I. Voices That Fracture
The silence that followed Alexander's words wasn't just silence.
It was a pit.
A void that swallowed them all without warning.
Liora was the first to break it.
"No… no, Alexander, no," she whispered, her voice trembling as if she were speaking beneath a storm. "There has to be another way. We can't… we can't take his mana away! It's… it's part of him!"
Her hands shook.
Her elven ears—usually calm and upright—were tense, rigid.
"Mana is life," she went on, almost choking on the words. "It's soul. It's identity. How can you suggest something like this? How…?"
Alexander didn't answer.
He couldn't.
His face, carved by seven days without sleep, was proof enough of the hell he was carrying.
Johana gripped the sheet over her legs.
She couldn't stand.
Couldn't speak.
Couldn't even think clearly.
Two lost pregnancies.
Two lives extinguished before she ever heard a cry.
And now… again?
Her throat burned.
Her eyes never left the incubator.
"If we don't seal him…" Alexander began, his voice broken. "His core… will collapse. And… he—"
He couldn't finish.
A muffled sob escaped Johana's chest, like her soul remembered the void she had already survived.
Liora wrapped her arms around her, firm, trembling just as badly.
But Manuel…
Manuel remained unmoving.
Straight posture.
Fixed stare.
A storm's shadow in his eyes.
Seconds dragged by.
When he finally spoke, his voice was a blade:
"If he lives without mana… what kind of life will he have?"
No one dared answer.
Manuel continued:
"Out there… people despise what they don't understand. They hate it. They fear it."
Johana shut her eyes.
"They'll reject him," he went on. "Children. Adults. Houses. Clans. Everyone. He'll be an easy target. A joke… or something worse."
His jaw tightened.
"Those who hate me will use him to hurt me."
It was the first time in days Manuel had said so much.
Yet his voice wasn't harsh—only honest.
Painfully honest.
"Are we going to condemn him to that…?" he asked, never taking his eyes off the incubator. "To growing up believing he was born defective?"
The word fell like a knife.
Defective.
Liora inhaled sharply and stepped forward.
"That's exactly why we can't seal him!" she cried. "If we strip his mana away, we damn him from the very beginning. It's almost… almost like killing him from the inside!"
She swallowed hard.
"Mana is part of what we are as living beings. If we seal it, we'll be locking it inside an inner prison… and that could break him from within."
Alexander clenched his fists.
"I know!" he snapped. "I know better than anyone. But if we don't… he— he—"
His voice shattered.
"He'll die."
Johana felt the air drain out of her.
She looked at her baby beyond the glass:
Small.
Innocent.
Breathing as if the world weren't tearing itself apart for him.
"I… I don't want to lose him again…" she whispered.
Manuel's gaze shifted—just barely. A single crack in his perfect armor.
Alexander breathed deeply.
"There is no third option."
Silence.
Silence that crushed.
Silence that suffocated.
Silence sharper than any word.
Liora cut through it, desperate:
"Alex… tell me the truth. Is there really no other solution? Not even one?"
Alexander lowered his eyes.
"No. I'm… exhausted. And there's nothing else. Not this time."
Then Manuel spoke.
"Do it."
Liora spun around.
"What—?!" she gasped. "Manuel? You said… do it?"
"It's the only way he survives."
"Survives?" the elf nearly screamed. "Survives without mana? Survives empty? Is that your idea of life?!"
"It's life," Manuel replied with unshakable calm. "And while he lives… we can protect him."
"Protect him from what?" Liora's voice shook with bitter grief. "From the whole world? From yourselves?"
She turned to Johana, her heart torn open.
"Johana… do you agree with this? Are you really going to accept it? Seal your son? Sentence him from his very first breath?"
Johana lowered her gaze.
She didn't answer.
And that silence was worse than any words.
Liora trembled, whispering:
"When he's older… when he notices he's treated differently… rejected… insulted…
if one day he learns the truth, that the reason for all of it was a decision you made…"
Her voice broke.
"What do you think he'll feel?"
Johana cried in silence.
Manuel tightened his jaw.
Alexander closed his eyes in pain.
Then Manuel said quietly:
"I'd rather have him hate me alive… than love me dead."
That was the end of the argument.
The decision had been made.
---
II. The Echo of a Broken Mind
While the outside world burned in tension and grief,
somewhere deep…
inside a tiny body connected to an incubator…
another battle was happening.
A completely different one.
Silent.
Internal.
One no one could see.
---
Jhosep
Darkness.
And water.
Cold, still, endless water.
As if I were floating in a black sea with no sky, no bottom.
What… is this?
Why… am I still thinking?
I jumped.
I chose to fall.
I remember the bridge.
The rain.
The fear.
The pain crushing my chest for years.
I should be dead.
I should've vanished.
So…
why am I still here?
I try to move an arm…
but something huge—like a mountain made of silence—pins my whole body down.
I try to open my mouth…
but it's shut, sewn, sealed with invisible threads.
I try to open my eyes…
but my eyelids weigh like molten iron.
I can't move.
I can't speak.
I can't see.
If this isn't death…
what the hell is it?
And then… the images.
Blurry.
Shattered.
My mother.
My father.
Just as I remembered them…
but I shouldn't be seeing them.
Not here.
Not now.
Am I… remembering?
Is this what the mind shows right before it goes out?
It makes sense.
More sense than anything else happening.
But between those fragments—
she appears.
A woman with long ears.
Unknown.
Beautiful.
Crying as if my existence meant everything.
Who are you?
She isn't real.
She can't be real.
My mind is inventing her because it's dying.
And then…
—Not yet… our son…
The world freezes.
That voice.
That phrase.
I heard it right before I hit the river.
Right before I died.
Why… why am I hearing it here too?
My mental breath accelerates.
Why am I still existing?
I force myself to think.
Even if it hurts.
And I understand.
I'm nowhere.
I'm dying.
Or I already died.
This is the echo of what I was.
My final punishment.
A dry, cruel thought rises—directed at myself:
I'm a coward.
Yeah.
That's what I am.
Too weak to endure the world.
Too fragile to face my fears.
Too broken to ask for help.
Too tired to keep going.
I'm a coward.
For running.
For choosing to jump.
For giving up.
And now…
not even death accepts me.
What an irony.
What a tragedy.
What a pathetic end.
---
III. Two Realities About to Collide
While Jhosep sank into his black sea,
on the other side of the glass…
his family had chosen his fate.
And the two realities—inside and outside—
were about to collide.