The Extra's Rebellion
Chapter 105: A child’s dream

Chapter 105: A child’s dream

"Watch your back out they! You’ll never know where a blade is coming from".

Ignoring Noctis threat, he found his way back to his squad apartment.

The academy grounds were unusually lively—students gathering in groups, laughing, hugging, kissing goodbye. Some wore full gear, others still clung to school uniforms and final memories.

Most of them had no idea how harsh the world truly was. But they were all about to find out.

Zephyr didn’t bother watching them long. He kept his pace steady, eyes fixed ahead.

He eventually arrived at the building assigned to his squad. He reached the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside without pause.

He felt all eyes turning to him.

His squadmates sat scattered across the living room, mid-conversation, but his arrival brought silence. Tension prickled the air as Cynthia shifted uncomfortably.

Zephyr didn’t stop, officially he was no longer a part of this squad, and it met he didn’t need to acknowledge them.

He crossed the room without a word and disappeared into his assigned quarters, he had better things to do than entertain awkward stares or pointless chatter.

Like figuring out where the hell he was supposed to get to Limbo.

He kicked off his shoes and dropped onto the bed like a corpse returning to a grave. Arms spread wide, eyes on the ceiling.

"I’ll wait for Merin to return". He muttered.

She was due to return today. Maybe she’d have an idea— any idea— on how to reach Limbo. That in-between world had been calling to him for weeks now, tugging at his thoughts like a hook beneath the skin.

His eyes followed the pattern of tiles above.

One. Two. Three. Four...

Then—

"What the hell is wrong with me". Zephyr recalled what had happened earlier today. Back when he was underneath the pile of snow, his very existence told him to just lie down and die, the pain was unbearable.

But he didn’t want it to end there so he just screamed internally like some anime protagonist, who knew that his body would move despite the state it was in.

He had ordered his body to move.

And it had, not out of strength but of sheer will.

When the blade broke in his chest, he felt shock more then he felt pain. The shock had been louder than the agony.

His body moved without hesitation, he knew at that point that the pain would be unbearable, but the most shocking part was that, despite the pain clouding his mind, he could still think. And clearly to boot.

He had assumed that it had something to do with his strange new eye, but that sentence echoing in his head threw that idea to the trash.

At the therapy session, when he was thinking about it deeply, a sentence crossed his mind.

"His body has learned to move without strength. And his mind... had learned to function without hope".

"I wish I could see his memories," he said quietly. "Maybe then I’d know what he’s been through."

Then he remembered that he could indeed see them.

Clairvoyance.

His eyes flicked toward the mirror across the room. He rose swiftly, locked the door, and stood in front of it. The rules of clairvoyance were simple—it required proximity. Line of sight. And since memories were abstract, the best anchor...

Was a soul, and eyes, after all, were windows to the soul.

Zephyr stared into the mirror, unblinking.

Then, just as he prepared to activate the Eye, he heard a whisper.

"Don’t do it."

He froze.

The room was silent. His space sense detected no presence. No hidden energy, no Aether fluctuation.

"Must be my imagination". He muttered, shaking it off, he was sure that it was just his imagination, why else would the whisper sound exactly like his voice.

His eyes shimmered like disturbed water.

The irises bloomed into lavender, and the color spilled outward, slowly, concentric circles formed and rotated within them—an endless tide of motion.

He took a breath— and he willed it.

Clairvoyance.

Then the whisper came again.

But this time... he knew it wasn’t just his imagination, and he now knew the source of the whisper.

It came from his mouth. Soft. Trembling.

"...Don’t do it... I beg of you".

Zephyr’s blood ran cold.

His own reflection stood in front of him—but the lips in the mirror was moving, begging him to stop whatever he was about to do, but the deed was already done.

Too late.

Reality folded like wet paper.

And then—

Darkness swallowed everything.

****

For a moment, everything went black.

Not just the room. Not just the mirror. Everything.

Zephyr couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. The world had vanished, leaving behind only pain—phantom pain—ripping across his entire body.

It felt like he had drowned. His lungs burned with absence, like he was underwater and fire had taken residence in his bones. His skin stung like it had been scraped raw, charred in a fire accident.

Yet he wasn’t drowning nor was he wasn’t burning.

