Chapter 164: To Burn for Your Light
’Ethea.’
Soren opened his eyes, only for the world to instantly vanish into a heavy crimson. Thick fluid smeared across his retinas, obscuring his vision and turning the interior of the vehicle into a useless blur of red shapes.
His eyelids instinctively clamped shut against the wet film. The dark offered a brief shield against the spinning room, though the mental noise inside his skull still throbbed with a terrifying weight. He held his breath, pinning his remaining clarity down by sheer grit, and forced his head to turn.
Every tendon in his neck strained and locked. He dragged his chin around blindly, tracking the layout of the car entirely from memory until he felt his face align with the space of the backseat.
With a final surge of willpower, he forced his bloody eyelids back open.
His sight swam through a narrow, dark-rimmed slit. The red film distorted everything, but as his vision briefly cleared, he froze.
The pressure in his skull seemed to fall away completely, eclipsed by the shape cutting through the haze.
It was Ethea.
She was right there, her blurry yet familiar face finally breaking through his ruined vision. Seeing her breathing and her eyes open once again should have brought an overwhelming wave of relief. Instead, it dealt a fresh blow. Tears were streaming down her pale face, carrying a sadness so deep it made her look far more broken than she ever had before.
"S-Soren..."
From the side, Clara let out a choked, trembling sound as she witnessed his bloodied state.
He barely registered the painful tone of her voice as his failing sight remained locked entirely on Ethea, completely consumed by the heartbreaking reality of her tears.
"A-!"
Soren wanted to speak, to assure her he was fine, but the moment his focus wavered from his internal anvil, the pocket of clarity shattered.
The curse rushed back into the vacancy with a vengeance.
The same white light hit him instantly, tearing through the mental pathways he had just fought to stabilize. As his consciousness began to slip toward a total collapse, he clamped down on the last shred of his awareness. Just before the darkness swallowed him completely, he sent a thought toward Ethea.
’I will finish soon.’
As soon as the outside world was cut off, Soren dove straight back into the chaos inside his mind.
The remaining mass of the curse loomed before him, churning with a suffocating malice. Soren stared directly into the oncoming waves, his focus hardening into a cold resolve as a single thought echoed through his mind:
’She is waiting for me.’
───────
’..Urgh.’
A low, strained groan escaped Ethea’s lips as her mind drifted back toward consciousness.
’W-what... hap... en... ed?’
’Where... am I?’
She tried to reach backward into her thoughts to piece together the fractured blank space in her mind, but the mere effort sent a sharp, stabbing spike of pain through her skull. The brutal pressure forced her to immediately stop thinking. She let her mind go completely blank, riding out the throbbing pulse behind her eyes.
Time passed, and the intense spike slowly receded, settling back into that familiar ache. With the drop in pressure, the missing pieces suddenly rushed back all at once. She remembered the breakthrough and the terrifying weight that had collapsed upon her body and soul right after, dragging her down into a dark, suffocating abyss until her consciousness simply cut out.
’Why did that happen? Did something go wrong? And where... where am I now?’
The questions swirled through her mind, but before she could dig any deeper, a faint sound of sobbing echoed through her fading numbness.
’!’
Ethea froze inside her own mind. The raw terror in that sound made her chest tighten, a sudden, heavy dread sinking deep into her gut. Something was entirely wrong.
’I have to wake up.’
She gritted her teeth, fighting through the lingering fog, and forced her senses back to reality. Her eyelids twitched against the stubborn weight of her exhaustion, resisting her efforts until she finally managed to blink them open.
"Hick... Hick..."
The muffled, choked sound became clearer, cutting through the silence and immediately pulling her focus.
Though her vision remained hazy, a blurred figure gradually took shape right within her line of sight. It was Aunt Clara, sitting right beside her.
The older woman was completely paralyzed, her attention entirely fixed on whatever lay ahead. She wasn’t paying attention to Ethea at all; she just sat there frozen, tears streaming down her face in absolute horror.
