---
Kaito woke from a nightmare screaming.
Not his own nightmare—that would have been manageable. Instead, he'd been pulled into someone else's terror. A knight down the hall was dreaming of Millbrook, of demons tearing through his squad, of friends dying in his arms. And Kaito's empathy, even in sleep, had connected to that fear and made it his own.
He sat up in bed, sweating, heart racing, trying to separate his emotions from the knight's. It was getting harder. His range had expanded to nearly a hundred feet now, and his control was slipping. He felt everyone in the palace wing constantly—their joy, their fear, their anger, their pain.
It was drowning him.
*In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.*
The breathing technique barely helped anymore. His therapist's voice echoed in his memory: *"You can't control other people's emotions, Kaito. You can only control your response to them."*
But what if you could literally feel everyone's emotions all the time? What then?
He gave up on sleep—it was nearly dawn anyway—and dressed quietly. Maybe a walk would help. Maybe fresh air would give him space from the overwhelming press of everyone else's feelings.
The palace gardens were empty at this hour, just him and the predawn light. Kaito walked the paths aimlessly, trying to find peace in the solitude. But even here, he could feel the guards on the walls. The servants beginning their morning routines. The city beyond waking up, thousands upon thousands of emotional signatures pressing against his consciousness.
*I'm losing myself,* he realized with cold fear. *I'm becoming a receiver for everyone else's feelings, and I don't know where I end and they begin.*
"You look like shit."
Kaito spun to find Yuki sitting on a bench he'd walked past without noticing. She had her notebook open, covered in equations, and looked like she hadn't slept either.
"Thanks," he said dryly. "You look great too."
"I know I look terrible. I haven't slept in thirty-six hours. I'm running on coffee and spite." She patted the bench beside her. "Sit. Tell me what's wrong."
"What makes you think something's wrong?"
"Kaito, I'm analytical, not oblivious. You've been increasingly withdrawn for two weeks. You flinch when people get close. You avoid the common area when we're all together. And right now, you're practically vibrating with anxiety."
He sat, because standing felt like too much effort. "My empathy is getting stronger. Too strong. I can't turn it off anymore. I feel everyone, all the time, and it's..."
"Overwhelming."
"Crushing. I don't know how much longer I can handle this."
Yuki was quiet for a moment, then: "Show me. Let me feel what you're feeling."
"Yuki, I don't think—"
"I'm serious. You said you can project emotions, right? Project onto me what you're experiencing right now. Let me understand."
Kaito hesitated, then reached out with his empathy, connecting to Yuki and showing her what his existence had become. The constant press of other people's feelings. The inability to distinguish his own emotions from theirs. The sensation of being dissolved into a sea of other consciousnesses.
Yuki gasped and pulled back after only five seconds. "Okay. Point made. That's... that's psychological torture."
"Now imagine it twenty-four hours a day. Imagine never being able to turn it off."
"You need shielding. Mental barriers. Something to filter the input before it reaches you."
"I've been trying. Nothing works. The stronger I get, the harder it is to block."
"Then we need a different approach." Yuki tapped her pen against her notebook. "Your power is fundamentally about connection, right? You're connected to everyone's emotional state. What if instead of trying to block the connections, we organized them? Created a mental framework for sorting and prioritizing the input?"
"Like... filing system for emotions?"
"Exactly. Your brain is being overwhelmed because it's trying to process all input equally. But if you could create categories—immediate threats, allies, background noise—you could focus on what matters and filter out the rest."
"That's... actually brilliant. But I don't know how to do that."
"I can help. My power lets me see code, structure, patterns. If empathy has a structure, I can probably visualize it. We can work together to build a mental architecture that functions like a filter system."
For the first time in weeks, Kaito felt hope. "You'd do that? Spend time helping me instead of working on the barrier problem?"
"Kaito, you're part of the team. If you collapse from empathic overload, we lose our tactical advantage. Your ability to read intentions and predict actions is crucial." She paused. "Also, you're my friend. I don't want to watch you suffer."
Coming from Yuki, that was practically a declaration of love. Kaito felt warmth in his chest—his own emotion, he was pretty sure.
"Thank you."
"Thank me when it works. Now, let's start with basics. Close your eyes and describe what you feel."
