Paulo's cinnamon-brown cloak whipped violently against the howling gale, its heavy fabric snapping like the wings of a dying raven as he trudged deeper into the fractured fantasy realm. The sky above churned in perpetual twilight, bruised violet clouds haemorrhaging crimson lightning that cracked across jagged mountain spines like veins bursting under impossible pressure. Winds screamed at hurricane force, tearing at his skin with icy claws that should have flayed him alive, yet his body, reborn, cursed, unbreakable, stood defiant, every step driving his boots deeper into the blood-red soil.
Memories slammed into his skull like hammer blows from the old world:
Lily's betrayal under that amber streetlamp, the rooftop edge where wind clawed at his chest, Hana's broken body by the river, the sterile psych-ward restraints biting his wrists while he screamed her name into the void.
The trauma had not faded; it had metastasized. Inside his mind, fractured voices howled in endless chorus, You ruin everything. Everyone leaves. Burn it all. Laughter, unhinged and jagged, tore from his throat as he clutched his temples, nails drawing fresh blood that instantly evaporated into green sparks.
"I remember you all… Ava, Alexis, Saya, Tsuki… my ghosts," he snarled to the empty air, eyes wide and manic, pupils dilated into black voids that reflected nothing but the storm. "You left me to rot. You laughed while I shattered. But here? Here I'm the monster they made me. And I like it."
His grin split his face like a wound reopening, teeth bared in feral glee as the depression's black tide fused with reborn rage, twisting sanity into something razor-sharp and laughing. The cloak billowed behind him like a shroud of madness, and he welcomed the hurricane's fury, it felt like the rooftop wind finally answering his scream.
In the distance, three abominations materialized from the sulfurous haze: soul creatures forged from nightmare and bone. Their armour was living ossuary, ivory plates fused with pulsing crimson flesh, veins throbbing like exposed arteries. Glowing green eyes burned with predatory hunger, and thick ropes of acidic drool hissed where they struck the ground, melting stone into smoking craters.
The stench hit Paulo like a physical blow: rotting meat, ozone, and the metallic tang of old blood. The lead beast roared, a sound that vibrated through his bones and dragged fresh flashbacks screaming to the surface, Max's smirk, the group-chat laughter, Hana's final unanswered call. Paulo's laughter rose to meet it, high and broken.
"Come on then!" he bellowed, voice cracking with insane delight. "Let's see if you can break me better than they did!" The first creature charged, earth shattering beneath its cloven hooves. Its massive fist, knuckles ridged with serrated bone, sliced through the air with a sonic boom that flattened trees for a hundred yards.
Paulo sidestepped at the last heartbeat, the shockwave alone ripping five distant mountains into cascading rubble, boulders the size of houses tumbling like dice in a mad god's game.
The displaced air slammed into him like a tidal wave, yet he planted his feet, cloak shredding at the edges, and laughed louder. "Too slow! Just like the rumors, always missing the mark!"
He exploded forward, speed no longer human, twenty times the roar of sound itself, the world blurring into streaks of violet and crimson as his body tore through the atmosphere. The second creature swung a kick that could pulverize granite; Paulo caught the leg mid-arc with one hand, bones grinding audibly, then twisted.
The beast's femur shattered like dry timber, shards exploding outward in a spray of gore. But the third lunged, its claws raking across his torso. Fabric and flesh parted in a wet rip, his left arm tore free at the shoulder in a fountain of arterial spray, the limb spinning away into the storm. Pain detonated, white-hot and exquisite, but Paulo only grinned wider, eyes rolling back in ecstatic madness.
"YES! Hurt me! Make it real!" he screamed, voice echoing with the psych-ward's restraints, the rooftop's final leap, Hana's silence.
Blood poured, yet even as the stump smoked, emerald cosmic energy surged from the wound. Flesh knitted in seconds, muscle threading, bone reforming, skin sealing with a wet snap. The regenerated arm flexed, stronger, veins glowing faintly green.
He snatched a jagged branch from the debris, the simple wood humming as if terrified of what it now held.
The first creature recovered and barrelled in again. Paulo swung the branch like a god's judgment. Cosmic energy detonated around it, viridian lightning coiling into a blade of pure void, slicing clean through the beast's armoured chest. Ribs exploded outward in a shower of bone shrapnel and black ichor; the mountain behind it cleaved in two with a thunderous crack that split the sky, the peak sliding away in a slow-motion avalanche of dust and screaming rock.
The creature's bisected halves hit the ground still twitching, green eyes dimming as Paulo stepped through the gore, boots squelching. The second beast roared and charged low, jaws unhinging to reveal rows of serrated fangs dripping venom. Paulo met it head-on, insane laughter bubbling as he drove the glowing branch upward through its throat. The dagger-form weapon elongated mid-strike, carving through spine and skull in one fluid, devastating arc.
Green energy erupted, vaporizing flesh into ash that the hurricane scattered like confetti from hell. The creature's death throes sent shockwaves that toppled another ridge, but Paulo rode the chaos, cloak snapping, eyes alight with traumatic rapture.
Only the third remained. It turned to flee, massive legs pounding craters into the earth, but Paulo's speed devoured the distance in a heartbeat. He was on its back before the beast could scream, dagger now a shimmering green sickle in his fist.
"You don't get to run!" he howled, voice layered with every betrayal, every laugh that had driven him to the edge. The blade flashed in a frenzy, slice after savage slice, carving the creature into a million wet fragments that exploded outward in a gory mist.
Bone, flesh, and glowing ichor painted the storm-red sky as the hurricane whipped the remains into a vortex of carnage. The final piece hit the ground with a wet slap, and silence fell, broken only by Paulo's ragged, triumphant laughter echoing off the shattered mountains.
He stood amid the slaughter, chest heaving, regenerated arm still humming with power, the makeshift dagger shrinking back into a simple green blade that he tucked into his cloak with shaking fingers.
Blood, his and theirs, streaked his face like war paint from a broken god. The voices in his head roared approval: They hurt you. Now you hurt everything. Tears of manic joy mixed with the rain of blood and dust on his cheeks.
"So being dead has its perks now," he whispered, voice hoarse yet giddy, eyes darting wildly as if the ghosts of Lily, Max, Hana, and the psych ward watched from the clouds with hate in their eyes.
"Witchcraft? Magic? Call it whatever the hell you want. I'm excited… because now I can make them all pay. Every last one of them, if I find a way back home." The cinnamon cloak settled around him like a lover's embrace as he turned toward the blood-red sunset bleeding across the fractured horizon.
Behind him, the ruined mountains groaned in protest, the storm itself seeming to recoil from the insane boy who had just been reborn not as a hero, but as vengeance given flesh.
He walked on, laughter still bubbling low in his throat, the new world's winds howling his name like a promise of endless, glorious ruin.