Chapter 136 Thank You

I blinked awake, finding myself naked and lying on my back in a stretch of sand that shimmered under the afternoon sun. The sky was white-hot, hazy, the kind of light that burned straight into your skull.

For a moment, I couldn’t tell what was real. The desert air felt too thin, my breath too slow. How long had I been gone? Inside that memory-world of Light’s, I’d lived a lifetime, but the sun told me otherwise. Barely an hour, maybe less.

Perception was a strange thing.

A voice hissed from my throat that wasn’t my own. “Get. Out. Of. My. Body.”

Before I could react, electricity tore through the air. A brilliant surge of energy burst outward, incinerating the sand around me. Light was fighting me from within. I could feel his mind, his fury, and his pain. He wasn’t gone. He was clawing for control.

The current ran hot beneath my skin, cracking through the air in white arcs. His laughter echoed through our shared mouth, loud and unhinged.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I’ll kill you, Eclipse! You hear me!? I’ll burn you out of me!”

The desert trembled. The sand turned molten beneath us, glass forming in long ripples that reflected the blinding radiance of his power. A pillar of light erupted, soaring into the clouds, a monument of rage, of divine fury.

Yet, through all of it, I stayed.

When the brilliance dimmed, when the air stilled into a humming silence, I was still there. Still inside him. Still breathing through his lungs.

I smiled. “You done?”

His body twitched violently. His hands rose toward his face. He screamed, a raw, animal noise, and dug his fingers into his own eyes. Blood splattered, and darkness filled our shared vision.

“Stop—” I started, but then realized what he was doing.

He was trying to destroy his own brain. He thought if he could kill the organ I inhabited, he might erase me entirely and regenerate a clean version of himself. Unfortunately, I wasn’t inside his brain, but his being. More unfortunately for him, his regeneration was too strong. Each time he gouged, burned, or crushed, the tissue simply reformed. He couldn’t even die properly.

“You’re really pathetic, you know that? Hmmm… How about this? Five seconds… That’s how much I am willing to give… Think of it as a head start.”

I laughed as Light staggered, then straightened his posture with defiant grace. He floated a few feet off the ground, the desert wind whipping against his skinless frame. His body gleamed unnaturally in the sunlight, the electricity crackling beneath the surface like veins of molten silver.

“Do you not understand, Eclipse?” he roared. “I am beyond your comprehension! Beyond life, beyond death! I am a god reborn… the storm given flesh! Five seconds!? I don’t need five seconds! I am going to kill you, now!”

He spread his arms wide, basking in the burning light above. The electricity that rippled from him scorched the sand, and the air began to shimmer with heat distortion. His voice trembled somewhere between ecstasy and insanity.

“Not even you can live inside me! You’ll burn before you take what’s mine!”

He clenched his fists, electricity building up until it danced violently over his body. Then he turned it inward, and electrocuted himself.

The burst of light was so bright that even I flinched. The skin bubbled, cracked, and then immediately regenerated. He did it again, screaming through the pain, laughing through the agony.

“See?! SEE?! I am infinite! I can… I can devour you! I’ll make you mine!” he shouted, slamming his fist into his chest, then his temple. Sparks erupted. Blood boiled and evaporated before it could fall.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

“Seriously,” I said, “let’s try that again.”

I could feel his anxiety spiking through the connection we shared. The electric pulses were erratic now, frenzied. He was trying to drown me in his madness, but all I felt was his panic bleeding through the static.

“Fiiiive,” I began counting, slowly and deliberately.

He froze, the faint tremor of fear passing through his arms. Then he gritted his teeth, charging himself again.

“Fouuuur.”

Light exploded into motion, transforming into lightning and blasting across the horizon in a streak of blue and white. The air cracked open behind us, heat and thunder rolling like waves.

“Threeeee.”

He was fleeing, flying faster than sound, faster than thought. I could feel his mind churning, desperate, searching for a solution. A psychic, maybe. Some outside interference that could purge me from within.

“Twoooo.”

The fear was thick now, almost intoxicating. For someone who called himself a god, he sure reeked of mortality.

“One.”

I shifted our shared center of gravity and pulled down with everything my power could muster. His flight faltered. His form shattered from lightning to flesh as we plummeted out of the sky.

We crashed into an old shack by the highway, tearing through the roof in a rain of splinters. The impact drove us into the floor, scattering dust and debris everywhere. Pain followed. Splinters of wood embedded deep in the skin, bones bent, then righted themselves with a series of pops as his regeneration took over.

Light’s body twitched, the air around us thick with the scent of ozone and blood.

I exhaled, amused. “You done?”

Silence. His breathing came ragged and uneven, but I could feel his heart hammering with primal terror.

I smiled to myself and whispered, almost kindly, “I’m going to take it slow on you… so let’s enjoy the moment.”

Light tried to run. I saw the flicker of energy build in him, the telltale tremor that came before his superspeed burst forth, but with a twitch of my power, I shut it all down. His muscles stilled; even the breath caught in his throat. When his legs failed, he dropped face-first onto the steel table, the echo sharp and satisfying. My Enhancer ratings gave me seamless control over every movement, every nerve impulse. He wasn’t getting away, not now, and not ever.

