There’s No Love In the Deathzone (BL)

From the outside, the [Nightfall] looked like a dome. It encompassed almost the whole field and the tribune where the creature resided. It was different from the darkness around them, which was created by the absence of light.

The [Nighfall] looked impenetrable, like a fortress, a sturdy wall. And yet it also pulses, as if alive.

There was no sound but the soft vibration of the dome. Not even those scratching modulating sounds from the creature could penetrate the wall of darkness.

"So that's [Nightfall]," Ron muttered, after a quite long silence.

"This is the first time I see it with my own eyes," Sierra stared unblinking at the dome, hands clenching her gun tightly.

Zein tried to extend his energy toward the dome, but it bounced off the rippling and pulsing darkness. He couldn't sense anything, including Bassena, even though he still felt the esper's skill inside his shadow.

Something tickled his heart then; and as he unconsciously grabbed the hilt of the dagger strapped on his thigh, he realized that it was anxiety.

Ah...so it already tried to make a root there—the attachment.

"What should we do now? Should we go to the shard's room—?"

Before Eugene could finish his words, a loud shooting sound cut him first as Sierra released a bullet into an incoming wraith coming from behind the door.

"Well, that's probably safer, but—" Ron took out his reserve weapon—a bow—from his inventory, and joined the sharpshooter in the offensive just as a rippling mana shield surrounded them. "We need to get rid of the leftover."

It seemed like there were still reserve troops that didn't get caught inside the nightfall, and after failing to penetrate the dome, they started to charge at the only other living beings there. Zein looked down, at the wriggling darkness beneath his feet, and whispered. "Go,"

The wriggling darkness paused for a bit, and then coiled into his leg as if nuzzling him, before shooting out of the shield into the unfortunate beasts running toward them.

"And after we got rid of them?"

Han Shin looked toward the other entrance of the stadium, which according to Zein, would lead to the shard's room. But they still needed to thread complex hallways before they could arrive on the site. "We need a special shard pathfinder to reach the room," the healer shrugged. "But I don't think our guide had any intention to leave this area."

They looked at Zein, who was watching the dome keenly, fingers tight around the dagger he already took out. Despite saying he didn't like to get cut by a dagger, it seemed like the guide was ready to immediately drew his own blood the moment Bassena got trapped again.

"Well, our situation is not exactly dire either," Ron smirked while releasing another arrow. "So we might as well just wait."

Ron glanced at Zein, who briefly looked at him before returning his gaze to the dome. The scout chuckled quietly; the look inside the blue eyes told him that Zein had already come to terms with the fact that Bassena was rather special to him.

'What a cute brat,' Ron smirked while shooting his arrow for the last time.

The field had filled with silence again, which indicated the end of the beast's last spurt attack. So all they had to do now was wait for Bassena.

The child of darkness wriggled back toward Zein, coiling the guide's leg up into his arm, nuzzling the palm as if asking for praise. For some reason, the skill behaved just like its master, so Zein patted the flexible lump of darkness, just as he patted Bassena earlier, and it went back beneath his feet again, inside his shadow—if there was any.

And they didn't have to wait long, turned out, for the dome dispersed just after Ron finished his after-care for his bow and put the weapon back inside his dimensional storage.

With the big dome of darkness disappearing, it was like the light coming back into their vision, and the heavy air felt like it was being lifted. There was nothing there anymore but the reassuring figure of the Serpent Lord.

Zein didn't realize how hard he'd been clenching into the dagger's hilt until he felt the tingling inside his palm as his fingers loosened up. He put the dagger back inside its sheath as Bassena walked toward them with something in his hand.

"Tank," he said abruptly, before anyone could say anything.

Eugene and Anise spent a second getting startled and the next few seconds rummaging inside the dimensional bag, before pulling out a secured container from there, and opening it for Bassena. He dropped a ball-shaped black crystal with swirling fog inside it into the container, and the researcher shut the box tight after that.

"That's fast. You're really rampaging in there, aren't you?" Han Shin grinned, reaching out his hand to let out strands of healing magic toward Bassena, hunting for wounds.

"Another core...so it was a specter too?" Ron asked as he watched the researchers and Balduz carefully put the sealed container inside the dimensional bag.

