I saw terror manifest in his eyes as he realized that his strongest weapon was nothing but smoke before my fists.
Suddenly, with a swift movement in which I concentrated every atom of my muscular energy, I felt my leg muscles stiffen and swell with titan strength.
I launched toward him like a red meteor splitting the arena in two.
With a speed beyond human perception, I leaned my body with lethal flexibility and delivered a thunderous kick toward his head with all the hatred I possessed.
"BAM!"
The sound of the impact echoed like a bomb shaking the corners of the arena.
His body flew like a blind projectile, crashing into the stone wall behind him with such force that he became embedded in it, carved amidst the falling rubble and dust.
There were no more screams, no more magic... only the majesty of the flesh that crushed the legend in a fleeting moment.
At that instant, my connection to reality was completely severed. There were no bleachers, no students, no academy.
The world withdrew from around me, and my vision drowned in an absolute, thick blackness, as if I had descended to the bottom of a bottomless pit.
Amidst this darkness, nothing echoed but the sound of my own voice—a savage, cold, and urgent echo resonating through the corridors of my mind:
"Kill him... tear him apart... leave no trace of him, Aria!"
I moved with mechanical steps toward him and stood before his human wreckage.
He could barely open his shattered eyes to catch a glimpse of my shadow looming over him, blood pouring profusely from his face, staining the earth a dark crimson.
I felt not a shred of pity; instead, I felt that black aura beginning to emerge from my pores, wrapping around me like demonic smoke—the Aura of the Void, the energy of doom and death that froze the blood of everyone in the hall who sensed it.
The crowd began to scream hysterically:
"Stop! You'll kill him!"
But their voices reached me as a distant, meaningless whisper.
I raised my fists and launched into a fit of combat madness.
I delivered a barrage of superhuman punches, so fast that eyes could no longer track them.
The movements of my hands turned into fleeting red flashes, tearing through the air and piercing his body everywhere.
The sound of bones shattering under my blows was the only music I heard.
Screams of a terror the academy had never witnessed before rose around me.
Even Kristoff's voice, calling me with longing and despair, reached my ears as if coming from a parallel world I didn't belong to.
I had left the boundaries of humanity; in another world, a space of absolute silence where nothing echoed but the voice of the kill that had awakened deep within me, demanding more wreckage... and more blood.
I stopped suddenly, not out of mercy, but to prepare the final blow.
I raised my fist, which was dripping with hot blood, my skin stained with the color of sin.
He was trembling beneath my shadow, coughing weakly as blood gushed from his mouth, painting an imminent end.
I concentrated every atom of my raw power into that fist, charging it with all the anger and darkness I possessed to be the finishing blow that would blow his head to pieces and end his filthy existence.
But, before my fist could fall to execute the sentence, I felt a wall of flesh and pressure rush toward me.
A sudden, unexpected force pushed my body violently, causing me to fall to the ground while a heavy body threw itself over me, pinning my movement.
I could see nothing; the blackness still shrouded my vision like a veil of eternal night.
I was breathing frantically, my chest rising and falling like a broken machine, and my dark aura flowed from me in terrifying abundance, wrapping around me like snakes of smoke.
As for that voice in my mind, it was enraged, screaming in a horrifying, savage tone:
"Arise! Crush them all! Quench my thirst with their blood... leave no one alive!"
The voice was tearing through my skull, demanding total annihilation.
Amidst this internal noise, a scream in a familiar voice full of horror and despair pierced my ears, followed by the rapid panting of someone looming over my head, pressing down on my wrists and pinning them with iron strength, trying to restrain the hurricane dwelling within me.
I was fighting that restraint, caught in the limbo between the desire to kill and the consciousness beginning to seep from behind the curtains of blackness.
The smell of blood, gunpowder, and close breaths made the world spin around me, while the outside world trembled from the aura of doom still emanating from my pinned body.
I could not see, but the killing instinct deep within me was the only vision I had.
I pushed the person who pinned me with titanic strength and kicked the other one looming over my chest with all the violence I could muster.
I heard his muffled groan, but he did not budge; instead, he traded back a barrage of curses thick with bitterness and effort.
I froze for a moment... that voice, 그 sharp and sarcastic tone even in the darkest moments...
