Toshi jolted awake in the dark, damp cave, his entire body quivering violently as an intense wave of dizziness overwhelmed him. Every muscle trembled under the assault, as if his very essence was being unmoored from his being.
His breath came in erratic, heated bursts—the ghostly warmth of a long-diminished fire still lingered on his skin—while the surrounding cave air wrapped him in a biting chill. His heart pounded furiously against his ribs, each beat resonating like a drum of war, with the lingering echo of an elusive, alien presence that made his chest feel heavy with otherworldly whispers. His limbs, unnervingly inert, moved with the languid sluggishness of a marionette whose strings had been roughly cut, leaving him unnerved, as if he no longer belonged to his own body.
Questions exploded in his mind. What in the world had just happened? Where was I?
Desperation drove him to press his fingers into the rough, jagged floor of the cave, the coarse stone biting at his skin as his grip faltered. Every inch of his body radiated a profound sense of dislocation—as though he had been ripped away to a dimension beyond the tangible, where reality itself was a fragile veneer.
Then, breaking the oppressive silence, a familiar chuckle echoed around him, reverberating off the damp walls. "Back so soon?"
Toshi's head jerked upward, his eyes burning with anger as they zeroed in on Ikaris, who stood a few measured paces away. Arms confidently crossed, Ikaris' lips curled into a perpetual, enigmatic smirk that danced tantalizingly at the edge of mischief and disdain.
"What did you do to me?" Toshi demanded, his voice edged sharper and more slicing than he had intended—a raw cry for answers.
Ikaris responded with a languid shrug that spoke of nonchalance. "Nothing. I just allowed you to glimpse a bit more than you were ever meant to see."
Fury coiled inside Toshi as he clenched his fists, each muscle taut with rising frustration. "That place—was that real?" His voice faltered at the edges, betraying uncertainty beneath the storm of anger.
The smirk on Ikaris' face deepened into something colder, more calculating. "You tell me."
At that, Toshi's fragile patience shattered completely. "Enough games! Tell me, what is Energy really?" His demand rang out, a desperate cry to demystify the forces that had so cruelly toyed with him.
For the first time, Ikaris' smirk faded, replaced by an inscrutable expression of deliberation. Tilting his head as if gauging Toshi's readiness, he slowly advanced. "You really want to know?" he asked, each word meticulously enunciated.
Without a moment's pause, Toshi nodded, his eyes burning with determination.
Ikaris exhaled slowly, a flicker of something enigmatic and unreadable dancing briefly across his face. "Energy isn't power. It isn't an element. It isn't even a tool." His tone was measured, dripping with an unsettling certainty.
Toshi furrowed his brow, struggling to pierce the veil of mystery. "Then what is it?"
A cold smile—now sharper, more piercing—returned to Ikaris's face. "Energy is the authority to decide what is real." His words reverberated in the claustrophobic space of the cave.
Without further ado, Ikaris raised his hand with deliberate precision. "Watch." He pointed at a weathered crack along the cave wall, the fracture etched amidst ages of stone.
Before Toshi's wide, astonished eyes, the crack began to shimmer and dissolve—a vanishing act that defied repair or healing, as if the fissure had never marred the rock's surface at all.
Toshi stared in silent disbelief, his voice barely escaping a whisper. "That's… impossible."
A low chuckle emanated from Ikaris, its tone dark and knowing. "No, it's just Energy." His words hung in the icy air.
Then, Ikaris' eyes began to glow with a faint, otherworldly light. "You humans believe strength is about physical power—about brute force. It's utterly laughable." His tone shifted as he continued, "Energy doesn't work that way. It doesn't care about muscles or spells. It listens only to those who dare defy the very rules of existence."
Toshi's mind churned, trying desperately to reconcile these incomprehensible ideas. His fist tightened as frustration welled up inside him. "Then why couldn't I stop my own arm from being taken?" he demanded, his voice hardening with raw hurt.