They spent the next two hours in the garden, Yuki helping Kaito map his empathic sense. She asked questions with scientific precision, building a model of how his power worked. Gradually, a structure emerged—not a solution yet, but at least an understanding.
"Your empathy works in layers," Yuki concluded. "Surface emotions are louder but less informative. Deeper feelings are quieter but more revealing. You're treating all layers equally, which is why you're overwhelmed. We need to teach your brain to prioritize depth over volume."
"How?"
"Practice and discipline. Same way you'd train any skill. We'll start with meditation exercises—proper ones, not just breathing techniques. Then we'll add visualization, mental compartmentalization, and eventually active filtering."
"That sounds like months of work."
"We have four months before harvest. Plenty of time." Her smile was sardonic. "And by 'plenty' I mean 'barely enough if everything goes perfectly.'"
Despite everything, Kaito laughed. "Your optimism is inspiring."
"I contain multitudes."
---
They established a routine: every morning before dawn, Kaito and Yuki met in the gardens to work on his empathic control. Yuki brought her analytical mind and coding expertise. Kaito brought his desperate need for relief.
The first week, they focused on meditation. Not the relaxation kind—the disciplined, martial kind. Yuki had apparently researched meditation techniques used by military snipers and surgeons, people who needed absolute focus under pressure.
"You need to create an internal space," she explained. "A mental room where your consciousness resides, separate from the empathic input. Right now, you're standing in the middle of a hurricane. We're building you a shelter."
Kaito tried. Failed. Tried again.
By the third day, he could maintain a basic mental space for about thirty seconds before being overwhelmed again. By the seventh day, he could hold it for five minutes.
"Progress," Yuki declared. "Slow, but measurable."
The second week, they added visualization. Kaito learned to imagine his empathic sense as a house with many windows. Each window showed him someone's emotions. The trick was learning to close windows he didn't need open.
"Don't try to block everything," Yuki instructed. "That's fighting your power's nature. Instead, accept that you're connected to everyone, but you get to choose which connections you actively monitor."
It was like learning to ignore background noise. Difficult, exhausting, but gradually possible.
By the end of the second week, Kaito could reduce the constant empathic press from a roar to a murmur. Not silence—he'd never achieve that—but manageable background static.
"Better?" Yuki asked after a particularly successful session.
"So much better. I can think again. I can tell which emotions are mine." He looked at her with genuine gratitude. "You probably saved my sanity."
"Probably? I definitely saved your sanity. You were about three days from a complete breakdown." She closed her notebook. "But we're not done. This is basic filtering. Next, we work on tactical applications."
"Tactical applications?"
"Your empathy is a weapon, Kaito. You've been using it defensively—reading people, projecting emotions in emergencies. But you could do so much more. Empathic interrogation, emotion-based illusions, mass crowd control, psychological warfare. You're potentially the most dangerous person on our team."
The idea made him uncomfortable. "I don't want to be dangerous. I just want to help people."
"You help people by protecting them. And sometimes protection requires danger." Yuki's expression was serious. "We're running out of time. The harvest is coming, and we're not ready. We need every advantage. That includes you learning to weaponize your empathy."
"Weaponize..."
"Wrong word. Optimize. Utilize effectively. Choose whichever euphemism makes you comfortable. The point stands—you need to embrace your power's full potential."
Kaito thought about the trapped souls in the catacombs. About the harvest awaiting them. About the four months they had to break a thousand-year-old cycle.
"Okay," he said. "Teach me."
---
The third week brought new challenges. Now that Kaito could control his basic empathic input, Yuki pushed him to explore offensive applications.
"Start simple," she instructed. "Find a guard on the wall. Read his emotional state, then try to manipulate it slightly. Nothing dramatic—just shift his mood from alert to relaxed, or vice versa."
Kaito found a guard and extended his empathy carefully. The man was bored, slightly tired, thinking about breakfast. Kaito tried to amplify the tiredness, making him more drowsy.
The guard yawned and shifted his weight, clearly fighting sleep.
"Good. Now the opposite—make him alert."
Kaito pushed energy, focus, and attention toward the guard. The man straightened, suddenly more aware of his surroundings.
"Effective," Yuki observed. "Now try something harder. Multiple targets at once."
