We live for our unfulfilled dreams when we are alive.
Our fulfilled dreams live for us when we are gone.
....
The city stretched below them like a nervous heartbeatevery pulse of light trembling through cables that laced the skyline.
Neon blinked too hard, too bright, too alive for the hollow dark that smothered everything else.
The hum was constant, swallowing breath.
Two figures stood at the edge of that glow.
Lynn tried to keep himself together. The colors flickered across his face, making him look ghostly.
He clenched his jaw, unclenched it.
His fingers jerked once and then fell still.
Then the younger one's lips curved with quiet ridicule.
"You look pathetic," he said. His voice carried no volume, and yet it cut through everything.
"You going to stare me to death, or is that all you're good for?"
Lynn flinched. He searched for his voice and steadied it.
"Is this fun to you?" he asked.
The boy's smile was slow, deliberate.
"Yes. Watching you squirm is the most fun I've had in ages."
His gaze glittered the under the neon. "Tell me Lynn,what's the best thing that could happen to a person like you?"
Lynn said nothing.
The question hung between them like smoke. The boy chuckled.
"Can't figure it out?
Thought not.
Anyway, it's simple: hope.
The best thing that can happen is hope itself. You of all people should know that."
He leaned forward,
"After all, someone gave you that chance once.
What was her name again?
Aah...Vahel, your well wisher."
The name struck Lynn like a shock. His throat tightened.
"Get to the point," he said roughly.
The boy clicked his tongue.
"You mean the point that you failed even after getting an magic upgrade pack from her?
Or that you squandered your second shot?
You call yourself a magic master,
but you couldn't even manage to survive it."
Lynn's patience cracked. "Enough."
"Not yet," the boy snapped.
"You've got another shot now, and this one's mine to give. Think of it as… the ultimate hope."
He grinned; it was sharp as glass.
"But if you're asking whether I'll let you walk over me—" The boy's voice climbed, splitting the neon hum.
"I WON'T."
Like a trigger pulled, the city dimmed around them. Colors bled out until the boy stood a silhouette against a dying glow.
Lynn didn't flinch; his pulse stuttered. "…Fair enough" he said.
The boy straightened, satisfied.
"Try harder this time.
Third time's the charm, isn't it?
I'm not your savior here. I'm just here because I can be."
He stepped forward; sneakers scraped cracked pavement.
"Oh, and one more thing,about your other self?
The one who saved you from being Vahel's puppet?
He goes out the moment you succeed. Soul erased.Simple as that."
Lynn froze. "So if I get rid of you—"
"You kill him," the boy finished, smirk widening. "Finally, something clever from you."
Lynn's voice dropped, low and cold. "You're part of his mind.....right ?"
"And you're the part that wrecked it," the boy countered back. His grin sharpened.
"But don't worry. The only one disappearing tonight is you."
Lynn stared, breathing even, eyes burning.
"You are really making me feel I'm the villain." here.
"What's wrong in being a villain? Everyone's a villain to someone," the boy said, narrowing his eyes.
"And why should I care for the man who killed me?"
Silence pressed heavy and electric. When Lynn spoke it was almost calm. "Thank you," he said.
"For reminding me what I need to do. And… I'm sorry that i am going to get rid of you,kid.."
For the first time the boy's smirk faltered, then returned with something like approval.
"Now you talk like a man."
He tipped his chin. "One lesson before we begin. Power means nothing if it's not done your way. Do it wrong, and even victory feels hollow."
Lynn nodded slowly, his expression hardening into purpose. Neon caught in his eyes, bright as resolve.
"You're right. So I'll do it my way. I'll tear this world apart if I must, starting with you."
The boy laughed, raw and bright, echoing against metal and light.
"You really are obsessed with your little magic tricks." The laughter thinned back into the city's hum.
....
Lynn's mind became a storm. The choices before him were cruelly simple take the chance, win, and erase the soul that had once saved him; or turn away and let fate unravel.
It should have been easy. But it wasn't.
His mind screamed take it.
Destroy this false mind. Return to the living world. Claim the life stolen from him. Start again, recover his body, rebuild what had been ruined. No more strings. No more waiting.
The thought pounded like a drum of defiance.
Vahel's debt could wait. He would face her when he was strong enough to bend his fate.
"Whether it's cruel or not," he murmured to himself, barely audible over the whispering air, "I'm going to do this."
The indecision burned away. Where doubt had been there was now merciless clarity.
His fingers stopped trembling. The pressure behind his eyes eased.
He felt mana returning to his core,
the lost thing coming back in small, electric threads.
Still, one regret stayed, etched sharp and close: the face of the man who had refused to watch him perish.
The man who had died for his mistake. Lynn's lips curved into something fragile. "I'm the whole is quite lacking compared to him," he said softly, almost laughing.
Echoes swallowed the words.
He looked at the boy and felt the last of his hesitation dissolve.
"Can you tell him," Lynn asked quietly, "that I was sorry?"
The boy blinked, then tilted his head with mock confusion.
