The apartment was quiet.
Not the silence of peace, the silence of exhaustion, of bodies pushed past their limits, of minds too tired to keep racing. The kind of silence that settled over a home when the last light had been turned off and the last word had been spoken and there was nothing left to do but sleep.
Yuuta lay on the couch, his blanket pulled up to his chin, his body curled against the worn cushions. The couch was too small for him, his feet hung over the armrest, and his shoulder pressed against the back at an angle that would leave him stiff in the morning.
But he had not complained.
He would never complain.
The bed was for Erza and Elena.
The bed was for the two beings in this apartment who needed comfort more than he did.
He had made that choice willingly. Gladly, even.
But as he lay there in the darkness, listening to the soft sounds of Erza's breathing through the open bedroom door and Elena's occasional sleepy murmurs, something gnawed at the edges of his consciousness. A feeling he could not name. A weight he could not identify. Something was wrong.
He did not know what. He did not know why. But the feeling pressed against his chest like a cold hand, and no matter how many times he told himself it was nothing, just anxiety, just exhaustion, just the residue of the day's confrontations, it would not leave.
His eyes grew heavy.
His breathing slowed.
The feeling followed him down into the dark.
The nightmare took him without warning.
One moment he was floating in the warmth of sleep, and the next he was standing in snow so deep that it reached his knees. The cold bit through his clothes, thin clothes, rough clothes, the kind of clothes a slave might wear. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were small. Too small. The hands of a child.
Four years old. He was four years old.
His palms were bleeding. Fresh wounds, still wet, still dripping onto the white snow in slow drops that steamed in the frigid air. The cuts were deliberate, not accidental, not the result of play. Someone had hurt him. Someone had carved into his skin with purpose, and he could not remember who or why.
Where am I?
The thought came to him in a child's voice, high and trembling, barely formed. He looked around, his small body turning in a slow circle, and saw nothing but snow and trees and sky.
The trees were enormous. Massive. So tall that he had to crane his neck to see their tops, and even then, he could not find them, they disappeared into a sky that seemed too far away, too vast, too empty. One hundred forty feet or more, his adult mind supplied from somewhere deep, but the child inside him did not know numbers that large. The child only knew that the trees were bigger than anything he had ever seen, and that they made him feel very, very small.
The air itself was wrong. Dense. Heavy. Each breath felt like trying to breathe underwater, his lungs had to work harder, pull deeper, strain against a pressure that should not have existed. The cold burned his throat. The cold burned his chest. The cold burned everything, and he could not get warm, could not get comfortable, could not get away from the feeling that something was watching him from the shadows between those enormous trees.
Then he saw the wolf.
At first, his child's mind did not register the danger. It was just an animal, a shape in the snow, darker than the darkness, with eyes that glowed like embers. A normal wolf would not have scared him. He was twenty years old in his real life, an adult who had faced dragons and demons and the impossible made real.
But this was not a normal wolf.
It was twenty-five feet tall. Eight feet long. A monster of fur and muscle and teeth that gleamed white against the darkness of its muzzle. It moved like a bear, heavy, powerful, unstoppable, but its eyes were wolf's eyes, ancient and hungry and utterly without mercy.
The wolf stared at him.
Yuuta stared back.
And then he ran.
His tiny feet hit the snow, sinking deep with every step, slowing him down, dragging at him like hands reaching up from the ground to pull him under. His bleeding hands left red smears on the white, a trail that the wolf could follow, a path that led straight to him. He knew this. He knew he should try to hide his tracks, should try to be smarter, should try to do anything other than run blindly through a forest he did not know.
But he was four years old.
And four-year-olds ran.
The wolf did not chase him at first. It simply watched, its red eyes tracking his progress, its massive head tilted slightly to one side as if amused by the futility of his flight. Then, when he had put perhaps fifty feet between them, it began to move.
Not fast. Not yet. A loping gait that covered ground effortlessly, that ate up the distance between them without appearing to try. The wolf was playing with him. Toying with him. Letting him believe he had a chance so that the fear would have time to grow.
Yuuta's blood spilled onto the snow in bright red drops.
This is a dream, he told himself, even as his lungs burned and his legs screamed and his heart pounded so hard he could feel it in his throat. This is a dream. This is not real. This is not.