"Wait, is this Vassilios?"
My mind gave me no chance to think, as the other person returned to tighten his grip on my wrists with a force that made my bones groan.
He was panting violently and screamed my name in a voice torn by fear and plea... it was Kristoff.
"Where am I? Why can't I see anything?"
Panic seized me, and I began to thrash again like a sacrifice resisting the knife.
I kicked Vassilios, who was pressing his weight over me to steady me, and he screamed in my face with angry curses, desperately trying to control my raging limbs.
Suddenly, a strange breath of air rushed into my lungs—air heavy with a pungent chemical smell... a sedative material began to seep into my senses and numb my rebellion.
I felt Vassilios's hand approaching my face carrying something circular; I did not resist, but rather grabbed his hand and pulled it toward me with a strange hunger.
I devoured that refreshing substance with strong breaths and greedy gasps, as if I were suffocating under the weight of that blackness.
With every breath, my taut nerves began to relax gradually, as if invisible chains wrapping around my soul began to unravel.
My vision began to clear slowly; the veil of eternal night faded to reveal the pale faces above me, and the voice of
"the kill" that was screaming deep in my skull began to fade, withdrawing like a faint echo of a devastating earthquake that left behind wreckage and an exhausted body unable to move.
I opened my eyes slowly, and the blurred vision sharpened.
Vassilios was crouched over my chest, panting violently, his messy hair covering his face which had turned pale with anger.
Beside me, Kristoff was kneeling on his knees, holding my shoulders tightly as if I would fly away if he let go, his blue eyes drowned in a sea of terror and suppressed tears.
Vassilios exhaled sharply, tossed the circular object aside as he wiped sweat from his forehead, then screamed in my face in an angry but trembling tone:
"Damn it, Aria! Have you completely lost your mind? You almost turned the academy into a mass grave! If not for this cursed sedative, you'd be cutting our heads off now too. You fool... do you think your human body can handle this amount of Void without burning up?"
He cursed again in unintelligible words as he tried to stand up with difficulty, groaning from the kick I delivered to his vertebrae.
As for Kristoff, he didn't scream.
He moved closer, loosening his grip on my hand until his hold turned into a gentle, trembling touch.
He whispered in a low voice, as if afraid to break my silence:
"Aria... can you hear me? I was so scared... I thought we had lost you forever, that that aura had swallowed you. Please, don't do this again; the fight wasn't worth all this destruction."
I looked at them with withered eyes; Vassilios's anger trying to hide his fear behind curses, and Kristoff's honest terror still trembling.
I could still inhale the remnants of the sedative lingering in the air, feeling the coldness of the ground beneath my exhausted body, while I remembered the "flaming" student I had crushed... the price was very high to satisfy the instinct of revenge.
I lay on the shattered arena floor, my breaths coming out like cold lava.
I glanced at the flaming student with a withered look; he was drowning in his blood, surrounded by a swarm of sorcerers who had summoned their energies, desperately trying to repair what my fists had crushed with healing magic that seemed faint before the magnitude of the destruction.
Beside me, Kristoff was trying to gather his strength, sitting hunched over while holding his damaged shoulder, his faint groans piercing the silence of my daze.
As for Vassilios, he was like a trapped hurricane; pacing with angry steps that hit the ground hard, cursing audibly, glancing at me with looks that mixed blame with dread, then turning toward the dying student as if calculating the meters that separated us from the gallows.
I was completely surrendered to this stillness... and suddenly, the thread of peace was cut.
A polar, shocking cold swept through me—a cold not of this world.
My being shivered to the core as if my bones had turned into pieces of ice.
In a single moment, the dam holding back the memories of the cursed past collapsed.
The same tearing pain I had tasted in that dark lab returned to me...
When they used to tie me like a sacrifice and expose my body to intense magic for hours until my veins would burst.
Moans of pain began to leak from between my trembling lips, and soon they turned into a muffled scream tearing through my throat.
The ice turned to hell; my body began to heat up dangerously and suddenly. I felt my blood boiling in my veins as if my heart were pumping liquid fire.
My limbs cramped with a force that made my bone joints scream, and my body began to shake violently over the soil in an energetic seizure the likes of which I had never seen.
