I opened my eyes slowly, but the scene that greeted me was not the cold laboratory; it was the bustling Academy square.
I found myself alone in the center, with hundreds of students circling me like a pack of hyenas, laughing with a hysterical roar that tore at my eardrums.
They were pointing their fingers at me, and those hateful words came out of their twisted mouths in mockery:
"Stupid... you really are stupid!"
The echo of their laughter struck my chest like hammers, while I stood in daze, my breath cut off and my mind unable to comprehend this sudden fall.
I held my head with my trembling hands, feeling the coldness of death settle in my limbs, my eyes wide, watching the misery of this situation, while my lips quivered with a helplessness I had never known.
I could not bear this suffocating pressure, and I exploded with a resounding scream from the depths of my being—a scream so powerful that I felt as if my vocal cords had been uprooted from their place.
Suddenly... my body jerked violently to collide with reality.
I woke up gasping madly, my chest heaving as if I were in a race with death.
My forehead was dripping with cold sweat, and my heart was pounding in my chest with a violence that nearly shattered my ribs.
Damn it... was it a nightmare? I placed my hand over my heart, trying hard to calm that violent throbbing, as I reclaimed my lost breath amidst the darkness of the room whose nature I did not know.
Were those images merely pipe dreams, or was my mind warning me of what was to come? I stared around me into the void, trying to steal a single thread of light from the gloom, but the blackness was a solid wall pressing against my breath.
"Damn it... where am I?"
I whispered, bitterness boiling in my chest; I swore secretly that I would tear out the heart of that wretch, Vasilios, with these two hands to quench my thirst for revenge.
I tried to move, wanting to retreat instinctively, but something pulled my wrists with a sudden force.
I froze for a second, then tried to move my hands violently, only for that loathsome metallic sound to ring in my ears.
My eyes widened in the dark; they weren't just restraints—they were massive chains they had used to lash me to an iron chair as if I were a ravenous beast.
"Whore... Whore!"
I screamed with all the strength I possessed, my voice echoing in the desolate place.
My eyes ignited with a hellish rage, and I clenched my jaw so hard the grinding of my teeth echoed in my head.
"Do you really think these stupid chains will stop me?"
I barked with a wild cry that shook the corners of the room, feeling a terrifying physical strength exploding from the marrow of my bones.
I squeezed my fists until my veins nearly burst, then I raised my arms with supernatural violence.
In that moment, the metal rings did not hold; the chains snapped, and their pieces scattered across the marble floor, producing a disturbing metallic sound echoed by the deafening walls.
With the same savagery, I kicked the restraints wrapped around my legs, shattering them as if they were flimsy cobwebs.
I stood up, my body trembling from pure rage, my red eyes piercing the darkness in search of any target; my anger had crossed all boundaries, and there was no restraint left in this magical world capable of curbing the beast they had awakened within me.
I began to feel the air frantically, my hands roaming the darkness as if I were searching for the neck of this world to strangle it; I yearned to touch any wall or door to turn it into rubble and bring this cursed academy down upon the heads of its inhabitants.
Finally, my palm struck a hard, cold surface, and a diabolical smile spread across my face; I had found the exit.
I began to deal blows to the door with savage force, each strike coming from my fist carrying the grudge of years of deprivation and the hatred of the moment they betrayed me.
With every thud of my hand hitting the metal, the surrounding walls cracked, and the sound of terrifying fissures crept across the ceiling like the groan of a building breathing its last.
I stepped back, charging all my anger into my arm, then delivered a punch that pierced the heart of the metal door; I plunged my hand into it as if plunging a dagger into the body of an enemy, then pulled it back with a violence that shredded the steel.
I was preparing for the final blow, one last fist that would either uproot this door or demolish this cursed cellar over their rotten heads.
I raised my hand and tightened my shoulder muscles, but the moment my fist was about to touch the metal, the lights flashed on suddenly with a crushing visual power.
My eyelids closed instinctively, and I felt as if daggers of light had been thrust into my eyes; that sudden flash blinded me for moments, and I froze in my place, my fist still suspended in the air, while my heart hammered in my chest amidst this dominant whiteness that revealed the destruction of my hands and my surroundings.
