Boggled is the mind...

  "You're telling me that she's actually alive? Before last night??" For the second time, I inquired about my mother to the forensic at the University.

  "Time of death uhh... around sunset or so. Unless you know how to explain it in your 'terms', I don't see any other thread that could connect the dots."

  Hah...

  So you're saying that there was a chance if we act fast enough...

  Useless as ever oneself is.

  Hence why even if the Father is a very influential figure in the establishment, I tend to resent the stench of hospitals. Those death stench masked in pine bleach, alcohols, and cleaners alike. I sat down at a nearby chair, trying to process the grief and other dots that might have or might not been a mistake on my side, in other words I'd like to think that it is the sins that the dream has been talking about. What do you mean that she was still alive a couple of days ago? Does that mean that they have been mutilating her alive as if she's a lab frog? Every question left unanswered, while every second passed only created more mysteries than I could ever handle. HAH! Laugh all you want, I swear on my life I will collect each head of those bastards who did-

  "Airlangga... brother, may I get you something?" The doctor said, probably noticing the colour shift on my face.

  "Just water... if you'd be so kind..."

  She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive . She was alive She was alive . She was alive . She was alive UNTIL LAST NIGHT. Why can't I do anything about it!? Herjuna was right, I am a STUPID FUCK trying to play a hero while in fact I don't have anything to offer. The weight feels heavier each second but nothing could ever make it less lighter.

  "Here... don't be so harsh on yourself. We contacted your father, he'll be here soon,"

  "Thank you," I received a glass of water, it's lukewarm.

  "Condolences to you and your family. If you need anything else, I'll be in the next room to prepare the funeral"

  The doctor left. I stare at the water I hold in between my hands. Calm, no reflection, and somehow they appear fizzy than usual. Water bubbles emerged although I know for sure that boiled tap water wasn't meant to be 'gassy'. No heat, no pressure, no strong presence of anything, the only thing I feel and see with my senses is newborn spirits who are busy weeping their mortal vessel. Something is odd, the more I stare at the cup the more bubbles it forms as if they're boiling yet no vapour can be seen coming out from the glass cup I'm holding. Right before I could realize anything the cup shattered, spilling water onto the floor.

  "What..?" To myself, I muttered in confusion.

  The water froze instantly. I stood up, observing my hands in a way trying to crack down the mystery of what happened with that cup of water the forensic doctor gave me. Fingertips are steaming out of the cold, and some ice crystals are forming under my nails. I shook them off hoping to get rid of them, yet it's all no use of anything. I shouldn't have come around before paying a visit to Ratnaningsih. Hopefully, it's just one of those times my power suddenly got triggered and nothing sinister. Next room should be the place where the coroner prepares dead bodies for the funeral, so I walk towards that exact room to check on the-

  "The Son will pay the price of his sins"

  The room goes dark in the blink of an eye, fear sprouts from the unknown things that could happen in total darkness. When one of your senses becomes powerless, the other sharpens but it's meaningless when there's nothing much going out except of darkness and whatever is lurking behind the endless shadow. I step forward, trying to grasp anything that could emit from the sound of boots against the concrete floor. Split second later a light emerged from a single light bulb, revealing a mirror maze that reflected light and shadows alike, hence the bright aftermath despite it only coming from a single bulb in the ceiling. Am I dreaming? Somewhere down the line, the ambience is a duplicate of those nightmares I experienced. Curious to find out, I touch the mirror...

  Out of fragility, the mirror cracked before shattering into pieces. The sound echoes rapidly, creating a soundwave that wiggles all the mirrors, glass shards flying all across the space as I shield myself from them. A chain reaction broke the whole mirror maze, revealing some hidden entrance that was hidden by one of the mirror panels. Dimly lit room, with an even dimmer light bulb, the yellowish haze envelops blurring colours and other hues alike. The spotlight of that room is a male figure cuffed and hanged by their hands. I decided to come up close, despite the danger if it's a whisper from the future it would be the first thing I remember after waking up. Know that sometimes it could be difficult for me to escape from the dream ripple itself. Blood drips from the figure, chains clanging as the figure moves, while the only light in the room blinks on and off.

  "R.. run...." the figure said.

  Upon closer look, the hanged man was skinned alive from head to toe but leaving his eyelids and some of the hair alone. Exposed muscles, deformed facial features, the only thing that would make you recognize the person is the personality. But what power does the figure have for him to tell the story when everything is exhausted just to keep his system alive. Something familiar, yet what he said was clearly one thing I had never heard from the real person. I took another step closer, catching a glimpse of a rusted mandible.

  "Juna!?"

  "Run... Airlangga... R%3U%$Nn!!!"

