AIN: The Eyes of Deception

Chapter 7 : People Like Me

The light particles that exploded from the red balloon weren't just light, they were sharp dust of reality, piercing Arel's skin until it felt like thousands of needles stabbing his pores. The darkness that followed wasn't merely the absence of light, it was a vacuum that swallowed his breath. Arel lay sprawled on the floor of his now cracking apartment, his body feeling as heavy as lead. Before him, Velkris, the ink entity that had now separated itself, grew towering, filling the narrow room with a posture that no longer resembled a shadow, but rather a monster with impossible body proportions.

"What are you doing, Velkris?" Arel's voice was hoarse, his throat dry from dust and despair.

Velkris didn't answer with words. He only looked down, his face now sharper and more shapeless, staring at Arel with black holes where eyes should be. Beside the monster, Eluni stood calmly, her small fingers playing with the leftover string of the deflated balloon. The girl showed no fear at all, in fact, her gaze was so vacant, as if she were watching an ant trapped in a drop of dew.

"He's no longer yours, Arel," Eluni whispered, her voice clear yet incredibly cold. "All of you are just translators, and translators aren't allowed to have their own manuscripts. Now, this manuscript has been taken over by the Author."

Arel felt a violent pull in his chest. Aelion, who usually stood beside Velkris as a balance, now seemed to shrink, his silver light fading drastically until it was almost invisible. "Aelion! Don't just stand there!" Arel screamed. However, the light entity only looked at Arel with a gaze full of pity and deep regret.

"It's too late, Arel," Aelion's voice sounded distant, as if he were speaking from behind a thick wall. "We've passed the threshold. Ain is no longer about your desires. Your desire was only the entrance, and now, the door has been thrown wide open for something else."

Suddenly, the screen of Arel's phone lying on the floor lit up. Its broken vibration noise shattered the haunting silence. A message arrived, a notification from a secret forum he had found a few days ago: [WARNING: Level 3 Ain Signal detected. Unidentified anomaly. Leave the location immediately.]

Arel tried to reach for the phone, but Velkris stepped on his wrist. The sound of cracking bone echoed loudly in the silent room. Arel winced, but the pain actually triggered something in his brain. He was no longer a human who feared pain, he was an Ain user who had reached rock bottom.

"You can't just take over," Arel growled, even though tears flowed from the corners of his eyes from the burning pain. "This is my body. This is my soul!"

"Your body is just a medium," Velkris said in a voice that echoed, not from one point, but from the entire room. "And your soul? You've already burned your soul for your shallow ambitions. You wanted to be a ruler, didn't you? Well, now you can be the throne."

Velkris extended his black tentacles, wrapping them around Arel's body until he was lifted off the floor. At the same time, the apartment door that had been wide open suddenly slammed shut with a loud bang, even though there was no wind blowing. Eluni stepped forward, her tiny hand touching Arel's chest, right over his heart.

"I need something pure," Eluni whispered. "A power untainted by hatred, but by a betrayed innocence. And you, Arel... you have betrayed yourself so much that your soul has become quite delicious."

"What do you mean?" Arel tried to fight back, trying to visualize something, anything, so he could break free. But his mind was blank. It was as if someone had brainwashed him. He couldn't imagine anything but the darkness in front of him.

"Lyxaria Venn isn't coming to save you," Eluni continued, ignoring Arel's question. "She's busy protecting her company from the destruction you unconsciously caused. But there's something bigger than her. Sahrakel won't come either. He gave up on this irredeemable world a long time ago."

Velkris tightened his grip. Arel felt his ribs begin to grind against each other. His breath caught, his vision began to blur. In the final seconds of his consciousness, he saw a black hole open in the ceiling of his room, a dimensional rift that wasn't a result of his Ain, but something much older and more primal.

From that hole, it wasn't light that descended, but a collection of countless black hands. Those hands reached for Arel's body, as if he were a precious artifact.

"Wait!" Arel shouted, one last cry gathered from the remnants of his strength. "Who are you people?!"

Velkris brought his face close to Arel's eyes. For the first time, the monster showed something resembling emotion, a brutal satisfaction. "We are the consequences, Arel. We are the end result of everyone who thought they could play with reality without paying the price."

Eluni pulled her hand away from Arel's chest. "Goodbye, Arel. Thank you for being such a great medium."

Just as the black hands were about to touch his face, Arel did one last thing that no one might have expected. He didn't try to fight Velkris or Eluni. Instead, he concentrated the remnants of his consciousness on his phone lying on the floor. He didn't visualize destruction, he visualized a message.

With his last bit of strength, he forced his fingers to move, triggering the Ain power on the phone screen, sending one last text message to a random number he had once saved from the Ain forum, a number rumored to belong to Sahrakel.

I am the host. Come before everything becomes permanent.

The phone exploded into dust, but the message had been sent. Velkris realized what he had done, let out a roar of rage, and slammed Arel's body against the wall with full force. Arel fell, unmoving, his eyes staring at the ceiling now filled with hands of darkness.

The apartment room suddenly shook violently. Cracks in the walls spread at high speed, emitting an incredibly blinding white light. It wasn't the usual Ain light, this was a light that was pure, ancient, and extremely hot.