I looked around madly; the room was moaning under the weight of my blows; cracks were crawling on the walls like black snakes, and the ceiling was shedding cement dust as if it were about to collapse over my head to become my marble grave.
I scoured the place with my predatory gaze, but there was no body to pour my wrath upon, until I raised my sight upward.
There, I spotted a strange magical device hanging—a cold glass eye watching the destruction of my arms.
I screamed with a savagery that made my vocal cords hoarse:
"If you don't open this damn door now, I swear I will demolish this filth over your heads!"
I took my breath with difficulty, my chest boiling like a cauldron, waiting for a response to satisfy my rage before I turned the place into wreckage.
Suddenly, the device glowed with a suspicious white flash, and from it emerged a transparent image of Vasilios; he floated in the air like a cold mirage, exchanging with me those provocative, calm looks, as if he hadn't betrayed me moments ago.
He spoke in a low voice, but his words fell upon me like a thunderbolt that paralyzed my limbs:
"If you do not remain silent... I cannot guarantee the life of that small family of yours."
The blood froze in my veins, and my eyes widened with a shock that shook my entire being.
My family? Mother Joanna? The children? Had they reached such vileness as to touch innocent souls who had no say in the matter?
Had they been stripped of every shred of humanity to use my loved ones as human shields?
He continued with a coldness that kills the soul:
"Now... sit down to begin the tests."
As if he were telling a lab rat the time of its meal.
I closed my eyes so tightly that I saw sparks behind my eyelids, and I squeezed my fists with a violence that almost shattered my bones.
When I opened them, my gaze fell on a sharp metal piece that had been torn from the shattered door; I picked it up slowly and aimed my sight at his phantom image with black hatred, the whites of my eyes drowned in the redness of blood from the sheer hidden rage.
With a muffled cry, I threw the piece with insane force toward the hanging device; the machine did not just shatter, but the metal and the wall were pierced, leaving a crushing hole and black smoke rising from the burnt wires.
I headed to the cursed chair and sat on it with a suspicious calmness that precedes the storm.
I will not allow them to touch a single hair of my family, even if the price is my body, and even if the trade is that I turn into a weapon in their filthy hands to ensure the church's safety, I will not hesitate.
I will wait... I will wait for the moment the table turns, and then, the head of Vasilios will not be enough of a price for this threat.
I stood there, in that suffocating silence, waiting for them to isolate me and my body.
Rage still boiled in my veins like volcanic lava, demanding to explode and shatter everything, but I forced myself to remain still; for the images of the children's faces and Mother Joanna were the only shackles my fists could not break.
The door opened and a doctor entered; his features were strange, a mixture of trepidation and cold scientific curiosity.
He signaled with his hand for me to follow him without uttering a word.
I rose slowly from the chair, my body heavy with the bitterness of oppression, and walked behind him in total surrender, watching his back and wondering what kind of new hell had been designed specifically for me.
The doctor stopped at a massive iron door, resembling the previous doors in its formidable stature.
He raised his palm, and from it emanated that enchanting white light—the light that had come to symbolize, in my eyes, everything false and treacherous in this Academy.
The door opened with a suspicious smoothness, and the doctor turned toward me, glancing at me with an ambiguous look before remaining in his place; I realized then that I was the only one who would cross this threshold, the only one who would face what waited inside.
I exhaled a faint breath and took steady steps into the room.
No sooner had I crossed the threshold than the door closed behind me with a decisive metallic thud, as if severing my connection to the outside world.
I looked around; the room was white, cold, and desolate like the one before it, but what caught my attention and made my heart tighten was that transparent glass structure in the center, inside of which sat a metallic chair connected to countless wires and tubes.
I smiled with bitter irony and whispered to myself mockingly:
"Is this a new torture chair, or another platform to test the extent of my endurance before I turn you all into ash?"
The chair sat there like a beast waiting for its prey, and the silence enveloping the place foretold a storm of pain I had never known before, but I stepped toward it; for death was easier to me than for them to touch my family with harm.
