Daiki's eyes snapped open. A blinding light seared his vision, and he lurched upright with a ragged gasp.
"Rino!"
But his voice echoed into emptiness.
"He didn't really understood where he was, his thoughts still all over the place."
The blood, the ruins, his parents' bodies—they were gone. He was no longer in his home.
Instead, he stood in an endless white expanse. The light was not warm but sterile, pressing against him from every direction, leaving no shadows. The silence was suffocating.
"Another one," a voice muttered, weary and sharp as broken glass.
A figure bled into existence not radiant, not merciful, but wrong. Its outline shifted constantly, human for a moment, then monstrous, then formless light. Daiki's stomach churned just looking at it.
"Daiki try to step back but his legs didn't listen, like they wasn't even his."
He staggered back, fists clenched. "Who are you? Where is my sister?!"
He keep hoping she'll answer somehow, even though he know she can't.
The figure regarded him with an indifference that hollowed the air. "Dead. You, at least. Your flesh has ended. What remains is a fragment of will, standing before me."
"No…" His voice broke. He staggered forward, trembling. "No, she was alive I held her hand—I can't leave her—"
The figure's laughter was hollow, like bones rattling in a grave.
"Mortals cling so desperately. You think you are the first to beg me for what cannot be undone? Time does not rewind for you. Death does not return what was taken."
"I don't accept that!" His voice broke, but he forced himself to meet the figure's eyes.
'If there's any chance at all, I'll crawl through hell to reach it.''
The silence stretched.
For the first time, the being's form flickered as if Daiki's defiance unsettled even it.
"…Defiance. Even in the void, you cling to it. Very well. If you crave a second chance so desperately, I shall grant it. But understand this, child—gifts from gods are never free."
Its hand rose. The white expanse shuddered.
"I give you… Limitless Mana. Power without ceiling. A curse as much as a blessing It will burn you hollow if you falter But with it you may chase the shadow of what you lost."
The void trembled, fractures spreading through the light like cracks in glass.
Daiki's breath came ragged, but he raised his head. "If that's the only way… then I'll take it. I don't care if it kills me."
He wanted to say more but the words just dont come out right.
The figure leaned closer.
Its many-shifting faces whispered in unison:
"Good. Let us see if you drown… or ascend."
The ground collapsed beneath him. Darkness swallowed him whole.
"Run, mortal worm," the voice echoed. Run until your soul breaks, Run through blood and ruin, if you ever see her again."
He fell screaming into the void—grief, fury, and resolve burning as one.
———
"Ugh… cold."
I tried to move, to push against the slick surface pressing in, but my limbs were
numb, unresponsive, like they weren't mine. Panic burned in my chest.
Wait… I can't move? What the hell…?!
My vision swam, slowly clearing. Small, delicate fingers floated in front of me.
Not mine.
"No… no way."
Bile rose in my throat as realization struck. The god. The reincarnation. This wasn't my body.
I was suspended in a tube of water, displayed like some grotesque specimen in an aquarium. Cold, expressionless eyes studied me through the glass.
A child's reflection stared back. Five years old. Fragile. Helpless.
I wanted to scream but only a weak whimper escaped my underdeveloped lungs. Darkness claimed me again.
But waking never brought relief.
It only dragged me back into hell.
They came in white coats, their eyes empty, their hands precise. Not doctors. Not humans. But butchers.
I wasn't a child to them—I was material. A living specimen.
Strapped down, I watched vials fill with my blood. Needles pierced veins until they were raw. They prodded, cut, injected, observed. Their voices were clinical, cold and sometimes amused.
My pain was data. My screams, entertainment.
Their cruelty were endless.
When curiosity turned cruel, the real experiments began.
Poison burned through my veins—not to kill me, but to test how fast I'd heal. My skin blistered, split open, then stitched itself back together under their fascinated stares.
Fingers snapped like twigs. Joints twisted until ligaments tore. Bones shattered under calculated force. Then came the waiting—their eyes fixed on the grotesque dance of regeneration.
Nails peeled
hair ripped out by the handful, just to see if it grows back differently.
Teeth are yanked out like weeds, gripped and torn free just to see if they grow back straighter
And once metal spoon pressed beneath my eyelid. Pressure. Tearing. The world went red.
Every time I prayed for death. Every time it came the crawling sensation, the grotesque miracle. Flesh writhing, knitting back together. Bone re-forming with sickening cracks.
Not mercy. Mockery.
At first, i scream until my throat was raw. Begged through bloody lips. Please… someone. Make it stop.
No one came.
Eventually, the screaming faded. Tears dried. My face forgot how to show pain.
Fear dulled. Pain dulled. Even hope dulled.
I stopped reacting.
my face learned not to flinch. body became a shell.
Something to slice. Inject. Break. Repair.
Over.
And over.
Again.
Until only silence remained.
———
Seven years bled together into one endless nightmare.
Every morning felt the same...machines buzzing, metal tools catching the light, no warmth anywhere.
What hit hardest were the memories….