Vassilios rushed toward me, panic having washed every trace of anger from his face.
He fell on his knees beside me, his color turning pale when he saw my eyes turning completely white as consciousness withdrew from me like an ebbing tide.
"Aria! Damn you... don't do this now!"
Vassilios screamed in a trembling voice as he tried to steady my shaking shoulders with all his might.
He turned toward Kristoff, who was frozen in his place from the horror of the sight, and screamed at him sharply, filled with panic:
"Kristoff! Don't just stand there like an idiot! Help me steady her limbs or she'll tear her muscles apart! Her body is rejecting the 'Void'... it's burning from the inside!"
Kristoff knelt beside me, his hands trembling as he held my feet, which were kicking involuntarily.
He whispered in a broken tone that was almost choked by tears:
"Aria... please, hold on... don't leave us like this!"
But Vassilios, despite his panic, realized the bitter truth.
He placed his hand on my forehead, which was radiating scorching heat, and screamed, despair filling his tone:
"Curse this magic! I warned you... I told you that this human body cannot contain doom without a price!"
I could no longer see anything; their faces faded into a thick white mist, and I drowned in a deep darkness where there was no pain and no sound, leaving behind Vassilios's angry screams and Kristoff's pleas echoing through the space of the stricken academy.
Consciousness withdrew from me completely, but Vassilios's panicked voice continued to echo through the corridors of my subconscious like a reverberation from a distant well.
My mind was not ready to surrender, and my soul would not accept such a wretched end.
Suddenly, I found myself in a place where the laws of the earth did not govern; an absolute darkness, with no ground to tread upon and no sky to shelter me—a total void that swallowed everything.
The "Aura of the Void" wrapped around me in this place with a savage frenzy, like the turbulent waves of a sea made of pitch. At the same time, I could feel my physical body out there...
I felt it trembling, struggling with death, as pain tore my soul into pieces.
"Calm down, Aria... just calm down,"
I whispered to myself amidst that disorientation.
I began to summon their images to be my anchor; I remembered Mother Joanna's tender features, the innocent laughter of the children that filled my heart with hope, and the promises I made to them that I would always return. I remembered
Kristoff's kindness, his terrified face, and the gentleness I wasn't used to.
Those memories were like threads of light in the middle of this blackness.
Gradually, with all the willpower I possessed, I began to contain that raging energy.
It burned me, stabbing my veins with daggers of cold fire, and gnawed at my essence, but I resisted.
I did not allow it to swallow me; instead, I began to tame it, pulling it deep inside me and forcing it into stillness.
I felt my physical body begin to calm; those violent spasms subsided, but the heat was still devouring me from within like embers beneath the ashes.
Suddenly, the outside world began to seep back into me... I started to hear their voices.
Vassilios's voice was trembling as he wiped cold sweat from his face, whispering in a tone filled with amazement mixed with anxious relief:
"Damn... she did it. She's calming down... her pulse is starting to stabilize, but her body heat is still abnormal. Curse it, Aria... you almost burned up completely! What kind of power do you possess in that stubborn soul?"
As for Kristoff, his whimpering was audible, and I felt his tears falling on my trembling hand as he whispered weakly:
"She's back... Vassilios, look, she's stopped shaking. Please, tell me she'll be okay."
Vassilios exhaled sharply, replying in a voice that regained some of its defensive harshness:
"She'll be fine because she's as stubborn as a mule, but we are not fine! We have to move her from here immediately before the guards arrive. If they saw this aura emanating from her, she'd never leave their dungeons. Do you hear me, Kristoff? Carry her, and let's vanish before these sorcerers wake up from their shock!"
I opened my eyes with difficulty; my vision was blurred, and the heat still surged through my veins, but I knew I had won the first battle... the battle against myself.
A wave of dizziness washed over me as I felt my body lift off the cold ground.
I settled between two strong hands carrying me with extreme care, as if I were a piece of rare glass that its owner feared might shatter.
I felt his chest close to me, and his violent, disturbed heartbeat thumping like war drums, telling me of the extent of the terror gnawing at his soul.
I opened my eyes with immense difficulty.
My vision was hazy and heavy with pain, but I glimpsed Kristoff's face; so close, his pale face dripping with sweat, and his blue eyes, which were always overflowing with calm, were now drowned in a surge of existential fear.
