Chapter 199: My animosity

Mikoto walked.

His steps were soundless, swallowed by the endless void beneath him. There was no ground, no sky, no wind—just an infinite abyss, stretching endlessly in every direction. A blackness so absolute it felt alive, pressing against his skin, wrapping around his limbs like a silent, invisible force.

Yet, despite the consuming darkness, he remained untouched—a solitary figure within the void, moving forward with no destination, no purpose.

His armor, draped in obsidian black with its deep red accents, gleamed faintly under an unseen light. But there was no helmet to obscure his face.

His white hair was wild and free, tumbling to his shoulders in an untamed cascade, stark against the abyss that surrounded him. It swayed gently as he walked, despite the absence of any wind. It made him stand out. A pale, ethereal specter cutting through the eternal darkness.

His red eyes held no warmth. No light. They were cold, empty pools of reflection, devoid of emotion, devoid of attachment. His face, too beautiful to belong to something so devoid of humanity, was an eerie contradiction—a masterpiece of perfection sculpted from suffering.

And all around him—

Shards.

Countless shattered fragments of glass floated in the abyss, suspended in the air like frozen stars in the night sky. They whirled around him, aimless, jagged edges catching in the unseen glow. They were beautiful—too beautiful—like the delicate remains of something that had once been whole, now broken beyond repair.

But they were not simply glass.

They were his memories.

Each shard held a reflection—not of his own image, but of his past. And as he moved forward, they shifted, rotating in eerie synchronization, allowing him to glimpse the horrors they contained.

A flicker. A vision.

A woman collapsed on the wooden floor of a dimly lit room.

Her breathing was ragged, her lips split and bleeding, her once-pristine kimono torn and sullied with the grime of the ground. Long, silken raven hair was tangled around her face, strands sticking to the crimson that trickled from the fresh wounds marring her once-perfect skin.

And above her—

A man.

Towering. Overpowering.

A monster draped in the flesh of a human, his eyes burning with a cruel, unhinged madness.

His father.

Mikoto did not react.

The memory played out in perfect clarity, captured within the shard as though the abyss itself had crystallized his suffering.

A fist descended.

A sharp gasp.

Mikoto's mother's body jerked violently under the blow, but she did not scream. She never screamed. Not anymore. She had long since learned that there was no mercy in this household—no salvation in cries for help.

He watched.

The boy that once was stood in the corner of the memory, smaller, fragile, fists clenched so tightly his nails had pierced his palms. Blood dripped from his hands, but he did not move. He could not move.

Because he was next.

A crack echoed through the abyss.

Another shard drifted into view—its reflection shifting like the turning of a page.

This time, it was his little sister.

Hinata.

A small girl with the same hauntingly raven hair and piercing gray eyes as his former self, trembling as she clutched at her tiny frame. Her cheeks were bruised, a thin line of blood tracing down from her forehead.

Their father loomed above her, his presence casting a long, terrible shadow.

He spoke.

Mikoto could not hear the words. The abyss had stolen all sound, leaving only the unbearable silence of a nightmare unfolding before his eyes.

But he knew what was said. He had heard it countless times.

"You are weak. You are nothing. You are a failure."

Another blow.

Hinata crumpled.

Mikoto did not look away. He never looked away.

He simply watched.

Another shard spun past—a new vision. A new memory.

This time, it was not of suffering.

It was of retribution.

The boy was older.

His hands were no longer small, no longer trembling with helplessness.

Instead, they were stained red.

A group of bodies lay strewn across the wooden floor of an alley, their forms mutilated, unrecognizable yet alive.

Bullies.

They had tormented Hinata. They had mocked her, pushed her, laughed at her fear.

So Mikoto had taken their laughter away.

He watched himself work—calm, methodical, almost elegant in the way he carved through them. There was no anger. No hatred.

Just efficiency.

The reflection flickered, revealing the aftermath—Hinata standing there, wide-eyed, staring at the bloodied remains with something between awe and terror.

Mikoto simply wiped his knife clean.

And then—

The final shard.

The last fragment of his past.

It hovered before him, trembling as though even the abyss itself feared to hold its contents.

A darkened room.

A father, drunk, monstrous, violent.