Over the following days, Kaito practiced empathic manipulation on progressively larger groups. Guards became his unknowing test subjects—he'd make them nervous or calm, focused or distracted, friendly or suspicious. Never enough to cause problems, just enough to prove he could do it.
"You're getting better," Yuki noted. "But you're still thinking too small. Empathy at scale could change entire battlefields."
"How?"
"Imagine a demon army charging. You project terror at them—not mild unease, but absolute existential dread. Half break and flee. The other half are too paralyzed to fight effectively. Meanwhile, you project confidence and courage to allied forces. What was an even battle becomes a rout without a single weapon drawn."
"That's... horrifying."
"That's warfare. And it's far more humane than killing everyone. You give them the choice to flee rather than die."
Kaito couldn't argue with the logic, but something about it still felt wrong. Manipulating people's emotions on that scale felt like violating their autonomy.
"I can see you overthinking this," Yuki said. "Let me ask you something: is it worse to manipulate someone's emotions to make them flee, or to kill them?"
"Manipulation is... it's taking away their choice."
"Death also takes away their choice. Permanently. At least with fear, they can overcome it later. They can recover. Dead is forever."
"You're saying the ends justify the means."
"I'm saying we're facing impossible odds and we need every advantage. Moral philosophy is a luxury for people who aren't scheduled to be harvested in four months."
She had a point. Kaito didn't like it, but he couldn't deny it.
---
One month after beginning his training with Yuki, Kaito's empathy had evolved significantly. He could now:
- Maintain mental shields almost constantly
- Read emotions up to 150 feet away
- Distinguish between surface and deep emotional states
- Project emotions onto multiple targets simultaneously
- Absorb others' emotional pain to give them relief (though this was still dangerous)
- Sense lies and deceptions with high accuracy
- Create empathic "illusions"—making people feel things that weren't real
That last one was Yuki's newest idea, and the most unsettling.
"You can make people feel fear, right?" she said during a training session. "What if you made them feel physical sensations? Pain, heat, cold?"
"I don't think empathy works on physical sensations."
"Try. Emotions and physical sensations are connected. Pain causes fear and distress. If you can project those emotions strongly enough, the brain might interpret them as physical."
Kaito tried it on himself first—projecting the emotion of being burned. To his shock, his skin actually felt hot, even though there was no fire.
"It's psychosomatic," Yuki said excitedly. "Your brain is interpreting the emotional signal as physical reality. This could be incredibly useful in combat."
"Or incredibly traumatizing."
"Both things can be true."
By the end of that session, Kaito had learned to create empathic illusions—making people feel things that weren't happening. It was powerful and terrifying in equal measure.
"You're becoming a master manipulator," Yuki said with approval. "In a few more weeks, you'll be able to control crowds, break interrogation subjects, and wage psychological warfare at scale."
"I sound like a supervillain."
"You sound like a strategic asset. There's a difference."
---
Six weeks after beginning training, Kaito was walking through the city market when his empathy caught something that made him freeze.
Hatred. Pure, focused, murderous hatred.
He turned, scanning the crowd, trying to locate the source. There—a man in nondescript clothing, pretending to browse fruit while his emotions screamed violence. And his focus...
Was on Himari, who was at a nearby stall buying supplies for the healing ward.
Assassin.
Kaito's mind raced. He could shout a warning, but that would alert the assassin and likely trigger the attack. He could try to reach Himari first, but he was too far away. He could—
Use his power.
Kaito extended his empathy toward the assassin and projected the strongest fear he could muster. Not mild anxiety. Pure terror—the kind of primal panic that overrides rational thought.
The assassin gasped, went pale, and stumbled backward. His hand went to his concealed knife but didn't draw it. His eyes were wild, seeing threats that weren't there. He turned and fled into the crowd, his nerve completely broken.
Himari never noticed. She completed her purchase and moved on to the next stall, oblivious to the danger she'd just avoided.
Kaito leaned against a wall, shaking. He'd just mind-controlled someone. Forced them to feel emotions that weren't their own. Violated their mental autonomy.
But he'd also saved Himari's life without anyone having to die.
*Was it worth it?*
He didn't know. But he'd do it again without hesitation.
That evening, he reported the assassination attempt to the others. They decided not to tell Himari—she had enough to worry about. But they increased security measures and Kaito committed to scanning crowds whenever they were in public.