I advanced with firm steps, shrouded in an icy coldness that hid beneath it a volcano of fury, and sat on that cursed metal chair.
I placed my hands and feet in the designated spots, as if voluntarily surrendering myself to a fate I had no escape from now.
The moment my body settled, I felt the metal of the chair shudder; cold iron shackles erupted from it, wrapping around my wrists and ankles with lightning speed, gripping so tightly that I felt the coldness of the steel piercing my pores, completely paralyzing my movement and making me a part of this rigid structure.
I did not just lean back; rather, a solid iron band emerged from behind the backrest, wrapping around my forehead to fix my head with excessive force backward, forcing my gaze upward.
Not an eyelid flickered, and my features did not shake; I watched the ceiling with a suspicious calmness, waiting for this absurdity to end.
But the silence did not last; the ceiling above me suddenly opened, and from its depths emerged a massive blue crystal ball, radiating a celestial glow that was both enchanting and terrifying at once.
Then the voice of Vasilios echoed, cold and stripped of any mercy, filling the corners of the room as if he were standing right behind my back:
"Let us begin..."
As soon as he finished his sentence, the ball exploded with an exaggerated light, and from it poured an intense magic that descended directly toward me, flooding the glass cube surrounding me with a deluge of ether.
At first, I felt nothing but a simple sting, but as the seconds passed, my body began to heat up strangely, and my temperature rose to a terrifying degree.
For the first time in my life, I felt a strange energy trying to penetrate my skin, violently attempting to fill the crushing void within me.
"Damn... are they really trying to plant Mana into my body?"
I screamed within my soul. Moments did not pass before my being responded; my body began rejecting that foreign energy and dismantling the magic fiercely.
For my defensive system is an insulator by nature, and no matter how much they tried to stuff me with their magic, my body, by its rebellious nature, would not accept it.
But they—curse them—did not stop; instead, they poured the magic over me in even greater abundance, to the point that I felt my blood boiling in my veins.
My body began to resist with excessive force, and here, the pain crept in; a sharp pain that started like needles stabbing into my cells, then intensified to become an unbearable tearing.
My face contorted severely, and my limbs trembled involuntarily under the weight of the torture.
A muffled scream escaped my mouth—a piercing pain that made me clench my jaw and fists with insane force, trying to suppress the sound of my agony, but they were not satisfied.
They continued pumping magic for long hours, the end of which I did not know.
I convulsed in my place madly, the metal chains restraining my violent movements, while my hoarse screams began to fill the room, declaring a struggle for survival between a body that refused to bow and magic trying to violate the sanctity of its void.
They continued in that hell for an eternity of torment, until I felt my soul being dragged out of my body.
My mind was no longer able to bear the pain signals hitting my nerves; my eyes rolled back until their redness drowned and a desolate white took over, and white foam erupted from my mouth as I jerked madly, rattling those metal chains.
I felt the veins of my head bulging and swelling in a terrifying way, as if my precious blood was trying to slit my skin to free itself from this cage; I was literally dying under the weight of their sadistic test.
The pumping finally stopped, but my body did not understand the meaning of stillness; violent spasms continued to strike my limbs, and I felt my heart faltering in its beat, slowing down at times as if breathing its last, and thumping violently at others like a slaughtered bird.
The pains gnawed at everything that remained intact in my being, turning my existence into human wreckage.
Amidst the crumbling fog of consciousness, the sound of the metal door being violently opened reached my ears, followed by the sound of footsteps running with extreme panic around me.
And their voices reached me distorted, overlapping as if coming from the depths of a deep well, carrying tones of fear and confusion that I no longer cared about.
Suddenly, I felt something cold being pressed against my mouth and nose; they pumped a chemical substance that pierced my lungs with brute force, and coldness flooded through my burning veins.
My body began to relax slowly, and the spasms faded before that powerful anesthetic, as the pains gradually withdrew, leaving behind a black void.
I surrendered to the darkness that began to crawl over my vision, and I drowned in it again, escaping from a world that wanted to rob me of my truth, even through torture.