Avatar of the Frozen Behemoth: Volume 1

Chapter 33: Eyes Through A Shattered Soul

His heart sank, plummeting into an abyss of confusion and dread. He was still trapped in this strange, nightmarish realm in his subconscious mind, but now he wasn't even in control of his own body. Something was wrong-terribly wrong.

W-What... what is this? Yukio's thoughts raced, tangled and desperate. He felt the ground beneath him shift as if he were being pulled through a tunnel of disjointed images and sounds, disoriented beyond belief. I'm not... I'm not supposed to be here anymore. I should be back! Why am I still here? What the hell is happening to me?

Suddenly, his vision stabilized, but it was wrong-alien.

He was seeing through someone else's eyes. Panic clawed at his chest as he tried to make sense of it, his breath quickening. He saw someone being dragged, no-evacuated, by what appeared to be Royal Spadian guards. The scene was chaotic, the palace around him crumbling, ravaged by destruction.

But he wasn't in the palace... was he? How could he be seeing this?

The blizzard raged on, but the ferocity of the wind didn't drown out the desperate cries echoing in his mind. A young girl's voice, thick with emotion, pierced through the storm, crying out for her father. "No... Father, please! Don't leave me! I don't want to live without you-don't die, please, don't die! I want to stay with you!"

Yukio's heart twisted painfully as he watched, utterly powerless. The scene was so vivid, so agonizingly real. He could feel the heartbreak, the terror.

"Who... who is this? Who is crying? Why am I seeing this?" He tried to will himself out of it, to snap back to his own body, but the vision held him in its merciless grip.

He could feel the warmth of tears streaming down his face-no, not his face-hers. The guards dragged the girl further away, her father's figure growing smaller, fading into the distance. The pain in her voice-no, their voice-cut through him like a knife.

"What is this? What's happening?!" Yukio's thoughts were a whirlwind of confusion and fear, his mind struggling to comprehend the reality unfolding before him.

He was drowning in emotions that weren't his own, suffocating under the weight of this unknown sorrow. "Why am I seeing this? I can't... I don't understand any of this!"

The vision was relentless, the raw, piercing pain of separation and loss overwhelming his senses. He tried to grasp at some thread of understanding, something that could anchor him to reality, but everything was slipping away, spiraling into chaos. His heart pounded erratically, each beat a thunderous reminder of his helplessness.

Please... just stop... whoever's doing this, make it stop! His thoughts were desperate, pleading, but the vision didn't relent. He was trapped, caught in a tide of emotions that weren't his own, with no way out. The tension in his chest was unbearable, like a vice tightening around his heart, squeezing the air from his lungs. "I can't take this... I don't even know what this is..."

His mind was spinning, every sense on edge, as he struggled to hold onto some semblance of reality. But the vision kept pulling him deeper, showing him things he wasn't meant to see, feelings he wasn't meant to feel. And all Yukio could do was endure it, praying that it would end before it completely consumed him.

Then suddenly, the girl abruptly stopped moving.

Her desperate pleas silenced as if a switch had been flipped. Confusion gripped Yukio like a vice.

"Why did she stop? What's going on?" He could sense her body stiffen, almost as if she'd turned to stone. The Spadian guards, who had been urgently guiding her to safety, halted in their tracks, their expressions shifting from grim determination to alarm.