"You saved her life," Ren said. "That's what matters."
"I violated someone's mind."
"You used your power defensively. That's not the same as attacking someone unprovoked."
"Isn't it? Where's the line?"
Ren didn't have an answer. None of them did.
---
Seven weeks after training began, Kaito made a discovery that changed everything.
He was practicing his empathic range, trying to extend his sense as far as possible, when he felt something strange. A presence that wasn't quite human. Multiple presences, actually, all clustered together.
The trapped souls in the cathedral catacombs.
He could feel them from here—over half a mile away. Their pain, their fear, their desperation. And unlike living people whose emotions shifted and changed, these were static. Frozen in eternal agony.
Kaito dropped his practice and ran to find Yuki.
"I can feel them," he said breathlessly. "The trapped souls. From anywhere in the city. I think... I think I might be able to communicate with them."
Yuki's eyes widened. "That's—that's incredible. And potentially crucial. If you can communicate with the trapped souls, they might be able to tell us how to free them."
"Or they might be too far gone. Seraphina said some have fragmented."
"Only one way to find out."
They gathered the others and returned to the catacombs that night. Seraphina let them in, though she looked worried.
"Be careful," she warned. "Their pain can be contagious. If you connect too deeply, you might not be able to pull back."
Kaito approached the crystals cautiously. Up close, the emotional pressure was overwhelming—one hundred souls screaming in unison. But he'd been training for this. He erected mental shields, filtered the input, and focused on one crystal in particular.
The young woman he'd noticed before. The East Asian girl who'd been here for who knows how long.
*Hello,* he projected toward her. *Can you hear me?*
For a moment, nothing. Then—
*HELP*
The word hit him like a freight train. Not spoken, but felt. Pure desperate need.
*I'm trying to help. We're trying to free you. All of you. But we need information. Can you tell me anything about the harvest ritual? About how you're bound?*
*PAIN CAN'T THINK BURNING HELP PLEASE MAKE IT STOP*
She was too far gone. The agony had overwhelmed her ability to think coherently.
Kaito tried another crystal. Same result. And another. Most of the souls had been here so long that they'd lost the ability to communicate anything except their suffering.
He was about to give up when he felt something different. One of the newer crystals—only twenty-five years old—had a soul that was still mostly coherent.
*Elena,* he realized. Seraphina's daughter.
*Elena? Can you hear me?*
*...yes. Who...?*
*My name is Kaito. I'm a hero from the twenty-first summoning. Your mother sent us to find a way to free you.*
*Mother... is she alive?*
*Yes. She's helping us. She wants to save you.*
A wave of emotion—relief, grief, love, pain all mixed together.
*Tell her... tell her I forgive her. She couldn't have stopped it. Tell her I love her.*
*I will. But Elena, I need your help. We're trying to break the harvest cycle, but we don't understand how the binding works. Can you tell us anything?*
*The binding... it's in three parts. The ritual that traps us. The altar that holds us. And the barrier network we power. All three are connected. Break one, and the others weaken. But if you're not careful...*
*What? What happens?*
*The release could be catastrophic. All this energy, suddenly freed. It could destroy the city. Kill thousands.*
Kaito's blood ran cold. He relayed this to the others, who'd been watching anxiously.
"So we can't just destroy the altar," Yuki said, processing the information. "We need a controlled release. A way to free the souls without causing a magical explosion."
"Can you do that?" Ren asked.
"I... maybe. If I can rewrite the binding to redirect the energy safely. But it'll take time. Lots of time. And testing on smaller magical structures first."
"We have two and a half months," Ren said. "Is that enough?"
"I don't know. But it has to be."
Kaito returned his attention to Elena. *Thank you. Is there anything else we should know?*
*Be careful of Aldric. The king. He's not... he's not what he seems. He's older than you think. More dangerous. He has contingencies you don't know about.*
*What kind of contingencies?*
*I don't know. But I felt his presence during my harvest. Something was wrong. Something beyond the normal ritual. Be careful.*
*I will. And Elena? We're going to free you. I promise.*
*I've heard that promise before. From Marcus, two hundred years ago. He tried. He failed. Why do you think you'll succeed where he couldn't?
Because we're not doing this alone. And because we have something he didn't—hope that things can be different.
