The lightning bolts, fueled by anger and hatred, shattered Yu's wooden hand and gave it a new shape. Then the lightning bolts, fueled by his anger, moved towards Elaine Jie, who plunged a sword of ice into the back of Yurine's abdomen.
When the lightning struck Elaine Jie, thunder rumbled, the whole world went dark for a second and she flew too far away to see as Elaine Jie's body glowed and her bones broken.
“AAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The lightning bolts Yu used were not belong to him, he had created them with a borrowed force. He didn't know how he did it, but the anger he felt was so great that he went with the flow and threw the lightning bolts at Elaine Jie to kill her.
“AAAAGHHHHHRHHHHHHHH!”
Even though he used lightning bolts, his body was not strong enough to withstand them. Even though he was the one who created them in his rage, the lightning spread to his body and left him with burns all over his body, although they did not kill him instantly like Elaine Jie.
Yu screamed even louder. “AAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
He had seen Yurine die and the anger he carried was burning him. With all the meaning of word, he burned.
There was a hot star shining in his chest. The mass of the star was so great that even his soul felt like it was being pulled into the gravitational pull of the star. The flames that started to spread from that star burned Yu.
“AAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
When he confronted Yu Zao, their swords clashed several times and then Yu Zao cut off Yu's right arm and both legs in one move and threw him back.
He was in a handless, armless and legless form, yet he was trying to crawl towards Yurine, who was now lying on the ground in front of him. Dark smoke began to rise from Yurine's body.
And Yu screamed again. “AAAAAGHHHHHHHHH!”
His scream was so strong that as he screamed he felt his throat ripping, his vocal cords tearing, and he vomited blood, but when the star that appeared in his chest caught fire and set his whole body on fire, he could do nothing but scream louder.
This borrowed and cursed power he carried was far too much for Yu's pathetic body to handle. Someone like him was not worthy of this power, did not deserve to carry it.
So the power burned Yu. He fed the fires that lifted his skin with anger at his own powerlessness and self-hatred. His clothes were melting and sticking to his flesh, the flames so hot that he could feel his flesh sticking even to his armor. Yet the rage and the cursed power that burned him still kept him breathing.
“AAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
How he had deceived himself, pretending to accept death, even though he knew he was only deceiving himself. But Yu Valarfin was afraid of death, he was a coward.
He was afraid of death again, but this fear was no longer for his own death, but for Yurine's. He didn't want to believe that she was dead, he tried to get closer to her with his burning body, hoping that she was alive.
And Yu Valarfin hated death itself.
“AAAAAAAGGHGHGHGHHRRRHHHHHHHR- KHAK- KHAHAA- KHAHAA- Khaha-Ha...Öhr...”
When he tore his own throat out with his screams, he vomited more blood and could no longer scream. Now he could only make a strange sound like a moan, like a dying animal.
But as his blood boiled, he could not even think of dying, could not even desire to die. As his vision blurred and turned black and gray and red, there was only hate. Hatred for Yu Valarfin.
“It's beautiful!” As his meat and clothes stuck to him, a new person came into the area. “Very good! It's so beautiful! Very good, very good, very good, very good, very good! Finally... I finally see someone with this!”
The newcomer was talking like a madman.
“You...” Yu Zao started to speak, but the newcomer's laughter stopped him.
“Hiahahahahaha! HAHAHAHAHA! VERY GOOD! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
He was not in line of sight and with his deteriorating senses he could not understand which side the voice was coming from. He had no intention of understanding where it was coming from.
“No, Your Majesty.” The man sounded ecstatic, enjoying the situation so much that it was as if he was having sex. “Don't kill him, this grace must not perish.”
“What do you think you're saying!” Yu Zao shouted angrily. “He killed Elaine!”
“Before I finish...” The voices began to fade. He was about to lose his hearing completely because of the flames. “...I... After I took the core...”
“Your pleasure!”
Yu was still burning and crawling towards Yurine, but he couldn't do it anymore, his body had no strength left to move. The rage he carried was only enough to keep him alive for a little while longer.
It was much worse that he could not make a sound even though he was still burning. He felt pain but could not react in any way, not even to move. He was a being of pain.
“That's enough...” This time the voice came from someone in his line of sight. “No matter what I do... I can't change... So that's it.”
It was Keichi. When he saw him, the star in his chest shone brighter and his anger grew even stronger. As star burned brighter, the gravity became much stronger.
Even as he began to feel the pain of being burned because of the star more and more, the flames on his body began to die down. The flames were diminishing and retreating back towards the star from which they had originally emerged. But that didn't change the fact that the star was getting hotter and hotter. The gravity and the temperature were constantly increasing.
