Aren’s breaths came in short, trembling bursts—each weaker than the last.

  Samye held him gently, terrified to move, terrified to let go.

  The boy’s lips parted.

  “Brother…” his voice cracked, barely more than a whisper, “I… I was already dying a year ago.”

  Samye froze.

  Aren continued, coughing up blood between words.

  “Before you found me… my life wasn’t better. I was a… a living corpse. My parents were taken a year before that… and I was just waiting.”

  His fingers tightened weakly around Samye’s hand.

  “I was going to die on that bridge. I really was.”

  Samye shook his head desperately. “Don’t talk like that. Please—”

  Aren smiled faintly.

  “But that day… you saved me. You pulled me back from a place I didn’t think anyone could reach.”

  His voice trembled.

  “I know… I’m not your real brother. I know I can never be that.”

  Samye felt his heart twisting painfully.

  Aren’s blind eyes stared somewhere into the distance, but his smile stayed warm.

  “But calling you ‘brother’…”

  “It gave me meaning again.”

  “It gave me a reason to walk forward.”

  “It made me feel… less alone.”

  Samye’s throat closed.

  Aren’s breaths grew shallow.

  “If there’s a next life…” he whispered, “I want to be your brother for real. Not by accident… but because I chose it.”

  A tear slid from the corner of his empty eye socket.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “With you… I’m not lonely anymore.”

  A final exhale left his lips—soft, fragile.

  The light in his face dimmed completely.

  The small hand in Samye’s grip fell still.

  Aren died in the arms of the only person who ever protected him.

  For a moment, Samye didn’t move.

  He couldn’t.

  His mind refused to accept the weight now sitting in his chest—a crushing, suffocating grief that threatened to split him apart.

  Then the guilt came.

  Sharp.

  Violent.

  “I’m not worthy,” Samye whispered, tears falling freely. “I wasn’t strong enough… I wasn’t fast enough… I couldn’t protect you… not from them… not from this world…”

  His voice broke.

  “You deserved better than me.”

  He hugged Aren’s small, broken body to his chest and sobbed silently, every breath filled with regret and rage.

  A deep, burning hate rose inside him—toward the guards, toward the facility, toward the world that allowed this to happen.

  And as that hatred met his grief—

  Something inside Samye fractured.

  The first spark came from his chest.

  The second ignited in his spine.

  The third burst behind his eyes.

  A dark, star-like light erupted across his body—violent, uncontrolled, expanding outward like the birth of a miniature sun.

  The world around him trembled.

  Stone cracked.

  Air screamed.

  Reality itself twisted.

  The ground beneath the facility warped as if pulled by invisible hands. Walls bent. Metal snapped. Lights shattered. Space folded inward, collapsing like paper crushed in a fist.

  People—guards, prisoners, ability users—froze mid-motion, their bodies locked in place.

  Samye didn’t see them.

  He didn’t hear their cries.

  He only held Aren.

  The power surged again.

  A pulse of pitch-black energy expanded outward, forming a globe that swallowed the entire facility whole. Inside it, time twisted violently—stretching, cracking, collapsing.

  Within a minute—

  The facility fell silent.

  Utterly. Completely.

  Every living being inside vanished—

  not dead,

  not alive,

  just gone.

  As if they had never existed.

  Dimensions swallowed them whole, dragged them into fractures Samye could not yet comprehend.

  Samye didn’t understand it either.

  He didn’t know he had caused it.

  He only knew his brother was gone.

  Hours later, when the storm clouds gathered and rain poured down in sheets, Samye carried Aren’s body outside—past fallen structures, past the ruins of screams, past the void where life once existed.

  Alone.

  He dug a grave with his bare hands.

  Bleeding.

  Crying.

  Speaking quietly through broken breath.

  “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

  He buried Aren beneath the storm.

  The rain washed his blood and tears into the earth.

  Lightning flashed across the sky.

  Thunder roared like a mourning beast.

  When Samye stood again—

  the facility behind him was empty.

  Dead silent.

  Abandoned.

  Collapsed.

  Erased.

  No bodies.

  No tracks.

  Nothing.

  No one would ever find those who vanished inside.

  It was as if they had been erased from the world’s memory.

  And Samye—still bleeding, still trembling, still grieving—stood alone in the rain.

  Forever changed.