The wolf lunged.
Less than a foot remained between them when the wolf's jaws opened wide enough to swallow his entire head. Yuuta saw the teeth, rows and rows of them, yellowed and sharp, dripping with saliva that froze in the cold air. He saw the back of the wolf's throat, dark and endless, and he knew with absolute certainty that he was about to die.
Then something slammed into the wolf's side.
A figure, smaller than the wolf but larger than him, moving with a speed and grace that seemed impossible. Green light exploded from her hands, vines and thorns erupting from the snow to wrap around the wolf's legs, to pull it down, to drag it away from him.
She stood between him and the monster.
Her back was to him, her body blocking his view of the wolf's thrashing form. Her hair was silver, no, not silver, something else, something that caught the light and shimmered with colors he could not name. Her ears were pointed. Elongated. The ears of a creature from stories, from legends, from the kind of tales that grandmothers told to children before bed.
An elf, his mind whispered, and the word felt both foreign and familiar, both impossible and true.
She turned to look at him.
Her face was blurred. He could not make out her features, could not see her eyes or her mouth or the expression she wore. Something was blocking his vision, a fog, a shadow, a veil that had been placed over his memories to keep him from seeing what was really there.
But he knew her.
His body knew her before his mind did. Tears poured down his cheeks, hot against the cold, and his small hands reached for her even though he did not know why. His chest ached with a longing so deep that it felt like grief, like loss, like the pain of someone who had been separated from a part of himself and had only just realized it.
Who are you? he tried to say, but the words would not come.
She reached for him. Her hand, pale, slender, trembling, extended toward his face.
And then the pain hit.
It exploded behind his eyes like a bomb, white-hot and blinding, spreading through his skull in waves that made him scream. His mind was splitting. Cracking. Breaking apart along fault lines he had not known existed, as if someone had driven a wedge into his consciousness and was prying it open by force.
The seal, he thought, or someone thought, or the memory of a thought echoed through the ruins of his mind. The seal is breaking.
He woke up screaming.
The sound tore through the apartment, raw and animal, ripped from a throat that did not care about neighbors or late hours or the sleeping child in the next room. Yuuta thrashed against the couch, his blanket tangling around his legs, his hands flying to his head as if he could hold it together by force.
The pain vanished as quickly as it had come.
One moment he was drowning in agony, and the next he was sitting on the couch, gasping for breath, his body drenched in sweat, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it in his fingertips. The apartment was dark. The bedroom door was still open. He could hear Erza's breathing, still steady, still asleep. She had not woken. Neither had Elena.
Good, he thought, though he was not sure why. Good. They didn't hear. They didn't see.
He lowered his hands from his head.
Something wet touched his fingers.
He looked down at his palm and saw blood.
Not much, a thin trickle, dark against his skin, seeping from his left ear and trailing down his neck. He touched his ear with trembling fingers, and the blood smeared across his fingertips, warm and sticky and real.
Not a dream, he thought. The nightmare was real. The blood is real. The pain was real.
He sat there for a long moment, staring at the red on his fingers, his mind struggling to process what had just happened. The snow. The trees. The wolf. The woman with the pointed ears and the blurred face. The way his heart had reached for her even though his mind did not know her name.
Who was she?
He did not have an answer.
Slowly, carefully, he untangled himself from the blanket and stood up. His legs were unsteady. His head throbbed with a dull, lingering ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He made his way to the bathroom, moving in the dark, his bare feet silent on the cold floor.
The first aid kit was under the sink. He pulled it out, opened it, and found the cotton buds. His hands were still shaking as he cleaned the blood from his ear, gentle strokes, careful not to push too deep, methodical in a way that suggested he had done this before.
Because he had.
This was not his first nightmare. This was not the first time he had woken up bleeding. There had been others, worse ones, ones that left him curled on the floor unable to move, ones that took hours to recover from, ones that made him afraid to close his eyes again.
He glanced at the calendar hanging on the bathroom wall.
Tomorrow, he read. Appointment with Dr. Jenny.
He sighed, a long and tired sound that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his lungs.
Tomorrow I have to meet her.
He thought about canceling. He thought about pretending everything was fine. He thought about hiding the blood and the nightmares and the growing sense that something inside him was cracking open, something that had been sealed away for a reason.
