Chapter 414: Who Are You?
“You… who are you?”
Nyarelle’s voice was soft, but the weight behind it was colder than steel. Her athyst eyes caught the dim light of the restaurant, reflecting it like a predator catching the glint of a blade. Her body shifted with the smooth grace of a trained killer; one hand slid almost imperceptibly toward the dagger she kept at her thigh. Every instinct she had scread threat.
Rhask blinked at her, confusion etching itself into the sharp lines of his face. “Rhask. Why do you ask? Don’t you rember ? What year are we in?” His tone was steady, but beneath it lay a tiniest crack; he could feel it, the way the air in the booth had thinned and sharpened. This wasn’t the reunion he had imagined. No warm smiles. No relief. Only suspicion.
Around him, chairs creaked softly as bodies shifted, almost imperceptibly, into battle-ready postures. Vorr’s hand rested casually on the edge of the table, but Rhask could see the tension in his knuckles. Darak’s tattoos glimred faintly beneath his skin, betraying the way his affinity stirred in response to danger.
Kalev tilted his head, his cybernetic eye flickering once as it scanned Rhask up and down. “If that’s you,” he said slowly, “then why do you feel like a damn storm about to break my neck?”
Rhask’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t realized how heavy his presence had beco since the ritual. He didn’t an to leak danger; it was simply there, coiled in his very being.
“…The Rhask I know of never talks unless in a difficult battle,” Yamal said, voice low and asured. His crimson eyes bled into a dangerous glow as power simred beneath his calm exterior.
The temperature in the booth seed to dip as his aura surged, a dark crimson tide wrapping around him like a second skin. It wasn’t just for show. Yamal, second-in-command, was taking this seriously.
Rhask’s gaze flickered to Regnare instinctively, hoping for backup, a word, anything.
But Regnare just shrugged, leaning lazily back in his seat, amusent tugging at the corner of his lips. ‘Sorry, bro. You’d have to convince them yourself.’ His eyes said it clearly: You’re the one who disappeared for this long. I’m not saving you from this one.
Yamal took a step forward, closing the space between them with silent precision. He was no longer at his old level. Everyone could feel it. The air rippled faintly as his crimson aura flared, pressing down like an invisible tide.
The table had suddenly beco the center of a storm.
“You were gone for just a few weeks,” Maelis’ voice cut through next. Her silver hair shifted slightly as she tilted her head, nostrils flaring subtly. Her senses were razor-sharp. “Yet your scent isn’t the sa. Your rhythm isn’t the sa. Rhask… you feel wrong.”
“Your aura is… twisted,” Vorr added, his normally quiet voice steady but hard. “It’s like standing next to a blade that hasn’t decided whether to cut you or spare you.”
“I’ve seen corpses that felt more alive than you,” Kalev muttered under his breath, though his hand remained close to the energy pistol hidden beneath the table.
“Your eyes weren’t like that,” Darak finally rumbled, his voice shaking with sothing between confusion and emotion. “And your hair… Rhask, what the hell happened to you?”
Rhask stood there, his dreadlocks tied neatly back, his crimson eyes with black slit pupils unblinking. He could see their distrust, feel it pulsing through the air like a heartbeat out of sync. His skin was paler now, too pale for what they rembered. His horn, the single black spike now curving from his forehead, was a silent declaration of the thing he had beco.
He wanted to explain everything, but the words caught in his throat.
I didn’t change who I am… I just beca what I had to.
“People change,” he said finally, his voice quieter now, but it carried a resonance that hadn’t been there before. A weight that made the table go still for a heartbeat too long.
Nyarelle’s fingers flexed on her blade. Maelis leaned slightly forward, listening, asuring. Darak’s fists clenched tight against his knees. Yamal’s aura didn’t lower. If anything, it burned brighter.
“You don’t just change like this,” Yamal said, his tone dipping into sothing sharper. “You vanished into nothing, Rhask. You overused your affinity, but this is sothing else… And now you stand here with death wrapped around your soul like a cloak. You’re not walking out of this booth until we know what you are.”
Rhask’s gaze hardened. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t retreat. He’d expected this, maybe not from them all at once, but suspicion had always been a shadow waiting for him at the door.
His voice ca lower, firr now. “Then ask your questions. All of them.”
The air around the booth thickened, pulsing with power, tension, and sothing else, sothing older.
A reunion had just beco an interrogation.
And Regnare… Regnare smirked from his corner, crossing one leg over the other. Well, he thought dryly, this party’s getting lively.
…
The questions ca fast. Too fast.And Rhask answered them one after another, his voice steady, his eyes unwavering, but every word only made the weight in the air press harder against him.
