I’ll Make a New Promise

The digital clock blinked softly.

6:00 a.m.

Ren's eyes drifted from it—back to Anya, asleep beneath pale hospital sheets. They were alone in the quiet hush of the VIP wing of Marie's hospital. The room was wide and filled with sterile calm, soft lights and the hum of machines. A large wall of glass overlooked the still-sleeping city, the skyline veiled in indigo and fog.

He hadn't slept all night. He couldn't.

The doctors' words kept repeating in his head:

She was given a heavy dose of immunosuppressants. It's the kind of treatment we'd usually give before a major transplant—meant to shut down the immune system so it doesn't fight whatever gets introduced.

Right now, her body's still processing the drugs. Until they wear off, her system won't start healing properly. It's going to take some time.

Ren exhaled slowly. He sat beside her bed like a statue—breathing, but still. Awake, but far from alive. He couldn't rage. Couldn't scream. But something in him twisted in the shape of those things.

'Immunosuppressants, huh…'

It made a grim kind of sense. If the human body kept rejecting Vira—or the cells of Virans—then suppressing the immune system would be necessary to avoid rejection.

Then it hit him.

Maybe the only reason Anya hadn't been experimented on yet… was because the drugs hadn't taken effect.

He sighed as his head fell back against the chair. His gaze shifted toward the glass wall. The city beyond looked like a dream—unreachable, indifferent. Streetlights flickered like stars blurred underwater.

But it no longer looked beautiful.

Nothing did anymore.

'You were right, Aika. The world is truly evil.'

He closed his eyes for a moment.

A storm began churned in his mind. He remembered the day his parents died. How he had just… watched. Frozen with emptiness. And how Anele had almost killed him. 

He thought of the promise he made to Anya in the hospital. That he'd never let her feel helpless again. And yet, barely a month had passed, and she'd lived through terror so raw it left her shaking in her sleep.

His chest ached.

It didn't make sense anymore. How did things go from a happy picnic with his family… to losing almost everything? His family. His friends. His district.

And how did it go from Anya just picking up her paints… to almost becoming an aberrant? Just like that. And no one even knows who her kidnappers were.

He barely noticed when he started speaking—like the words had been waiting all along.

"There's nothing left of the life I had. It's just me and Anya now—trying to survive, trying to start over in a world that seems hell-bent on taking everything I love. Why can't I have one thing that lasts? Why does the world keep trying to rip it all away?"

His voice was barely a whisper.

"Why?"

He opened his eyes slowly, lifted his hands, and stared at them as if he were seeing them for the first time.

"I couldn't do anything before. But what about now?"

Things had changed. He was no longer just a human as he had thought before. He was a Viran. One with powers too. Power to change his reality.

So what about now?

He dropped his hands and exhaled long and hard.

"I don't like the emptiness that comes with being powerless.

I don't like the fact that I can't protect the people who matter to me.

I don't like how easily people take… and how little I can do to stop them.

I hate this hollow space I keep standing in—one I can't control."

His eyes drifted to the ceiling.

"I lived like a human my whole life. But I'm not one. So what now?!"

He remembered the words Aika told him a while back.

—If you want to survive. You need to be powerful.

"But I don't just want to survive," he whispered.

"I want to live. Without worry. Without loss.

If i live in a world where certain people can shape the world around them to protect what they love or get what they want, then can't i do the same?

If the world is a frightening place… then i just have to become something it fears right?"

His fists tightened at his sides.

He turned to Anya—silent and fragile beneath the sheets.

"I'll make a new promise… and this time, I'll keep it, sister.

I'll grow strong enough to protect you myself.

They took your happiness—so now I'll take.

I'll take the lives of those who stole ours."

His voice dropped.

"You asked who would make Anele pay. I will.

I'll grow powerful enough to find him. To get answers. To make him understand what it means to lose everything.

This is my goal now. My reason to keep going. I don't care how long it takes—I'll carve a path to him, and I'll take the peace from the man who shattered our family."

He leaned forward, gaze burning deep with cold intent.

"Everyone who hurt you will pay, Anya.

I'll give you all their lives.

I'll be the siren whose song drowns your sorrow.

And if the world dares to stand between you and your happiness again…"

His eyes darkened, the ocean behind them still and deep.

"Then I'll flood the entire world with the sea."

***

The Penthouse…

——

Ping.

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime.

Aika stepped into the penthouse, her black kimono trailing like smoke around her ankles. The lacquered white mask still clung to her face—smooth, seamless, etched with a single word: Silence.