But he knew he would not cancel. He would go. He would sit in Dr. Jenny's office and let her check his vitals and ask her questions and pretend that everything was normal. He would not tell her about the elf-eared woman or the enormous wolf or the way his mind had felt like it was splitting in two.
He would smile. He would say he was fine. He would go home and cook dinner and play with Elena and pretend that he was not slowly falling apart.
Because that was what he did.
That was what Yuuta Konuari had always done.
He put the first aid kit away. He washed the blood from his fingers. He looked at himself in the mirror, pale, hollow-eyed, his red eyes still faintly glowing in the darkness, and did not recognize the face that stared back at him.
Who am I?
The question floated through his mind, soft and fragile, and he did not have an answer for that either.
He walked back to the couch. He lay down. He pulled the blanket up to his chin.
And he closed his eyes, afraid of what he might see when he opened them again.
_______________________
The morning sun filtered through the windows of John Bosco Culinary College, casting long golden rectangles across polished hallways.
Students rushed past in clusters, their voices echoing off the walls laughter, complaints about early classes, the universal language of young people not quite awake enough to face the day.
From somewhere deep in the bakery kitchens, the smell of fresh bread drifted through the corridors. It mingled with the sharper scent of coffee from the student lounge and the occasional whiff of something burning from a first-year who had misjudged their cooking time.
Yuuta walked among them, but not with them.
His feet moved automatically toward the nurse's office a route he knew by heart after years of visits. His shoulders felt heavy. His eyes burned with exhaustion that sleep hadn't touched. Every step required effort that shouldn't have been necessary.
He knocked on the familiar door.
"Come in."
He entered.
Dr. Jenny sat behind her desk, a cup of tea steaming at her elbow, her kind eyes lifting to meet his the moment he stepped inside.
She was in her thirties, with warm brown skin and hair pulled back in a loose ponytail that had more gray in it than he remembered.
She had been his nurse back in the orphanage days the only adult who had ever looked at his scars without flinching, who had bandaged his wounds without asking questions he couldn't answer, who had listened to his nightmares without telling him they weren't real.
When she'd transferred to this college, Yuuta had been surprised.
And secretly, deeply relieved.
She was the only one who understood.
Or at least, the only one who tried.
"Sit down, Yuuta." Her voice was gentle, as it always was. "You look terrible."
"Thanks." He managed a weak smile and collapsed into the chair across from her. "That's exactly what I needed to hear."
She didn't smile back.
Her eyes were studying him really studying him, the way she always did when something was wrong.
"So," she said quietly, "how do you feel today?"
Yuuta looked down at his hands.
At the paper cup of water she'd placed in front of him without him noticing.
"To be honest..." He hesitated. "I'm still having nightmares. And I feel tired. Not normal tired. Like... something's draining me."
"Nightmares again?" Her brow furrowed deeper.
"Yeah." He traced the rim of the cup with his finger. "Worse than before."
Dr. Jenny leaned forward, her elbows on the desk, her full attention focused on him.
"Tell me about this one."
Yuuta took a breath.
The dream came back in fragments images, sensations, feelings that clung to him like cobwebs.
"This time, it was too real. More real than any dream I've ever had." He closed his eyes, trying to find the words. "I was running through a forest. Alone. Everything was dark not nighttime dark, but shadow dark, like the light itself was afraid to be there."
He paused.
"There were wolves chasing me. Dire wolves huge, bigger than any wolf should be. Their eyes were red, and their mouths... their mouths were full of teeth that didn't fit. They were hungry. So hungry. And I was their prey."
Dr. Jenny didn't interrupt.
Didn't move.
"I saw myself running through snow," Yuuta continued, his voice steady but distant, as though the memory itself did not fully belong to him. "My legs were small, and I kept falling as I tried to run."
He took a slow breath before continuing.
"Just before a Dire wolf could reach me and eat me, an elf-like woman appeared her hair was Pink and She saved me."
His expression darkened slightly, the calm in his voice beginning to fade.
"But then the dream shifted, as if something inside it had been forcibly broken apart."
He hesitated, searching for the right way to describe it.
"She began to change in a way that didn't feel normal. Her mind felt unstable, almost corrupted, like something had damaged her from within and was still spreading."
