Volume 3—Chapter 64: Turn Around
Ever since the Spectre started parasitising my body, I haven’t felt warm.
It’s almost always cold—bone-deep cold. Not the kind you shake off with a jacket or a hot drink. It’s a chill that clings to your soul, that makes the world feel hollow even in sunlight. At first, I thought it was just me. Maybe I was imagining it. But no... The Spectre had nested deep, and its presence has turned every moment of my life.
And then… I met her.
The Spectre vanished without warning the moment I touched her. One second it was crawling beneath my skin, whispering inside my skull, and the next… gone, just like that.
But the cold remained.
Not as sharp. Not as soul-draining. Just a lingering chill at the edges of my senses. The kind that makes you question if it’s truly gone, or just hiding deeper now. Still... I could feel warmth again. Actual warmth. I’d forgotten what that felt like. The sensation of blankets on skin, of heat from the morning sun creeping through the windows. Simple things I hadn’t noticed were missing until they came back.
I thought maybe... just maybe, I could finally sleep through a night without trembling.
That hope lasted only a moment.
Before I could enjoy another hour in my bed, it happened.
A dimensional crack tore through my apartment building. Or rather, my entire building got swallowed in the dimensional crack. Because of that, I lose the feeling of warmth again. Like the very air here only knows cold.
This… is the Spectre's home world.
Then I met her again, the girl who somehow made the Spectre inside me disappear. I learned her name: Aria. It suited her, oddly enough.
Long story short, we encountered a blonde woman. Aria kicked something invisible, and just like that, there she was. She seemed to mess with our perception, subtly twisting our thoughts until we found her. At first, I didn’t understand why, but once I realised she was possessed by a Spectre, it made sense. She was luring us in… to become prey. Also, I recognise her, she is the partner of the investigator who pinned me down.
Unfortunately for her, Aria seems to have some kind of natural resistance to mental manipulation.
Now, the two of us are fighting her.
We're struggling against her, even though it's supposed to be two against one. Then again… she keeps summoning skeletons, so it’s not exactly a fair two-on-one fight.
Until—
"Aneira, can you back out a bit?" Aria suddenly said.
Huh? What is she planning now?
I extinguished the white flame in my hand and stepped back, just like she asked.
But the blonde woman didn’t let up. Her barrage of white flames continued, and two skeletons charged straight at Aria.
Yet Aria just stood there.
What is she doing? Has she given up?
Then… she moved. She raised her right hand and held it out like a traffic cop, a simple 'stop' gesture. Obviously, fire doesn’t obey hand signals. The flame slammed into her arm.
I froze.
She knows that fire absorbs energy. I told her that. Why is she just taking it head-on?
Unless…
Right. Just like how the Spectre vanished from my body…
“What…?” I heard the blonde woman mutter in disbelief.
Aria had nullified the white flame.
"Tch. I thought that talk about you being able to neutralise supernatural powers was just a bluff," the blonde woman spat.
Well… it kind of was a bluff. Even I wasn’t sure it was true.
The white flame was no longer a threat—Aria had completely neutralised it. But the skeletons remained.
One of them lunged forward, jaw clattering and arms raised. With a simple downward motion of her hand, Aria brought it to a halt—no, she crushed it. Bones shattered on impact with the ground as if some invisible force had slammed it down like a sledgehammer.
"Huh? Telekinesis? You can do that too...?" the blonde woman muttered, eyes narrowing. "No... that's your real power... clever. You disguised it well. I’ll give you that. Neutralising and super strength are byproducts of your telekinesis. You almost fooled me there. I thought you were an outlier, after all, Esper can only have one power.”
Aria didn’t respond right away, her expression flat.
“Is that so?” she said finally, her voice calm. “But if an Esper can only have one power at a time, then how do you explain having three? Mind manipulation, white flame, and summoning skeletons?”
The blonde woman chuckled in amusement. “Hahaha... well, yeah... You got me. That’s because two of them—the flame and the summoning—were given to me.”
Aria's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing in response.
Instead, she raised her hand again.
Suddenly, a whirlwind of objects burst through the air—furniture, a TV, kitchen knives—all flying out from one of the nearby rooms, aimed straight at the blonde woman like guided missiles.
The moment Aria raised her hand and launched that swarm of furniture like it was nothing, I felt a chill, not from fear, but from awe. A whole TV, a knife, and half a living room's worth of debris flew straight at the blonde woman like a damn hurricane. And for a second… just a second… I saw panic flash across her smug face.
“Tch…!” she hissed, snapping her fingers.
Two more skeletons burst from the ground. They moved fast, faster than I expected, jumping right into the path of the attack. The TV exploded into shards on impact, and I saw a knife dig into one of the skeletons’ jaws.
But it wasn’t enough.
A piece of a chair slipped through, cut her cheek, and drew blood.
That’s when it happened—her composure cracked.
“You little—!” she barked, voice trembling with frustration as she backflipped out of the danger zone. She landed on a chunk of broken wall like a gymnast sticking a routine, but I could see it in her stance—her balance wasn’t as perfect anymore.
She was rattled.
White fire began swirling at her fingertips again, but it wasn’t like before. There was hesitation now. Doubt.
I caught myself grinning.
“She’s rattled,” I muttered. “Aria, keep pushing. I think she’s near her limit.”
Aria didn’t reply, just stepped forward, like she was walking down a hallway instead of standing in a fight against a psycho possessed flame-throwing necromancer.
And somehow… I felt like we were finally turning this around.
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