!~Ding~!

[Trinity: 20↑]

"Let's end this—"

THUD!

Delphine flinched when Aether suddenly fell backwards along with the chair he sat on. It looked as if an invisible force slammed into him, hurling him straight into the wall. Wood splintered as the chair snapped under him and collapsed.

"Aether!!"

Delphine shot up from her seat so fast her own chair scraped across the floor. She rushed toward him, breath trembling, knees hitting the ground with a soft thud as she reached out to steady him.

"Aether, are you alright? Talk to me… please."

"Arh…"

Aether groaned, one hand rising toward his skull as if something burrowed deep inside. His vision fractured, doubled… shifting like ripples over glass.

His eyes drifted toward the person holding him.

"D-Del?" he whispered, confusion clouding his expression.

"Yes, I'm here. I'm right here. What happened? Aether, look at me." Her voice cracked, the remnants of tears from their earlier conversation still staining her cheeks.

Aether tried to focus, but his eyes kept squinting.

Two Delphines were kneeling before him—one slightly behind the other, both close enough to touch. They hovered inches apart, overlapping and separating in uneven pulses.

That couldn't be real.

How could there be two?

"Aether?"

Delphine leaned closer, panic tightening her voice.

And then... only a fraction of a second later, the second Delphine echoed the exact same word with the exact same tone.

"Aether?"

The sound overlapped like a delayed reflection, a slow-motion echo that didn't belong in reality.

"Arrh…" Aether's fingers clenched his head, breath thinning.

"I… I don't know… something's inside my eyes… inside my mind…"

"A-Aether, tell me what's going on!" Delphine cried, her hands cupping his face, trying to force his gaze back to her. But her voice trembled when she saw his pupils begin to melt away.

His iris faded next, sinking into a ghostly white that consumed both eyes.

"Aether, no… no, no, look at me! What's happening to you? Aether!!"

But he didn't hear her anymore.

His breathing slowed... His lips parted slightly as his awareness drifted far beyond the boundaries of her office.

The room around him warped, then layered itself... copies of walls, shelves, windows—stacking on top of each other like imperfect mirages.

The office wavered, trembled, then split again, leaving dozens of overlapping afterimages trembling in the air like broken reflections in water.

And in the middle of that distortion…

Aether saw her.

... A third Delphine?

She sat alone on the office couch, shoulders slumped, her hands buried in her hair as she cried into her palms.

She didn't look up.

She didn't notice the other Delphines.

She just wept…

"D-Del… don't cry—"

His words halted when he saw…

A fourth Delphine sitting on the desk.

She screamed into the empty room, sweeping every object off the desk with a single furious swipe. Her expression twisted between rage and heartbreak, a woman collapsing under emotions too heavy to hold.

"N-no… I am her—" he whispered, but his voice trembled when another vision formed.

A fifth Delphine… lying back as she stared at the ceiling with hollow, lifeless eyes, as if every dream, every hope she carried had bled out of her.

She didn't blink... She looked like someone who had already given up on the world.

"W-What's happening—" Aether muttered.

A sixth Delphine suddenly appeared.

But this one… this one was shouting at him.

He blinked in confusion as the space warped again... showing Aether himself standing beside the desk, a version of him he didn't recognise, shouting back at Delphine.

Both looked exhausted, furious, and desperate.

"Oh? So you are the victim here? So I need to spread my legs for you?" Delphine screamed, voice cracking with betrayal and raw pain.

"Yes, I am! Do you know what I've gone through? Huh? You can't even compare the shit I was suffering in that hell! Every day is a nightmare for me! And you think handling your shit was easy, too?"

Aether's vision of himself roared back, veins visible on his neck, eyes burning with anger he never believed he could direct at her.

"GET OUT!!!!"

Aether flinched. "W-What?" His voice barely escaped him. He stared at the argument playing out... an argument he never had, words he would never throw at her… yet they existed here, "What's happening…"

Then another scene tore into his mind.

A seventh Delphine… pressed against Aether's chest, kissing him with desperate hunger.

"Ahh… I missed you… aahh… y-yes…" she gasped.

"Yes… Look at me… only me…" the Aether in the vision whispered, eyes glowing with a sharp red light.

Delphine's face twisted in dazed obedience, her mind slipping under his control as his skill crawled across her thoughts.

Aether's stomach twisted. He had never... would never do that to her.

A new voice cracked the scene apart.

An eighth Delphine knelt before him, hands trembling, shoulders shaking with fear.

"I… I am sorry… I am truly sorry… please… please leave me… alone… please…" She lowered her head like someone begging an executioner for mercy.

Before he could reach out, another image collided with it.

A ninth Delphine stood like a statue, eyes blank as Aether... another Aether, knelt in front of her.

"It's my fault… please don't leave me… I am nothing without you!!" he begged, voice breaking like brittle glass.

Then came the tenth.

This Delphine flung her arms around Aether, tears streaming down her trembling face.

"I-I should have known… I am sorry… It's all my fault… I am sorry for being selfish…" she whispered.

And the Aether in that vision smiled behind her back... a wicked, triumphant grin—while she sobbed against him. His expression shifted instantly when she lifted her head, turning into a pitiful, innocent Aether crying for forgiveness.

The real Aether's breath froze.

His eyes widened in horror as he turned slowly, realising every corner of the room was filled with her.