Yuuta's brows tightened as the memory grew heavier.
"After that, I felt a sharp, unbearable pain in my head, and everything collapsed into darkness before I woke up."
A quiet pause lingered in the air.
"When I opened my eyes again, I could not see her face. It was completely hidden in shadow, as if the dream itself refused to reveal it."
His gaze lowered slightly.
"And the place I saw… it didn't feel like any part of Earth I know. It felt unfamiliar, distant, like a world that existed somewhere beyond what I understand."
Silence filled the room.
Dr. Jenny was quiet for a long moment, her expression thoughtful, troubled.
"Hmm." She tapped her pen against her clipboard. "You were recovering so well this past year. Your episodes were decreasing. The nightmares were less frequent." Her eyes lifted to his. "Why are your symptoms getting worse?"
"I don't know."
"Are you sure," she said carefully, "that you're not doing anything... strange?"
Yuuta blinked.
"Strange? What does that mean?"
She sighed.
Long.
Deep.
Weighed down by things she couldn't say.
"I wish I could explain it in a way you'd understand." She set down her pen. "Let's just say... it's like someone cast black magic on you."
"Black magic?" Yuuta's voice rose despite himself. "That's not...that's not real. Is it?"
"I know it's hard to believe." Her voice was calm, steady, the voice she used when she needed him to trust her. "But you have to be careful. Stop touching unknown things. You're... sensitive to them."
Yuuta wanted to argue.
Wanted to ask what she meant.
Wanted to demand explanations for words that made no sense in a world that was supposed to be ordinary.
But he was too tired.
Too drained.
Too worn down by everything that had happened, the zoo, the lions, the blood, the endless chaos of a life that had stopped making sense days ago.
He just nodded.
"Okay."
Dr. Jenny studied him for another moment.
Then she reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a small stone.
It was white.
Smooth.
Polished.
About the size of a large marble, but heavier, denser, like it contained more than stone should.
"Close your eyes," she said.
Yuuta obeyed.
He felt her move closer. Felt her hand hover near his face. Felt the cool weight of the stone settle against his forehead.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then,,
Warmth.
Not painful. Not unpleasant. Just... warmth, spreading from the stone into his skin, through his skull, into the deepest parts of his mind. It was like sinking into a hot bath after years of cold. Like light flooding into a room that had been dark for so long he'd forgotten what brightness felt like.
Something moved inside him.
Something dark.
Something heavy.
Something that had been there for so long he'd stopped noticing its weight.
He felt it being drawn out pulled from his body like poison from a wound, like splinters from under skin, like shadows fleeing the dawn. It flowed into the stone, carried by that gentle warmth, leaving him lighter than he'd felt in... how long?
Years.
Decades.
His whole life.
When he opened his eyes, the stone was no longer white.
It was black.
Completely, utterly, absolutely black. Not the black of stone or shadow or anything natural. The black of something that had swallowed all the light in the room and asked for more.
Dr. Jenny plucked it from his forehead without a word.
Slid it into her desk drawer.
Closed the drawer.
Locked it.
"You're okay now," she said calmly. "Just let me know if your condition changes again."
Yuuta stretched.
His arms rose above his head.
His back cracked in three places that had been tight for weeks.
His eyes opened wider, clearer, sharper.
The heaviness was gone.
The exhaustion that had been dragging at him for days weeks? months? had simply... vanished. He felt alive. Present. Here in a way he hadn't been since... since before he could remember.
"Wow." He looked at his hands, flexing his fingers. "I feel... I feel so much better. I didn't realize how heavy I felt until now. It's like I've been carrying something and I didn't even know it."
Dr. Jenny smiled.
It was a warm smile.
But her eyes, her eyes were worried.
"Good," she said. "That's good."
Then her gaze caught something.
"Hmm." She tilted her head. "Did you wear contact lenses again?"
Yuuta's hand rose instinctively to his eye.
"Well... I still can't bring myself to remove them." He looked away. "My original eyes... they're terrifying to other people."
"Terrifying?"
"They're red. Like... really red. Bright red. The kind of red that makes people stare. Or run." He shrugged, trying to make it casual. "Contacts are easier."
Dr. Jenny was quiet for a moment.
Then she leaned forward.
