Kai held Nyra's cold hand tightly, his fingers wrapped around hers as if he could anchor her fading life to the physical world through sheer willpower alone.
He didn't look at the door. Instead, his gaze remained fixed on her pale face.
"Nurse," Kai whispered. His voice was soft, barely louder than the faint mechanical beeping of the heart monitor.
"Could you please give me five minutes?"
The nurse standing by the door hesitated. The tragic atmosphere inside the room pressed heavily against her chest.
She had seen countless patients in critical condition, but something about the boy sitting beside this dying girl made the air feel unnaturally thick.
Suffocating.
She opened her mouth to protest, knowing hospital protocol dictated that no patient involved in a System-related incident be left unsupervised.
But the words refused to come out. The boy's voice carried something strange. It wasn't anger. It wasn't desperation. It was something colder. Something painfully final.
"…Just five minutes," she said quietly, acting almost entirely against her own judgment.
She stepped backward out of the room, gently pulling the heavy metal door shut behind her.
Before she close the door , she took one last glance at girl. Wait why is there 2 shadow... suddenly the door closed rapidly, pushing her away.
The lock clicked.
Silence fell over the isolation ward. The only sound left in the sterile white room was the slowing, agonizing rhythm of the heart monitor.
Beep… Beep… Beep…
Each tone echoed like a distant clock counting down the final moments of a life.
Nyra slowly turned her head toward Kai.
Something felt different. The very pressure of the air around him had shifted.
Kai's head was slightly tilted downward, his expression hidden beneath the harsh white glow of the hospital lights.
The fluorescent rays struck his face at an odd angle. The right side of his face reflected the light faintly. But the left side… the light didn't reflect at all. It vanished.
Nyra's breath caught weakly in her throat.
Her heart started to pounding fast .
Kai's left eye wasn't reflecting the light—it was actively absorbing it. It looked like a tiny, silent black hole sitting in the middle of his face, drinking in the room's illumination.
A strange, cold unease settled over Nyra's fading consciousness. A shiver crawled up her spine.
For the first time since meeting Kai… she felt afraid of him.
"Kai…" slwoly shaking his hand.
Kai leaned slightly closer. "What's the matter, Nyra?"
His voice was entirely too calm. There was no light in it. No warmth. Only a deep, crushing ocean of quiet sadness hidden just beneath the surface.
Kai glanced briefly at the heart monitor beside the bed. The numbers were dropping. Slowly. Steadily.
Her pulse was weakening with every passing minute, yet inexplicably, the shadows beneath her hospital bed seemed to grow darker, reaching up toward her skin.
A violent tremor ran through his hands. Not for himself, but for her. In his mind, it felt as if the System itself was draining the last fragments of her life.
No, she was afraid of dying. She didn't wanted to die without living anything behind. She wanted to live , wanted to discover truths which were unspoken .
Nyra forced a slow, rattling breath through the oxygen mask, curving lips slightly. Her voice trembled perfectly as she spoke.
"Maybe Lucifer was kind today… letting me see you one last time."
Kai's jaw tightened instantly. A muscle twitched sharply in his cheek. "Why are you saying something like that?" he asked quietly.
His hand moved slowly toward his inner jacket pocket, his fingers brushing against the cold, smooth glass of the small bottle hidden inside.
The Elixir of Life. He had to choose.
Lilia… or Nyra.
Before he could pull it out—
THWACK.
THWACK.
THWACK.
The heavy metal door suddenly shook under violent pounding. The peaceful silence of the room shattered completely.
"Mr. Kai!" a harsh, electronically distorted voice shouted from the hallway. "Step away from the patient and come out now!"
Another heavy fist slammed against the metal surface. "We are the authorities! Open the door immediately!"
Kai didn't react. Not even slightly. He didn't look toward the door, nor did he acknowledge the shouts. He simply sat beside Nyra's bed, watching the heart monitor.
Beep… Beep… The sound grew slower. Weaker. Beside him, Nyra's chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Her pulse dropped further.
Beep… … Beep… Kai slowly released her hand. His fingers slipped gently away from hers. The moment his hand left her skin—
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
The long, continuous tone filled the room. The heart monitor flatlined. The pulse dropped to zero.
For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to freeze. Kai stared at the red line stretching across the screen. His hand trembled in his pocket. His fingers tightened around the glass bottle.
