Chapter 8 – No Fear Now
The cold muzzle of the gun pressed against Kaeron's chest, right above his heart. A flickering streetlamp buzzed overhead, its dying light painting both men in flashes of orange and shadow. The alleyway behind the apartment complex was deathly quiet—too quiet. Even the wind had retreated, as if it, too, feared the man standing before Kaeron.
Kaeron didn't move. Didn't blink.
Is this how I die? Alone? Cornered? Like a forgotten name in the wind?
His breath slowed. "Why?" he asked, voice low, calm.
The figure didn't answer.
Kaeron's eyes narrowed. "Who are you? What do you want from me? Why are you following me? What the hell did I do to deserve this?"
Still, the man remained silent.
Kaeron took a half-step back, fists clenched. "I don't know who you are or what your problem is, but pointing a gun at me without saying a word isn't really doing your intimidation game any favors."
At last, the figure's lips moved beneath the shadows of his hood.
But not to answer Kaeron's questions.
Instead, the man began to recite.
"From shadows deep where nightmares crawl,I twist their fear and make them fall."
Kaeron's pupils shrank.
The air shifted — no, warped.
Darkness bled from the man's feet, spreading like ink across the cobbled ground. Symbols — crude, ancient, and flickering like spirits — spiraled in the air, swirling around Kaeron in a rising vortex. Ghostly sigils passed over his body, through his chest, into his mind.
And then, everything collapsed into black.
He stood in nothingness.
No sky. No ground. No sound.
Just void.
Kaeron tried to move but couldn't feel his limbs. Numbness crawled up his skin like frost. Even pain abandoned him.
In the silence, he heard the stalker's voice again. But not from outside — from inside his mind.
"Tread lightly, for in this realm I reign—your deepest fears are mine to chain."
Two gunshots rang out.
Kaeron flinched as both arms snapped back from the force of invisible bullets. Yet, strangely… there was no pain. He looked down. Blood didn't drip. Skin didn't tear. His arms simply… refused to move.
A thick fog poured from the stalker's palms like liquid smoke. It floated around Kaeron like circling wolves before plunging violently into his eyes.
He screamed.
But the scream didn't echo. It just vanished.
The domain changed.
No longer void, but memory.
He stood again… in that place.
The place he had sworn to bury.
Flames devoured the village. Screams echoed as homes fell into ash. His mother — her hand reaching for him. His best friend — his lungs filling with blood. Kaeron remembered this moment.
The night he lost everything.
And he had done nothing.
He had stood there. Frozen. Helpless. Weak.
"No," he whispered.
But the smoke around him answered with laughter — dark, cruel, endless.
The figures of his past danced around him like ghosts, bleeding, begging, burning.
"You let us die," they said in unison."You watched."
Kaeron's legs buckled.
He dropped to his knees, fingers clawing at his scalp as if tearing his own thoughts apart could end the agony. He wanted to run. To scream. To disappear.
He wanted to die.
The Umbra Core's effect was taking hold — its whispers threading deeper into his heart.
This is what you are. Powerless. Worthless. Helpless. Just end it. Escape it all.
The stalker stepped forward from the swirling void, gun now raised to Kaeron's throat.
His voice echoed coldly. "Fear is the sharpest blade. And you've already cut yourself with it."
Kaeron didn't look up.
But something… breathed inside him. Faint. But present.
A flicker.
Not of strength.
But of rage.
His inner voice trembled. If this is what it takes to kill me, then maybe I deserve it.
But another voice rose beneath it — quieter, deeper. One he hadn't heard in a long time.
No... Not like this.
His body trembled, not from fear now—but from defiance.
"I'm not…" Kaeron said hoarsely, "giving up."
The stalker's gun twitched. "What?"
Kaeron's head slowly rose. His eyes, still streaming with smoke, burned with a red flicker.
"If people are going to find my fear and try to use it against me as a weapon..." he growled, voice growing stronger, "then I'll just overcome my fear with my will... and climb up."
The ground shook.
The entire domain began to shudder like a mirror beginning to crack.
"What are you doing—?" the stalker muttered, stepping back.
Kaeron stood.
Despite the bullets in his arms.
Despite the weight of trauma.
Despite the agony in his soul.
He stood.
The black fog tried to rush back into him — but it couldn't.
He clenched his fists.
The smoke was being pushed out of his body — repelled by the glow of an angry, pulsing crimson aura rising from his core.
The stalker shouted, "Stay down!"
He fired.
Kaeron moved.
One step forward.
Then another.
Then—
CRACK!
Kaeron's boot slammed against the stalker's chest in a violent, explosive kick, hurling him across the void. The bullet missed. The gun fell. And the fear domain — the entire Umbra landscape — crumbled into glowing dust around them.
They returned to reality.
The cold alley.
The streetlamp flickered.
But Kaeron stood transformed.
His overcoat fluttered in a wind that wasn't there. His body glowed faintly with a dark red aura that pulsed like a second heartbeat. His eyes were no longer afraid — they were fire.
The stalker scrambled back, blood at his lips.
Kaeron stepped forward, voice calm, deadly.
"You put your hands somewhere you should've never done…"
He stopped, glaring down at the man who had tried to break him.
"…Now get ready for the consequences, you sick bastard."