"CEEEEE - SAAAAAAR - !!!"
Half an hour later, when the episode finally reached the moment where Mark - playing Joseph - ripped that name out of his throat like it came from the bottom of a well, what happened in the room was exactly what Alex had predicted.
No one could eat another bite.
The worst was Bruce Walts. The guy wasn't just crying - he was crying like his body had decided to turn grief into something physical. Big, heavy drops fell straight into his bowl, mixing with the broth until it turned into a miserable kind of soggy meal nobody even had the heart to joke about. There was no teasing. The air wouldn't allow it.
Teacher Heleno had never followed the series. He didn't have fandom context, didn't know the weight this story carried… but the script didn't need an introduction. Tragedy didn't. His eyes reddened anyway, and he let out that choked, half-laughing sound of someone who can't believe an animated scene can squeeze a human chest that hard.
He looked at Alex like he'd caught the culprit in the act.
"You realize next week readers are going to mail you… gifts, right?" His voice trembled between laughter and tears. "Fans get vindictive. Especially when you do this."
Alex just shrugged, smiling with that maddening calm of someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
"Then they'll need to stock up," he said. "Because that? That's only the beginning."
"Dude… what the hell." Bruce's eyes widened, his heart thudding off-beat. "You're serious? You still want to kill who?"
It came out as a terrified whisper, not a joke.
In his head, a sticky memory resurfaced - the curse hanging over that bloodline, the sense that fate always demanded a price that was too high. And what if, in the end… what if Alex decided to do the unthinkable? What if the story ended without sparing even the protagonist?
Alex didn't answer. He just picked up the remote, as if the conversation were a pebble in the road and he'd chosen to step around it.
"Let's watch the next episode."
But the more he dodged the subject, the more certain Bruce became that the worst part wasn't what had already happened.
It was what was still coming.
And when that episode of Aurora Dreams aired, the feeling crossed the screen. Thousands of people, scattered across couches, beds, and late-night rooms, felt the same sharp jab of dread Bruce had felt - an unspoken warning, a sudden certainty that this author wasn't the type to blink when it was time to pull an emotional trigger.
…
The weekend arrived the way a sentence does: inevitable.
Fans opened the new chapter as fast as they could, fingers impatient, hearts already tight before the first scene even loaded. The previous week had ended exactly where it hurts - César's memories still echoing, the promise of the battle frozen at its peak like a blade suspended in midair. A whole week of waiting to find out whether the world would soften… or crush.
The screen lit up.
The fight began.
César versus Wamuu.
César came out of a training regimen that looked like something out of a nightmare - the kind that breaks you inside before it strengthens you outside. And you could tell. Every movement had precision; every step carried the conviction of someone who wasn't there only to win… but to prove something to fate itself.
For a few impossible moments, Wamuu gave ground.
The giant, who until then had been treated like a living wall, was pushed back. Not by luck. Not by coincidence. But because César truly was stronger than before.
"Look closely, Wamuu!" César's voice rang steady, almost taunting, and the camera moved as if it obeyed him. "The bubble blades I released… they're already in the air. They formed lenses!"
The scene swung around and showed what Wamuu hadn't noticed: above his head, the entire room seemed flooded with bubbles. Not cute, not harmless - tense, gleaming bubbles that looked like glass, vibrating with danger.
Wamuu's gaze shifted. He felt it. The kind of premonition that doesn't come from thought, but from instinct.
"These bubbles will reflect the sunlight that comes through the holes you made with your sandstorm…" César continued, and each word tightened the knot. "…and then - reflect it onto you!"
The light that slipped through the cracked openings of the abandoned building fractured. It passed through the bubbles, multiplied, and became thin, violent beams that painted Wamuu's body like chains of fire.
His scream tore through the room.
"AAAAAARGH - !"
And César didn't waste the instant.
"Now… the finishing blow! WAMUU!"
He leapt, his whole body thrown forward like a promise. A kick charged with ripple energy - an attack that wasn't just technique. It was pride. It was legacy. It was someone telling the universe: I won't go down without a fight.
On the other side of the screen, hands clenched into fists. People rose without realizing. Hearts spiked with the euphoric certainty that, finally, this time, the story would reward them.
He's going to win.
He's actually going to win!