Red, gray and black, these were the only colors he could see and his vision was not detailed. Nevertheless, he could distinguish that Keichi had taken a woman hostage and was holding a knife to her throat.
Did he care even though he saw it? No, he didn't. He only harbored anger against Keichi, who had a part in his failure, and this anger was inside himself because he could not express it in any way.
He couldn't breathe properly because of the blood pooling in his throat, his lungs couldn't function with the little air he was getting and the world was slowly going black. That he was even alive now was entirely due to the cursed power that had caused him this pain. Even though the flames burned his whole body, the fact that his nerves were not completely destroyed still allowed him to feel something, and everything he felt, even the wind against his skin, caused him pain.
Keichi turned around and looked at Yu. Looking under his head was horrible enough, but when he looked at his face, he grimaced. His hair was gone, his eyes were red, his lips were half stuck together. His face was covered in pink and red shapes because of his blistered body.
“I'm sorry, Yu.”
Keichi took one last look at Yu as a wheel appeared above him and turned his back to him. They were facing Yu Zao.
He couldn't quite see the wheel that appeared above him, but he could make out large symbols that looked like Roman numerals. The symbols were arranged like a clock inside the wheel and some were missing.
“Your Majesty... Your Majesty... I beg you... This... Save me!”
The voice belonged to the woman Keichi had taken hostage. She was Akalda.
“What are you... Libra...” Yu Zao spoke. Although he couldn't hear the whole sentence, it was clear that his anger had not subsided.
Akalda was shouting. “You bastard!... Liar! I...”
“Shut up, whore.”
Keichi spoke and the moment he slit Akalda's throat, the shape above him began to glow. After a few seconds, Akalda fell to the ground and the whole world was plunged into darkness.
***
Darkness...
And anger out of darkness...
And a little bit of hatred...
No, not a little. So much hate... Even though his body no longer burns, the hatred is so much that it burns his body, his soul, without the need for flames.
“Why...”
First the shock of Yurine's fall prevented tears from flowing, then the shock of the flames prevented tears from flowing.
But now he was crying. He was crying and asking as he crawled into nothingness in the darkness, on a non-existent ground, his body as solid as before.
“Why?”
There was no one to answer.
“Why? Why? Why? WHY!”
His voice spread into the darkness and disappeared. Maybe if he too moved into the darkness he might find the answer. Maybe that was why his anger gave him the strength to move. He kept screaming as his whole body, his whole mind, his whole darkness was taken over by his rage.
Even though there were no more flames, the star in his chest was collapsing him inward, burning him. Even without the star, his anger would have been enough to burn him.
Stolen novel; please report.
“AaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
His voice once again traveled into the darkness, this time echoing and dissolving back into nothingness. Yu's mind was also dissolving into nothingness.
He stopped crawling.
“Why?” he asked again. There was no strength left in his voice. “Because I wanted to save you, didn't I?”
He felt his anger enveloping the darkness, but he was wrong; the darkness enveloped his anger and everything else.
“Because Yurine told me to save her mother... So...” He chuckled. “That's why everything happened...”
He could see the star's radiant glow, but even with such a bright light, it was still dark where he was. Yu Valarfin's darkness could not be illuminated by any light. Neither a candle nor a sun could reach Yu Valarfin in this darkness.
“To save his mother...” He thought of the Sky Palace. “To save the witch.”
Isn't that why he was here? They were on their way to rescue a witch.
「For the Witch.」
「For the Witch.」
「For the Witch.」
She was the cause of everything. The Witch was the cause of everything. He had tried to save a witch and ended up like this, but he didn't blame the Witch. Yu Valarfin was solely responsible for everything that happened to Yu Valarfin. He was the one who caused it all by following a witch.
“Yu?” He heard his name and the tears stopped flowing from his eyes. “Is that you?”
The familiar voice he had heard brightened his fading consciousness again. He wiped his eyes.
“Look what you've become...”
Yu lifted his head up and met the violet eyes staring at him. His eyes filled once more and his lips trembled. For a while he just cried, unable to think of anything to say as the purple eyes looked at him.
“Sister...” When he was about to speak, he called out to the woman in front of him, sobbing. “Sister... Sister...”
Just like the last time, he couldn't tell which sister she was, but he knew she was his sister. That face, and that skin, that hair, those elegant eyes could not belong to anyone else.
“Sister...”
When he raised his right hand towards her and tried to reach out, her beautiful face instantly soured and she stepped back. Yu didn't understand why she did that and didn't question why.
“Sister...”
As he got up on his knees, he didn't even know what was going on in his mind. He stood up and there was his sister. She was so beautiful in everything, like a flower Yu couldn't stop looking at. Anyone who saw them could tell at a glance that they were sisters.