The apartment door was completely destroyed, not by physical impact, but by a sudden explosion of air pressure from outside. A shadow stood in the doorway. It was Sahrakel. However, he didn't look old or shabby. He wore a simple white robe, and in his hand, he held an ancient lantern that emitted a steady blue light.

"You dare touch what I have marked?"

Sahrakel's voice was now much deeper, more authoritative, and carried a weight that forced Velkris to retreat several steps.

Eluni snorted. "Oh, Sahrakel. You're too late. He already belongs to us. He is the key to the door we want to open."

Sahrakel stepped inside, and with every stride, the once pitch-black apartment floor became covered in glowing golden carvings. "He is human. And as long as I still breathe, you will not use this human as a sacrifice for your pointless cosmic ambitions."

"He is no longer human, old man!" Velkris screamed, his form shifting into something more aggressive as he spewed a poisonous inky aura.

Sahrakel did not respond with words. He swung his lantern. The blue light swept across the room, striking Velkris and making him shriek in pain. The ink monster's body began to peel away, as if the light were a highly potent acid.

Arel, who was still lying weak, watched the fight with increasingly blurred vision. He saw Sahrakel move like a dancer, dodging every fatal attack from Eluni and Velkris. Every movement triggered a shift in reality, the broken table became whole again, the cracked floor drew back together, as if Sahrakel were repairing the reality damaged by Arel's Ain.

Yet, in the middle of the fight, Arel realized something that made his skin crawl. Sahrakel was not trying to save him. Instead, Sahrakel was focusing his power on the open door in the ceiling.

"What is he doing?" Arel whispered.

Aelion, now glowing brightly again beside Arel, whispered in a very low tone. "He isn't saving you, Arel. He is imprisoning you. He is going to close the door, and you... you will be trapped between two worlds forever."

Arel tried to scream, tried to protest, but his voice would not come out. Sahrakel glanced at Arel for a split second, his gaze cold, without a shred of mercy in his eyes. "This is the price you must pay, boy. You are a threat to the world order. And I cannot let that threat roam free."

Sahrakel slammed his staff onto the floor. Golden light exploded, swallowing Velkris, Eluni, and Arel in a single, powerful dimensional pull. Arel felt his body being dragged into a bottomless vortex. His vision spun, and the world around him shattered into meaningless fragments of light.

"Noooooo!" he screamed, but his voice was swallowed by absolute silence.

When everything stopped, Arel found himself in a place he did not recognize. There was no apartment, no city, and no light. There was only a vast, endless room decorated with thousands of mirrors reflecting his own face, Arel's face covered in wounds, Arel's face full of hatred, Arel's face full of fear.

In the middle of the room, he saw someone sitting down. The person turned around. The face was identical to Arel's, but the eyes... the eyes held a depth that could not be measured.

"Welcome to your personal prison," the figure said with a very familiar smile.

Arel stood up, realizing that he no longer had a Cupid behind him. There was no Aelion, no Velkris. He was truly alone.

"Who are you?" Arel asked.

The figure stood up, stepped closer, and pressed his palm against the mirror in front of Arel. "I am you, Arel. The you from before, before you awakened the Ain. I am the part of yourself that you simply threw away for the sake of power. And now... I will teach you what it means to be human without anyone's help."

The figure tore the mirror away, and behind it, Arel saw the city. He saw Lyxaria leading a meeting, he saw Draeven rising from the ruins with even worse injuries, and he saw Sahrakel walking away from his apartment, ignoring the fact that he had just cast someone into another dimension.

Arel tried to strike the mirror, but he was thrown back. He was trapped. And out there, the world he left behind began to change. Something larger than the Ain was moving in the shadows, something that no longer needed Arel to be its catalyst.

Arel collapsed into a sitting position, realizing he was no longer the protagonist of this story. He was just a footnote left behind in a history book that had long been closed. However, just before he gave in to despair, he saw something in the corner of that mirror room.

A small shadow.

It wasn't Velkris or Aelion. It was Eluni. The little girl smiled at him from behind the farthest mirror.

"The game isn't over yet, Arel," Eluni whispered through the mirror. "Sahrakel locked you away, but he forgot one thing. He cannot imprison a will that never dies."

In the real world, amidst the ruins of the apartment, a small red balloon suddenly emerged from the rubble, floating slowly into the air, and exploded into a sign that could only be seen by Level 3 Ain users.

An invitation to a real war. And that war had just found its new leader.

Arel, inside the dimensional prison, stared at his hands which were now starting to emit a faint light. If he could not get out, then he would make this prison his weapon. He closed his eyes, beginning to visualize something no one had ever thought of.

He would make this entire dimension his own. And when the time came, he would return not as the failed Arel Virel, but as something even Sahrakel would not be able to stop.

"From now on," Arel whispered, his eyes now radiating pure silver light as they snapped open, "I am reality itself."

In the real world, Lyxaria Venn suddenly stopped walking. She turned toward the collapsed apartment. She felt a powerful vibration, a tremor that made her heart flutter with fear for the first time.

"He isn't dead," Lyxaria whispered to herself, her fingers trembling as she held her phone. "And he just became more dangerous than anything that has ever existed."

The Ain War had reached a boiling point, and behind the dimensional mirror, Arel was building his own army, waiting for the right moment to destroy everything.