"'Sorry'? What's that?
Never heard of it." The tone was casual, almost playful, with something vicious underneath.
The words cut like small, deliberate knives.
Lynn let out a small laugh.
"Figures. A manifestation who doesn't know regret."
"What kind of manifestation do you take me for?" the boy replied, grin widening.
" You are the reason I am here too."
For a moment neither moved.
Lynn almost laughed at the irony: the villain in his own story.
Maybe that would do. "Well, damn it," he muttered. "I guess I've always been the bad person in someone's story."
He looked at the kid and the last of his hesitation was gone.
The neon behind him pulsed brighter, steadier, as if answering his resolve. "And now," Lynn said, voice steady, "I'm going to be worse."
The boy's grin sharpened.
"That's the spirit."
Lynn finally let go.
The guilt, the what-ifs, the constant hesitation that made him feel smaller than he was,it all slipped out of him, quiet and unceremonious, like air leaving a cracked glass.
He lifted his hand, not with grandeur but a faint tremor.
His fingers twitched once before he snapped them.
A flicker answered—a thin, uncertain flame perched at his fingertips.
It wavered like it wasn't sure if it belonged here.
The kid watched in silence, the light painting his face in shifting orange.
"So,what's next?"
Lynn didn't reply. The flame danced, reflected in his eyes. He stared at it as though trying to recognize something old and forgotten.
His face was expressionless, but there was a strange steadiness there, a kind of detached calm. The flame began to change. Slowly. The orange drained into a colder hue , pale blue licking at the edges, quiet and clean, like frost disguised as fire.
The boy's grin twitched wider.
"There it is." Around them, the world moved on, blind. People walked through, the crossing streets.
Their steps made no sound, their shadows didn't bend.
The city was still pretending to be alive, unaware of the two who had stopped pretending. "Go on," the kid said.
His tone carried no command just curiosity.
Lynn closed his hand, crushing the flame into his palm.
A faint hiss, a curl of smoke. For a heartbeat, it seemed gone.
Then he opened his eyes.
The color in them had dulled, almost indifferent.
He opened his hand again.
The flame had survived but only different now. It clung to his palm in a slow, deliberate burn, not fierce or loud, but real. It didn't roar or surge.
It just was. A steady blue pulse. Lynn watched it spread, quiet and alive, crawling across his skin like something that had been waiting to return.
He didn't smile. He didn't look proud. Only certain.
The kid studied him, chin tilted slightly. "You look calm."
"I am," Lynn said simply. The words came without effort. "I finally stopped trying to fix what's already done."
The blue flame shifted, reflecting off his knuckles. His voice stayed low.
The kid let out a slow exhale.
"Finally," he said, voice soft.
"You look like yourself."
Lynn didn't answer. He lowered his hand, the flame dimming but never dying, and glanced at the city.
The people moved through him like smoke, their faces hollow, their words just hums of color.
He spoke almost absently.
"It's strange. I used to think peace would feel warm."
The boy raised a brow. "And?"
Lynn let the flame die out between his fingers. "It doesn't."
The glow vanished.
Only the faint smell of ozone remained, sharp and clean.
The boy looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Then maybe you're finally ready."
Lynn's eyes flicked toward him,calm, unreadable. "Maybe."
Lynn's gaze flicked toward the kid, just a faint, detached glance as if this whole decision had already been made long before. "Thanks," he said quietly, voice hollow, carrying no warmth.
"For making me feel this again."
The kid blinked, uncertain.
"Okay..? I guess—" But he never finish.
Lynn's lips curled upward, too calm to be sane.
"Mana Burst."
The words cracked the world.
In an instant, light bled through the streets — blue, merciless, alive.
Buildings folded into themselves like paper caught in a storm.
The air ignited. Windows screamed. Every sound was swallowed by the roar of unnatural flame devouring everything that had ever pretended to exist.
Lynn stood at the eye of it, hand still raised, blue fire coiling around his arm like a serpent recognizing its master.
For the first time, his smile wasn't bitter. It was honest.
"Hope, huh…" he murmured, watching the flames crawl toward the heavens like desperate souls trying to escape.
"I guess it's finally on my side now."
He exhaled slow, almost peaceful,
the way someone might after finally dropping a burden too heavy to name.
But then—
"Hope ? .....Not yet,dear."
A voice tore through the flames, low and amused, its resonance twisting the air like it had always been here, waiting.
The temperature dropped.
The blue fire trembled.
"How will hope reach you," the voice said again, closer now — thick with something ancient, something knowing.
"When I haven't let it leave my hands?" Lynn's smile faded. His fingers stopped burning.
The world that was supposed to die… paused mid-ashes.
And the kid — untouched, unmoved, the same faint smirk sitting exactly where it always had been, stood there in the middle of the inferno, not a flicker of heat daring to touch him.
His eyes gleamed with that same unbothered light, but there was something else now.
"Why don't you try to take it from my hands?
I will remind you something one last time, Lynn.
TRY HARDER THIS TIME."