After that birthday night, the day of the course closing ceremony had finally arrived. In one of the auditoriums of the school building, Hanabi was giving the speech before the crowd of students and parents present.
With a sober posture that could deceive more than one, the proud woman spoke about the moral and ethical values that were the pillar that sustained that institution. Making an effort to contain a laugh full of cynicism, Yukino bit her lip trying to bear that string of lies that the parents themselves swallowed even knowing the kind of children they had in her house.
Being true to her word, Akane began to make life miserable for Yukino as soon as she set foot on the school premises. The harassment was varied and at times seemed a cliché, like the tacks on the shoes, anonymous with insults and the desk smashed with obscene marks. But the day before the ceremony, the harassment reached an unexpected level.
It was a little past 6 p.m. on the classroom clock when Chiasa the class treasurer asked Yukino to accompany her to the student council offices, in order to discuss the planning of visiting points and expenses for the school trip for the third graders .
Upon arriving at the office, Akane found herself on her back, staring out the window at Yukino's reflection while he smiled unfriendly. As the minutes passed, the discussion seemed to pass normally and without major setbacks they decided that the destination would be Nagoya. Taking advantage of the fact that the Yamaguchi family had a mansion in that city, they could use the funds for other consumptions and save on lodging.
After the discussion, Yukino stood up and headed towards the classroom to collect his things and go with Kaoru. The moment he stepped outside the council office, Akane told him that he should hurry back to the hall. Because of the time he could not guarantee the safety of his belongings.
Yukino felt a chill on the back of her neck as if a Yurei was stealing her life, the emphasis Akane put on the word belongings was not referring to material objects. As he ran down the stairs, Yukino felt that it was difficult for him to breathe and running saliva down his throat was like swallowing needles. By the time I get to the living room and look inside, the desks were thrown away as a sign of a fight. Among all the things that were thrown on the floor, a notebook stood out for a small stuffed animal in the shape of a rabbit.
On it was a notation written with something akin to blood, which when he read it made his heart nearly paralyze: "Look for your bunny in the ladies' room on the first floor." His legs were shaking and they could hardly answer him due to the shock that that note caused him.
Lucero could heal thanks to Yukino's latent powers, but only as long as he had that channel with him along with her. A few more negative thoughts crowded his mind, making his fears seem very real as he tried to reach out by leaning against the walls, almost shuffling.
"Bright Star!" - A heartrending scream came from deep in Yukino's gut as he slammed open the bathroom door. In front of her, she was completely bound and gagged as she was held by several of Akane's friends.
Her eyes were filled with tears and her gaze was that of a completely terrified prey in the face of a predator. The door behind Yukino was locked and just behind her a shadowy figure struck her with a metal piece on her knees, causing her to cry out in pain as she fell to the floor barely reaching to put her hands together.
"Now I can see who is the woman to whom you have now given your heart to my beloved Yukino" - That sarcastic voice was none other than that of Akane, who slowly approaching the defenseless Kaoru, smiled devilishly as she took out a retractable knife from her pocket of her skirt.
"Don't you dare hurt him, your problem is with me!" - Yukino was desperate at the helplessness of not being able to move due to the damage received in her legs. That desperation escalated sharply as the razor's edge settled on Kaoru's throbbing jugular.
Her desperation made him sweat and he tried to scream through her gag to no avail, causing her body to shudder like that of a mouse being trapped by a boa. Just when the razor was about to dig into the skin and sever the jugular, Yukino began to cry bitterly as she hit the bathroom floor until her hands were injured.
"Would you do anything to save this scary bunny?" - Laughing like a possessed drunk with power, Akane approached Yukino as she lifted his face pulling her hair. The expression on her face was that of a bloodthirsty maniac, her eyes were cloudy and her smile for a moment caused panic in the dejected woman on the floor.
"Then undress for me" - With a whisper in her ear, that order was something that caused her disgust for the vile nature from whom she came. But looking once more as Kaoru found herself subdued and at her mercy, he knew she had no choice but to play along with the infamous villain.
Akane forced her to perform different poses for her while taking photos with a digital camera, each pose of her was more denigrating than the last and made her blood boil with rage. But losing all her dignity was preferable to putting Kaoru's life at risk.
I spend half an hour of humiliation in that desolate bathroom until night fell. Akane's henchmen did not stop laughing at Yukino who was dejected in a corner of the bathroom, she tried to cover her nakedness while she cried with anger as she watched them come out of her while they spit on her face with insults.
When she finally felt safe, she crawled over to Kaoru painfully to untie her as she held the channel with her right hand. She was barely released, Kaoru hugged Yukino crying with deep sadness and shame.
The trance of that memory was broken by the sound of applause in the auditorium at the end of Director Hanabi's speech. Who just came down from the stage, she looked for Yukino indicating that he should accompany him to her office.