" Mister " tiny hands pressing from behind. Kai's breath caught, his eyes sparkled , "it's it's you right , ...Anna". As he was about to turn.
"Don't look behind , Mister " rubbing her tiny trembling face around his curved back . " It's scary .... seeing you like this. "
Kai froze.
He slowly grabbed her hand keeping one hand near Nyra. "I… I'm sorry," His trembling voice scattering across the room. "This useless mister… couldn't save—"
The small hand tightened. "No," Anna said softly. "I'm having fun… with someone who looks just like you."
Kai's pupils shrank, his heart stopped pounding. "What…?"
The warmth behind him began to fade. "Will you come too, mister?"
The small hand dissolved—breaking apart into faint, glowing particles… like dying stars.
Kai's breathing became uneven.
"No… wait—"
Kai wanting to turn behind but was held by the Nyra. The last fragment vanished.
Silence.
beep. beep.
The monitor started to work.
"Ka.. Kai " Nyra whispered with faint voice as if she being choked.
His sanity finally snapped.
Before the cops could breach the lock, Kai ripped the glowing golden bottle out of his jacket, uncorked it with his teeth, and forcefully tipped the single drop of the Elixir of Life past Nyra's pale lips.
A blinding surge of warm, golden System light pulsed through the room, washing over her skin.
He had saved her. He had doomed Lilia.
Kai stood up. His movements were slow. Precise. Mechanical.
It was as if someone had hollowed out the human inside him and replaced it with a machine following a silent, terminal command.
Without looking back at the hospital bed—where a faint, unnatural color was already returning to Nyra's cheeks—Kai walked toward the door.
The pounding outside had grown more aggressive. The Super Cops were seconds away from breaking the lock. Kai reached out, grasped the handle, and pulled the door open.
The hallway outside was filled with heavily armored officers. Black combat suits.
System-issued weapons. Helmet visors glowing faintly under the hospital lights. Kai stepped out of the room, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.
His body blocked the entrance completely. No one could see the miracle inside.
The lead officer stepped forward, his gloved hand resting firmly on the hilt of a sleek System weapon at his waist.
"We are here to arrest you," the officer said coldly, his visor scanning Kai from head to toe.
"You are officially charged with trespassing on restricted property, suspected kidnapping, and the unauthorized use of a lethal Skill in a civilian zone."
The officer paused, his voice hardening into a threat. "But mostly… the System wants to know how a Level Zero is still alive."
The hallway fell dead silent.
Kai said nothing. Slowly, he raised both hands into the air. Empty. Unarmed. A gesture of surrender.
"Then arrest me," Kai said quietly.
He slowly lifted his head. Their eyes met.
Something inside the officers shifted instantly.
For no logical reason, several of the heavily armed men felt their hearts skip painfully inside their chests.
The boy standing in front of them should have been entirely harmless. Level Zero. Powerless. But the look in his eyes felt fundamentally wrong. Terribly wrong.
It was not the gaze of a frightened teenager. It was not the gaze of a desperate criminal, either. It was something else entirely.
A deep, suffocating void. An emptiness that made their primal instincts scream in danger. The lead officer's pride flared instantly.
'A Level Zero making highly trained officers uneasy? Unacceptable.'
With a sudden snarl of anger, he lunged forward. His hand swung violently across Kai's face.
SMACK.
The sharp sound echoed down the hallway. Kai's head snapped to the side under the immense force of the blow.
But he didn't fall. He didn't stumble. He didn't say a single word.
Slowly… Kai turned his head back. His eyes locked onto the officer's face again.
The officer felt a sudden, icy chill crawl down his spine. That look… it wasn't anger. It wasn't fear. It was pure calculation.
For a moment, he had the terrifying feeling that he had just hit something that was not human. It was the cold, unblinking gaze of something studying him.
It looked exactly like a glitch inside a machine, silently analyzing a corrupted line of code right before deleting it.
The officer's breath caught unexpectedly. He stared down at his own fingers, realizing his hand had begun to tremble in complete confusion.
Then, without realizing it—he took a step backward.
Just then, the nurse pushed past the blockade of armored officers, rushing into the isolation room to tend to the flatlined patient.
A second later, her shocked voice echoed into the silent hallway.
"Sir! The patient... her pulse is back!"