Rain leaned against the cold tunnel wall, listening to the air current as he waited.
The pressure from within didn’t build gradually.
It stacked—each second laying another weight on top of the last, until the air itself felt like sothing that had to be earned.
Rain’s first breath after turning back was already half what it should have been. His second was worse.
His lungs didn’t panic. His body simply got to work.
It started without his input. Sothing in him—that deep, stubborn machinery that had kept him alive across more lifetis than he could cleanly count—began to push back.
Not forcefully. More like a tuning fork finding its note against a sound trying to drown it out.
A wavelength. His wavelength.
He couldn’t have nad it if asked.
It wasn’t holy energy—he felt enough of that today to know the difference. It wasn’t dark. It wasn’t a technique he’d been taught or a thod he’d read about.
It was just... him. So core frequency his existence had always been broadcasting, finally turned up loud enough to matter.
The suppression peeled back from around his body like water off hot stone.
He exhaled slowly.
Then took another breath—full, clean, easy.
’Huh.’
Slowly, he made his way back to the large chamber.
Waiting for him there was Haron, standing beside the open gate.
One of his arms had turned monstrous, slick with dark brown scales that resembled a snake’s hide.
His aura had changed as well, and so had his face. Ti itself seed to roll back, leaving him looking no older than thirty.
"Why did you co back?" The other party asked. Even his voice sounded younger now.
"I was curious about the beast sealed in this place," Rain responded. "If my guess is right, you rged with it because it can’t exist on its own."
Haron smiled. "That’s right. I’ve beco its vessel—the highest honor in our organization."
Rain tilted his head slightly. "So, what happens after?"
Haron’s scaled arm flexed, the dark brown hide catching what little light remained in the chamber. "After?"
"Once you’ve collected all the parts." Rain gestured loosely toward the scaled arm.
"Use it to destroy the church." Haron admitted bluntly.
Rain shook his head. "That’s not what I asked. You would be trading yourself. Your mind. Your will. Everything you are right now gets pushed into a corner and eventually goes dark. You know that."
Haron was quiet for exactly four seconds.
Then he laughed.
"You’re right. Completely right."
"And I don’t care." Haron’s smile softened, serene and peaceful. "I’m not foolish enough to believe I’ll survive what’s coming. I’ve known that ever since I accepted this role."
He raised his monstrous arm and looked at it—not with disgust, not with pride, just with the plain recognition.
"My mission is to make it whole and deliver justice. What happens to after that—" he lowered his arm—"is irrelevant."
A disappointed sigh escaped Rain. "Huh. You’re actually more boring than I expected."
The cold that had settled into the stone since the gate opened began pulling back from Rain.
Then his skin changed.
It began at his hands, the redness deepening as it climbed his forearms, spreading across his neck and face.
One hundred percent. From the first breath.
Thin streams of steam hissed from his pores, curling upward before fading into the air.
This was only the second ti he unleashed it since arriving in this world.
While others might see it as nothing more than a spike in temperature, the chanism behind it was far more intricate.
To reach this level, his heart had to beat at an impossible rate—five hundred tis per minute.
Such a feat required more than a normal heart; every blood vessel, every organ had to be equally flexible, stretching and contracting like living rubber to withstand the strain.
Without his regeneration ability and the countless evolutions his body had undergone, he would have already exploded under the pressure.
"You’re more dangerous than I thought." Haron’s eyes narrowed. The thing sharing his body recognized what it was looking at.
And it was not unimpressed.
His scaled arm rolled slowly at the shoulder, the dark brown hide pulling taut over sothing that was no longer quite the shape of a human joint.
His aura expanded in response—not to match Rain’s heat, but to answer it. Deep and cold and vast, the way the bottom of an ocean was vast.
Rain’s fingers curled.
The VIEL responded. Dark slimy substance pulling from his clothing, solidifying between his hands into the shape of a huge bow.
It was shaped purely to deliver force.
He pulled.
The string drew back further than any bowstring had a right to. The material reshaped under the pressure—softness hardening like tal, thread by thread.
Fiber locked against fiber until it sang a single, continuous note, a sound that had nothing to do with music.
Soon, the air around the string stopped behaving normally. Dust lifted from the stone floor without being touched.
He released.
The sound ca after—sharp, piercing, like an airwave produced only by a bullet train.
Haron’s scaled arm snapped up and caught it.
The impact exploded against his palm. His feet carved two short grooves backward across the stone.
Then he stopped.
He stood there, scaled hand still raised, smoke curling from between his fingers.
Slowly he opened his palm. The bolt had spent itself completely against his grip, leaving nothing behind.
Haron flexed his fingers once, studying them with interest.
"A flying boulder," he said, almost to himself. "That’s roughly what that felt like."
He lowered his arm and looked up. His expression held no anger, no alarm.
"Is that your ceiling?"
Rain was already pulling the string back again. His eyes squinted, but there was no fear—only a grin stretching from ear to ear.
This was it. The mont he had been chasing. The electrifying thrill of facing an enemy who could crush him without effort.
His mind raced.
Every possibility flickered, collided, and refined itself until a plan—impossible yet intoxicating—began to crystallize.
"No. I’m just getting started."
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