A son, standing tall, his gray eyes void of fear.

A daughter, behind him, clutching a knife.

It was not a battle.

It was an execution.

And they won.

Steel bit into flesh.

Their father's eyes widened, mouth parting in a choked gasp of disbelief. He reached out—to strike, to punish, to hurt—

But he could not.

His children had finally ended him.

Mikoto's red eyes flickered as he watched his past self lower his knife, stepping back to observe the corpse before them.

And then, ever so slowly, he turned toward Hinata.

She was smiling.

A soft, twisted, bloodstained smile.

The shard shattered.

The memory was gone.

The abyss remained.

And Mikoto…

Mikoto kept walking.

His white hair swayed once more, strands catching against his face.

His expression never changed.

His red eyes did not waver.

There was nothing to fear here.

Nothing to mourn.

Nothing to regret.

Because this—

This was just the way things were.

Mikoto walked.

He had always walked.

Through pain. Through violence. Through memories stained in blood and silence.

But this time, he stopped.

The moment was seamless, like an imperceptible shift in the fabric of existence. One step, then another, and then—

He fell.

Not his body. No, his body remained standing, clad in its ominous black armor, its red accents gleaming like the remnants of a dying fire. His figure was strong, sharp, formidable—an unshakable monument carved from his suffering.

But something else slipped free.

Something fragile.

Something dainty.

His soul.

It stepped out of him as if stepping out of a cocoon, the motion disturbingly natural yet profoundly unnatural.

A small foot, bare and delicate, touched the abyss first.

And then—the rest followed.

A nude, ethereal form, pale and ghostly, dripping with an otherworldly luminescence. His skin, untouched by scars or war, was almost too perfect, too delicate—like porcelain crafted by divine hands. His long, silken white hair billowed weightlessly behind him, strands gleaming in the abyss like moonlight trapped in water. His red eyes, usually so sharp, so filled with resolve, were now hollow, wide with something that was neither fear nor understanding.

And then—he fell.

The moment his soul fully separated, gravity seized him.

Or perhaps it wasn't gravity at all. Perhaps it was the abyss itself, yawning open like the maw of a great and endless beast, dragging him down, down, down—

He did not scream.

He did not struggle.

He simply fell, his form spinning slowly in the void, graceful in descent, like a forgotten feather drifting through an infinite expanse.

And as he fell, the emotions struck.

They came like knives.

Each one sharper than the last, slicing into the raw, naked essence of him.

Hate.

It surged through him, white-hot and suffocating.

Hate for his father.

For the monster who had turned their home into a battlefield, who had battered his mother, tormented his sister, and cursed his very existence with violence. He remembered the feel of that man's throat under his blade, the way the blood spilled so easily, the way the life left his eyes in a slow, pathetic flicker.

It hadn't been enough.

He should have made him suffer more.

Hate for Octavia.

For dragging him here, into this world of war and Gods and expectations.

What right did she have? What right did she have to chain him to the fate of a hero? What right did she have to force him to care, to demand something of him when he had already lost so much?

Hate for those who expected him to be a hero.

For the voices that whispered of destiny, of responsibility. Those who looked at him and saw a savior, a figure meant to inspire, a warrior meant to protect.

Did they not understand?

Did they not see that he was nothing?

A boy made of hatred. A boy who had long since lost the capacity for kindness. A boy whose only instinct was to destroy.

The emotions wrapped around him, coiling like living serpents, sinking fangs into his soul. They were beautiful in their horror, twisting around his form like the delicate tracings of an artist's brush.

And as he plummeted, the abyss itself responded.

The darkness shifted, rippling like water. It reached for him, tendrils of shadow stretching out, brushing against his bare skin like an unseen lover's touch.

It was welcoming him.

He belonged here.

A figure sculpted of hatred and sorrow, drifting endlessly into the depths.

His beautiful face remained passive, as if unaffected by the torment, but inside—inside, he burned.

And the abyss, like a sentient force, whispered back.

 Hate them. Hate them all.

Let it consume you.

Let it define you.

After all, you were never meant to be saved.

He fell deeper.

And deeper.

And deeper still.

Until there was nothing left but the black and the whispers and the cold, cold truth—

He would never be anything but this.