He smiled, her sister's face was not covered in blood.
“Sister,” he said as he continued to smile. While smiling, his face was contorted with pain. “Please answer me, why? Why is all this happening to me?”
He tried to get closer to his sister, but as he stepped forward, she moved backwards, away from Yu with a look of disgust on her face.
“Why? WHY!” When his sister continued to walk away from him, he kept walking towards her and shouted. “WHY IS ALL THIS HAPPENING TO ME! WHY IS IT HAPPENING TO ME AND NOT TO SOMEONE ELSE! ME! I'M BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE! I'M BETTER LOOKING! I'M SMARTER! WHY AM I GOING THROUGH ALL THIS! IT'S BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! JUST BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!”
Even though spittle flew out of his mouth as he shouted, he continued to speak into his sister's face.
“THIS IS NOT FAIR!” he shouted with all his might. She spread her arms wide and raised his head high. “I DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS! I DON'T DESERVE THIS!”
“You're a disappointment.”
Yu froze at the two words he heard. “What did you say?”
The two words he had just heard were words he never wanted his sisters to say. They had given up their own dreams for Yu and he had worked really, really hard to make sure they didn't think he was a disappointment.
But now his sister was standing in front of him, telling him that he was a disappointment.
His violet eyes, the same color as his sister's, opened and his pupils instantly shrank. Anger continued to envelop his body.
“You're a disappointment, Yu.” Yu's right eye twitched when his sister spoke again. “You're a failure.”
“Don't be ridiculous...” Yu clenched his fists hard, his palms bleeding from the nails digging into his own flesh.
In addition to his palms, the star on his chest began to burn more intensely. His body trembled with pain.
“What a mistake it was to give up our own lives for you. You are a disgrace to us.”
“Cut the crap... I've always been a great brother, I've always been a great brother, I've always succeeded in everything I've done, you said you were proud of me.”
He didn't want to be angry with his sister, he didn't want to upset her, so he tried to control himself, but if her his kept talking like that, it wasn't going to be easy.
“You killed that girl like you killed us.”
Yu continued to stand still.
“You were just playing a game, or did you think you could be a father? Was it fun playing at being a father?” His sister laughed sarcastically. “It certainly didn't end in fun.”
Her sisters were not the kind of people to say such things. They were kind people, they could not have said such hurtful things.
“First you took her away from her mother, then you killed her.”
Yu could not answer. He knew she was right and could find no words to defend himself. Empowered by his silence, her sister kept talking.
“You killed her. By your own stupidity and failure and anger... You took her life force and turned it into lightning bolts to satisfy your rage. In the end, those lightning bolts hurt you too. Is your anger satisfied?”
Yu began to grit his teeth as he clenched his fists, straining to the limit.
“You killed her, Yu. Don't you dare blame anyone else, you killed her. By your own selfishness and your own choice.”
“Shut up...” That was all that came out of his mouth, and his words were as weak as a blade of grass in a hailstorm.
“You killed everyone, you killed Yurine.” The obvious disgust in his sister's voice tore a hole in Yu's heart. “Murderer.”
“LIAR!”
He slapped her mouth with the palm of his left hand to silence her lying tongue.
As his anger continued to burn inside him, his sister fell to the floor like a hollow puppet and grabbed his busted lip.
“I DIDN'T KILL HER! HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH A HORRIBLE THING!” He vented his rage like a rabid animal. “I DIDN'T KILL HER! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!”
“It was your fault.”
“LIAR!”
He wanted to pick her up and hit her one more time, but as he leaned toward her, he was jolted by the pain in his left arm, lost his balance and fell to the ground.
“Aaaghhh...” He moaned. He kept moaning as his left arm burned from his shoulder to his fingertips. “Aaaghhhhhhhhh!”
There was no flame, but the burn marks on his arm were spreading rapidly, blistering, swelling, bursting and continuing to hurt.
His older sister was lying across from him, her face beginning to bleed. Veins bulging, purple eyes losing their sparkle of life, she looked at her little brother with hatred.
“No...”
He tried to reach out to his sister but he couldn't touch her, some force prevented him from reaching her as her face decayed and disintegrated.
“No... No, please don't go... Don't leave me again! I'm sorry! Sister! I'M SORRY!”
It was too late. His sister's body slowly withered as it blackened and swelled, Yu saw blood oozing from every part of the corpse before it disappeared into the darkness.
He asked again. “Why?”
He knew the answer. He had set out on this journey to save the Witch and, as his sister had said, he had reached this point by his own choices. Yu Valarfin was in over his head.
His sister was right. Yu Valarfin is a disappointment.