"Yeah," Bassena craned his neck and moved his freshly healed shoulder, trying the joint. "It's blabbering nonstop though, maybe because it resides in a place with human traces?"

"So it does have cognitive abilities?" Eugene, who just finished storing the container, snapped his attention back at Bassena.

Bassena took a moment to drink the water Balduz offered to him before answering. "They probably picked up from the remnant of civilization inside this ruin, and spent decades, probably hundreds of years to evolve. You should try to find out through the three specter's cores we acquired."

"Another specter..." Zein looked up into the tribune where that swaying sinister fog was earlier. "It's like they were acting as guards or something."

"Yeah, we definitely need to look into it," Han Shin turned to look at the researchers. "Now, isn't that a productive result? Even without the shard, Radia won't get too—"

"Sir Han, you can't jinx it!" Anise, the usually quiet one, snapped at the healer. They had gone too far with too much hope. She turned to Bassena next, hands clasped in prayer. "Sir Vaski, could you—"

"I'm not writing any report until we get back to proper civilization," Bassena raised up his hand to shut the wilting, pouting researcher, and turned his gaze toward Zein. "Now, should we go to get the treasure?"

* * *

Honestly, Zein felt it was quite underwhelming.

Perhaps because the core of the fragment provided them with the majestic tree fortress filled with vibrant life, but when he saw the humble condition of the shard, it felt just like a piece of ordinary crystal.

Except, of course, it wasn't ordinary at all. The shard still radiated light, but perhaps because it wasn't a core, and only a piece of a fragment, the light wasn't as bright as the one inside the tree fortress. It stood atop a pedestal—a half-broken pillar. The room itself, while big, was empty. It reminded Zein of the Unit's dining hall without any of the chairs and tables. There were things that looked like desks and chairs in a pile in one corner of the room, so perhaps this room used to be an office or something, before the doomsday befell upon Earth.

And of course, unlike the core, the safe zone generated by this shard wasn't as big. It encompassed the whole room and a few rooms surrounding it, plus a floor below where they stood, approximately a hundred meters radius, without any additional abilities to commence life. So, no greenery or water gushed out around this one.

And yet, Zein could feel the excited stares following him as he walked toward the shard with Bassena in tow. One thing that didn't change was the fact that it still prevented anyone other than him to get close, so Bassena stopped a few meters from the pedestal.

"Let's see..." Zein muttered as he touched the shard. "Will I be able to see you again?"

He closed his eyes, and expected either the white space or the forest again. But what he 'saw' was a cityscape. A city on the brink of destruction. Fire licking and devouring the building, sinister black fog spreading on the ground. Corpses were strewn around, some looked new, some already decayed. Snarling beasts with red eyes and covered in black fog roamed the streets, scavenging the building, searching for prey.

It reminded Zein of that day; the red-zone outbreak.

He realized then, that the shard was giving him a vision of this ruin's history. The vision shifted from place to place, but everything gave him the same vibe; destruction, despair. Things he'd been so familiar with all his life.

It gave him visions of the last resistance of the humans before everything was snuffed out. The city died, fast, scorched and blackened.

He felt sad. A deep sorrow that vibrated the air. He felt angry, and frustrated. He wanted to do something, but his power was not enough. He needed the others to help—no, he had to demand responsibility.

Zein blinked. Ah...it wasn't his emotions. He felt it, but it wasn't his.

It was Setnath.

But while there was anger and sorrow, something else gnawing at those emotions. Eroding. A celestial being was not supposed to be emotional, for they need to be partial, rational. This thing that gave him the authority of heaven slowly eroded his compassion.

But how could he not be partial?

He was once a human.

Before he lost himself, he would rather shred himself to pieces. This heavy celestial body, this boring soul that lost its passion. He would rip them to pieces and use them to preserve humanity—that which once was him.

And then, someday, one of those pieces would be a vessel, and he would be reborn…

Zein opened his eyes, and almost slammed the shard back into the pedestal, gasping and panting while clutching the pillar hard.

Vessel. Fragment.

—after all, you are also my fragment, Luzein.

