Chapter 198
From each of those main "roots," hundreds of smaller branching cracks intertwined and spilled outward, crowding one another as they crawled upward, sideways, and even across the corners of the room.
The pattern resembled shattered ice spreading across a frozen lake, or more precisely, a fractal pattern of destruction etched into concrete and plaster.
The cracks emitted a fine yet continuous crackling sound, a song of despair from a structure grievously wounded.
At the base of that mosaic of ruin lay Ilux's body.
His head was tilted, supported by the wall that had now become both a cushion and a monument to the impact he had suffered.
Dust and fine particles rained down from the cracks above him, falling like ash onto his motionless hair and shoulders.
In the darkness, broken only by drifting dust and the groaning lament of the room, the super-wide fissure in the wall stood as a silent witness to the force that had passed—and perhaps as an all-too-literal metaphor for everything that had fractured, both within the room and inside the unconscious youth at its foot.
'Was it me who did this, or did the world break first?'
In a silence that was not truly silent—filled with a piercing ringing in the ears, the occasional rustle of falling debris, and faint groans from somewhere nearby—Ilux's consciousness crept back like water seeping through cracks.
Pain was the first thing he felt.
No longer the psychic throbbing at his temples, but a broader, more concrete symphony of agony.
A pounding ache at the back of his head where it had struck the wall, a sharp pain in his ribs, a burning sensation on his injured cheek.
That physical pain, strangely enough, became a kind of anchor, pulling him back into the reality of his shattered body.
He could still hear the voices—the echoes of curses, Aldraya's screams—but now they sounded as though they came from behind a thick curtain, mingling with the ringing in his ears that might have been damaged by the blast.
His tightly shut eyelids began to flutter.
The blinking was slow and heavy, like a rusted machine forced back into motion.
Each time they opened, the world that appeared was a shapeless blur, a field of gray, dusty brown, and meaningless dark patches.
His eyeballs moved in an automatic attempt to focus, but the motion was sluggish and poorly coordinated.
Yet with every heavy blink, the fog began to part, little by little.
Not into clarity, but at least into a blur with texture.
He began to distinguish darkness from slightly brighter areas, perhaps from a distant, dim light source.
Large shapes started to emerge from the flat background.
A dark mound that might have been an overturned table, a leaning vertical pillar that had once been a bookshelf, and irregular spreads that were piles of debris.
That "blank canvas scribbled without meaning" began to reveal rough strokes recognizable as shattered objects.
His vision remained blurred, like looking through thick, cracked, fogged glass.
Details were still absent; faces, writing, or precise distances were impossible to discern.
But at least the total sensory void had ended.
He was back inside a space, even though that space had transformed into something unrecognizable—a graveyard of the academic activity that had been taking place not long ago.
This gradual visual recovery coincided with the slow fading of the harshest hissing sounds in his head, as if the physical explosion had shaken loose and driven away some of his auditory ghosts, leaving behind only dull echoes and a terror that now had an unmistakably real cause all around him.
'The pain isn't where it should be.'
The pain arrived not as a trembling guest, but as a dark resident suddenly opening its eyes within his flesh.
As the intention to rise crept from his mind into his nerves, a cold, sharp stab shot from the base of his arm to his ribs, writhing like an electric snake wrapped in torturous tingling.
Strangely, the parts of his body that should have borne the brunt of the impact—his back and the head pressed against the cracked wall—were numb, as though buried beneath thick snow.
Instead, the pain migrated to untouched places, as if his entire body were a single mass of suffering capable of shifting its epicenter at will, an uncontrollable internal rebellion.
The world of sound collapsed into a deep well.
Inside his ears rang a high-pitched, monotonous hum, like a giant mosquito siren droning endlessly within his skull.
The clamor of debris, groans, or footsteps that might have existed around him all drowned out, muffled, and sounded as though they came from behind the thick glass of an aquarium.
There was only a hollow space resonating with its own internal noise, an auditory isolation that severed him from collective reality and turned him into a prisoner inside a cell whose walls were made of that endless ringing.
His vision presented a canvas of chaos painted in dirty gray watercolors.
The lingering dust haze filtered the light into a static gloom, turning all forms into faint silhouettes that swayed gently.
Collapsed bookshelves were nothing more than elongated dark mounds, shards of glass glittered like scattered dim stars on the floor, and the moving shadows of people appeared like fragmented ghosts in the low light.
Everything was blurred, lacking clear edges, as though his eyes were coated with oil and ash, forcing him to stare at the world through a constantly shifting veil.
'This isn't the time to go soft. Get up!'
Time crawled like thick resin, each second feeling like a long breath drawn by a wounded earth.
Dozens of minutes were not a pause, but a slow journey through a labyrinth of chaotic sensations.
The fog before Ilux's eyes refused to lift, a grayish curtain wrapping every shape.
Irritation began to creep in, cold and sharp, replacing the initial confusion.
He realized something.
This was not total, silent darkness—not blindness.
There were still shadows, still movement, but everything was blurred and meaningless, like seeing the world through a window constantly smeared with heavy condensation.
That realization—that his eyes still functioned but had been betrayed by the explosion—brought forth an anger harsher than resignation.
That anger granted him a warped kind of strength.
With cold-burning resolve, his body, once flung aside, gathered its remaining will.
His legs, which felt as though they were made of molten lead, were set down one by one.
He stood.
There was no trembling, no dramatic sway.
What existed instead was a rigid, pressured balance, like a granite statue forced into life.
His face, still warm from the dust of the blast, turned cold with a decision.
His left hand clenched—not with explosive force, but with terrifying precision.
Then, with a motion closer to an execution than a desperate gesture, that fist slammed into his own left cheek.
The impact was solid and dull, echoing inside his skull.
Four times he shook his head, slowly yet firmly, as if driving away the last remnants of dizziness while solidifying a resolution within his still-ringing mind.
At that moment, an incomprehensible transformation occurred.
Not a change accompanied by blinding light or thunderous sound, but a silent, trembling metamorphosis.
Both of his arms, which had once been human hands with fingers and palms, began to melt and reassemble themselves.
To be continued…