In the shadows of the S Ranked Main character -
Chapter 65: Boss(6)
Chapter 65: Boss(6)
June pov
June’s voice barely escaped his throat.
But the moment he spoke
Silence
Not quiet. Not a pause.
A stop
As if every kneeling corpse, every bent monster, every malformed worshipper had been struck with an unseen blade that severed their strings mid-act.
The chant ended in perfect, dead synchrony.
Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.
All still.
All frozen in position.
The sudden absence of noise was not relief it was pressure. The void left behind by their voices was too complete. As though even the very air had forgotten how to vibrate.
June stood absolutely still, his sword limp in his hand, pulse hammering in his ears. He could feel his own heartbeat like a war drum now, out of place in the deadened church.
He opened his mouth to speak again—
Then they moved.
Not their bodies. Those remained utterly rigid.
But the sound returned.
Faint.
Dry.
Not spoken aloud, but heard, somehow, everywhere and nowhere. Not in the air. Not in the mind.
In the bones.
"...Help her..."
A whisper not from one throat, but from all of them. Every corpse. Every beast. Every creature.
Still unmoving. Still bowed.
But whispering.
Not rhythmic. Not ritualized anymore.
They weren’t chanting.
They were remembering.
"...Help her..."
"...Please, help her..."
"...She’s still dreaming..."
"...She won’t wake up..."
The words trembled. As though the ones speaking them had been crushed under too much weight. Too much time. Too much failure.
Then—
The voice changed.
It wasn’t the others now.
It wasn’t the thousand whispers.
It was one.
A voice layered, exhausted, old not in age, but in experience. Like something that had once been vast, divine, capable, but had been whittled down to a fraying strand of self.
It didn’t echo.
It bled.
"...I don’t have much time..." the voice said.
June’s breath hitched. His body locked.
"...But you need to deal with her..."
"Because I... I can’t... not anymore..."
It sounded... male. Barely.
And wrong.
Like the voice was coming from behind a wall. Like it was trying to remember how to speak at all.
"I tried... gods, I tried... I buried her beneath rituals... locked the doors, drowned the memories... I failed every time."
"She always finds a way to dream again."
"Every cycle, every re-loop... I fix one piece and she breaks another..."
"You weren’t supposed to be here yet. But now you are."
"So now you must."
The voice wavered.
Cracked.
"Don’t trust what she looks like."
"She’ll sound real. Sound right. She’ll say the name you need to hear. She’ll smile the way you want her to. She’ll cry like she means it. But it’s not her Not anymore."
"What’s left is just..."
Silence again.
This time not from interruption, but from collapse.
As if the speaker had simply gone out.
The kneeling corpses did not rise.
But they moved one last time.
Together.
All at once, as if a bell had been struck across the dead.
Every one of them raised their head.
Not fast. Not dramatic.
But slow. With dignity. As if waking from a long, long prayer.
And their eyes—where there were still eyes—glowed faintly.
Not with light.
With memory.
June didn’t step back.
Couldn’t.
Every gaze in the ruined cathedral fixed—not on the altar.
On him.
One voice. Not spoken aloud. But final.
"Don’t let her open the last door."
"Don’t let her Wake up"
And then
Stillness.
Their heads bowed again.
And this time, they didn’t rise.
Not one.
No breathing.
No twitching.
No chant.
The corpses had gone still in perfect unison spines bowed in reverence before the altar, as if they’d finished their final prayer. Or maybe as if they were waiting for his answer.
June stood alone.
The ruined church cold and unmoving.
The altar before him silent.
The corpse unmoved.
But something behind the silence watched.
Something inside the cracks.
And the air that returned with sound felt thin, like he was being measured.
June exhaled once, softly.
"...What the hell are you?" he whispered.
But he already knew:
She wasn’t sleeping.
She was just waiting.
And the worst part was
Whoever that voice had once been...
They had loved her.
---
The moment the final whisper faded from the cathedral, the ruined air went still again—
and then it wasn’t.
June staggered slightly as the world around him warped not like a spell, not like teleportation. This was temporal. A ripple in memory A fracture in sequence
The altar flared once.
The corpse did not move.
But his vision did.
The world tilted, flickered—
And June was no longer in the church.
---
[Somewhere Else. Somewhen Else.]
Ash swept across a burned village square, the ground cracked, the air thick with death. The sky overhead was a hollow gray, warped at the edges. A ruined street stretched ahead, bodies scattered, heat still radiating from distant fires.
And then he saw them.
Kai.
Dragging himself upright, left leg shredded below the knee, a broken arm limp at his side Face pale Breathing ragged
Kathlyn.
Beside him, half-holding, half-dragging him across the ruined earth, her magic flickering faintly in her fingertips, mouth bloodied, voice hoarse from shouting.
June didn’t speak.
He couldn’t.
He wasn’t there.
He was watching.
A vision. A replay. A scar the world refused to heal.
The moment unfolded around him with crystal clarity, like a memory sharpened by pain.
Kai’s voice rasped, desperate, afraid. "Kathlyn—!"
Kathlyn: wild-eyed, wounded, breathless. "We’re GOING!"
The horde behind them rose like a wave. Screeching. Shrieking. Dozens of blackened corpses, rotting warriors, things that should never have moved again.
The sprint The panic The injury
The leg. Gone.
Just gone
Blood sprayed across the ash. Kai nearly blacked out. Kathlyn didn’t let him
"Don’t you dare pass out," she snapped, voice cracking under the weight of exhaustion.
She carried him. Hauled him. Through corridors of crumbling stone, dodging the horde with inches to spare, her magic too weak to fight, just enough to resist.
And then—
The fairies.
The burst of light.
The trial’s end.
June watched it all. All of it.
Every pain-streaked stumble. Every cursed breath. Every heartbeat shared between two people on the edge of death and failure.
He saw the kiss.
That quick, trembling kiss Kathlyn pressed to Kai’s cheek. Her voice soft Her goodbye clear.
"In case I fail. Thank you."
He saw the way Kai froze injured, stunned, unable to stop her as the light claimed him.
He saw the way Kathlyn turned. Alone. Resolute. And walked toward the ritual with fists clenched, teeth gritted, shoulders shaking beneath the weight of something ancient.
And then the white light took Kai
And June blinked.
---
[Back in the Church.]
He was standing again before the altar.
His knuckles were white against the grip of his sword.
But something in him had changed.
Something in him had felt that memory not as a story, but as truth.
And worse
He’d felt the wound left behind.
Not the leg.
The separation.
The way Kathlyn had walked into that light with a smile she didn’t believe in, and a goodbye Kai hadn’t wanted to understand.
And now... June understood.
The voice had said not to trust her.
Not to believe what she looked like.
That she would smile. Cry. Sound real.
And now June had seen it:
Kathlyn’s goodbye was real.
But what came back might not be.
He turned slowly toward the altar, the corpse still unmoving.
But his voice was steady now.
"...If this is what she left behind," he muttered, "then I need to know..."
He stepped forward once more.
"...what she’s become."
---
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