"Yuuta." Her voice was firm but kind. "You have to accept who you are. All of who you are. If you keep hiding pieces of yourself, you'll spend your whole life struggling against your own reflection."
"I know, Dr. Jenny." He couldn't meet her eyes. "But I don't want to lose my friends. And I'm afraid of the bullying. I've been bullied my whole life. I just want... I just want to be normal."
She sighed.
Long.
Deep.
Sad.
"Nvm." She waved a hand, dismissing the conversation. "You should get to class. It's almost time."
Yuuta stood.
Gathered his bag.
Paused at the door.
"Dr. Jenny..." He turned back. "How much do I owe you?"
"No need." She smiled again, that warm, familiar smile. "Just be careful."
He smiled back.
That warm, grateful smile that had gotten him through so much.
"Thanks, Dr. Jenny. For everything."
"Go." She waved him away. "Learn to cook something delicious. Bring me samples next time."
"Deal."
He left.
The door clicked shut behind him.
For a long moment, Dr. Jenny sat perfectly still.
Listening.
Waiting.
Then,
"You can come out now."
The shadows in the corner of the room shifted.
A man stepped forward.
He wore a black combat suit, tactical gear that absorbed light rather than reflected it, military precision in every line. His face was hard, weathered, the face of someone who had seen things that should remain unseen. His eyes moved constantly, scanning, assessing, hunting.
He moved like a predator.
Silent.
Controlled.
Dangerous.
"So." His voice was a command wrapped in gravel. "Did you extract his aura?"
Dr. Jenny didn't flinch.
Didn't seem surprised.
"Of course I did...But?"
"But?" The man's eyes narrowed. "I hear a 'but' in your voice."
She paused.
"His aura level rose again."
"Again?"
"Higher than last time. Much higher."
She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out the black stone.
Held it up.
The man's eyes widened.
"This is..." He took the stone carefully, reverently, turning it over in his gloved hands. "This is concerning. Very concerning."
"I was thinking the same thing."
He slipped the stone into a reinforced container on his belt a container designed for exactly this purpose.
"We need to report this to the Chief immediately."
"Agreed." Dr. Jenny leaned back in her chair, her expression growing heavier with concern. "Who knows what will happen if this continues? If his aura keeps growing at this rate…"
She hesitated, her voice trailing off, as though afraid that even speaking further might somehow harm Yuuta's personal life.
The man opposite her exhaled slowly.
"You're right," he said at last. "I should have brought him to the chief the moment I discovered it."
He paused, then clicked his tongue in frustration.
"Never mind… we can't force him to join the agency. Not with Captain Phoenix's protection over him."
His gaze hardened as he continued.
"Keep watch on him," he ordered, sliding a bag filled with stones across the table. "And collect more aura readings. From children if necessary. We need them to recharge our weapons… if we are to eliminate the demons."
Dr. Jenny's eyes dropped to the pile of stones, unease flickering across her face.
"What the hell is the agency even doing…" she muttered under her breath. "Are they preparing for war or something?"
The man did not answer her question directly.
"We are preparing to raid a demonic den," he said instead, his tone turning colder. "We received a report an actress went missing after visiting a royal suite near Zion Valley. The suspect is Aaron, though nothing is confirmed yet. What is certain is that the area has strong demonic activity."
He adjusted his coat, turning slightly toward the exit.
"Roger that," Dr. Jenny replied after a moment, her voice subdued. She took the bag from the counter and held it tightly. "I will gather as much aura as I can from the students."
He turned toward the door.
Paused.
"Keep watching him, Jenny. If his condition changes again if the stone fills any faster contact me immediately. Day or night."
"I will."
He left.
Silence returned.
Dr. Jenny sat alone in her office, staring at the drawer where the stone had been.
Thinking.
Worrying.
What are you, Yuuta? she wondered. What's growing inside you? And what will happen when it finally breaks free?
She thought of his red eyes.
His impossible scars.
His nightmares that felt too real.
The relic, she thought. He's connected to the relic. Somehow. Some way. And if that connection grows any stronger...
She shook her head.
Drank her cold tea.
Waited for the next student who would walk through her door with a burned hand or a stomach ache or a story that made sense.
But in the back of her mind
The black stone remained.
And so did her fear.
To be continued...