Upon entering it, she closed the curtains of the large window and lit some ritual candles to light her room. To enter the dimension of the orb, it was necessary for Yukino to spiritually detach himself from her container. Since the ethereal matter was the only one that could cross the barrier of the dimension and nest in it.
When Kaoru hinted that she wanted to accompany Yukino, she was forcefully reprimanded by Hanabi who slapped her. Warning her that she was no longer an astral entity but that she was a simple human being, so detaching her from her spirit would lead to death.
Yukino seeing Kaoru scared, comforted her by hugging her, promising that she would return in a piece of that dimension, causing Hanabi to whistle with disapproval of her for that affectionate show that she did not like at all.
Once prepared to enter the orb, she placed her hands on it and recited in unison a chant that Hanabi dictated to enter her spiritual phase: "Dominus ergo corpus exilium spiritus delapsa". At the last intonation, the flames of the candles were caught and a light enveloped Yukino's body, which collapsed on the floor completely empty.
Feeling in immense darkness, she Yukino found herself oblivious to all sense of time and position. She floating in a sea of ether that completely enveloped him like a lonely shroud in the immense universe.
"Sleeping beauty, do not focus on moving or opening your eyes. That does not exist in that dimension, remember that you are a spiritual being." - With a mocking laugh, Hanabi tried to get Yukino's attention so that she would be aware of the situation she was in.
Being a spiritual entity, the perception of sound, light or movement was not subject to the senses of the human body. But to the spiritual sensory capacity of the individual who was confined in the dimension of the orb. With this in mind, Yukino began to focus on feeling her surroundings by making the very ether that surrounded her give her a physical form of an astral body.
That was very similar to what she experienced when she was with Lucero for the first time before reincarnating and at the moment when she found herself in a trance during the fight in the abandoned building.
"Very well, I thought you were so weak that you would end up dissolving your consciousness in the ether. But it seems that I was wrong" - With a hint of disappointment, Hanabi continued giving him directions so that he could move within the dimension, in which little Little by little he felt as if it were the physical world itself.
For a Loa the domain of the spiritual current is of utmost importance, since the greater the domain, the greater the amount of power that he can control directly from the flow of life. The fine line between life and death resides in that particular quality in the middle of a fight against a void.
Yukino recalled that in her first training experience with Lucero, she told him that it was necessary for him to merge her consciousness with the spiritual flow. But inside the orb that was dangerous, since she just tried to repeat her previous training, her spiritual body began to disintegrate.
With a great yell of anger, Hanabi demanded that she not do anything stupid within the orb. Since being a world that did not follow physical rules, playing experiment could not only end her life, but also create a dimensional rift that could suck everyone in the room into a black hole from which they could not escape.
With that in mind, Yukino found herself in a predicament. Although she had been able to form a spiritual body, making use of the flow of life was impossible for her without a physical medium or the help of the channel. Feeling useless, she began to feel desperation inside of her to the degree of mortification.
"I never thought that she would fuse me with someone so pathetic human, your real name is Adam right?" - The sound of a voice that resembled the flow of many waters resounded inside his being, in front of him, the anthropomorphic figure that had appeared on the night of his first meeting with Hanabi, spoke to him with a tone of authority and disapproval .
"Are you a void?" - With a hint of disbelief, Yukino rebuked that mysterious being that stood in front of her. Which let out a laugh that made even the room where Lucero and Hanabi were found rumble. Those who, seized by a reverent fear, contemplated for the first time in many eons a being like that in front of her eyes.
"I am who I am, I am one with the flow of life and the flow of life is one with me. I stand proud on who dares to put his foot on my ground and desolation is the price he pays for his insolence. confuse with those useless people who have lost their consciousness and are carried away by their primitive instinct. I am a Loa forged from the beginning of time by the same Architects, my name is above all names, I am Apollion. "- If his body spiritual outside of flesh and blood, Yukino would have experienced with all his senses what absolute terror was. That name remembered Adam very well from what he had read in the biblical texts in his past life. Such a powerful angel capable of destroying everything, lord of the abyss and the grave. But that reference was useless in the face of the truths she discovered just after his death.
Apolion explained to him that he was a modeler under the direct orders of the Architects, by which all things acquired their form and reason for being in this universe, manipulating the vital flow with complete obedience to the authority of his lords. But one day he learned from his own experience that the flow of life itself had a consciousness of its own. It communicated and decided for itself and what they considered as control was nothing more than a mere illusion.
This was an absolute heresy in the eyes of the Architects who ordered the capture and remodeling of the heretic. It was then that he understood that they knew in advance everything that happened with the flow of life and when they were discovered the only option to maintain his nefarious power was to silence any voice that opposed them.
From the east of the universe to the west of the last border, the voice of Apollion was spreading and finding followers who joined his cause in order to overthrow those who at some point they considered as fathers. Commanding the Loa hordes in battle for the dominance of the flow of life against the Architects, he engaged in an all-out war that meant the loss of three-quarters of all Loa in the universe.