His mother slipping into his room with food during those late-night study sessions, trying to hide the worry in her eyes, his father talking on and on about things that never really mattered, just trying to connect in his own clumsy way…
And Rino's small hand clinging to his every morning on the way to school, trusting him without question.
Those memories didn't comfort him—they dug in, sharp and merciless, reminding him of everything he'd been torn away from.
Hatred grew. For the god who cursed him. For the men in white coats who carved him apart. For the body that refused to break, no matter how much he begged for death.
The "gift" of regeneration was no gift at all. It healed him just enough for the next cut, the next break, the next scream. He learned silence. He learned stillness. He became a vessel for pain.
Until the day he turned ten …
Something inside him broke. Or perhaps it awoke.
The years of torment, the pain that never fully healed, the outrage that wouldn't die—everything hit him at once.
All of it ignited in a single, unstoppable of surge. Mana, vast and volatile, tore free.
It didn't flow.
It erupted.
The reinforced chamber—meant to hold things that didn't survive outside it—didn't even slow the blast. Metal folded in on itself, glass blew outward in a single violent burst, and the floor split from the shockwave that tore through the room. The lights popped out overhead, plunging everything into a dim, broken glow.
Daiki was at the center of it, thrown into the blast he couldn't control. His body tore open under the force, then healed itself again just as fast, locking him in a loop of pain he couldn't escape.
It didn't feel like power. It felt like he was being ripped apart from the inside and forced to stay conscious through all of it .
He wasn't in control—he was just living through it.
Pain fed the power. Power fed the pain.
It was astorm.
And he was the eye.
The explosion ripped through the hidden facility. Beyond Daiki's chamber, the children caged in other cells stirred as walls cracked and smoke flooded the corridors.
Tiny hands clutched rusted bars. Wide eyes glowed in the dim, some human, some not.
An elf girl with a face marred by cuts flinched at every tremor.
A beastfolk boy, muzzle biting into his jaw, stared with hollow eyes.
A fae child, wings broken and bloodied, rocked silently, whispering to himself.
A Lupine girl curls in the corner, one ear half-severed, her good ear twitching at every sound.
A scaled boy sits motionless, scales dulled and cracked, watching without blinking.
So many. Too many.
All broken. All waiting to die—or worse.
For years they had only known silence, needles, and the doctor's cruel smile. Now the silence was broken by destruction.
And at the far end of the corridor, the doctor stood frozen. His lips curled not in delight this time, but in rage and a flicker of something rarer.
Fear
The blast punched a hole straight through the mountain. The fake cave hiding the facility split open, letting real daylight in for the first time. Fresh air rushed through the ruin, carrying dirt and pine instead of chemicals and metal.
Daiki stood at the center of it, small and shaking. The energy leaking off him lit the space around him in harsh, uneven waves. He didn't look like a weapon or a miracle—just a kid barely holding himself together.
The doctor's voice, once so steady in its cruelty, now faltered.
"Impossible… this… this is—"
Daiki raised his head, eyes burning like coals fanned by five years of hate.
The storm had only just begun.
For the first time, there is a way out.
A path to freedom.
The children frightened trembling stared at the breach with wide eyes. Hope, something long forgotten, flickered in their chests.
"Seal the exits!" the head doctor bellows, panic cracking his voice.. "Do not let those brats escape! You—contain Subject 07! I want him restrained, sedated—-now!"
Knights in enchanted armor clank into motion, swords drawn, forming a defensive wall between the children and the jagged breach in the rear.
Mages lined the corridors, glyphs glowing as they chanted.
Too late.
Daiki stepped from the rubble, his small body cloaked in a blazing orange aura. The air warped around him, heavy and electrified. He radiated not like a boy—but like a storm given flesh.
Before he moved, they felt it.
Mana pressure slammed into them like a falling mountain. Knights staggered, some dropping to their knees, choking for air.
"Hold him back!" the doctor shrieks retreating toward the rear hallway. "USE MANA SUPRESSIONN! USE EVERYTHING…. JUST STOP HIM!"
But the knights hesitate—frozen not by orders, but by fear.
Daiki raises a hand, and the world twists.
Metal screamed as armor folded like paper. Shields imploded, puncturing chests they were meant to protect. Breastplates crumpled inward, ribs splintering through lungs with wet pops that bubbled blood from gasping mouths.
One knight's arms twisted backward until tendons snapped like bowstrings, his spine cracking in half with the sound of a branch breaking underfoot. Another's helmet compressed, eye slits narrowing as the metal crushed inward, forcing eyeballs to burst and seep through the faceplate's joints. Blood jetted from joints and seams.
A knight crawled forward, intestines dragging behind through his shattered backplate, fingers clawing desperately at the stone floor.
With just a twitch of Daiki's hand, the remaining men slammed against the walls, their weapons becoming shrapnel that pierced their own bodies. When silence finally fell, only the drip-drip-drip of blood from the ceiling marked the seconds.
Daiki didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
He was no longer prey. He was judgment.
The children scattered. Terror flared in their eyes, hope flickering in their chests like fragile candles. They didn't understand what had happened—only that the screams of guards had stopped, that doors no longer held them back, and that something monstrous stood where a child once knelt.