Then I hope you're right. For all our sakes.
Kaito broke the connection, exhausted. Communicating with the trapped souls was draining in ways his normal empathy wasn't.
"She says the king has contingencies," he told the others. "Some kind of backup plan we don't know about."
"That's... vague and terrifying," Daichi said.
"Welcome to our lives," Yuki muttered.
They left the catacombs with more questions than answers. But they also had a new capability—Kaito could communicate with the trapped souls, which meant they had inside information about the harvest ritual itself.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
Two months after beginning his empathy training, Kaito had become someone he didn't quite recognize.
He could read a room instantly, knowing who was friend or foe, who could be trusted and who was lying. He could project emotions powerfully enough to stop attackers or inspire allies. He could sense threats from hundreds of feet away. He could communicate with souls that weren't even technically alive anymore.
He was powerful.
He was also terrified of what he was becoming.
One night, unable to sleep, he confessed his fears to Ren.
"I'm scared I'm losing my humanity," Kaito said. "When you can feel everyone's emotions but can filter them out at will, when you can manipulate people's feelings like they're puppet strings, when you can invade someone's mind and make them feel things that aren't real... what does that make you?"
"Human," Ren said simply. "Humans have always had the ability to manipulate others. We call it persuasion, charisma, emotional intelligence. You're just doing it more directly."
"That's a rationalization."
"Maybe. But consider this: you've had this power for two months. How many times have you abused it? How many times have you manipulated someone for selfish reasons rather than to protect someone?"
Kaito thought about it. The assassin he'd terrified. The guards he'd practiced on. But every time, it had been for training or protection. He'd never used his power maliciously.
"Never," he admitted.
"Exactly. You're scared of becoming a monster, which is exactly why you won't. Monsters don't worry about being monsters." Ren put a hand on his shoulder. "You're the moral compass of this team, Kaito. Your empathy—both the power and the character trait—keeps us grounded. Don't lose that."
"What if the power corrupts me eventually?"
"Then we'll stop you. That's what teams do. We watch each other, keep each other honest." Ren smiled slightly. "Though honestly, I'm more worried about my command power corrupting me than your empathy corrupting you. At least you have to feel people's pain when you manipulate them. I don't even have that check."
It was a fair point. Kaito had noticed Ren using his command power more frequently, more casually. Nothing terrible—small commands, convenient orders—but it was a slippery slope.
"We need to watch out for each other," Kaito said.
"Agreed. You keep me from becoming a tyrant. I'll keep you from becoming... whatever the empathy equivalent is."
"An emotional vampire?"
"Sure. That."
They sat in companionable silence for a while, just two broken kids trying to stay human while wielding powers that could easily make them monsters.
"Two months left," Ren said eventually. "Two months until they try to harvest us. Are we going to be ready?"
"I don't know," Kaito said honestly. "Yuki's still working on breaking the binding. We haven't figured out the king's contingencies. We're juggling alliances with Malachar and Celestia without committing to either. And we still don't have a plan for what happens after we break the cycle."
"So basically, we're doomed."
"Probably."
"Good thing we're too stubborn to quit then."
Kaito laughed despite everything. "Yeah. Good thing."
With two months remaining until harvest, the five heroes had evolved significantly from the terrified teenagers who'd been summoned:
Ren had become a capable leader and tactician, though he struggled with the temptation of his command power.
Yuki was working obsessively on breaking the harvest binding, sleeping three hours a night and running on spite and coffee.
Daichi had become their shield—the protector who stood between threats and the team.
Himari was learning to balance healing with combat, becoming a symbol of hope in the city while preparing to fight when necessary.
And Kaito... Kaito had become their eyes and ears, their lie detector, their psychological warfare specialist. He could sense threats, read intentions, and manipulate emotions at scale.
They were no longer helpless victims. They were becoming exactly what they needed to be.
Heroes.
Real ones. Not the propaganda kind. The kind who struggled with impossible choices, who questioned their actions, who tried to minimize harm while accepting that some harm was inevitable.
Two months. That's all they had left.
Two months to break a thousand-year-old cycle, free one hundred trapped souls, stop a harvest ritual, survive an angry king, and somehow save both themselves and the kingdom.
It should have been impossible.
But they were going to try anyway.
Because that's what heroes did.