When they thought his defeat was imminent, an unexpected twist occurred on the battlefield: The flow of life infused his power into their bodies, granting them the ability to face the Architects hand-to-hand. But all power comes with an implicit cost, their bodies were reduced to the primordial particle that shapes the universe, what they knew as the ether.
After that the Architects began to tremble at the idea of an insurmountable and indomitable enemy, far from any yoke of subjection or future obedience. Watching the fruit of their machinations fall like a house of cards, four of the leading Architects made the most drastic decision that even they considered heresy. But in a moment of desperation it seems like a good idea to fight fire against fire.
When Apolion saw it before his eyes, he felt fear and within his being he knew the end result of facing this new fused being. But even as he dictated his pride, he threw himself into combat without measuring any consequence.
The defeat was colossal, every Loa present was reshaped in front of his eyes without being able to do anything at all. The last image that could be taken to the dream of oblivion while it was dissolved in the flow of life, was the entity Pandora putting his hands to her chest with a wince of pain. She tightly holding a strange pendant that looked cracked.
"The talisman broke!" - Yukino remembered Lucero's words in the hospital when he first told her his version of that story. That talisman was the source of consciousness of the supreme being and the fact that it was cracked, gave the possibility that it was unstable.
So much power in the hands of a being insane would be catastrophic for the universe itself, the feeling of anguish grew like foam in the consciousness of Adam who worried about the future of Judith, his young daughter that he had left behind with his death.
"I am not here by chance, nothing happens by the whim of fate in this universe. For eons I remained asleep in the flow of life without regaining my form, while my other comrades in arms rose as living dead without conscience. But that one day a voice called out to me in desperation, forcing me to retrieve the scattered fragments of consciousness from the flow of life. It was then that I saw you standing in the middle of everything, merging with the current being one. " - Apollion said all this with extreme fascination, as if he remembered one of the most significant moments of his entire existence.
For a proud being, to speak in this way implied something extremely important because whom even the Architects themselves could not subjugate, now found someone who he could consider worthy of accompanying him.
Extending his hand against the chest of Yukino's astral body, he began to recite a song in a dead language from the beginning of time. As he did this, the ethereal body began to be covered in what appeared to be armor. The gauntlets had the shape of claws and the boots as if they were beast legs, that resembled a lion.
"To fully use my power, you just have to focus on the concept and shape it. It was what I did while I was a shaper under the clutches of the Architects. I will be with you on your journey to the end, I want to see how far we can go together comrade "- With those last words, Apolion's consciousness merged with Yukino's spiritual body, causing a rumble of power that was difficult to handle even for Hanabi, who in horror watched as a fissure opened in the orb's surface.
"No, no, nooooooo! Shit we are screwed, we are all completely screwed, you damn idiot" - Hanabi screamed desperately, she knew what would happen now that the orb had a fissure. Being an encapsulated dimension, it was stable as long as it was isolated from the outside world. But now both reality and that dimension were colliding uncontrollably.
"Yukino, do something quick or we will all die" - Kaoru desperately pleaded with him to somehow resolve that situation. As the seconds passed, the crack began to widen, letting out strange sounds that resembled unintelligible wailing in complete agony.
Heeding Apollion's words, Yukino concentrated on materializing the flow of his thought into a solution to be able to seal that fissure. Suddenly, a pair of hawklike wings sprouted from her back and she rose above the disturbances of dimension, molding in her hands what seemed to be a resin formed by the very ethereal medium in which she found herself. immersed.
"Swallow this damn" - With a cry and superb strength, Yukino threw that material against the fissure seeing that it began to unite around it, but it was insufficient. Seeing that it was possible to seal it with that substance, she became excited and began to use more of her power to create it until after a few seconds, the fissure had closed completely.
The contingency had passed, both the dimension and the director's room had completely stabilized. That made Kaoru sigh in relief, while Hanabi bit her thumbnail with a disgruntled expression on her face, wondering how someone like Yukino could have acquired such magnificent power.
"We are done for today" - Hanabi was laying her hands on the orb about to chant the chant to bring him back, when she suddenly felt a spiritual disturbance that she had not perceived in a long time.
"It can't be, it's impossible!" - Before her eyes the figure of a girl holding a doll materialized inside the orb face to face with Yukino. It was impossible, she repeated to herself while her body trembled like she had not experienced in a long time.
That girl was her first mission as Loa, but at the same time hers was her first failure, one that signified the radical change in her behavior that made her the cynical and hard-hearted person that she was now.
"For all that is sacred run away, run away!" - Hanabi's eyes and expression were completely disfigured, that stoic woman's appearance crumbling into the vivid expression of terror. She knew that hell was hiding that angelic figure that was approaching step by step until the unnoticed Yukino.
If the dictionary had to choose the image for the definition of hell, it would most likely be the one that was about to happen.