“So, what do I do now?” he asked himself. His arm continued to burn, but he was now sensitive to the pain.
There were no tears in his eyes, no will to live.
“Am I dead?”
There was no such thing as a soul and when people died, they disappeared. Yu Valarfin believed this before he came to this world. In fact, one of the things that made him so depressed was that he thought his older sisters had disappeared.
So this was annihilation? It lay in nothingness, in the darkness. Was this death? Could this be where Yu Valarfin would disappear forever?
「Darkness.」
He was disappearing into the darkness. When he saw that the strands of hair in front of his eyes had faded, he looked at his hand and realized that his hand had also disappeared, so he knew that he had disappeared into the darkness.
“Will the darkness understand me?”
Was it bad that his mind was in darkness? As a man incapable of living in the light, this might be where he deserved to be, even if he didn't like it. If the darkness was where he deserved to be, then darkness could understand what he had done, and give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Will the darkness forgive me?”
Yu Valarfin, the murderer, couldn't forgive himself. He could never forgive himself. If he couldn't forgive himself, would the darkness do it for him?
“Will the darkness accept me?”
He was. Yu Valarfin had lost. He had killed, stolen, destroyed. He had done it all thinking that one day he would put it all right, but a dead man could fix nothing. Only darkness could accept such a loser.
There was nothing he could fix. He had done everything with his own hands, he had taken the lives of people he cared about with his own hands. This was not something he could fix.
Life could no longer accept him. Even Yu Valarfin couldn't accept himself.
But the darkness that enveloped him could accept the monster Yu Valarfin.
And so it was, he surrendered himself to the darkness.
Was he afraid of dying? Yes, he was.
But he didn't deserve to live.
.
.
.
“Don't let him fool you.”
Another voice he heard stopped his body from withering. His darkened mind was lifted up as if out of the water and Yu turned around to look at the owner of the voice.
「Witch.」
He thought there were no more tears in his eyes, but they welled up again. The witch was standing in front of him and the darkness disappeared, giving way to the Sky Palace and its starlit landscape.
They were on top of the tower in the Sky Palace. The stars and the moon were as bright as last time and the Witch was as beautiful as last time. She was shining as if she was gathering the sparkle of all the stars around her.
Yu crawled towards her as her voice caressed his soul.
“I thought I could have a conversation with you this time,” the Witch said. Her sad and gentle voice acknowledged Yu. “I'm afraid it's not possible again.”
Yu continued to crawl towards her and stopped right in front of her.
“You want me to save you,” he said.
The Witch did not answer. Her white hair was much longer than before and completely covered the floor they were on. Her body was covered by a one-piece white dress, as before, and her eyes were again hidden.
“But I'm the one who needs saving.” He hugged the witch's legs and buried his head, soaking her white dress with his tears. “I beg you, I don't know what to do, help me.”
He thought about everything that happened after he gave the dragon his hand. He was so confident throughout the whole process that he thought everything was going perfectly.
When he met Keichi and realized his power, he never imagined they would lose.
But he lost.
The Witch knelt down and took Yu's head between her breasts, running her soft, delicate fingers through his brown hair.
She was holding him and stroking his hair and there was no conversation between them.
It was something Yu had needed for a long time. He so longed for someone to hold him, to stroke his head.
Yurine hugged him every day, but this was clearly different. This was a maddening in love. His heart sped up and sped up and sped up.
“Don't let him deceive you with his lies, don't give up, don't be sad.”
Yu moved his hands to the Witch's back, ran them under her white hair and wrapped them around her back. He was hugging her.
「As the night falls on me one last time,」
「My eyes are closing with your dream.」
「Even if I'm not with you in the future,」
「I have only one wish, and it’s your smile.」
“Lullaby...” Yu heard the melody of the lullaby for the first time. “Who does my soul belong to?”
“I don't know.” The Witch answered the question with a mournful smile, but Yu did not look at her smile. He closed his eyes and began to feel the peace the Witch offered.
“How do I know these feelings are mine?”
“I don't know.” The Witch kept stroking Yu's hair and brought Yu to a state where he was about to fall asleep. “I don't know, but I hope... I hope the next time we meet won't be here.”
Yu raised his head and looked at the talking witch. He pulled one of his arms from around her back and brought his hand to her face. He held his breath, hoping that this world would not disappear again, and pushed aside the white hair that had fallen in front of her eyes.
Red eyes appeared.
He called her name as the lullaby continued to play in his head. “Rie.”
Rie lowered her head and placed a kiss on his forehead. “I believe you.”
As the place he was in began to fade once more, he hugged Rie again, closed his eyes peacefully, and when he opened them again, he was again met with pain.