They ran. Because they could. Because they had to.
Most bolted without looking back, their bare feet slapping metal and stone, echoing through the shattered hallways. But a few lingered—three, maybe four—frozen in awe and fear, staring at Daiki, their savior and destroyer.
The Lupine girl was one of them. Her ears flattened low, golden eyes locked on the boy cloaked in pulsing mana and unrestrained vengeance.
Another child—a scaled Argonian—tugged at her arm, urging her to move, to flee. She hesitated, a heartbeat longer than safety allowed, before finally sprinting after the others, leaves crunching beneath her feet.
Daiki didn't glance at them, yet somehow they felt the weight of his gaze, a silent warning: this was no hero>>> they were witnessing the storm he had become.
"Not one of them said a word."
The halls ran red. Researchers lay scattered across tile and steel, their blood smeared into the walls, their final screams already fading. Male or female, young or old—Daiki spared none. Those who had mocked, cut, or watched in silence were carved down without mercy.
He keeps moving, unstoppable, his aura pulsing like a heartbeat made of fire and hate.
The head doctor stumbled backward, terror carving lines into his once-smug face. The sadist who smirked at children's pain was gone.
In his place stood a trembling coward, scrabbling for excuses..
"W-Wait! We can fix this! I can help you, please—! It was all for the greater good!"
He grabs one of the younger researchers, shoving her forward like a human shield. "Take her! Take them! It wasn't just me!"
Others cry out, confused and horrified, but it's too late.
Daiki's eyes didn't flicker.
Twin blades of searing mana ignited from his hands, arcs of light crackling in the smoke. With one motion, he swept them forward. The researcher's scream cut short, body falling in scorched halves.
The doctor's cry was higher, sharper, breaking into pure terror. He tripped over corpses, scrambling back.
Daiki followed, aura still pulsing, silence louder than any scream.
"He will repay every ounce of pain, every stolen tear, every drop of blood."
The man's frantic pleas were drowned beneath the roar in Daiki's ears—a symphony of wrath, unrelenting, spiraling toward its apex.
Terror hung in the air, thick and suffocating, like smoke that burned the lungs. And Daiki… drank it in, savoring the bitter balm of years of suffering.
Still, it was never enough. Could never be enough. Not yet.
Daiki reached out, his small hands trembling—not from fear, but from the unbearable force barely held in check.
He starts with the man's hands. Not cleanly. Not quickly. Slowly. Deliberately. Each bone snaps, each tendon tears, skin peeling beneath his grip. The chamber echoes with shrieks, a grotesque harmony to the wet tearing of flesh and bone.
Then he moves lower—to the legs. Bones crack under invisible weight, muscle splitting like paper. The body convulses, a ragged puppet with strings cut, thrashing against the floor. A high, broken wail cuts through the silence of the dead facility.
Blood pools beneath him. His limbs are useless. His legacy, his control, his arrogance—undone.
Daiki stood over him, breathing steady, eyes dull. He stares down at the ruined figure—limbs twisted, face contorted in agony—His intent hardened.
Death is too kind.
With grim purpose,
Daiki digs his nails into his own arm, ripping it open to the bone. Blood spills hot and fast, mana thick within it. For a moment, he stood with only one arm and a mangled stump then, the wound knits closed with cursed speed, the severed one, twitching in his grip. He raised his restored hand, Mana coils, shaping into a jagged claw of shimmering energy—like a predator's talon forged from hatred itself.
He sinks his claw into the doctor's chest.
Flesh stretches taut,
tearing open in ragged,
bloody shreds; bone cracks like brittle wood.
The ribcage splits with surgical malice, unveiling a slick, pulsing heart. The doctor's raw, agonized scream is swallowed by the wet, hungry rip of flesh in Daiki's ears.
Then came the cruelty.
Daiki pressed the severed hand against the ruin, his cursed Blood dripped into the man's body, forcing the heart to beat again, knitting ribs and flesh. The body mends.
The doctor lives.
Alive and in agony.
His screams tear through the air, desperate, endless.
But Daiki is unmoved.
He doesn't speak.
He doesn't gloat.
He doesn't even hate.
His face is calm, detached, half-hidden beneath blood-streaked strands of hair
He moves like a machine forged in torment, wielding suffering like a scalpel.
Again and again, he rends his own flesh.
Again and again, the claw forms.
Again and again, he rips the doctor's chest open.
Again and again, he forces him to heal.
Each cycle feeds the next. Screams collapse into sobs, sobs into gasps, gasps into silence. Sanity cracks. The man no longer fears death— he begs for it.
But Daiki never grants it.
He forces him to live. To feel. To endure.
In the end, the heart gives out not from wounds, but from horror.
Not from pain, but from the knowledge that Daiki—his creation has become something else.
A child broken by monsters who became one himself.
When the body finally lies still, Daiki stands over the corpse, his arms coated in his own blood, his chest rising and falling in silence.
The rage has passed.
Only emptiness remained.
He had his revenge.
But it tasted like ash.
* * *