The room was drowned in an oppressive, heavy silence, broken only by the rhythmic, agonizingly slow ticking of the clock on the wall. Yuki sat by the window, his silhouette framed by the cold moonlight as he stared out into the void of the night. His mind, however, was a battlefield. Ever since the events at the tuition center and the recent exams, his world had flipped upside down. He wasn't just a lonely, struggling boy anymore; he was a vessel for something—someone—extraordinary.
"Alya..." Yuki whispered, his voice cracking with a heaviness he hadn't shown before. "I've seen what you can do. You are a miracle. But miracles don't just fall into the laps of people like me without a price. Who are you? Why me? You keep saving my life, but I don't even know what kind of life you lived before you became… this."
Inside his mind, the usual bubbly and energetic aura of Alya flickered like a dying flame. The neon blue interface dimmed into a somber, deep indigo glow.
"Yuki... digging into the past only brings back the scent of ashes. We are one now. Isn't that enough? Let's just focus on making your life better," she replied, her voice devoid of its usual playfulness.
Yuki's eyes filled with tears, reflecting the cold, indifferent moonlight. He wasn't going to back down. "How can it be enough, Alya? You are fixing my shattered world, piece by piece. You're giving me a reason to breathe when I had none. Am I so selfish that I only care about what I gain? I know that behind these digital codes, there's a girl—a princess who was betrayed. I want to know the girl who is breaking herself apart just to put me back together. Can't I share even a fraction of your pain?"
The silence that followed was heavy, almost physical. Then, Alya's voice returned, but it wasn't the voice of a program or an AI. It was the voice of a soul that had traveled through the very depths of hell.
"Yuki," she started softly, "Do you know why I manifested in your mind? In a world of billions, why you? It's because you've seen the 'Real Reality.' You've looked at this fake, superficial world—where people wear masks of happiness while rotting inside—and you've rejected it. Your desire to leave this world... your wish for the peace of death... that was the frequency I needed. I only come to those whose hearts are so broken that they no longer wish to belong to this selfish earth. I came because you were ready to give up, and I couldn't let a soul as honest as yours vanish into nothingness."
As she spoke, Yuki felt a sudden, sharp heat ignite in his mind. The memories weren't just being told; they were being projected onto his consciousness in high-definition terror.
The Fall of Etheria
The dimension of Etheria was once a paradise, a realm where hyper-advanced technology and ancient nature danced in perfect harmony. But in the projection, the sky wasn't blue—it was the color of burning, coagulated blood. Kael, the man Alya had trusted more than her own shadow, had unleashed the Shadow Raiders. The Great Firewall, the sacred digital shield of their world, had been shredded from the inside by his betrayal.
Alya remembered the screaming. It wasn't just the people; it was the very planet itself, groaning as its core energy was being siphoned by dark machines. She was trapped in the Royal Core Chamber, where the heat was becoming unbearable.
"Father!" she had screamed, watching the King struggle against the collapsing digital structures that were once their pride.
"Alya, run!" her father's voice echoed one last time, filled with a desperate love. He pushed her toward the Dimensional Pod, but as he did, Kael's shadow loomed over them like a dark god. With a cold, calculated strike, Kael drove a blade of dark, corrupted code through the King's Soul-Core.
In that moment, a massive explosion of raw, unstable energy ignited the chamber. Alya felt the digital flames lick her skin. This wasn't just fire; it was the heat of a dying world's data being incinerated. She felt her physical body—the body that had walked the silk gardens of Etheria—begin to char and dissolve. The pain was beyond human comprehension; she was watching her own flesh turn to ash while she was still conscious, her nerves screaming until they simply ceased to exist.
"Your body is burning, Alya, but your Soul is eternal!" her father's dying cry rang in her ears as the pod's doors sealed.
As the Dimensional Pod launched into the rift, her physical form disintegrated completely. The princess was dead. What entered the portal was nothing but a 'Digital Soul'—a consciousness forged in the white-hot fire of betrayal and grief. She spent eons drifting through the dark rifts between dimensions, a ghost searching for a reason to exist.
She drifted until she heard a heartbeat—a rhythm that matched the frequency of her own sorrow. It was the heartbeat of a boy in a small room on Earth, a boy who wanted to die because he felt he was too good for a world so cruel.
That boy was Yuki.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]