  He screamed but his last word was 'blurred', in a mix with some kind of hell abomination. His back swells as if another being lives inside of him. A hand burst out, covered in blood alongside bits of torn flesh that were in a way. The man screams in agony yet he can do nothing about it. My knees are shaken, yet the instinct to run has not kicked in, even if I do have the reasons to do so I do not know where I should hide. My heart rushes as the torso of that abomination emerges, a humanoid, unless a second later another pair of hands begins to sprout from its shoulder, then another, then another. The four limbs grew in length, the longer the slender it got. Female entity, long hair, no face but a pair of glowing red eyes.

  'Run'

  Everything freezes. The colder it gets, the harder it is for me to keep the air flowing inside as if the air crystallizes deep within my lungs. I stepped backwards slowly, trying to dampen my footsteps as silently as I could. That being fell down from whatever was left of the jawless man's corpse, only half of its body exists with internals dragging across the floor. She crawls in my direction, will all might I run, escaping the evil's view but no space is limitless. The walls begin to close in, making the dreamscape smaller and smaller, reducing the gap between me and whatever being is chasing me.

  Wake up...

  I beg you, please wake up...

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I've seen enough!! Wake up!!!!

  -------

  Being incapacitated is so awful. It hurts and you cannot do shit about anything bad that could approach anytime. On top of that slight sunlight into my eyes would send my head hurt, as if I were to have a constant lobotomy. I hope it doesn't turn purple, my iris. Harting was formidable, thank goodness I managed to do something before he pierced my heart. Well, he did pierce it but thanks to self-voodooism and another 10 years to the tab, it all reversed. But I can't just use it whenever I fight a super being such as Harting and Bram alike.

  Fuck...

  Recovery hurts so bad..

  Every stitch, every wound, you might not feel it one or two hours post-surgery but after that it's just hell and a bunch of painkillers. Maybe I should just get a knife and cut the tab here, I don't mind paying it in hell, as if living is not one of them anyway. Just for a week perhaps, unless Haryono approved something for Ratna.

  "Banaspati!! Please!! He's freezing himself"

  I woke up from my rest, my body aching and so did everything else because of the muscle memory. I can't really move and at this time there's an emergency that requires my attention just because I can make fire without any burnables. Ratna sounds a bit serious, if he's just dreaming then he would probably come back to his senses soon. Freezing himself? That doesn't sound like Airlangga himself, might as well ignore it. I mean the first time his ability expanded, he had to shoot himself a couple of times just to prove a point. My left foot was dislocated and it's a bit painful to move it since the muscles were shaken and stretched.

  "Calm down..." I said, slowly taking my veil off. Even with all windows blinded, the light from those burning candles still stings a little. There's no way I need total darkness.

  "I- I did everything I could to make him stay sane. But it- it happened so fast E... everything froze!"

  "Ratna!"

  "PLEASE!! HE'S TRAPPED IN HIS OWN DREAM!!"

  I grabbed my blood bag before jumping out of my sick bed, did not care if anything bad would happen to me. I do not feel it, I do not feel any pain at all. Every stitch every cut, every blood that drips from the gap in between flesh, they mean nothing. Ratna can make mistakes because she's young but I can't, and if he dies everyone else will.

  She said everything froze, in this part of the world the weather only has two sides and changes every semester. To my surprise after getting out of the Sanctuary, everything was icy cold, even at some point I saw something like a small chunk of cotton flying in the air. Being bare-chested makes the cold twice as it could be. Hell, I would be dead if I stayed still in this part of town. No more reflection, the sun is burning my eyes, and each second wasted is one step for him to drown in a false reality.

  "Is Taksaka around?" I ask a nearby guard.

  "Sir Taksaka is at the ground zero, Sir!"

  I rushed the male bath underground. The air gets colder and colder, but the temperature does not feel constant in every wind that blows. Many questions are left unanswered, but I feel that some of them will have some explanations by the end of the day. Cold is a state of mind, the more you move the warmer your temperature. However the wind is harsh on the skin, one of the very elements that actually catalyzes any temperature. Hot or cold whenever they meet the exact wind pairing is just a beautiful catastrophe to behold. I made my way to the basement, greeted by the very windman who tried to guard the ground zero with his very own hands.

  "How long have you been here?" I asked Taksaka as the man.

  "The whole event. Kid's importing the whole European climate to a Javanese land..." he answered while trying to keep the bath's door shut.

  "I'll take it from here"

  "As usual?"

