Seko stirred in his sleep, the fever wrapping his body in waves of heat and cold. Outside the temporary shelter, the artificial shade offered by Violet's flora kept the harsh planetary sunlight at bay. But inside Seko's mind, there was no hiding. No shelter. Only echoes—shadows and forgotten screams clawing their way out of the sealed crypt of his memory.
The dungeon returned, as it always did. Stone walls slick with dampness. The reek of blood and decay lingering thick in the air. The grotesque laughter of goblins twisted into the soundtrack of his trauma. And Nivarna—his sister—standing between him and them. Defiant. Battered. Radiant with that fire she always carried, even when the world offered her nothing but torment.
She had fought them.
She had fought for him.
Her human body had moved like a storm, years of training and pure rage giving her an edge no monster expected. Goblins fell. Bones broke. But there had been too many. Eventually, even her spirit couldn't keep her standing. They tore into her, cackling, feeding off her strength and pain.
Seko had shut his eyes then, too afraid to witness what came next.
But tonight, in the haze of sickness, the dream peeled back another layer. He didn't shut his eyes. He saw everything.
The goblins were dead. Shredded. Torn into pieces that didn't resemble combat wounds. No martial artist, no human sister—not even Nivarna—could have caused such precise, surgical annihilation. This wasn't self-defense. This was slaughter, cold and methodical. The kind that left silence behind it. The kind that smelled of something worse than death—intent.
Amid the mutilated corpses, a figure stood.
It was human. At least in form.
Tall and thin. Dressed in dark, simple robes stained with blood that didn't belong to him. His face was... normal. Disturbingly so. A clean-shaven jaw. Pale skin. Lavender-tinted eyes that shimmered in the dungeon's torchlight like glass over a flame. And that smile—small, composed, almost polite.
He hadn't spoken.
He hadn't needed to.
His eyes had scanned the room, and then landed on Seko—not with curiosity, not with pity—but as if Seko were some object behind glass, unworthy of touch but worth noting. For a breathless moment, the boy remembered their gazes locking.
That stare felt eternal.
But it wasn't the man's silence that broke Seko.
It was what happened next.
Nivarna, bloodied, her clothes torn, her pride shattered—but alive—lifted her head.
And she saw him.
She didn't run. She didn't scream.
She stood.
She stood.
Her legs trembled, her eyes swollen, but she pulled her obi—the frayed belt of her worn martial arts uniform—tighter around her waist, as if cinching herself back together. And then she turned to Seko, barely able to smile, but she tried.
"See? That wasn't that bad."
Her words—etched into his soul—sounded again in the fever dream.
And then... she walked.
Not toward him.
But toward the figure.
He didn't force her. He didn't drag her.
She chose.
Seko watched his sister vanish into the darkness behind him, swallowed by something he could never reach. And in her place, only blood and silence remained.
He had wandered for days after that, hollow and afraid. His cries unheard, his body fading with hunger, his soul even more so. And then the monks had found him—a child vampire not attacking them for flesh or blood, but crying for help. And they had taken him in, not just with pity, but a strange sort of admiration.
But that was never the end of the story.
Because now—years later—his subconscious had shown him the truth. Not all the goblins had died by her hands.
Not all the evil in that dungeon had been monstrous in form.
There was something else.
Something human.
Something far worse.
Something that hadn't left his life… just yet.
The hum of the spaceship was gentle, like a low lullaby echoing through metal veins. They had finally left the planet behind—Kutol, with its trade markets, divine cubes, and Bhishma's legacy now faded into history. In the cockpit, Atama sat with his feet up, lazily crunching on another exotic snack from the last planet, his eyes half-closed in relaxation. Kiyomi monitored the navigation panel. Violet, ever flamboyant, seemed more focused on brushing his silver-white hair to a pristine shine than anything else.
And then there was Seko.
Silent. Still.
Staring.
His eyes occasionally flicked to the stars outside the hull—those cold, endless fields of nothingness that stretched further than even his pain—but they always returned to Atama.
There was something in the way Atama existed… as if the laws of emotion and consequence bent around him. He was whimsical, erratic, yet incomprehensibly intelligent. Detached. But not unfeeling.
Seko had always prided himself on carrying his burden alone. He had to. There was never anyone else.
But now… after remembering him—the man in the dungeon, the smile, the blood, the choice his sister made—Seko's soul trembled in places he had spent a lifetime keeping locked away.
He didn't want to share it.
Didn't want to unravel it in words that would cheapen the horror. Or make it real again.
But something inside him wondered… if anyone could understand, maybe it was Atama.
Seko leaned back in his seat, his eyes drifting sideways.
Atama, still chewing, met his gaze.
For a second—no more—they looked at each other.
Seko didn't speak. He didn't have to.
Atama didn't ask. He didn't need to.
He simply gave a slow blink, a small tilt of his head. Not pity. Not concern. Just a quiet acknowledgment.
Then, after a pause, he casually said, "Most people think wounds disappear when the body heals. But you and I… we know that's not true, don't we?"
Seko didn't answer. But for the first time in a long while, he felt like someone had heard a scream he hadn't even let out.
And in the silence of the stars, that was enough.
The ship continued on, deeper into space.
Toward the planet of light and shadow.
Toward answers.
Toward scars too deep for most to name.