Chapter 69: Sen’s Choice

The air reeked of scorched flesh and ozone.

Sen lay paralyzed on a high-speed flexible stretcher, the sterile fluorescent lights of the medical bay flashing rhythmically above him as orderlies shouted over the roar of life-support monitors.

"What are you doing?!" an emergency physician barked, jamming a central line into Sen’s collarbone. "He needs a full-spectrum plasma synthetic run and high-density regenerative tissue matrix right now!"

The doctor shoved past, rushing to handle another dying casualty from the District 12 disaster as the surgical team wheeled Sen deeper into the complex. Sen’s vision flickered, his consciousness fraying around the edges as the powerful anesthetics and neuro-blockers took hold. The physical world dissolved into a tide of fragmented memories.

---

Flash.

He was standing in the foyer of his family’s manor, holding a heavy travel case. A young girl bounced on her heels in front of him, tugging at his sleeve with a wide, hopeful grin.

"So, big bro... don’t forget you promised!" she chirped. "You have to get me Saint Barnabas’s autograph!"

Sen looked down at his younger sister, the heavy weight in his chest lightening for a single moment.

"Don’t worry," he promised softly, ruffling her hair. "I won’t forget."

The memory shattered into dust.

---

Sen felt his physical body growing numb, his mind slowly detaching from his flesh as his life signals fluctuated on the surgical bay monitors. His soul—fragmented and burning from the Titan’s light-fire—began to drift back into the Astral Plane, projecting into a vivid, agonizing echo of the past.

He was kneeling on a cold astral platform, his soul-form battered, bloodshot, and mangled. Standing above him was his mother, her gaze heavy with disappointment and mounting desperation.

"Look at you, Sen," she said coldly. "After everything happening with the Great Houses, I don’t know if our family will survive this era... especially not with what your brother has done."

Sen looked away, staying silent as he drifted in mid-air.

"If you want to reach the rank of a Saint, using keys to enter the trial isn’t enough—you have to fulfill the core requirements first," his mother continued, her voice echoing through the vast space. "And yet here we are. I don’t even know if you’ve managed to establish communication with your Astral Being... but this new weapon I secured for you has turned you into a monster. Even your very soul feels polluted."

She turned her back on him, and the vision dissolved into blackness.

---

Flash.

Sen was back at the entry point of the Golden Sun Realm—before the disaster, before the breach locked down.

He hadn’t run away. He had entered with a single, desperate intent to save her. He was not going to let her die, no matter what. As he crossed the threshold, the standard system display had flared before his eyes:

*[ WELCOME, Contractor, to the Eternal Breach of the Golden Sun Realm ]*

Sen had swiped the prompt away without reading it. Walking toward the edge of the floating landmass, he opened a spatial tear that led straight down into the abyssal waters below. His plan was simple—swim through the deep currents to find her.

Taking one last deep breath, Sen plunged into the dark ocean.

---

The abyssal ocean was pitch-black and bone-chillingly cold, but Sen didn’t mind. He kicked his legs, diving deeper and deeper into the endless blue-black void.

As he descended, the ambient temperature plummeted. It felt as though phantom, freezing hands were wrapping tightly around his limbs, pulling him down. Unseen voices began to echo through the water—chilling, incoherent whispers that vibrated against his skull.

Boom.

Far below, a muffled explosion detonated in the deep, sending brilliant, multicolored streaks of light shooting through the dark waters like an underwater firework display. The sudden brilliance illuminated the vast, empty expanse for a fraction of a second before plunging everything back into oppressive shadows.

Sen’s body was freezing, his skin growing numb, but as an Eclipser-rank contractor, holding his breath for hours—or even days—was trivial. The lack of air didn’t scare him. The suffocating depth, however, was starting to get to him.

*Is Rain really worth all this?* he thought, his strokes slowing. *I could just turn back right now. She’s just another innocent civilian who died in a breach... no one is going to blame me for this.*

The thought took root. It was so easy. Why was he risking his neck in an uncharted abyssal zone for a girl he barely knew? He was good at being lazy. He was an expert at running away from problems, avoiding responsibility, and letting the world pass him by. Facing danger head-on had never been his style.

Even when he had agreed to help Rain earlier, his plan was to cut and run the second things got out of hand. So why was he hesitating now? Why did this strange, gnawing guilt drag at his chest? Was he really going to walk away again and spend the rest of his life regretting another cowardly choice?

Before Sen could make up his mind to turn around and head back for the surface, the ocean made the decision for him.

Something cold, slick, and monstrously heavy wrapped tightly around his ankle.

Before Sen could even draw a breath, the entity jerked violently, dragging him down into the crushing dark at terrifying speed.

The pressure mounted instantly. Even with his Eclipser-rank physique, the unnatural cold seeped through his flesh and sank directly into his bones. The chilling whispers grew into a deafening roar in his mind as phantom, ghostly hands scraped across his arms, his chest, and his face, trying to pull his soul right out of his body.

Reflex took over. Sen reached for his weapon—a blade made of pieces of space—and moved.

*Clack-clack-clack!*

The blade separated into multiple shards of space. Sen lashed out, and the space shards moved through the dark water, slicing it to ribbons.

As the severed tendrils drifted past him, Sen realized it wasn’t a tentacle or a monster’s appendage at all—it looked like shredded cloth.

Sen kicked back, maneuvering his blade back into its solid form as he looked downward into the abyss.

There, resting on the silent floor of the ocean beneath a storm of swirling, phantom energy, sat a colossal structure.

A massive, glowing dome stretched across the seabed, pulsing with a faint, ancient light that cut through the darkness of the abyssal plain.