  "No, send Crow to Srikandi... we don't know what we're facing"

  Cold blizzard welcomes me when Joseph stopped guarding the door. Thin ice and frozen vapour. The hot bath no longer lives up to its name, everything is ice as far as the room stretches. In the middle of the pool, float the boy in his white shirt and the lower half of his uniform. It's not like some spirit would drag you under the water in this place, yet Ratna's too busy worrying about herself when everything happens. From the door you could see that the boy is having some shivers and jerks, it is probably getting harder and harder for him to differentiate between dream and reality. Whenever it gets way too real, there's some hidden meaning inside. Saving someone from a dream is nothing new, but ice and water are the things that would make me as useless as wet matches in a life-and-death situation.

  I took a deep breath, between the cold, pain and projecting magic... I don't have much energy for doing everything at once, I need to be wise. One thing at a time but maybe I should focus on saving the boy first before myself. Why should I worry about fighting spirits underwater when my strength is literally restricted to physical trauma. Well, that is the problem... if there is something down there I'm doomed for sure.

  "In the name of God, Lord Almighty... Through your fire, I burn all the evil that walks in between the living and the dead..."

  It's alright, just be calm and improvise. I pulled out the intravenous needle on my right foot, without pressure blood flowing from the open wound that the needle makes. Consider it as an offering to the one whose power I borrow from. Fire around the pool to keep me alive in between cold that bites through the skin and bones. Some of the ice already begin to melt in a matter of seconds. The water looks calm when everything somehow is covered with thin ice, the temperature must have been below the freezing point. A slight impact would freeze the whole thing in a short amount of time. Should I wait until it's warm enough? The last time I did it my shoulder was the price, would it be the same as before?

  "Wakey wakey," I muttered before going into the bath. Ice cold, gradually gaining heat but it's way far from being as acceptable as lukewarm. But luckily the particles aren't disturbed much.

  I know that Airlangga is not far from my reach but the walk is sure long because this cold is not something common. Few steps in and all my worries would only intensify.

  "Fuck-!!"

  As my right foot steps forward, a hand pulls me down to the bottom of the pool. Jinxed, but I do not remember the pool being bottomless. I swear to God that I was walking on some dark-colored tiles and now I'm drowning. Swimming up is the only way for me to save the day, but this damn hand is giving me quite a struggle. There's no carbon particle in water and the oxygen is occupied with two hydrogens, enough to dampen a combustion with fire. Boil? It's way too costly and it would take too long for this amount of water. Fine, I know what to do. You can't afford to make the water warm, but I can just heat my limbs to extreme temperatures in no time.

  Focus...

  It might hurt but it's better than giving up. I have never lost a battle to anyone, and now you're telling me that I'll die of drowning? Don't make me laugh, the cold is just a red herring to shatter my brain.

  I heat both of my feet as hot as they could be. Blisters and burns, I could feel my bone cracking from the inside heat yet the hand is still pulling me towards my doom. Sure it is equal to burning my own self, and nobody enjoys the feeling of fire in their skin. On top of that when you burn yourself from the inside of your body, the exposed bone would shatter. The thing shrieks, whatever and wherever it comes from it's deep down the bottomless illusion it has created. Although sound travels poorly in the water the frequency is quite deafening, even for a human with contracts like me. The hand finally loosened, fingers slowly releasing their grips from my ankle, just in time when the oxygen in my lungs was about to expire. I gasped for air, the cold pierced everything it passed through but somehow everything went back into a humid air the second I exhaled. No ice, no snowflakes, no sub-zero climate. Damn astral phenomena, I'd have to write a report just so the sages could perform exorcism in this place.

  The cold lingers around the boy when I drag him out of the pool. He's not pale, nothing blue, no cell death nor bruises, just his heat missing from the whole systemic puzzle. Not dead that is one thing I am sure, but I still need some explanations from everything that happened.

  "Kid, wake up..."

  I was left with no answers. Something formed up in the corner of his eyes when I put his back leaning on the wall. Blank pigment smudge as I wiped that 'tear' off his face. Coarse yet as fine as volcanic ash, with a slight oily touch and somewhat fishy scent to it. All I can think of is ink, but coming out of someone's eyes is surely not an occurrence you could explain with conventional biology taught at school.

  "Wake up!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs in the hot bath that had gone cold because of him.

  Cold hand plunge deep into my neck, gripping it firm with force while it's partially my fault for letting my guard down. It all happened so quick that the next thing I felt is that a harsh impact between my head and the cold floor. Right, the last time I had to dealt with him I got stitches on my arm. Despite being fresh out of bed the grip is no joke, the more he dominates, the harder I gasp for air. Every inch of pressure crunches on my throat are filled with hatred and intention to off someone's life. I'm pretty much hopeless since I'm not allowed to harm this kid, but the hell am I supposed to do when his other half wants me dead.

  "Ranti (chain)..."

  About time the First Lady shows up...