He was simply inside it—the darkness.

A familiar one.

This wasn’t just any void. No. This—this was the Pit.

"Don’t tell me I’m in the Pit..." he muttered in disbelief. But then—

A voice echoed softly through the void.

"Mom said the sun is a celestial body and is immortal... and she says that I’m her sun. Does that mean I’m immortal too?".

Zephyr froze.

That voice... ther was no mistaking it, it was his voice.

But not as it was now— this one was smaller, softer, uncertain.

"My five year old voice...". Zephyr instinctively knew that this was his voice while he was five years of age.

"Mom also says the stars are celestial bodies. That means we’re all immortal brothers, right?".

"I’m sorry I broke my promise to gaze at you every night. Take my song as an apology.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are...".

The voice trailed gently through the darkness like the melody of a dream.

"Up above the world so high... like a diamond in the sky".

Zephyr’s breath caught. ’So pure’. That was the only word that came to mind. So naïve. So untouched by the horrors to come. Even in a world that felt like drowning in tar, that child found joy.

Then—

Tap. Tap. Footsteps.

The boy’s voice wavered.

"Please leave me alone... I’ve been good. I didn’t ask for food. I didn’t do anything wrong...".

But the footsteps came closer.

Zephyr couldn’t see through the suffocating dark, but he heard the boy— his younger self— gasping, running blindly through the void. But it didn’t last.

They caught up to him.

He felt it—the cold hand closing around his small neck. The terror in that grip. The cries.

"I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I don’t know what I did!".

Then crack—

His little head slammed into cold stone. Zephyr felt it— the warm trail of blood slipping down his neck.

And then—the scream.

A shrill, broken cry as fingers pierced into the young boy’s chest. Searching. Tearing.

They closed around his left rib— the last rib —and ripped it out.

Another scream. This one sharp enough to shred his own throat.

Then something was forced into the hole in his chest. Sealed. The rib shoved back in. His small body tossed aside like garbage, hitting a wall before crashing into water.

Cold. Then warm. Then healing.

He ran again. Blind. Broken.

Years passed. Days bled into months. Months into years.

Zephyr was now twelve.

And he was still running, still escaping and still caught. Every time.

His body was numb from pain. But even when his legs failed him and he collapsed, he would whisper—

"They’ll get you...".

And somehow, the body would obey. Run. Always run.

But never far enough, was always caught. Always dragged back. Then— Cold stone. Again.

But this time, a voice—

"Dim the darkness. I want him to see my face".

Even in Zephyr’s half-dead state, that stirred something.

He had endured eight years of memories so far— eight years of hell compressed into one unending moment.

At first, he had regretted using the Eye, then regret turned to pain. Pain became hate.

And hate became numbness.

But no amount of numbness could stop the screams each time they tore into him.

The darkness lightened slightly.

And Zephyr’s young self looked up, his lips trembled. "Aunt Keede... save me..."

But hope was a cruel thing.

She smiled sweetly—before plunging her bare hands into his back. He screamed again.

And she made sure he saw it all.

A memory link through a Hollow Art. So he could see.

More time passed.

He was thirteen now, he sat curled in a corner of the darkness, whispering the only comfort he knew:

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star..." He had gone numb. So had Zephyr.

Then—a soft thud. Something landed on his head.

Food.

"Be safe, young lord". A voice whispered, Serena’s voice.

He tore into it like a beast. He had tracked those who experimented on him. He even found the exit once—but it was too steep to climb.

Footsteps again.

He ran.

Zephyr didn’t cheer for him this time. He already knew how it ended.

Caught. Again.

But this time, they didn’t hurt him immediately.

They offered him a deal.

"Gain access to Aether... and your mother will live".

"Mother. Mother. Mother...". The boy chanted.

Zephyr winced. He remembered this too well.

The boy tried, and failed.

And he believed that failure had cost his mother’s life.

Zephyr watched as the scythe fell, severing her head.

He knew it wasn’t real. She had lived.

But young Zephyr didn’t.

That day, he died—not physically, but somewhere deeper.

The thoughts stopped. No more inner voice. No more songs. No more dreams.

But the body still ran... anytime it heard the footsteps.

Like a cursed machine, still obeying the last order it was ever given.

To run.

To survive.

Even in death.