Panic flared in Ethea’s chest. Following Clara’s gaze, she parted her lips, desperate to call out and ask what was wrong, but her throat felt entirely dry and frozen. Not a single sound passed her lips.
Realizing she was unable to speak, Ethea forced her stiff neck to move, straining against the heavy numbness to turn her head.
Her vision swam, blurring the unfamiliar shapes before her, but as her sight briefly cleared, her gaze landed on the figure Clara was staring at.
The person was trembling violently, every tendon locking tight under their skin. Blood leaked from their nose and ears, and a dark, wet film covered their eyes. They just sat there, chest heaving irregularly as raw, stifled groans tore from their throat.
As the blurry features finally clicked into focus, Ethea’s heart dropped, a cold terror seizing her chest.
"S-So...ren..."
The faint whisper finally broke through her dry throat.
"!"
Hearing her voice, Clara snapped out of her paralysis and whipped her head around, her eyes widening in a mixture of disbelief and sheer relief.
"E-Ethea?!"
Clara immediately leaned over, throwing her arms around Ethea in a desperate, trembling hug. "You’re back... thank goodness, you’re back..." she muttered, her voice cracking with thick sobs.
However, the frantic words barely registered in Ethea’s mind. Her eyes remained completely glued ahead, a barrage of desperate questions crashing into her consciousness all at once.
’Why is he like this?’
’What happened? Who did this?’
’Why is Auntie not doing anything but crying?’
’Where... where even are we?’
’...’
The endless loop of questions spun violently in her head, but the agonizing sight of Soren trembling right before her cut through the mental chaos, demanding action. She couldn’t afford to wonder, not when he was falling apart right in front of her.
Ignoring the trembling embrace, Ethea managed to shift her gaze slightly back to Clara, her lips parting as she forced out a weak, desperate breath.
"H... help... him... ple..se..."
"!" Clara froze.
The embrace loosened as she sat back up, looking down at Ethea with a helpless, reluctant, and deeply complex gaze. Tears kept spilling over her cheeks as she shook her head.
"I... I can’t."
"W... why...?"
Ethea’s brows twitched upward in faint confusion, her weak voice carrying a fragile, questioning note.
For a terrifying split second, dark thoughts flared within her mind.
’Why isn’t she helping? Is she doing this on purpose? Did she... betray us?’
But as her gaze locked onto Clara’s devastated expression, Ethea mentally shoved the ugly suspicions away. The raw, unfiltered horror on the older woman’s face was too real; Clara simply wasn’t capable of that kind of betrayal.
Then, there had to be another reason, something entirely out of her control.
Straining against her dry throat, Ethea forced out another request, her eyes searching Clara’s for any semblance of an answer.
"Tell... me... everything... please..."
Clara flinched, her gaze wavering reluctantly. She glanced toward the front seat at Soren’s rigid, trembling back, and then looked down into Ethea’s desperate, hopeful eyes. A suffocating silence filled the small space before Clara finally closed her eyes and gave a nod.
"It... It all started when I heard a noise from your room..."
Clara spoke rapidly, her voice trembling as she recounted the nightmare that had unfolded the moment Ethea lost consciousness. She explained how the sky had shattered as a seventh-circle gate tore open directly above the city, plunging the entire region into emergency lockdown mode.
She described how Soren arrived just in time and rescued them, and their desperate escape through the highway, detailing how Soren had fought off the grotesque creatures hunting them, while almost dying.
Finally, her voice dropped to a fragile whisper as she reached the current moment, explaining why Soren suddenly ended up in this horrifying state.
"H-He told me not to help him or do anything else. He wanted me to focus entirely on you. Hick... B-But... Seeing him like this... I didn’t know what to do..." Clara choked out, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with fresh sobs. "I feared I might ruin everything if I did something."
Ethea stared at Clara, the revelation sinking into her chest like a block of ice.
The horrific reality of the situation was finally laid bare.
Her eyes unconsciously turned back to Soren, and tears began to fall freely, tracking down her temples. Her heart swelled with an overwhelming mixture of extreme sadness, crushing guilt, and profound gratitude.
’Stop hurting for me... please just stop.’
