TORTURED ME, TO AWAKEN AS AN SSS DRAGON

Chapter 3

The ceiling was white and the light was wrong.

Not golden. Not red. Just flat, institutional fluorescence buzzing above him like a trapped insect, and the sound of machines counting his heartbeats in small, patient numbers. Dante blinked until the room stopped swimming. Hospital. The smell confirmed it, antiseptic layered over something older and sadder, the smell of bodies fighting to stay alive in rooms designed for the ones that didn't.

He remembered blood. His own, floating. Gold behind his eyes. Creatures that stopped existing.

His right hand moved on instinct, two fingers pressing together the way he'd seen Awakened do a thousand times on screens and in training halls, and a translucent panel flickered to life in front of his face. Blue light, white text, numbers that didn't make sense.

Name: Dante Moretti Rank: SSS Class: Fallen Priest Spiritual Power: 44 Intelligence: 134 Endurance: 99 Skills: Fallen Will (SSS) | Crimson Judgment (SSS)

His breath caught somewhere between his throat and his lungs and stayed there.

SSS. That's not real. The highest ever recorded is Legendary, and only four people in the world hold that. SSS doesn't exist. Fallen Priest doesn't exist.

He read it again. The numbers didn't change. The class didn't correct itself into something reasonable. It just sat there glowing in the air above his hospital bed like a sentence handed down by something that didn't care whether he was ready to carry it.

He closed the panel and stared at the ceiling and tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person.

The door burst open so hard it hit the wall.

"Dante!" Lucia crossed the room in three steps and threw herself into his chest. Her face was swollen, eyes red and raw, and her fingers grabbed fistfuls of his hospital gown like she was afraid he'd turn to smoke if she let go. "You're awake. Oh God, you're awake. They said you wouldn't. They said your vitals were barely registering and that we should prepare for the worst and I told them they were wrong, I told them they didn't know you."

"Lu." His voice came out rough, scraped hollow. "I'm here."

"Three days." She pulled back just enough to look at his face, and her chin was trembling. "You've been out for three days. I haven't slept. I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that thing's claw going through you and I heard you fall and I couldn't..."

"Lucia." He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her close again. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

Gianna appeared in the doorway. She didn't rush. She walked in slowly, one hand on the doorframe, and her face did something complicated when she saw his eyes open. It crumpled and rebuilt itself three times in the space of a breath, like she was trying to decide between crying and collapsing and simply standing there holding herself together by force of will.

"Mamma."

"Don't talk," she whispered. She crossed to the bed and pressed her palm against his cheek, and her hand was shaking. "Just let me look at you. Just let me see that you're real."

He let them hold him. Both of them, Lucia's arms around his chest, Gianna's hand on his face, and for one moment the weight of their love pressed against him like warm water and he let it in. He let it fill the spaces where the fear and the pain and the impossible truth of what he'd become were already taking root.

Then someone knocked on the open door. Two sharp raps, polite but not asking permission.

Two figures in black uniforms stepped into the room. Gold insignias on their collars, the kind Dante had only ever seen on government broadcasts. The man in front was maybe sixty, gray hair cut military short, with eyes that moved across the room like they were cataloguing every detail for a report he was already writing in his head. Marco Ferrante. Dante didn't know the name yet, but he knew the type. The kind of man who asked questions he already knew the answers to, just to watch you lie.

The woman beside him was younger, maybe forty, and she had the stillest face Dante had ever seen on a living person. Sera Vitale. Her eyes were the color of wet steel, and they settled on Dante with a focus that made him feel like she was reading the back of his skull through his forehead.

"Dante Moretti?" Marco pulled a chair from the corner and sat without being invited. He opened a small leather notebook. "I'm Marco Ferrante, Head of the Department of Awakened Incidents. This is Sera Vitale, my senior investigator. How are you feeling?"

"Like I got stabbed through the chest by a monster."

Marco didn't smile. "Fair enough. I'll keep this brief. Three days ago, a dimensional rift opened in Educational Zone 39. Your sister reported that you were injured during the breach. Three D-rank Blightbearers were found at the scene." He paused. "Or rather, what was left of them."

"What was left?" Lucia repeated from her place at Dante's side.

"Nothing," Sera said from the window. She hadn't sat down. Hadn't moved from the spot she'd chosen the moment she walked in, positioned where she could see both the door and the bed. "No remains. No biological residue. No ash. The creatures weren't killed, Mr. Moretti. They were erased. Completely removed at the molecular level." Her gaze didn't waver. "The energy signature recovered from the site doesn't match any known classification of newly Awakened power."

"So what are you asking me?" Dante kept his voice even. Flat. The way he'd learned to keep it at school when Renzo and his pack came circling.

"We're asking what happened," Marco said simply. "In your own words."

Dante looked at Lucia. She looked back, and in her eyes he could see the memory of gold irises and a voice that wasn't his and creatures vanishing in columns of red light. She was terrified. Not of the investigators. Of him.

"I awakened during the attack," he said carefully. "First time. I saw the creature going for my sister and something triggered inside me. Some kind of defensive response. I don't remember much after that."

"What class did you awaken as?" Marco's pen hovered.

"Healer class. A priest." The lie tasted like ash on his tongue, dry and dead, but it wasn't entirely false. Fallen Priest. Technically accurate in a way they would never understand.

"A priest," Sera repeated. The word came out of her mouth sounding like something she was holding up to the light and turning slowly, examining every angle. "A priest class produced an energy signature that molecularly erased three D-rank creatures."

"I told you, I don't remember the details. I was dying."

Marco wrote something in his notebook. Closed it. Tucked the pen into his breast pocket with the precision of a man who kept everything in its place. "We'll need you to report to central base for official registration once you're discharged. Standard procedure for all new awakenings, especially those occurring during breach events."

"Fine."

Marco stood. Sera didn't.

She stayed at the window, her steel eyes on Dante, and when she spoke her voice was quiet. The kind of quiet that a blade is when it's being drawn slowly from a sheath.

"Mr. Moretti, I want you to understand something. I've been investigating anomalous awakenings for fourteen years. I've interviewed hundreds of people in rooms exactly like this one, and the ones who told me the truth all had one thing in common." She tilted her head slightly. "They looked relieved afterward. The ones who lied looked exactly the way you look right now."

Dante said nothing.

"The truth doesn't stay hidden for long," she continued, straightening from the window. "I'm not asking you to confess anything. I'm telling you that I know something doesn't add up, and I will be watching. Closely. Patiently. For as long as it takes."

She walked out. Marco followed, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click that sounded louder than it should have.

The hospital room felt smaller now. The walls closer. The ceiling lower. The machines were still counting his heartbeats, steady and mechanical, but the rhythm felt different, like something ticking down instead of keeping time.

Lucia's hand found his under the blanket. She squeezed once, hard, and didn't let go.

The room felt very close, very small, and very much like a cage waiting to shut.