She removed it slowly, revealing a pale face slack with fatigue. She was done with her work. Sleep was the only thing on her mind—and preferably twelve hours of it.

"If I don't hit a bed soon, I might just fall asleep on the floor."

She yawned, rubbing the corner of her eye as she shuffled past the lounge—expecting the usual dead silence of early morning.

But then she stopped.

There—curled up by the corner—was Sami.

He was sitting on the floor, knees drawn to his chest, arms looped over his head like a child trying to vanish. The lights were off, save for the faint glow spilling in from the hallway behind her. His figure was half-swallowed by shadow. Fingers tangled in his hair. Shoulders trembling.

A low sound escaped his throat—not quite crying, but something cracked and muffled. Something that sounded like it had been stuck in him for hours.

Aika didn't call his name.

She just walked over and crouched in front of him, close enough to catch the wet shimmer in his eyes.

"What happened?" Her voice was flat, but not cold—there was concern buried underneath the stillness.

"I can tell you called out Joonas. Why? And what the hell did he do this time?"

Sami didn't answer right away. When he finally looked up, their faces were inches apart—his raw, hers unreadable.

"Anya," he rasped. "She was taken."

His breath hitched.

"I got so angry. I was already slipping—I couldn't think straight, I couldn't—"

His voice cracked. He began to tremble, then reached out and clutched Aika's soft hands like a child reaching for something solid.

"There was a facility. Out in the middle of nowhere. They took her there."

His eyes flicked back and forth, as if the memory itself might lunge out from the shadows.

"There were kids, Aika. So many kids. They were being experimented on—turned into aberrants. I don't… I don't know who could do something like that."

His gaze locked onto hers, desperate.

"They were already dying. Mutating. Given more time, they would've become a whole horde. I didn't have a choice. I killed them. All of them."

His voice broke again. His hands shook.

"I keep thinking… maybe I could've saved them. Maybe someone at VHQ would've known what to do. But I was too angry. I couldn't control it. I didn't want to kill them. I didn't mean to."

He looked down at his bloodstained fingers—then flinched, as if the memory bit into him.

His next breath came shallow. Unsteady.

"Aika… I… I…"

Then—

He felt arms around him.

Aika pulled him forward, resting his head gently against her chest.

"I get it," she said softly. "It's not your fault."

She stroked his hair—not hurried or clumsy. Just a steady, quiet rhythm, like waves brushing against the shore. She didn't ask for more details. She didn't need them.

She had known Sami since they were kids. And this kind of guilt… she'd seen it in him before—more times than she could count.

Joonas was born from Sami's rage—a brutal persona who didn't flinch at violence, who killed without mercy and seemed to take pleasure in it. But Sami was different. Sami hated killing.

Even if the people in the facility had done monstrous things to children… even if they might've deserved it, it still didn't sit right with him. Not with the way Joonas killed them—savagely, and how he savored it.

He knew, rationally, that those children were already too far gone—aberrants couldn't be brought back. But it didn't matter. The guilt still clung to him like a second skin.

And with his affliction amplifying every emotion, magnifying every ounce of grief and shame… it was torture. A quiet kind of hell he could never crawl out of.

He trembled in her arms, and after a while the shaking dulled. Not vanished—but paused. Quieted. Enough to breathe again.

She held him a moment longer, her chin lightly resting on his hair, one hand gently patting his back in slow, reassuring motions. Then, she slowly pulled away. He didn't resist—just let her go, eyes red but clearer now, like someone surfacing from deep underwater.

Aika studied him for a beat. Then quietly said, "You did what you had to do."

Sami didn't answer. His hands were still in his lap, streaked with dried blood, twitching faintly like they still remembered the weight of every life.

Aika stood and exhaled through her nose.

"I'll be off."

"You just got back," Sami said—voice rough, but steadier.

She shrugged, already walking toward the door. "Someone has to look after Ren. I'm his babysitter, remember?"

Sami blinked—then snorted, a tired smile tugging at his lips. "Right. Babysitter."

She paused by the door. Glanced back over her shoulder.

"Don't disappear into yourself, Sami. You're not the monster he is."

Then she slipped out—bare feet silent against the tile.

Sami sat in the dark a moment longer.

He thought about Joonas. About the glass. About the children's screams. And everyone he had killed.

Then he thought about Aika—walking back into the cold morning for someone else.

Something she'd usually never bother with. Too much effort. Too much care.

But she did it anyway.

That was what made him smile. Barely. But it was enough.