Crying Delphines.

Angry Delphines.

Broken Delphines.

Manipulated Delphines.

Delphines, who hurt him.

Delphines he hurt.

Delphines from futures that never happened.

Delphines from pasts that never existed.

"N-No… what's going on…" Aether groaned, clutching his head as the cacophony of voices crashed over him.

The shouts.

The cries.

The moans.

The accusations.

The apologies.

The manipulation.

The heartbreak.

Everything echoed inside his skull like a curse that refused to loosen its grip.

It felt like the room itself shook with the weight of possibilities—thousands of outcomes, thousands of versions of their story.

What he could have done.

What he might have become.

What she could have become.

What they might have destroyed in each other.

All of it... happening at once.

All of it... surrounding him.

All of it... threatening to tear him apart.

However, for Delphine.... the one holding Aether, the one staring directly at his suddenly blank eyes, there was only confusion and rising fear.

She had no idea what he was seeing. His head kept jerking left and right, tracking something invisible. But all she saw was… her simple office room.

Nothing more!

"Aether… you're scaring me now!" she shouted, shaking his shoulders like she was trying to pull him out of a nightmare he couldn't escape.

"I-I need to call the Principal," she muttered when he still didn't respond. He only shook his head violently, screaming with a horror-stricken expression she had never thought she would see on him.

She couldn't watch him fall apart like this.

Just what happened?

Did her words… hurt him more than she ever imagined?

She began lowering him carefully, reaching for her phone to call Dora when—

Crack…

She froze.

A sharp, unnatural sound sliced through the room. Her hands gripping Aether tightened instinctively as she slowly turned toward the source.

Her pupils widened.

A chain?

A metallic chain was breaking through the air itself, splitting it open like fragile glass.

"W-What's that?" she whispered, voice trembling as horror crept into her bones.

Crack…

She jerked her gaze upward... and another heavy metal chain tore through the ceiling, fracturing reality as if it were nothing more than thin paper.

Her heart skipped painfully.

"W-What is going on here?"

Crack!

Crack!

Crack!!

Delphine flinched again and again as more chains burst into existence around them. Each one slithered through the tears in reality like cold, metallic serpents, inching closer to them.

"N-No… they're coming for him?" Delphine muttered when she noticed all the chains aiming toward Aether... ignoring her entirely.

"N-No, NO!!" Delphine screamed as one chain snapped forward and wrapped around Aether's leg, dragging him toward the fractured opening in the air.

Delphine threw her arms around him, locking herself around his torso with desperate force. "Let him go, fuck you all!!" she shouted, kicking at the chains, pulling, fighting with every ounce of strength in her trembling body.

But nothing worked.

The chains ignored her completely.

They only tightened... coil after coil, around Aether.

And they kept dragging him toward the broken reality.

"WAKE UP!! AETHER!!" she shouted furiously, shaking him so hard her own arms trembled.

His eyes remained empty... no pupils, no iris, only cold white like he had been hollowed out.

He mumbled senseless fragments, lost in a world she could neither see nor touch.

Each metallic link scraped across the floor with a low, sickening drag, and every sound clawed at her nerves. Aether's leg lifted slightly off the ground... yanked by something she couldn't fight.

"Please… please wake up," she whispered before her voice broke again.

Meanwhile…

Aether was still drowning in visions, swallowed by countless versions of Delphine and countless outcomes of choices they never made. Each version bled into the next, wrapping around him like a maze with no exit.

SLAP!

He watched himself strike Delphine with vicious force.

"How dare you say that… I don't care anymore… go and fuck whoever you want!!" the illusionary Aether spat before storming away.

The Delphine he struck crumbled, grabbing the desk for support as her knees buckled.

"I… I am not a slut…" she whispered as tears streamed down her face, her body shaking with humiliation and disbelief.

Aether's breath hitched.

"T-That's not me… I would never…" he muttered as his skin paled. His gaze darted between the versions of Delphine holding him... mouthing words he couldn't hear—and the illusions screaming, crying, collapsing. The pain in their eyes felt too real.

Then…

An eleventh Delphine appeared, curled against Dora's chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Sorry… sorry… sorry…" she whispered into Dora's clothes like a child desperate for forgiveness.

Aether stared, something tearing open inside him. Her grief pulled him harder than all the other visions.

He reached toward her, fingers trembling, wanting to touch her, wanting to erase her pain, wanting to promise—

"Who gave you the authority to use it?"

A cold voice sliced through the chaos.

Aether stiffened. Slowly, he turned.

Iteration No. 27 stood behind him, his stare sharp and merciless.

"You are not ready yet."

!~Ding~!

[Trinity: 10↓]

His hand rose.

The hand expanded... swelling, stretching, filling the room. Its shadow swallowed the walls, the floor, the countless Delphines and Aethers locked in their moments of suffering. Reality trembled beneath it, warping under the force of something no human was meant to witness.

Crack!

SHATTTERR!!

The entire world splintered. The fragments of visions shattered like brittle glass, each shard reflecting Delphine's screams, Aether's confusion, their arguments, their tears—until everything blinked out.

Aether's consciousness snapped.

Darkness swallowed him whole.

… …

In the Principal's office, Dora leaned forward,

"Tell me what's so important that you want to talk about?"

"I… I think I found what happened to me," the old woman whispered, fear trembling in her voice.

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