But the world doesn't move according to what we want.
At the exact moment César descended to strike, his own body crossed the line of sunlight the bubbles had reflected. A detail so small it was cruel. A fraction of a second. A mistake that didn't even feel like a mistake - just bad luck, as if fate had been waiting for a microscopic opening to bite.
And Wamuu saw it.
A single instant of vulnerability.
The counterattack came like a natural disaster.
The technique detonated on him - a brutal, spinning, double assault, like two tornadoes punched straight into his body. It wasn't just defeat.
It was ruin.
The impact twisted flesh and bone with merciless force, like the world itself wanted to fold him in half.
When the attack ended, César was still there… but he wasn't the same.
Wamuu breathed hard, his chest heaving as if he, too, had barely escaped.
He stared at César with a grim respect, almost shaken.
Because even he - the enemy - knew: it had been too close.
César tried to stand. And that hurt more than the blow.
Because there was no heroic stance. No "I'm fine." Just a broken man refusing to accept the inevitable.
He pressed a hand to the floor, forced his legs under him… and his body betrayed him. A stumble. A collapse. He fell again, heavy, without glamour.
In the audience, the silence turned into a hollow inside the chest.
Mouths parted. Breath caught. That awful sensation, like someone had thrown ice water straight onto everyone's heart at once.
Then came the sentence.
"Farewell. Your life ends here."
Wamuu turned his back, as if the matter was finished.
But César still had something left.
Not strength - not the ordinary kind.
A final spark that didn't come from muscle.
It came from pride.
From a whole line of people before him who had already chosen to die standing.
With what remained, César launched himself one last time. It wasn't an attack. It was a desperate theft, almost impossible - and still, perfectly executed.
He tore the lip ring from Wamuu's face.
The one containing the antidote - the only thing that could neutralize the poison inside Joseph.
Wamuu froze.
For an instant he didn't look like a monster. He looked like someone who simply couldn't understand what he was seeing.
"Why…?" he asked, low, disbelieving.
César, kneeling in blood, holding that ring like a relic, lifted his eyes with effort. Sunlight touched the scene and turned horror into something almost sacred.
Almost.
"Death… doesn't scare me…" His voice was weak, fractured, but it carried impossible weight. "What scares me… is going out like a coward."
He drew in air like he was breathing glass.
"I'm a Zeppeli. You… you're not human. You don't understand. My grandfather… my father… they chose this before me. And I… I won't shame their name when I reach the other side."
That wasn't just a goodbye.
It was an oath.
A legacy.
A man saying life could end, but dignity didn't have to end with it.
And suddenly the audience's fear turned into certainty.
The kind that clamps around the throat.
"What I'm going to show you now… is the Zeppeli soul. The soul passed down from generation to generation… carrying hope into the future. The human soul!"
The camera trembled in the heavy silence.
"Joseph…" He almost whispered the name, and the world seemed to hold its breath. "This is… my last ripple. Take it… and make it count."
People covered their mouths without noticing. Eyes burning. Faces wet before they were even willing to admit they were crying.
The comments exploded - desperate, furious, pleading, as if typing could stop what was coming.
But the screen had no mercy.
Not long after, Joseph and Lisa Lisa finally burst into the building. The air inside felt colder, older, as if the place stored death in its walls. And when they saw blood streaming beneath that cross-shaped slab of stone… there was no space left for courage.
Not even for pretending.
Lisa Lisa tried to stay composed - for one second. Just one. But her body trembled, and her face - no matter how controlled - couldn't hide the cracks where pain broke through.
Joseph, then, shattered.
"CEE - SAR - !!!"
The scream ripped out of him like it tore something living loose. A raw, jagged sound - someone who already knew, deep down, that name wasn't going to answer.
And on the other side of the screens, in quiet homes and rooms lit only by phones, the whole world did the same thing: it cried.
Tears falling onto keyboards, smearing screens, soaking pillows. People trying to laugh at themselves and failing. People cursing the author with a love-soaked hatred, like they were cursing fate for being too cruel.
César Zeppeli - beautiful as a bubble, radiant as reflected light… and as fleeting as something that bursts in the air before you can ever hold it.
And deep down, a new certainty settled, heavy as lead:
If Alex had the courage to do this…
Then no one was truly safe.
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