He tightened his grip on me whenever his steps faltered, as if he were clinging to life itself.
In front of us, Vassilios was scurrying with fast, agitated steps, looking right and left like a cornered wolf, his voice reaching me as a continuous, unintelligible whisper.
These simple moments of consciousness exhausted me; I couldn't even move a single finger, so I closed my strained eyelids again, surrendering to the weight of my body which still radiated heat like a burning volcano.
Kristoff whispered in a choked voice, as if addressing me or fate itself:
"Hold on, Aria... just a little longer. I won't let them touch you, I swear to you... no one will take you."
His voice trembled, and the tears he tried to hold back made his tone ragged; sometimes he quickened his pace and other times he feared the vibration of his movement would hurt me.
Then Vassilios's murmurs reached me, in sharp, fast words, pouring out his anger and anxiety:
"Curse this luck... damn the academy and damn you, Aria... why do you always choose the hardest path?"
Then his voice dropped as he looked at the map of corridors in his mind:
"We have to cross the Western Corridor... the guards will be busy with the battlefield now... if we reach the secret vault before they close the doors, we might survive... damn it, damn it, they're approaching."
Vassilios's murmurs were a mixture of desperate plans and curses, as if he were trying to drive the thought of failure out of his head.
The journey continued in a heavy silence, broken only by the sound of their running feet and Kristoff's panting breath, while I sank again into a fragile limbo, waiting for what fate would bring behind those locked doors.
They walked through the corridors with extreme caution and apprehension, as if racing against their escaping breaths; at that moment, being caught meant the inevitable end, for the Council of High Sorcerers would never overlook a breach of this magnitude.
They crossed the heavy door with trembling hearts, beginning the descent through a narrow spiral staircase diving deep into the earth, where pitch blackness wrapped around them from every side, turning the place into a maze of absolute silence.
Kristoff held Aria to his chest with a strength dominated by care, carrying her as if she were the most precious thing he owned and what he feared losing most; she was burning with heat beneath his hands, her body churning with restless energy.
He stole glances at her pale face one moment and at the darkness of the path the next, his blue eyes overflowing with suppressed dread.
In the lead, Vassilios cut through the path with fast, agitated steps, as if demons were chasing him; with every turn he took toward Aria, sharp curses exploded from between his lips, pouring out his anger and helplessness before her deteriorating condition.
They finally stopped before a massive metal door.
Vassilios placed his palm firmly on it; in the blink of an eye, a brilliant white magical light emanated, and the door opened, revealing a pristine white hall, teeming with the pungent smell of disinfectants that assaulted the senses.
"You fools! Move now before we lose her!"
Vassilios's scream echoed through the cold lab, startling the doctors and assistants who were scattered about like bees in a hive.
His sudden shout and the sight of the exhausted girl in Kristoff's arms caused a state of professional shock and confusion; medical tools fell from nurses' hands, and some stepped back as they sensed the terrifying "Aura of the Void" still surrounding her.
Vassilios rushed toward the nearest medical bed, beginning to shove tools aside violently as he screamed in the face of the chief physician who approached him cautiously:
"Don't just stand there staring at me like an idiot! Take blood samples, prepare the magical coolers! She's burning with a 'Void Overflow'... if we don't suppress this boiling in her veins now, the academy and everyone in it will explode! Move, you scum of doctors!"
Kristoff placed Aria on the bed with extreme tenderness, as if his soul was withdrawing from her with the distancing of her body from him.
He stepped back, panting audibly, his eyes never leaving her trembling body as the doctors began to surround her like scalpels.
His heart beat with a violence that made his whole body shake; the shock of the secret location, the awe of the absolute whiteness, and Aria's worsening condition made him feel as if the whole world was collapsing over his head.
Chaos and turmoil prevailed throughout the white lab; measuring devices emitted sharp, continuous sirens, announcing that Aria's cells had begun a rapid collapse.
The chief physician stepped forward with a trembling hand, carrying a massive needle injected with
"Cellular Restoration" serum—a glowing silver liquid designed to fuse with torn tissues and revive them before they vanished.
"Hold her arm firmly!"
the doctor screamed, plunging the needle