Blood kept pouring from the body.
A pool of it reflected in Seran's eyes.
His sword, still stained with blood, fell to the ground.
The hand that had been holding it trembled.
A white noise rang in his ears.
The world seemed to fade away.
"I killed a man…"
His breathing sped up uncontrollably.
His chest rose and fell unevenly.
"It… it was the only wa—" he didn't finish the sentence.
He vomited everything his stomach could hold.
He was kneeling on the ground, his head lowered.
When he finished, he stared at his hands in horror.
"Huff… huff… huff…"
His mind kept replaying what had just happened. The fight, the blood, the mana he had used.
All of it in sequence, like a broken record. The images accelerated more and more inside that mental cinema.
Then other images, unrelated, began to appear.
His parents, rejecting him upon hearing the news.
The world pointing at him as a cold, emotionless killer.
"No, it's not true… it was self-defense…"
"Monster!"
"Murderer!"
"You're not the son we raised."
The horrified gaze of Victor and Sophia.
And beneath it all, the full, echoing laughter of the man he had just killed.
"Ahahaha… I'll be immortal in your thoughts…"
Silence.
As if everything had shut down.
His breathing slowed.
The trembling in his hands began to ease.
And new visions started forming in his mind.
Regis lying in a hospital bed.
The man who had reduced him to that state still unpunished.
"Sooner or later, it was bound to happen…"
This was a world built on violence, where those with power could decide over others.
His rationality slowly reignited.
"He was a killer. I just stopped another kind of monster."
His eyes, once filled with shock, froze over.
Agitation gave way to a cold clarity.
Almost like a defense mechanism protecting him from his own mind.
He stood up. With cold, precise movements, he approached the body.
He crouched beside the corpse.
His hand reached toward the man's hand to take his mana ring…
But he stopped for a moment.
He closed his eyes briefly, took a short breath—then removed the ring.
Cold, just like the hand it had been on.
He then searched for the man's phone.
Feeling through one of the pockets, he found it.
He unlocked it.
The gallery opened.
He looked away.
Shuddering, disgusted by what he had seen.
A gallery of death.
It seemed the man had enjoyed capturing his victims after they died by his blade.
Anger surged within him again.
Shaken by both what he had seen and what he had done, he hurled a sphere of mana at the corpse, blowing its head apart.
Gray matter, bone, and blood erased from the world the face of that inhuman being.
He didn't stop.
He kept striking the body until almost nothing remained.
"Huff… huff…"
He had vented.
Coming back to himself, he returned to the city.
The light in his eyes was colder now—disturbed compared to what he truly was.
At the Presidium,
Seran chose the shortest line.
He waited his turn.
The attendant looked momentarily puzzled.
By now, it was well known that the raider Lag always chose Mirror's station.
"Good morning, Lag. Wrong line today?"
The boy didn't answer.
He simply handed over the day's earnings and the phone he had taken from the corpse.
"I'm reporting the killing of a Tower who attempted to take my life" he said, cold as a machine.
"This is his phone. It should help you identify him. There's nothing left of his body."
He finished, maintaining the same tone.
The operator, shocked, immediately got to work.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Then she froze slightly, surprised by the results.
"You survived RED. A known F1 serial killer. The Armed Forces have been trying to stop him for two years. You were lucky."
She spoke almost as if congratulating him.
"There was a bounty on him. 150.000 Flux."
She handed Seran's ring back to him.
"I've also already deposited the earnings from your hunt. On behalf of the Presidium, thank you for your service."
Seran gave no reaction. Rigid, like a block of ice.
"You'll be contacted soon by the AF to formalize and provide a report on the bounty" the woman added, showing a trace of respect for Lag's achievement.
"Understood."
And he left.
He felt nothing knowing he would be rewarded for the bounty, nor for the excellent gains from the day's hunt.
Meanwhile, a pair of magenta eyes rested on his back.
"He didn't come to me today… I wonder what was going through his head"
Mirror thought as she attended another raider at her station.
"His gaze was empty…"
The water from the shower ran over his body.
Head lowered. Silence filled the bathroom.
He could still see the blood on himself.
He began scrubbing nervously, as if trying to cleanse his restless soul.
"AHAHAHAHA—"
The laughter echoed in his ears.
He kept washing, more and more frantically.
"I'm the first… I'll live inside you forever, ahahaha…"
He stayed under the water for an hour.
His hands wrinkled, almost worn down by the water and detergent he had used to scrub himself clean.
He dried himself mechanically.
He never once looked at the mirror, fogged by humidity.
Afraid of seeing something he didn't want to see.
Dressing with effort, he went to sit on the couch.
On the table in front of him lay Red's ring.
He hadn't handed it over at the Presidium—perhaps to keep it as a reminder of what he had done.
Gathering his courage, he decided to look inside.
Mana rings had no security locks.
A bit of mana was enough to activate them.
That was why Towers never separated from them.
Inside: several daggers and knives, perfectly sharpened and polished, various tools for exploring Evox zones…and an incredible pile of cores.
At last, a flicker of emotion crossed his eyes.
Driven by it, he began counting them.
After a few minutes—
"457…"
How many raiders had he killed to have so many?
Why not absorb them… or sell them?
Not even counting those he had already used.
Anger rose again inside him.
How could a man be capable of all that? Was human life worth so little?Who gets to decide who lives and who dies?
He stored the cores in his own ring, deciding he would sell the rest separately.
Evening came, and he was still sitting there, motionless on the couch.
His gaze empty.
His posture rigid, not relaxed.
Small tremors appeared in his right hand.
His foot tapped repeatedly against the floor.
All of it was interrupted by the doorbell.
Pulled out of his trance, he stood up.
Slow steps toward the apartment door.
Looking through the peephole, he saw two faces he didn't want to see.
Victor and Sophia.
"Seran, are you there? We've been trying to call you for hours—you're not answering."
He picked up his phone. Dozens of messages from voicemail.
"Fuck…" he muttered.
"Seran, open up—we heard you!" Victor said, partly annoyed, partly worried.
Giving in—knowing their stubbornness—he opened the door that separated him from them.
"Seran, why aren't you answ—"
His mother didn't finish the sentence when she saw her son's empty gaze.
"What happened?" Victor asked, noticing it too—something was wrong.