His sister's face faded into the crowd.
Her terrified eyes desperately searching for him as the guards dragged her in the opposite direction.
Han stretched out his small hands, trying to reach her, but other arms held him firmly in place.
"Hedda! HEDDA!" he scread, his childish voice breaking with the effort. Tears stread down his face, hot against his cold skin.
"Han!" His sister's voice echoed one last ti before disappearing behind a carriage door. "I'll find you! I promise!"
The promise was never fulfilled.
The following years rged into an endless sequence of exhaustive training to transform him into a perfect tool. Physical pain beca so constant that Han learned to ntally separate himself from it, observing it as if it were happening to soone else.
"Rember the rules," the instructor repeated, his face always in shadows as Han lay exhausted on the training floor. The cold stone pressed against his cheek, the only comfort in a world of calculated cruelty.
"You know perfectly well that you are forbidden from seeing her directly, but..."
"If I contribute to my nation, Yino will ensure my sister has a good life," Han completed chanically, the words engraved in his mind after countless repetitions.
"The Queen you got is your last resort," the instructor continued, his voice monotonous but laden with threat. "The only situation in which you will use it is one where a high-priority target is within your reach. Otherwise, it's better that you die without ever using it rather than showing it to the enemy."
The instructor then leaned in, his hot breath against Han's bruised face. "Rember that if we find out you've committed that offense, she will pay the consequences."
The image of Hedda, now blurred after years of separation, was the only thing that kept Han functioning. The only thing that gave him purpose amid so much suffering. Her mory was both his strength and his weakness, the reason he endured, and the chain that bound him to his masters' will.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes, master. I understand."
The mory vanished like mist under the sun when a new wave of pain shot up from his knee and through Han's body. He focused on ignoring it as always...
But reality returned brutally: the underground chamber, the abyssal monster, debris everywhere. And Ren, that strange mushroom boy, trying to protect him with his own body.
♢♢♢♢
The spear struck first.
It penetrated cleanly into the segnt where the new core pulsed, the tip piercing layers of alien tissue until reaching its target.
Ren reached Han an instant later, just in ti thanks to the beast twisting in pain just as the tentacles were about to make contact.
"Hide in the tunnel!" Ren shouted, positioning his body between Han and the beast, using his own flesh as a shield. His mushrooms pulsed frantically, casting erratic shadows across his determined face.
The beast writhed a few ters away, its energy distribution reconfiguring after losing another core.
Han tried to stand to escape as requested, but a sharp pain in his leg stopped him. He looked down and saw the tear in his pants, blood soaking the fabric, his leg clearly fractured from the previous impact.
Even if he ignored the pain…
He couldn't move fast like this. He couldn't escape before the monster attacked again.
If he used the Carrion Queen, he could save himself... But that would an eliminating Ren with his own hands. Sacrificing an innocent to save himself, a final betrayal of whatever humanity remained within him.
It wasn't sothing he wanted to do.
So all that remained was to die as bait.
And he accepted this fact with a calmness that would surprise anyone who hadn't gone through his training. Death was simply another possibility for which they had prepared him as a spy. Another variable in the equation. The final page in a story written by others.
"Ren," he called, his voice strangely serene. "Leave . Save yourself."
Ren turned to him, his face marked by small cuts and dirt, his light pulsing weakly. Exhaustion had carved deep lines around his eyes, yet determination blazed within them.
"I can't," Ren responded, and Han could see in his eyes sothing he imdiately recognized: genuine determination.
It wasn't the manufactured determination that had been instilled in him during years of training.
It was sothing natural, sothing real.
"I already told you I couldn't sleep, and if I don't sleep, training with Lin is much worse."
Han felt a strange mixture of emotions.
Admiration for this boy who, with that beast and against all odds, had earned the respect of so many.
Envy for the freedom that radiated from him, for having real friends, for being able to simply be himself. For having sothing to protect by his own choice, not out of obligation or fear.
For possessing the very thing Han had been denied; the simple right to make his own decisions.
"Don't be foolish!" Han shouted, frustration breaking his façade of calm. "We'll both die if you stay!"
Ren simply smiled, that carefree smile he wore even in the tensest monts, and turned toward the beast that was beginning to recover. The segnt following the destroyed one pulsed with increasing intensity, the purple energy condensing to form a new central core.
"I don't plan to die," he stated with a simplicity that seed almost absurd given the situation.
The abyssal beast, now reorganized around its third core, prepared a frontal attack. Its tentacles, combined with insect legs and chitinous extensions, ford a living spear aid directly at the children.
Han closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable impact. His last thought was for Hedda, silently apologizing for not being able to send her one final farewell letter.
But instead of the pain he expected, he felt a wave of heat and heard a hissing sound, like compressed air being released under pressure.
He opened his eyes to witness sothing impossible.
Lines of pure light traversed Ren's body no longer emitting their usual soft glow; now they shone with blinding intensity, converging in geotric patterns over the diamond plates covering his body.
All the luminous energy seed to concentrate in front of Ren, condensing into a brilliant point. The light intensified with each second, transitioning from a soft glow to a concentrated ray of pure energy.
With a cry that channeled all his determination, Ren released the accumulated energy.
A ray of light, so bright that Han had to narrow his eyes to avoid being blinded. The beam cut through the air, impacting directly against the beast's frontal attack.
There was a mont of resistance, a frozen instant where opposing forces t and fought for supremacy.
Then, Ren's light prevailed.
The tentacles and extremities forming the creature's attack disintegrated upon contact with the ray, pulverized by the pure energy. The beam continued its relentless trajectory, vaporizing the beast's body segnt by segnt. Where it touched, corruption was cleansed, abyssal energy dissipated, and alien flesh simply ceased to exist.
Han observed with absolute incredulity. The child whom so idiots called "rotten," whom they despised for having the "weakest beast," was facing an abyssal abomination with a power they couldn't dream of acquiring.
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