"Lucre..." his lips trembled, letting out an unknown name. A name that he glimpses through their connection as the whimsical celestial being reminisced about his leftover humanity.

Once upon a time, before he was Setnath, he was Lucre.

"Ha…" Zein stared at the shard, blue eyes blazing with cold fury.

And then he laughed, and laughed, even as he felt Bassena's hands on his shoulder. He clutched the hard stone pillar and laughed into the hundreds of years old dirt.

Oh, how kind of benevolent the celestial being was.

But Zein knew, he felt it, that Setnath gave his identity away not because of some sacrificial benevolence, nor was it to bring salvation to the world.

It was for his desire to be reborn as a mortal, as he was before he received godhood.

And Zein was supposed to be that vessel.

* * *

"Have you calmed down?"

Zein lifted his gaze to meet the soft amber eyes, staring at him with concern. He was sitting at the base of the pedestal, swimming in messy thoughts. His body was filled with rage, and for quite some time, he was trembling because of it.

The good thing was that he didn't collapse like before. Perhaps because he didn't meet the vestige or converse with it, just witnessing some memory.

But his mental state was way way worse.

He had wondered all of his life; why.

Why his mother gave birth to him, only to die in heartbreak, leaving him fending the world alone with just a name and a selfish order telling him to live—that he must live.

Why he had this unique ability that help him survive?

Why was his brother, even on his last breath, telling him to live?

Why he was alive, while people precious to him were gone?

Why? Why must he live? What for?

Because he was supposed to survive until Setnath took over? Was he just a piece of a celestial being's soul?

Who was he? Who was Luzein? A vessel? A doll who didn't even know how to live his life?

It was so ridiculous that he couldn't help but laughed.

Still, it wasn't a good idea to instill worry in this expedition team, which was expecting a result. "Yeah," he answered finally, leaning his head into the pillar. "I just saw some horrible visions."

Honestly, it wasn't that horrible. Well, it was horrible, but he lived in the red-zone for more than twenty years, and it was just slightly less horrible than the visions. After all, wicked humans and miasmic beasts didn't have much difference.

"Here, have a drink first," Bassena put a bottle of water on Zein's hand, cap already unscrewed.

"Thanks," Zein still felt his vision to be rather unfocused, like he was floating, in a daze. But the water, as usual, brought him back. "They can come if they want. I had no energy to move right now."

As if had been waiting for that words, Han Shin leaped forward toward him with a speed of a hunter, grabbing Zein's face and scanning the guide all over. "You're alright? You really really alright?"

"I'm okay," Zein flicked the healer's hands and moved his head away. As the others came near, he tried to stand up, holding into Bassena's reaching hand. "More importantly, this shard can be moved. But unless we want to come back right now, just let it sit here until we're ready to go."

"We won't move now. Let's just rest for a night and come back tomorrow," Bassena decided, probably because of the state Zein was in.

It didn't seem like the other was mind, but the eagerness in their eyes told Zein that there was something these people wanted to ask of him.

Wordlessly, he reached out to touch the shard while looking at the researchers' wide eyes and parted mouths, at their fidgeting hands and feet. He would let out a chuckle if he wasn't so jaded right now.

"The repelling force had been deactivated so you can observe it closer. Just be careful with it."

It took a while for his words to sink into the others' heads. "Oooh!" but then, Anise, the not-so-quite one now, yelled excitedly and practically ran into the pedestal. Eugene followed her with an even louder shout, and then everyone started clamoring around the shard.

Zein, naturally, stepped back, letting the expedition team absorb the fulfillment of reaching their objective successfully. But the owner of the hand attached to him followed him rather than joining the merry celebration in the middle of the room.

Bassena still looked at him cautiously, as if expecting him to break down any moment. Well, he was the one who witnessed Zein's manic laughter closely.

Zein tilted his head, and then glanced at the busy congregation around the shard. He twisted his hand and grabbed the esper's wrist instead, pulling the other man toward the door.

He didn't want to think about existential crisis bullshit right now.

"What...now?" Bassena looked flabbergasted.

Zein glanced once more toward the others, and saw Ron staring at them. Zein brought his index finger to his lips, and he saw the scout scoff before averting his gaze.

Zein looked deep into the amber eyes next. "Now."