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Chapter 14 - The Beginning of What Shouldn't Begin

Then… everything fell still.

Not the usual silence that comes before a storm, nor the hush of the dead that follows after a scream, but a deeper silence — as if the universe itself had decided to stop breathing for just one moment.

The mana no longer moved, no longer glowed, no longer twisted or rose from the earth.

It stopped— not because it had been ordered to, but as if it had begun to doubt itself. as if it was looking at him and wondering:

is this still part of my weave? or has it become something else? a being we never knew,

never shaped, never allowed to exist?

Reis was not a bird in the sky, nor was he falling toward the ground.

He was not above, and not below, but suspended— caught in layers of air like a typo in a carefully written text.

As if gravity had abandoned him… or rejected him.

As if time itself refused to flow through him.

His decaying body floated— not by magic,

not by any activated mechanism, but simply because nothing now knew how to deal with his existence.

A child… barely a meter tall, completely naked except for his wounds, covered in dried blood

and layers of burned mana clinging to his skin.

A skeleton exposing every fragile bone

to whoever dared look.

No recognizable face— just a collapsed cavity, features melted away by fire and screaming.

His limbs dangled like the threads of a torn puppet, his eyes tightly shut, as if all that remained within him had chosen to sleep forever.

And yet… nothing touched him.

No mana approached.

No shadow passed near him.

Even time didn't dare be measured upon him.

As if an invisible, pulsing, thick weave wrapped around him.

Not a shield, not a mana field, but something closer to the guts of existence.

Sticky. Warm. Beating…

As though reality itself had enclosed around him, not to protect— but to isolate.

To say:

"This is not of us. Leave it be."

And still, at the center of all that isolation…

something moved.

Not his body.

Not the field.

But what lay beneath them both.

In his chest, behind sunken bones,

in the void long denied by all, behind a corrupted core they deliberately ignored

and labeled in their files:

"Failed case – no further development"…

There…something else had been sleeping.

Not energy.

Not ability.

But intent.

Something that had waited for this very moment with uncanny patience— as if it had been born just to witness this scene.

and now… it opened its eye.

...

Then… the light distorted.

Slowly without sound. without spectacle. as if the world itself had begun to lose its cohesion before his eyes.

The scene around Reis was no longer stable.

Even the reflections of the sky looked distorted, broken — as though the air itself had come undone, and reality was struggling to find a new shape to adapt to something it could not understand.

Layers of emptiness unfolded before him.

The fabric of space tore — not with a call,

not by command, but simply because the laws had ceased to function.

Then he vanished — without a flash,

without a sound, without even resistance.

As if someone had erased his name

from a single line in the book of the world.

---

He wasn't pulled.

He wasn't swallowed.

He wasn't transported.

He simply existed elsewhere.

Suddenly.

With no transition, no portal, no channel.

---

His body hit the ground.

The sound was faint — hoarse,

weightless, as if the body itself was no longer anything but a memory of something that had once lived.

The ground was concrete —

rough, dirty, stained with the remnants of old rain and fresh blood that hadn't yet dried.

A narrow alley, in a forgotten district

on the edge of a city whose name isn't worth a line in the records of major nations.

The place was dark — not because the light was absent, but because light itself had suffocated here.

The single lamp at the far end of the alley

hung from a torn wire, flickering

as if it were crying, or simply couldn't bear

to see what needed to be seen.

Reis's body had landed on its side, his limbs sprawled unconsciously, his head tilted,

his chest barely rising.

Beneath that trembling light, he looked like nothing more than a discarded human shell on the pavement.

No magic pulsed around him.

No field.

No glow.

No energy.

Just cracked skin, blackened wounds,

and eyes sealed shut as if they had never been meant to open.

...

Far from Reis, in a place whose chapters we had witnessed before, the silence remained thick across the laboratory. But it wasn't the kind of silence that brought peace or marked an end—it felt more like a temporary suspension of the world itself, as if the universe had decided to grant a single breath to something older than order... and further beyond comprehension.

At the center of the destruction, where the shadows of dead fire crossed paths with the remains of torn mana fields, the earth trembled once again. But it wasn't a quake from above—it came from deep below, from beneath the soil, beneath the metal, beneath the nightmares themselves. Something was returning to its true shape, slowly, horrifyingly, as if flesh and mana had forgotten how to unite, and now remembered—over the corpse of time.

From within the wreckage, a black, lumpy mass began to rise, like the heart of some colossal creature, pulsing with the remnants of an unquenchable heat. Smoke curled off its edges, and then it began to open—not like a flower, but like a wound. And from that wound… a body emerged.

A man's body.

