Kenji's eyes snapped open. He didn't gasp. He didn't scramble. His mind was already cataloging the failure of Death 1007, a cold record of the Whisperer's reach and the exact millisecond his defense had crumbled.
He didn't care that he had just died. He only cared about the kill. He slowly arose, his body moving with a ghostly, unnatural silence. He began sneaking up on the Whisperers, his chipped sword held low, his feet finding the gaps between the stone floor's vibrations.
BOOM!
A sudden explosion turned the land into a furnace of light.
CREEEEAAAK!
The Whisperers, whose entire world was built on silence, let out a collective cry of absolute terror as the massive sound waves shredded their sensitive hearing.
From the swirling black smoke, two humans emerged, flying through the air as if launched from a cannon. They plummeted toward the earth, skidding across the plain land until they landed right next to Kenji.
"Yeah, you're right. We overdid it," one of the young men said, standing up and shaking his head.
"Yes, you did, dumbass! I broke my hand for that!" the other snapped. This was William. His arm was glowing with a fierce, sickly green energy.
Kaito, the first guy, looked over and froze when he saw Kenji.
He didn't see a boy. He saw a hollow shell. He saw eyes that had lost their humanity and their fear eyes that were grey, flat, and void of any spark.
"Hey you," Kaito said, his voice dropping the playful tone. "Come be free with us." Kaito stepping towards him with a outstretched hand.
"Fr... Free?" Kenji's voice was a dry, hollow rasp, a sound he hadn't used for anything but screaming in a very long time.
"Yes," Kaito said firmly. "And my name is Kaito, and this here is William."
"We gotta go, Kaito!" William hissed, his green-glowing arm vibrating with enough pressure to shatter a mountain.
"Okay, okay, okay!" Kaito shouted. He looked at Kenji. "Hold on to William!"
Kenji hesitated. He wondered if freedom was worth it for him, yet he reached out and grabbed William's shoulder. The heat coming off the man was intense, the smell of ozone and burnt copper filling Kenji's nose.
"Hang on!" Kaito yelled.
Suddenly, the world began to rotate. It wasn't that the room was spinning, it was the very axis of gravity had flipped. The ground was no longer down; the horizon was now "below" them.
Kenji's stomach plummeted as he began to fall sideways. They weren't running; they were "falling" toward a forest at terminal velocity, hurtling away from the castle as Kaito shifted the world to make their escape a vertical drop into the unknown.
The leaders of the adjon group were assembled to watch Kenji go through his trial.
"So are we going to go for them or are we going to let them go?"
"Going for them would be too easy, let's play a game." Another one said and He grined
Thwip!
He teleported in front of the escapees and grabbed them at terminal velocity, dropping them in there track and said
"Hey there. You thought you could run? How cute," the Leader smiled. He leaned toward Kenji. "I'm not here to bring you back or kill you. But a warning: stepping any further, you'll die permanently. No more 'Return by Death.' You'll just be worthless again."
Kaito and William stared at Kenji, waiting for a reply. To their shock, Kenji smiled—a smile of pure, bone-deep relief.
"I would love to die," Kenji said, his voice gaining a cold edge. "But I'd rather take out evil like you with me first."
The Adjon grinned ear to ear. "Perfect. That's exactly what I wanted to hear." He straightened up, looking at the trio. "As you can see, the Adjon leaders are basically gods. There is no way you could beat us now."
His voice turned icy, making Kaito and William flinch. "So go out, get stronger, and let's see if you can 'destroy the evil like me'. Oh even better you have two years to reach Sehhear Mountain and if you miss that by an inch of time I'll kill you and your lab experiment friends"
Thwip!
The Leader vanished in a blur of distorted space, reappearing instantly on the high balcony of the castle. His five brothers stood waiting.
"It is done," the Leader said, staring out at the horizon where the three specks were still falling.
"So, what did you tell them?" the youngest brother asked, a flicker of a blue flame dancing between his fingers. "Did you break his spirit? Did you tell him he's just a pig in a slaughterhouse?"
The Leader turned, his expression unreadable. "I gave him a destination. I told him he has two years to reach Sehhear Mountain."
The brothers went silent. The air in the room grew heavy, the pressure of their collective confusion cracking the marble floor beneath their feet.
"Sehhear Mountain?" the oldest brother growled, his voice vibrating with the density of pure Earth. "That is the Prime Site. The origin of the theft. Why send a worthless Blank to the very place our legacy began?"
The Leader walked toward a massive portrait hanging at the end of the hall, a painting of Ren Adjon, the man who had liberated himself and shackled the rest of the world.
"Because," the Leader whispered, his hand touching the frame. "Kenji is the only human whose genetic code can't be overwritten by the incantation. He is the only 'Zero' in a world of 'Ones.' To restart the machine, we need a zero but he needs to be stronger. The boy is too weak to hold the energy right now"
He looked back at his brothers with a twisted, ambitious glint in his eyes.
"Yes, brothers. I am going to use the boy to bring back Dad."