Chapter 16 – The Return
The world distorted before his eyes.
It wasn't a simple fade to black—no, it was more grotesque. The edges of everything he knew curled inward, folding like paper consumed by fire. Walls bled into the floor, the floor bled into the ceiling. The boy's world, his torment, his memories—it all warped and twisted like a dying beast thrashing in its last moments.
The sound came next.
A terrible crackling, like thousands of bones snapping at once. Whispers overlapped, rising into a chaotic chorus that pressed against Lumian's skull. The noise clawed into his ears until his vision shattered into fragments of shadow and light.
And then, silence.
Blackness swallowed him whole.
A sharp pain tore through his skull, as if a blade had been driven straight into his brainstem. His chest convulsed. His fingers clawed at the invisible void around him. And just as his body seemed about to collapse entirely—
Lumian gasped.
Air rushed into his lungs like water into a drowning man. His eyes snapped open, bloodshot and wild. The dizziness hit him immediately, the kind of disorientation that made him feel as though his body was no longer bound to the earth.
His palms pressed against something solid—the coarse wooden boards of the floor. He felt the grooves beneath his skin, the sticky residue of blood smearing against his fingertips. His breathing was uneven at first, ragged, but then steadied, controlled, deliberate.
Slowly, his gaze lowered.
Not small.
Not fragile.
Not a boy.
It was his body. His true form. He had returned.
And then—
A flicker.
Thin lines of light carved into existence before him, forming a hovering screen that pulsed faintly with mechanical precision. The glow cut through the darkness, sterile and unnatural.
The system.
---
[You have visited the boy's memory world.]
[Your mind becomes stronger.]
[Your memory power and thinking speed have doubled.]
---
Lumian's lips parted slightly, his expression calm, almost unreadable.
"So… my overall brain got a boost," he muttered.
The words felt insufficient compared to what was happening inside him.
He could feel the changes like a second heartbeat. His thoughts, once heavy, sluggish, and tangled, now moved with sharp clarity. His perception stretched outward, subtle but unmistakable, as though invisible barriers had fallen away.
He noticed everything.
The way the candle's flame flickered, every ripple and curl of heat rising from its tip. The faint drip drip drip of blood pooling beneath the woman's feet. Even the sound of his own breath, measured and steady, seemed sharper—as though the world itself had grown louder, clearer.
And memory—
It was terrifying. He could recall every detail of the memory world in absolute precision: the exact tremble in the boy's voice when he begged, the metallic glint of Carl's knife, the stifling air thick with dread. Nothing had slipped away. Not a single word. Not a single sound.
It was as though his brain had been reforged into a weapon.
---
His eyes lifted.
And there they were.
The headless woman stood just steps away, her posture rigid, eerie. The white dress that clung to her figure was stained through, soaked with dark crimson that refused to dry. In her hands, she carried her head—her lifeless eyes staring outward, her lips frozen in silence, her long hair hanging like wet ropes.
Beside her stood the boy.
The same boy Lumian had been, the same boy whose suffering he had carried like shackles. His small face was pale, his eyes haunted yet curious, filled with something no child should ever have to carry.
They both watched him.
The air was heavy, suffocating, the silence almost unbearable. Yet No fear stirred in him. No shiver of disgust or discomfort crept into his flesh. Even surrounded by dripping blood, by the grotesque vision of a woman holding her severed head, his expression did not twist in horror.
Lumian did not flinch.
Where once he might have felt revulsion, where once fear would have clawed at his throat, now there was only something softer.
Sadness.
And pity.
The memory world had changed him.
A faint smile ghosted across his lips, fragile but real.
The woman tilted her head—well, her body did, the head in her hands remaining still, eyes blank yet somehow aware. The boy narrowed his brows slightly, confusion painting his expression. They didn't understand. Why did he smile?
Lumian's voice broke the stillness, low and steady.
"How long… have I been unconscious?"
The woman's lips, pale and blood-stained, did not move. She was silent as ever, her gaze unblinking.
It was the boy who answered.
"Only one minute… I think, Uncle."
Lumian's eyes flickered.
Only a minute.
Inside that distorted realm, time had stretched into hours. He had lived entire fragments of another life, suffered and endured endlessly. Yet here, in reality, barely a minute had passed.
The contrast was chilling.
But he had no luxury to linger. His thoughts snapped back to the mission. The system's words echoed in his mind: five hours. He had to remain here, bound to this cursed apartment. Only then would the mission be complete.
If Carl escaped before that—if Carl slipped beyond the walls—Lumian would be powerless to pursue. The restriction weighed heavy. He needed to end everything inside this place.
Failure was not an option.
"System," Lumian whispered, his tone edged with resolve, "how much time remains?"
The voice answered, mechanical and void of emotion.
---
[Main mission time remaining: 36 minutes.]
---
Thirty-six minutes.
Enough—if he was precise. If he wasted nothing.
Lumian's chest rose and fell slowly, determination tightening like a vice inside him. Carl would not escape. Not this time. Not ever again.
His gaze slid back to the woman and child.
The headless figure stood eerily still, crimson still dripping from her severed neck. Her eyes in her hands—dead yet aware—locked onto him. The boy clung faintly to her side, his small hands clutching her blood-stained dress, his gaze lingering on Lumian with something that almost resembled trust.
Lumian's expression softened, though the darkness in his gaze never faded.
This time, he didn't see monsters. He didn't see horrors.
He saw a mother.
He saw a child.
And he saw a tragedy bound in blood.
He smiled at them—not mockery, not cruelty, but a strange, unsettling warmth.
"So," he said at last, his voice cutting through the heavy air, slow and deliberate, "how about we play a little game?"
The words lingered, dripping with both calm and menace.
The candlelight trembled. The room's shadows seemed to lean closer, stretching across the floor like claws.
The boy's small eyes widened, and even the woman's expressionless face seemed to tighten, as though the air itself recognized something had changed in Lumian.
The blood still dripped. The silence deepened.
And for the first time since his return, the room no longer felt like a prison.
It felt like his stage.
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