmonious Sora household, once filled with laughter, warmth, and purpose, now echoed with unspoken fears. The air was thick with tension, and every interaction was marred by the weight of things left unsaid. His younger sister, too innocent to understand the darkness that had taken root, merely watched from afar with wide, confused eyes.
The lights in their home remained on longer than usual, as if trying to keep the shadows at bay. But no amount of artificial warmth could dispel the growing cold that gripped Hayato's heart. It was not anger that drove him into solitude—it was despair. A deep, gnawing despair that whispered he would never be enough. That he would fail. That the light within him was indeed flickering... and on the verge of being extinguished forever.
And so, in that quiet war within his mind, Hayato drifted—farther from his powers, his family, and perhaps, from himself.