Aden didn't wait for Zero's analytic voice to co through before he calmly pushed the door open. The wood didn't creak, it simply dissolved where the heat touched it.
The room was a swirling vortex of bruised purple and searing orange. Eren was suspended in the center, his clothes already scorched away, his skin glowing with the intensity of a dying star. The Violet Shard was embedded in the center of his chest, pulsing like a jagged, poisonous heart.
"Eren," Aden said, his voice occupying the space entirely.
The boy's eyes snapped open. They weren't amber anymore. They were two pits of molten glass, overflowing with a liquid fire that hissed as it hit the floor.
"It's... too much..." Eren gasped, his voice vibrating with the tallic resonance of the shard. "The hunters... I can hear them screaming inside !"
Aden's expression remained passive as he walked calmly toward Eren. His brows furrowed ever so slightly, betraying the storm of thoughts racing through his mind.
'I've made another mistake,' he thought.
After his exchange with the Entity, Aden realized he had almost completely forgotten the fundantals of cultivating Resonance. mories of his training resurfaced, clarifying the connection to natural frequencies and the subtle art of guiding them, not recklessly absorbing volatile, semi-sentient energy the mont he sensed it.
'Kaelthorn would be dissapointed,' the Entity jabbed ruthlessly.
Aden remained silent, neither denying nor accepting the fact.
'Master,' Zero signaled urgently. 'The boy is failing to assimilate the mory-trace within the shard. If the Desperation of the Tetrarchy overwhelms his Friction, he will beco a Living Bomb. The blast radius will eliminate the entire block.'
'And you think I don't know that? I wonder who's fault this whole thing is. If you'd advised against him absorbing this energy or reminded that the manner of cultivating Void and Resonance are fundantally different, we won't be in this ss.'
A long silence followed in Aden's mind space as he outstretched his palms and placed them squarely on Eren's back. His fingers didn't burn; the Void energy simply denied the thermal energy the right to affect him.
As he reached out to the shard in his chest, Zero's voice sounded timidly in his mind.
'But I did so, and the Master said the child could handle it.'
Aden's hand froze. A cold sensation crept up his back despite the searing heat surrounding him.
'I never said that,' he proclaid, his voice painstakingly maintaining its calm.
Zero's voice grew a tad confident as he replied, 'You can ask Lorelei if you deem it necessary.'
'Lorelei,' Aden called out. His ntal voice didn't carry its usual command; it was sharp, brittle, like glass under pressure. 'Zero claims I authorized the boy to absorb the Violet Shard directly. Tell he's mistaken.'
A heavy silence followed. In the physical room, Eren's skin began to flake away in glowing embers, his Friction grinding against the Desperation in a screeching, tallic howl.
'Master...' Lorelei's voice was hesitant, flavored with a deep, unsettling sadness. 'You... you did. After you snapped your shoulder back into place in the Arena. You looked at the shard and said that if the boy wanted to be a weapon, he had to learn to eat the ghosts just like you did. I tried to speak, but your Resonance was so... cold. I thought you had a plan.'
Aden's obsidian eyes widened. The heat of the room seed to vanish, replaced by an absolute, biting frost in his marrow. He didn't rember saying it. He didn't rember the coldness she described.
'Stage III,' the Entity whispered, a dark, rhythmic throb in Aden's skull. 'The narrative is being revised, Aden. Your Humanity rembered the danger. The Void rembered the utility. And the Void has a louder voice now.'
'Just... stay quiet,' Aden ordered as he retracted his hand for a split second to wipe the small beads of sweat forming on the creases of his forehead.
He didn't respond to Lorelei. He couldn't.
He looked at the back of Eren's head. The boy was shaking, his spine arching as the violet light of the shard began to sprout jagged, crystalline thorns from his vertebrae. The Desperation of the dead hunters was using Eren's Friction of his soul as a battery to reincarnate their final, agonizing monts.
"I… did this," Aden whispered, though his tone carried no trace of apology.
'Master!' Zero's voice spiked. 'Core temperature at 4,000°C. The boy's Resonance heart is about to invert. If you do not act, the result will consu the safehouse and the younger subjects, and the barrier we placed can't hold down Resonance as effectively.'
Aden's hands, still pressed against Eren's burning back, tightened. He felt the two energies fighting—the orange heat of life and the violet cold of death.
"Zero," Aden commanded, his voice returning to that flat, terrifyingly calm register. "Sync with my core. We aren't going to stabilize him. We're going to Substract the mory-trace."
"Master, that will require you to process the Tetrarchy's final monts yourself. Your mory-loss will accelerate—'
"Do it."
Aden closed his eyes and pushed. He didn't guide the energy, he invaded it.
Suddenly, Aden wasn't in the slums. He was back in the Arena, but he was seeing it through the eyes of the Tetrarchy. He felt the crushing weight of the blast, the absolute terror of his Absence, and the fanatical devotion to the Redwyns.
He began to pull the Screams out of Eren and into his own mind.
In the physical world, the orange glow on Eren's skin began to stabilize, turning into a deep, controlled crimson. But Aden's silver hair began to turn a dull, ashen grey, and the violet crack in his eye bled down his cheek like a tear.
'Aden!' Lorelei cried out telepathically. 'Your life is fading! You have to stop now!'
'I rember...' Aden thought, his consciousness flickering. 'I rember the axe. I rember the jungle. But... what was the color of my Master's eyes?'
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