“Damn you—!” Light snarled, his voice muffled against the metal. “You monster! Let me go!”

“Language,” I said softly, almost amused. “You don’t get to make demands.”

He struggled again, a tremor of defiance, and I felt his desperation flare through my Empathy. It was raw, pulsing panic. He wanted to live, to fight back, but I stripped him of everything but his regeneration and that cursed speedthought of his. I wanted him to be painfully aware of every second.

“Stop—stop this!” he spat, though I could sense the insult forming in his mind. I tilted my head, smiling faintly. “Oh no, you don’t get to say that.”

His mouth moved without his consent. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I’m such a moron. I should’ve known better. I’m… I’m pathetic.”

His eyes widened in horror as the words left him. His mind screamed curses, but I made his voice betray him instead with confessions, humiliations, and words twisted into something else with the intent to put him in his place.

“I’m a fool,” he said next, tone warped between sobs and forced laughter. “A useless fool who thought he could play god.”

I chuckled quietly. “You see, Light, sometimes the truth just slips out when you least expect it.”

His anger burned through the link we shared, but I snuffed it out as easily as a candle flame. With another mental tug, I heightened his senses with every nerve sharpened, and every ache transformed into a storm of agony. His regeneration only made it worse, resetting his suffering again and again.

He whimpered. Tears began to fall, though not because he wanted to. I simply made the tear ducts open, and the saltwater streamed down his face as his body shook with soundless sobs.

“Such a big crybaby,” I murmured, letting him hear the satisfaction in my voice. “Look at you… less than dust. The world doesn’t need a deluded idiot who thinks some ‘god’ or ‘prophet’ chose him to save it. No, Light… the world will be better off without you.”

He spat blood and said nothing. Again and again, I made him fall, made him remember what it meant to hurt, to lose everything he thought invincible. Each time he tried to flare with lightning, I cut it off, bit by bit, nerve by nerve, until the glow behind his eyes was gone.

Hours passed. The world had long since gone quiet; only our ragged breathing remained. When I finally dragged him through the dust toward what was left of the Tenfold Keep, the once-grand fortress had been reduced to a crater.

I dropped him in the rubble. “The Witch and the Prophet were just using you,” I told him. “Even I could tell. Why couldn’t you? No sane person would send you to save any world. You’re not a savior, Light. Not a god. Just a pawn. And right now, my only concern is hurting you.”

The wind shifted, carrying the scent of ozone and ash. At the crater’s center stood a young woman, naked, her blue hair tangled and dull. Mother… or Missive, depending on which half of her mind ruled. Judging by her stillness, it was Mother.

“You did well,” she remarked, her tone devoid of praise.

Light coughed, forcing the words out. “How… are you alive?”

“Delayed regeneration,” Mother replied. “A difficult technique, one you could never master. Your mind is too fractured to even think straight. No being of reason destroys itself so willingly.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now listen. You will stay down. I will give Missive her memories back, and she will have her revenge.”

Light’s eyes burned with returning fire. Electricity snapped across his arms as he wrenched his powers free. “I will kill you, you—”

Before he could finish, I reached out, seized his throat, and forced his abilities back into silence. His struggles weakened under my grip.

Mother stepped closer, her voice calm. “Hold him steady.”

I obeyed.

Her hand hovered over her breastbone, and her breath caught for the first time since she’d appeared. The change began, her expression shifting, eyes softening, and the tremor of someone waking from a long nightmare.

Missive blinked. Blue light flickered behind her pupils, no longer empty but painfully aware. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she looked at Light, my prisoner, her tormentor.

Then she screamed and stumbled forward. I let her do as she pleased.

Again and again, Missive brought her heel down, each strike fueled by grief and rage so deep it shook the air. The sound of it echoed through the ruins.

Light's skull was crushed and pulverized. Cracked and fragmented, the bones of the face had been driven inward, mingling with the shattered apparatus of the eyes and nose. Thick, congealing blood pooled in the empty sockets and dripped from the mauled features. Fissures in the scalp revealed the grey-white matter of the brain, exposed and mangled.

I would not dress it up: she stomped his head to death.

Still, Missive didn’t stop right away. Her breaths came in jagged bursts, her body trembling from exhaustion and fury. When at last her strength failed her, she stumbled back, almost collapsing from the effort. She looked like a child lost in the storm she had created… hollow-eyed, shaking, and barefoot on the broken ground.

I separated myself from what was left of Light. The sensation of returning to my own body was jarring, like surfacing from deep water, lungs burning, and heart racing. The corpse lay motionless, a faint shimmer of electricity flickering out and dying like a candle.

Even then, Missive was still staring at him, chest heaving, unable to stop. I approached her slowly, reaching through my Empathy. I felt the storm inside her from the sorrow, the rage, and the disbelief that it was finally over. I didn’t know what to say. What words could fix something like this?

So instead, I helped her breathe.

“It’s over,” I whispered. “You can stop now.”

Her hands fell to her sides. She swayed, then turned to me. Her eyes were wet and red, her lips trembling. And then she stepped forward and hugged me. It was sudden, fierce, and desperate.

“Thank you,” she said against my shoulder. “Thank you for ending it.”