Volume 4—Chapter 102: Guilt
“Aria! Stop what you’re doing now!”
Elizabeth-sensei’s voice rang out from outside, distant but sharp, carried through the violent distortion shaking the academy. I couldn’t see her, but I knew where she was. Near Onee-chan. Close enough to try to stop her.
It didn’t matter.
Onee-chan didn’t even look down. The violet light around her intensified, rippling outward as she rose higher into the sky, as if gravity itself had given up on arguing with her.
Without thinking, my body moved on its own.
I sprinted toward the shattered corridor, toward the broken windows, toward the place where the air itself felt wrong. My footsteps barely registered beneath the tremors.
“Irana, wait! It’s dangerous!”
That voice came from behind me. Ariana. I didn’t turn around.
I couldn’t.
Something far more urgent was happening. Something irreversible.
“Onee-chan…” I muttered, my voice barely leaving my throat.
I could feel it now, clearly. The pressure. The pull. The awakening of something vast and uncontrollable. Her power was no longer stirring. It was unfolding.
This was it.
This exact moment was what I had been warned about. What I had been asked to stop. No matter the cost.
My hands trembled as the truth settled in.
“I failed.”
I continued running, pushing my body harder than it had any right to move.
The floor ahead was shattered, uneven, and impossible to cross at this speed. I didn’t slow down. I slammed my hand down, cold surging out of me in a sharp breath, and ice bloomed beneath my feet.
An ice platform formed mid-stride.
I kicked off it, the impact echoing through my legs, and launched myself forward. Another platform formed instantly ahead of me, then another, each one appearing just long enough to exist, just long enough to be used.
Then, I realise…
If I could create ice wherever I stepped… then the sky itself could become my ground.
I clenched my teeth and forced more power out, ignoring the ache creeping up my arms. Another platform formed higher this time, angled upward.
I jumped.
The moment my foot left the ice, a new platform appeared ahead of me. I landed, kicked off, and kept going, climbing higher and higher with each step.
Then something seized me from behind.
Before I could react, my body was pulled backwards and slammed hard into the ground. The impact knocked the air out of my lungs, ice shattering uselessly beneath me.
“Snap out of it, Irana.”
Blood slithered across my arms like living chains, pinning me in place. I knew that sensation all too well.
Yukari-senpai.
Her blood constructs writhed for a moment, then tightened just enough to keep me from moving. Her expression was calm, but her eyes were sharp.
“Something is happening,” she said firmly. “And it’s not over yet. We need to stick together.”
Stick together?
The words barely registered. My chest burned, my thoughts a mess.
“How do you expect me to calm down when…”
Smack.
The sound was sharp. My head snapped to the side.
Ariana stood in front of me, her hand still raised. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t smiling either.
“I’ve seen this desperation before,” she said quietly. “I know what you’re feeling.”
“What do you know?!” I shouted back, struggling against the blood restraints.
Her eyes didn’t waver.
“Syena,” she said. “To me, Syena is the same as your sister is to you.”
I scoffed, forcing out a bitter laugh.
“How is it the same…?” I glared at her, my hands clenched so tightly they shook. “You don’t know anything.”
The words spilt out before I could stop them.
She didn’t know the weight pressing down on my chest every time I looked at Onee-chan. She didn’t know what it meant to be told, again and again, that it was my role to stop her. Not if things went wrong, but when. That I was the last line, the contingency, the one who had to choose the world over family.
This wasn’t just about being a sister.
It was a responsibility. Obligation. A future already decided for me by people who smiled and called it necessity.
What did Ariana know about that?
“You think this is just fear?” I muttered. “Or attachment?”
I then break free from the restraint and run away from them.
I wrenched my arm free, ice surging along my skin and shattering the blood restraint with a sharp crack. The fragments scattered across the floor and evaporated before they could reform.
“I don’t need this,” I said through clenched teeth.
Before either of them could react, I turned and ran.
The ground froze beneath my feet with every step, ice platforms forming instinctively, launching me forward and upward in rapid succession. The air burned in my lungs as I pushed myself faster, higher, refusing to slow down.
“Irana, stop!” someone shouted behind me.
I didn’t look back.
Their voices blurred into the chaos, swallowed by the roaring wind and the distant tremors shaking the academy. All that mattered was the figure ahead of me, glowing in the sky, drifting farther and farther away.
Onee-chan.
I leapt again, ice blooming beneath my boots, propelling me toward her. My heart pounded, not from the strain, but from the fear clawing its way up my throat.
Wait for me.
I ran, even as the world around me began to feel like it was tearing itself apart.
And I don’t mean it metaphorically. The world is literally tearing itself apart.
“A large-scale dimensional crack…” I muttered under my breath.
When I reach a certain part of the Academy ground, I stop. The moment my boots touched the fractured pavement, I felt it clearly. The ground is shaking.
All around me, reality split open like broken glass. Ragged cracks hung in the air, glowing with that same violent violet light. Some stretched across walls and floors, others floated freely, ripping space itself apart. From inside them came distorted sounds, screeches, howls, things that did not belong in this world.
Screams echoed everywhere.
Students ran in every direction, some frozen in shock, others tripping over debris as teachers tried desperately to guide them to safety. Sirens wailed in the distance, warped and uneven, as if even sound was struggling to exist properly.
Creatures clawing their way out of the cracks. Twisted shapes, half-formed bodies dragging themselves into reality. Limbs bent the wrong way, eyes glowing with alien intent. The air grew heavy, oppressive, like the world itself was suffocating.
My breath caught.
“This is…” My voice trembled despite myself.
Another crack split open nearby, and something massive forced its way through, tearing apart the ground as if it were paper. The academy I knew, the place I had walked through every day, was becoming a battlefield.
My fists clenched.
“Is this all because of Onee-chan?” I whispered.
The thought hit me harder than any blow. That familiar violet light pulsed through the cracks, the same glow wrapping around her figure in the sky.
If this was the result of her awakening…
I swallowed hard, fear and guilt twisting together in my chest.
“Onee-chan…”
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