“When did you wake up?” Maelis asked first, her head tilted, listening not to his words but to the sound beneath them, the cadence of breath, the beat of a pulse, the hidden tells of deception.
“Three days ago,” Rhask answered simply.
“Where were you?” Kalev leaned forward, elbow on the table, chanical fingers tapping lightly. His tone was casual, but his gaze wasn’t. “Because you didn’t just take a nap. You disappeared into a deep coma. And not even the Emperor’s hounds could sniff you out.”
“In stasis,” Rhask replied. “Under Master Lamair’s care.”
“Who brought you out?” Vorr asked, his calm voice slicing clean through the building tension. “And why now?”
“My master.”
“And what the hell happened to your face?” Darak bood at last, gesturing to the horn on Rhask’s forehead. “‘Cause last ti I checked, you didn’t have that.”
Rhask clenched his fists beneath the table. He’d expected the questions, but not the accusation hidden behind each one. It wasn’t their fault; they were soldiers, and soldiers knew what danger felt like. But it still stung.
Nyarelle’s voice slid in last, soft and lethal: “You’re different, Rhask. And different can an dead. Or worse.”
That last line hung in the air like a blade.Then sothing in him snapped.
His fingers trembled, not with fear, but with the kind of restrained power that begged to be unleashed. “You think I don’t know I’ve changed?” Rhask’s voice was low, but it cut through every whisper. “You think I asked for this?”
The booth trembled as a pressure started to rise, not a flare, not a burst, but a slow, creeping flood. A thick, invisible web extended from Rhask’s body, brushing across each of them like the touch of cold, skeletal fingers.
The very air seed to bend.
“Rhask…” Yamal’s eyes narrowed, and his crimson aura started to rise in response. “Don’t.”
But it was already too late.
The flood of his aura burst forth in a single pulse. Shadows deepened around the booth, the lights above flickered, and the hum of the restaurant blurred into silence. The aura wasn’t just power. It was precision. It was control.
Peak Expert.Sharp. Heavy. Dangerous.And, Regnare noted with a sudden tightening in his chest, dangerously close to Master level.
It wasn’t chaotic like Yamal’s fiery surge or Nyarelle’s cold precision. Rhask’s aura was like a puppeteer pulling invisible strings, deliberate, quiet, absolute.
For a heartbeat, everyone froze.Not because of fear.But because of recognition.
“…This feeling,” Yamal breathed, his aura faltering for the first ti. His crimson eyes flickered with sothing uncharacteristic. “This is…”
Darak’s eyes widened, voice rough. “It’s him.”
Nyarelle’s dagger lowered slightly, her instincts fighting against the very familiarity of that presence. That threading sensation. The sa overwhelming pressure they’d felt during that fateful simulation against Tyrant, the day everything went wrong.
Regnare stared at him quietly, the smirk gone now, replaced with a complicated look. The air had grown still again, but it wasn’t dangerous anymore. It was just… Rhask. The real Rhask. The aura that once commanded entire fields like a conductor controlling an orchestra of death. The puppeteer.
“…You overused it that day,” Vorr said softly, piecing it together. “That’s why you vanished. You burned through your core.”
“Collapsed right in the middle of the fight,” Kalev muttered. “Scared the shit out of us.”
The mories hit them all at once, the roar of Tyrant, the battlefield simulation, the feeling of their strings being tugged in perfect synchronization. They rembered Rhask at the center of it all, silent, cold, untouchable… until he fell.
Maelis let out a soft breath, as if the tension in her shoulders had finally cracked. “It really is you.”
Rhask slowly reined his aura back in, like silk threads rolling smoothly onto a spool. He exhaled. “Yeah,” he said, his voice steady again. “It’s .”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy anymore. It was… real. Grounded.
Yamal rubbed the bridge of his nose, muttering, “Damn it. You scared there.”
Darak grinned, rough and loud. “I almost punched you.”
“Would’ve broken your hand,” Vorr muttered, smirking faintly.
Kalev leaned back in his chair. “Peak Expert, huh? Tch. Show off.”
Nyarelle didn’t smile, but her blade was fully lowered now. “Next ti,” she said calmly, “don’t unleash that kind of aura in a public place.”
Regnare finally leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, grin returning in full force. “Well… now that we’ve established that our favorite corpse is back, how about we actually enjoy this damn night?”
And just like that, the storm eased. The tension in the booth lted into sothing warr, quieter.
Rhask could still feel their eyes on him, but this ti, it wasn’t suspicion.It was recognition.It was family.
And for the first ti in years, he didn’t feel like a shadow haunting the edges of their world.
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