A form that couldn't be tied to any clear human lineage, for its features showed only what you were allowed to see. He was tall—tall enough to invoke fear. His muscles looked as if they were carved from frozen ash, his bare chest beat with a rhythm that followed no bodily law, and his skin wasn't just dark or gray; it seemed to absorb all ambient color and refused to give anything back. And his face… was entirely obscured by a fine black mist. Not smoke, but a membrane of corrupted mana that twisted and coiled, distorting sight and igniting the imagination.

That… was Karamis.

Not his full name, nor his true one, but the title whispered by those who had lived, feared, and remained silent. One of the Ten Lords of the Black Eye. The mind behind the experiments on children and malformed beasts. The shadow that only appeared when expectations were shattered.

He stood in the ruined arena, his black eyes—or what could be called eyes—fixed on the void where the world had just been torn apart moments ago. He didn't look at the rubble, nor at the blood, not even at the shattered security systems or the scattered remains that lay around him like charred leaves. He looked only at the place where Reis had vanished—at the fracture no longer visible, though the air still trembled around it.

Without turning his head, he spoke in a voice that resembled a faint pulse echoing inside another's mind:

"That boy... was never ordinary. And what just happened... is only the beginning."

A voice answered from behind him—hoarse, defeated, but still holding onto a thread of composure.

"My lord… Lord Karamis… we didn't know. We never expected it to go this far."

Elin was walking unsteadily. Her shoulder bled, her lip was cracked, and her eyes shimmered with a look we had never seen in her before—a mix of guilt, fear, and realization. She was trying to stay composed, but she knew that whatever she had to say meant nothing in the face of what had just occurred.

"The core was dead… all the readings were faint. No flow. No structure. We didn't even expect him to survive."

He didn't turn.

He simply stood still.

Shadows began to gather behind him, pouring from his body as if he were the nexus of mana's entrails, or as though the world around him was unraveling into dark lines only to wrap themselves back around him. His body began to melt into them—not disappearing, but merging. Not fading, but transforming into something like an image printed on light.

Elin spoke again in a weary whisper, as though the words were forced out:

"He's moved… beyond the lab's range. Far outside our field."

And the air shuddered.

That single sentence alone was enough to freeze the bones of any mana researcher or scientist.

"Tracking ceased. No broadcast. No waves. No spectral trail. It's as if he didn't pass through any frequency. He wasn't transported. Wasn't taken. Wasn't seen."

Finally… Karamis moved.

He raised his right hand.

But it wasn't just his hand.

Behind it, additional limbs formed—interwoven shadows. They had no fingers, only ends shaped like blades, claws, tongues panting for a target. One of them lashed out… and wrapped around her neck.

Her feet lifted off the ground.

She gasped.

But no sound came.

As if it had been swallowed by the void.

Her eyes widened… and a single tear fell—not from pain, but because she understood she was never going to leave this place.

Then Karamis spoke, his voice slow and deep, like hidden drums beating inside him:

"Bring him back. Either him... or you."

Then he dropped her.

A breath of poisoned air escaped her chest.

She fell to her knees, coughing violently.

But she didn't cry.

Her voice came out torn:

"I need… time. But I'll find him."

He finally turned his head.

But his face couldn't be seen.

Behind it appeared something like a mass—

a writhing knot of shadows, shifting and coiling like a mask, a gate, or a mouth speaking from hell.

"You get one chance. Don't fail again."

Then he crouched, slowly, and placed his palm upon the ground.

The mana shifted instantly.

The earth itself trembled—

as if it had sensed a being stronger than itself.

From beneath his fingers, a thin line of dark light emerged, twisting and pulsing, slashing through the floor until a long rift opened, and from it erupted a viscous violet steam—like the drool of some ancient, hungry creature.

A gate… but not like any ordinary gate.

A tear in the fabric of space itself.

A door that only opens… when the commander speaks.

"I'll pass the order to the inner circle.

I believe it's time we move."

Then he stepped through,

and behind him, the shadows rose and wrapped around him—

and he vanished.

As if he had never been.

As if the earth had not folded—

but had simply forgotten who walked upon it.

---

Elin rose slowly.

Her eyes didn't blink.

She looked at the ruins… at the devices…

at the blood scattered across the walls.

And then, she stared into the void Reis had left behind.

Her gaze was not distant,

nor sorrowful—

but furious.

A silent, frozen fury—

as though holding in every curse

that should never be spoken aloud.

This wasn't what she had been promised.

This wasn't the plan.

She wanted a weapon.

Not a nightmare erupting in her hands.

Her eyes tightened,

as though she could still see his trace lingering in the air, polluting it.

She pressed her lips together, and whispered—

not to herself,

but to him,

as if he could still hear her from somewhere:

"You were a mistake from the very beginning."

Then she pulled the device from her wristband.

Her commands weren't frantic.

They weren't hesitant.

She pressed the first button:

"Track."

Then the second:

"Erase."

No mercy.

She wasn't searching for Reis.

She was hunting what remained of him—

to finish what should've been done long ago.

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