Ice's eyes bled a mixture of crimson and tears as the insect reached the edges of his mind.
In his last broken breaths, with death itself knocking at his door, he whispered in a voice that shook the room:
"I still have a debt… I haven't paid it yet."
"I still have a debt… I haven't paid it yet."
Zis responded with a hysterical laugh that shook the foundations of the room:
"Then go! Pay it NOW! Kill him!"
In that exact moment, the insect burrowed deep into Ice's skull and merged with his cells — beginning its devastating work. Destroying sensory centers and neural pathways systematically, killing his cells one by one.
Ice let out a scream that shattered the silence — not just from pain, but from pure madness.
"Ah! No… YOU! I have to kill YOU! You are the cause of all of this!"
Zis sneered:
"Kill me? Yes, I'm right here… hahaha!"
With a brutal movement, Zis grabbed a lock of Ice's white hair and ripped it from the roots. He spat on him with contempt:
"I don't like this color. White is for the great only — it doesn't suit you."
He leaned in, staring into the broken child's face.
"What beautiful blue eyes… oh. It seems I've removed the two things that were helping you see. But you won't need them where you're going."
Darkness swallowed Ice's world. But his voice came out strangled with blood:
"Even if I die… I'm taking you with me. Unfortunately — when I face my end, all I'll find in front of me is worthless garbage like you."
"Hm… your words don't please me. Silence is the language of the great."
Without mercy, Zis tore Ice's lips apart amid screams that would shake even inanimate things.
Then — something unexpected. A storming blue aura erupted from Ice's body, stretching like frail threads toward Zis's arms.
Zis asked with bored indifference:
"Kill me?"
Ice answered through the bleeding:
"I can't."
Zis exhaled in frustration:
"I'm tired of you. When exactly are you scheduled to die? I need to set an alarm for when you finally expire, boy. You were supposed to kill many people."
"No… I am not a killer. My parents never taught me that."
Zis snarled:
"Your parents died long ago! I have lost all hope in you. Even in your final moments, you couldn't be useful like them."
The blue aura flickered violently — taking the shape of ghostly hands reaching toward the torn lips and eyes lying on the floor.
Zis crushed those ethereal hands under his heavy boot:
"Fool! This isn't even power," he shouted as he pulled back. "Even after I poured fuel on the fire, you wouldn't ignite. I exhausted myself trying to wake you. But you're weak… pathetic."
But just as Ice was drowning in unbearable torment — Zis suddenly tore the lenses from his face.
In that stunning moment, the truth was revealed.
The blood. The torn flesh. The horrifying mutilation. None of it was real.
It was a digital illusion — a brutal psychological simulation poured directly into his mind.
Ice's head dropped to his chest, his eyes dimming with a look of deep grief and injustice — as if his soul no longer had the strength to carry the memory of that pain, even knowing it was a lie.
The scene began to change. The fog and darkness dissolved slowly.
Ice whispered from somewhere deep inside himself:
"Finally… rest from this torment. I'll return to my creator…"
But death wasn't written for him that day.
The suffocating atmosphere of torture disappeared, replaced by the familiar cold of Java — a sensory chill that felt like it was stitching his wounded soul back together.
Ice looked down with shattered eyes to find a presence he had never expected.
Not Zis.
A magnificent dragon, radiating with an almost divine aura. It had flowing golden hair, eyes like molten suns, and pure white wings that suggested holiness rather than threat. Beautiful — but carrying a terror no less than Zis's. The terror of the sacred, not the criminal.
The guardian dragon — bound by an ancient covenant with Ice's mother — drew close and gently lifted Ice's head to face him.
It whispered in a voice full of grief:
"I'm sorry… I wasn't able to — neither I nor Zis…"
Time stopped in Ice's gaze as one question repeated in his exhausted mind:
Who is this creature? And how is it connected to Zis and my mother?