Santy's brain rattled. The voice—so cold, so commanding, yet so feeble— obfuscated his senses, making him unable to determine if it had echoed in his ear... or had whispered to his soul.
The air whipped and whooshed, before beginning to whorl atop the strange rock with ferocity that ripped the smaller pebbles of the ground. A few of them broke free of the spiral and pelted onto Santy.
Santy hissed and tried to cover his head, making him realise his fingers had sank into the rock, not budging off. It was surprisingly warm.
A bloody mist bubbled out of it and diffused into the air. It churned and churned, concentrating into a darkish red in the air, like a potent concoction of blood, and started to solidify right above Santy.
The pebbles got sucked into it and disappeared. It stretched to the size of a human, with a glossy, translucent surface.
From the distance, he could hear the spectators shocked cries.
"Why is a Rupture forming here?"
"Shit! The two will get pulled into Hell... we won't be able to retrieve the egg like this."
"We can't just barge in there... does anybody know where it links to?"
Santy didn't have time to pay heed to those voices as the suction force grew so chaotic that it yanked him off the ground and pulled him inside.
The instant his body touched the portal, Santy felt a seering pain. As if something vital inside him was being ripped in two. But he couldn't pin-point what. All he felt was the Heretic slamming into him from the back as he got fully dragged inside.
Shouts echoed at their disappearance.
"No, the crack is closing!"
After a mere few seconds a figure shot out and followed after Santy.
Following the lead, numerous others gave chase.
***
The first change that Santy felt was the spiking pain that erupted from all his wounds and bruises. Then it was the air.
A pungent odor was ubiquitously present in the wind. It pushed through to his lungs and started to squeeze them.
Cough! Cough!
Santy's eyes swelled red. A severe throbbing in his head made him retch, and retch again admits his fits of coughs. Yet all that exited his throat was a gunky fluid tainted by blood and foam.
The suffocating helplessness made him bang his head on the coarse granular ground.
'Fuck... I feel as if I'll die.' Flecks of red and black popped out on his vision. He could barely make out the maroonish crushed stones that dug into his skin.
His mind felt especially light. His thoughts turned into a panicky crowd whose pleas he barely registered.
Then the darkened dots in his vision swelled and drapped the curtains over his eyes.
'Is this how I go out? Fuck, Sangre Trooty, damn you lived a pathetic life...' Blacked streaks pushed out of his eyes and stained his face while slidding into the blood on his cheeks.
'Fuck... I haven't even lived long yet. I'm barely seventeen you bitch.' His fists clenched down on the pebbles. The pain he felt as his flesh bit into the jagged pieces of grainy rock made his eyes flutter open.
His chin pushed into his lips, his forehead grooved by deep lines. His haggard breathing turned into sputtering chokes.
His vision slightly recovered as though the streams of tears running down his begrimed face had washed his eyes of the corrupted black.
"I don't wanna die..."
As a few fat blobs of tears splattered on the ground, he raised his head, looking around for somebody whom he could ask help from.
But all he saw were deserted ruins— Crumbling structures of odd designs and materials.
It was at this instant that he saw it, the Heretic laying unconsciously on the ground next to him.
His eyes flared. His body seethed as his fists shook from fury. The ring of red around his eyes intensified and an unreasonable amount of anger pumped out of his heart.
"It's all because of you!" His voice was hoarse, his teeth piercing tight till his jaw ached, "You caused this!"
Again, unconsciously, his body began to near him. The closer he got, the deeper the sheen of red grew in his eyes. He even forgot the insufferable condition he was tethered by.
He dragged his body against its will. Then with a pull, he flipped the body upright.
For some reason, he could see the little pulse still throbbing inside him. His haggard but still persisting breath as his cheeks, underneath the filth, had started to regain color.
A deep crimson haze stained his sight. His mind went numb as if something else had taken hold of his body.
He flipped aside the small pebbles and clutched a huge stone which he lifted up with a shake by both hands.
His heart went dum, dum, dum. It raged. It roared.
With a rush of goosebumps travelling down to his hips, he bashed that despicable face. The Heretic's body jolted, his fingers and feet pulled taut, before slowly, lifelessly, slackening.
A sickening crack reared its head as a few drops of blood splattered Santy's face.
One jumped to his eyes, causing his face to flinch and his eyelashes to flap.
But that only served to goad him further as he again raised the stone and... thwat!
He clobbered him again and again and again, causing his skull to arch inward and his skin to rupture and turn into flattened paste.
Suddenly the Rupture behind him whooshed as another figure shot out. The sudden intruder forcefully snapped the light back into Santy's eyes.
"Huh!?" Then all the pain and suffocation that he had been blindly pushing through with hit him at once.