"If Energy is that powerful, then why isn't everyone wielding it like a weapon?" Toshi pressed on.
Ikaris grinned, his smile morphing into a masterful blend of amusement and severity. "Because everything comes with a cost." His voice sank lower, the playful lilt ebbed away to reveal a somber truth.
"Every time you use Energy, something else pays the price." He elaborated, "You heal yourself? Something else perishes. You obliterate your enemy? Something else vanishes into oblivion. You take too much? The universe exacts its balance from you in return."
Toshi's pulse raced as a cold shiver crept over his skin. With a raw, dry lump forming in his throat, he swore, "Then… using Energy means desecrating reality itself?"
Ikaris' smile returned, slower and imbued with a knowing mockery. "Now you're beginning to understand." His words vibrated in the dim light as a deep chill seeped into Toshi's very bones, as if invisible tendrils were coiling around him.
Fisted with determination, Toshi bit down on his trembling nails, the realization burning into him that Energy wasn't mere brute power—it was a force that dictated the very essence of reality. Yet, the nagging question continued to torment him: if Energy governed reality, why couldn't he prevent his own arm from being wrenched away?
Grinding his teeth hard, Toshi growled, "Then teach me. Show me how to use it." His challenge resonated in the cavernous space.
Ikaris scoffed, his amusement turning dismissive. "Use it? You're not listening." His voice was laced with both derision and pity. "Energy isn't some tool you control. It's an unyielding force that chooses if it will heed your call."
Toshi's jaw set like stone. "Then how do I make it listen?" His tone was a mixture of defiance and desperate inquiry.
A razor-sharp smirk reappeared on Ikaris's face. "You don't." Those words cut through the space, leaving Toshi gasping for air—only to realize that the breath was being snatched away by an unseen force.
In an instant, his vision began to falter. The familiar stalactites and shadows of the cave melted away, replaced by an endless void where the world itself seemed to disintegrate. His body felt alien, as if something crucial had been stolen from it, leaving a cavernous emptiness.
Desperately, Toshi glanced down. His fingers, once firm and human, were disintegrating—crumbled to ash with an agonizing, surreal slowness.
Ikaris' voice, omnipresent now, echoed from every corner of the collapsing reality. "You thought you were real? Look at yourself." The words danced maliciously in the void as Toshi's arms continued to fade, the ash swirling away into nothingness, erasing every trace of his existence.
His breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, each one punctuating the inevitable decline as his heartbeat slowed to a dwindling rhythm. "Am I… dying?" he croaked in a voice that blended terror with disbelief.
Toshi tried desperately to move, to muster the remnants of his will against the disintegrating fabric of his being, but his legs were already no longer there—lost to the void's insatiable hunger. His body fragmented, piece by agonizing piece, as shadows devoured the edges of his vision. His thoughts scattered like grains of sand in a merciless cosmic wind.
Ikaris observed this spectacle with an eerie calm, His eyes remained fixed on the horizon, a faint quiver in his jaw the only hint of the storm raging within him. "This is what happens when Energy doesn't acknowledge you," he pronounced, his tone the embodiment of fatalistic inevitability.
A violent surge erupted from Toshi's core—a primal defiance amid the overwhelming cascade of nothingness. Clenching his teeth so hard that they ground together in a determined, raw protest, he rasped, "No. I refuse." His voice rang out like a battle cry against the encroaching oblivion.
Even as his remaining fingers twitched against the consuming void, the drifting ash momentarily halted. Time seemed to catch its breath; the void quivered; the inexorable fade of his existence paused.
Ikaris' grin widened into something both triumphant and sinister. "So, you don't want to die? Then prove it." His challenge echoed as a final dare against the cosmic design.
Summoning every scrap of willpower, Toshi forced movement—struggling desperately against the relentless void and the crushing weight of nothingness that pressed upon him. In that defiant moment, for the first time, Energy itself hesitated. And that single, imperceptible pause meant one undeniable truth:
he still existed.
chapter end