Chapter 104: Dream Of Past
BOOM!!
The explosion tore through the building like paper.
Fire bloomed outward in every direction. Orange and violent, glass and debris scattering across the street below in a wide, devastating radius. The upper floors collapsed inward with a grinding roar that shook the ground three blocks over.
From the heart of it, a figure jumped.
He cleared the fire in a single leap and landed on the road below with both feet, perfectly balanced, the impact absorbed through bent knees like it was nothing.
His black clothes were singed at the edges. His dark hair was slightly wild from the blast.
Not a scratch on him.
He straightened up and looked back at the burning building.
"...Fuck." He exhaled slowly. "I actually did that."
A beat of silence.
"I am so done for."
He started running.
"STOP RIGHT THERE, ETHAN!!! HOW DARE YOU!!!"
The voice came from somewhere behind the fire... furious, loud enough to rattle windows. Multiple sets of footsteps followed it, heavy and fast.
Ethan, a twenty-five years old young man, black hair, expression caught somewhere between guilt and pure adrenaline did not stop. He ran faster.
Silver light bloomed across his feet, accelerating each stride beyond what should have been physically possible. The same silver energy wrapped itself around the sword in his right hand, crackling along the blade in thin, restless lines.
The pressure that was emitting from his body was too strong.
Seven figures peeled out of the smoke and converged on him from different angles simultaneously, surrounding him in a formation that left no obvious gap.
"You cannot run away!!" One of them scream.
Ethan glanced around at them.
Then he bent his knees slightly, pulled his sword arm back, and swung in a full, sweeping circle.
The silver aura left the blade.
It traveled outward as a single sharp ring. Clean and fast and merciless and cut through all seven of them before any of them had finished committing to their attack.
They dropped.
He kicked off the ground and kept running.
BEEP! BEEP!
The communication device in his pocket started vibrating. He yanked it out without slowing down and answered.
"Ethan." The voice on the other end was male, tightly controlled, already worried. "What’s happening over there? Did you get the item?"
"I got it," Ethan said, slightly out of breath.
"Good. Then why do I hear explosions?"
"...There’s a small problem."
"What kind of small problem."
Ethan ran around a corner, vaulted a low wall, and kept going.
"Okay so... I went in exactly like you said. Blended in, acted like a regular worker, got access to the headquarters. All fine. But then one of their subordinates started treating me like garbage. Like genuinely disrespectful. So I—"
"Ethan."
"I handled it."
"And the explosion?"
"That was...part of the handling. I was angry on that perosn and beat the shit out of him. But my identity was exposed. And then while I was leaving I may have the building sort of—"
"You blew up their entire headquarters?" The voice from other side asked in nervouse tone.
"The structural integrity was already compromised—"
"ETHAN."
"I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I’m running. There are stronger ones chasing me now, the ones who survived—"
"I shouldn’t have sent you." The voice on the other end had taken on the specific quality of a person watching something terrible happen in slow motion and being unable to stop it. "I knew better. You kept asking and I said yes and I absolutely should not have — just get out of there. Move fast and try not to destroy anything else on the way."
"I make no promises—"
BOOM!
A meteorite the size of a carriage punched down from the sky directly behind him and detonated on impact.
The shockwave picked Ethan up and threw him forward.
---
"ARGH—"
Azael lurched upright in bed.
He sat there for a moment, breathing hard, one hand pressed against his forehead. The room was bright around him, morning light coming through the curtains, the fire in the hearth long since gone cold.
He exhaled slowly.
"...That was one hell of a memory."
He sat on the edge of the bed and let it settle, the weight of it, the vivid, chaotic texture of a life that had been entirely different from this one. Ethan. The explosion. The running. The complete and total absence of any reasonable self-restraint.
He hadn’t dreamed of his past life in a while.
He rubbed his face with both hands.
’I was genuinely reckless,’ he thought. ’No filter. No patience. Just whatever felt right in the moment and consequences later.’
He stood, stretched, and walked to the bathroom.
The mirror showed him his current face. Azael’s face, which he had grown entirely accustomed to by now. He looked at his own reflection for a moment while the water ran warm.
’Being here has changed me,’ he thought, without particular drama. ’Azael’s memories. His body. His situation. All of it has made me quieter. More careful. Less likely to blow up a building because someone was rude to me.*
He considered that.
’Mostly likely that was the reason of my change.’
He bathed, dressed, and came back into the room feeling considerably more human than he had when he’d woken up screaming.
It had been a week since that night with Isabel. The night she had finally told him she knew. That she had found it out. That she understood he was different from the person she had known before.
And a week since things between them had shifted into something neither of them had fully named yet, but that existed now in the particular warmth of small, daily moments.
A week had gone since that happened. And her obsession toward Azael was not that strong but it seems to he increasing as days goes.
And he really found it cute.
The academy. That was what sat on the near horizon now. Eternum Academy, beginning this coming Monday. The next Chapter of this strange, layered life he was living.
He sat at his desk and let out a long breath.
’More than two and a half months,’he thought. ’That’s how long I’ve been here. In this world. In this body.’
It had not been a boring two and a half months. He had trained until his body understood mana in a way that felt natural rather than forced.
He had worked through what Arista had taught him and built on it.
He had to start reaching back into the techniques from his past life the ones that lived in muscle memory and instinct more than conscious thought and finding ways to translate them into this body, this power system, this world’s particular rules.
He was not where he wanted to be yet.
But he was moving.
’Once I’m at the academy,’ he thought, leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling, ’I need to seriously start integrating the old techniques. No more holding back on that. The foundation is ready. I already learned enough new things from Airsta.’
A knock at the door.
"Come in."
The door opened and Isabel stepped inside.
She was in her maid’s uniform pressed and neat, her hair pinned back in its usual bun, her round glasses sitting precisely where they always sat.
She carried a plate in both hands, breakfast arranged on it with the particular care she brought to everything she did, and she walked to his desk and set it down with quiet efficiency.
She straightened.
Turned to go.
Azael reached out, caught her wrist gently, and pulled.
Isabel made a small, surprised sound, a soft and involuntary. As she found herself turned and seated sideways on his lap, his arm settling around her waist to keep her there.
Her cheeks went pink immediately.
She looked at him with that expression she made, the one that was trying very hard to be composed and not entirely succeeding.
"What are you doing, Master?" she asked, her voice carefully level.
Her breasts pressed against his chest.
Azael looked at her, at the faint color in her face, at the way she was sitting stiffly upright like she was trying to minimize contact while making no actual move to get up and smiled.
He leaned forward and kissed her.
Soft and gentle. The kind that didn’t ask for anything in particular, just offered something.
Isabel didn’t pull away. She never did, anymore. She loved it whenever he kissed her gently.
When he leaned back she was looking at him with that slightly dazed expression she got when she forgot to maintain the composed one.
"Feed me," he said.
A pause.
Something shifted in her expression, the stiffness giving way to something warmer, something that she still wasn’t entirely used to showing but was learning not to fight.
She smiled.
Small and genuine, the kind that reached her eyes.
"As you say, Master."
She picked up the utensil from the plate and turned toward him, and began to feed him with the quiet, unhurried attention of someone who had decided that this, whatever this was something she was choosing.
She won’t leave her young master.
The morning light came through the curtains in soft, warm lines.
Outside, somewhere in the manor, the household was waking up.
And Monday was coming.