His eyes flickered as the man that had appeared yelped and took two steps back in defense. His face turning serious as his fingers slipped into the pouch on his hips— preparing to battle.
Seeing his eyes as they shuffled from him to his side, a frown appeared on Santy's face as he looked back.
"AAHHH!" A scream jumped out of his throat as he attempted to crawl back, but the gruesome sight left his body cold and unresponsive.
He retched again, this time, a flood of blood burst out of his mouth and bathed the corpse's already deformed, bloody head.
A pang hit his heart, like a pin pressing down and trying to pop a balloon. His face churned as his body powerlessly collapsed onto the corpse.
Then he felt something stir within him, unlike before, with desperation that enlightened Santy to its prescene. His eyes flashed, his mind cleared as if some foreign influence had finally subsided— distracted by something else.
'Where's that rock?' His already pale face turned livid as he remembered how his fingers had sank into it, unable to leave it.
'There's no way it slipped from my hand...' Anger bubbled in his chest, then he sensed it... deep somewhere inside him.
He felt the foreign prescene of something especially cold and malignant.
It had a stony texture, with black strange markings dancing around its surface in a frenzy. Exuding a subtle black glow. Santy's teeth gritted tight.
It was gawning at him... his powerlessness, his helplessness.
The figure of that Devil flashed in his mind. The face of that silvery winged bastard. Then this stone.
It wasn't that he felt that they were toying with him that made him feel the urge to... puke. It was instead that they probably didn't even care for whatever happened to him.
How insignificant he was to them... for them to so casually disregard him while similarly throwing him to his death numerous times for their own ends.
His fingers lightly pushed into the chest of the Heretic he was collapsed upon... completely unable to exert any force.
Suddenly, the black glow exuding out of his palm reflected in his eyes, it had been for a while, but he had just registered it.
His teeth gritted in hate, not even the sudden crooking of one stirred him a stop. It became clear to him that the stone had been manipulating his body as it willed.
Slowly, a twisting, intangible blob of black tendrils popped out of the corpse.
The sight of this thing numbed his boiling blood. His powerless body trembled in its prescene.
The thing felt sacred, as though it shouldn't even be gazed upon, much less touched. But that was exactly what his hand did.
It pulled the blob closer and upon a single touch, all of it percolated through his palm.
It lasted in his body for an instance. Santy sensed a rush of strength in his powerless body, as though hundreds of steroids had been injected into him, and, instinctively, a word jumped to his lips in fright.
Soul.
The man who had been watching intently on guard, feeling the kid's trick of playing helpless to lure him forward before suddenly attacking him to be too childish for a seasoned warrior like him, suddenly screamed and leapt forward.
But it was too late.
All the energy rushed toward the rock which engorged on it in relish. It grew in size and cracks stretched out on its body.
A powerful prescene burst out of Santy that flung the man alongside all the figures that were just now shooting out of the Rupture flying back and crashing into the nearby dilapidated structures.
Santy's body convulsed and spasmed. Thick veins poked out of his skin, yet it wasn't the pain that made him grind his teeth.
It was the unwillingness. The helplessness. The powerlessness.
From the depths of his soul a screech bellowed out. It was the similar to the earlier incomprehensible one that grated his ears before. Only far worse.
As though the wails of a thousand dying people were reaching his ears at once. Yet it was devoid of any flare or fear, instead, it was icy cold. It made his soul shudder.
But, he strangely 'sensed' what it had been trying to say. The only reason he could think of was the shitty rock. But what he sensed only... left him perplexed.
[Requisites met.]
[Commencing Nightmare.]
[Target: Sangre Trooty.]
[Prompting the target to catharsis via abreaction.]
Before he could even begin to understand. A sound like the flowing of water engulfed him as all his pain rapidly dissipated like a bad dream.
Then the noise hushed. The darkness over his eyes driven back by piercing light, making him squint.
Slowly, his eyes settled and he started making out a few figures through the fog that was scattering rapidly from his eyes.
The sound of horns mixed with the prattle of the students to form a familiar, comforting noise.
The familiar college guard was closing the large college gates after the initial rush of students thinned.
The splayed rays of gold etched in the sky, coming from the sun in the midst of crawling down, painted the sombre time of evening.
'What... what just happened?' His eyes stared in shock at the group of his three friends that surrounded him.
Chatting away as if it was... evening. The same evening of the new year's eve that he had already lived past.
'How is this possible... did I have a dream?' His eyes flickered. A dark glow emitted from it as a word that had practically stood out to him resurfaced to his tongue.
'Nightmare... was I having a nightmare?'
His hand clenched his chest, cold sweat dampening his back.
'Or is this the Nightmare.. the hope of it being a nightmare?'