Breakage
The commander's office in Breakage fell silent for a moment. After Zan's story ended, only the red sky outside the window slowly shifted hues.
Rak broke the quiet first. "That's enough."
It was a short statement. "The past is settled. What matters now is what you can do right now."
Zan stood straight, drawing in a small breath. Having laid everything bare with her own words, her face was calm, but inside her chest felt hollow yet heavy.
El crossed her arms and jerked her chin toward the door. "Sounds like you're gonna work me to the bone again."
Rak neither confirmed nor denied it. "Let's head to the training field. You said there were guys hit by that plague mist earlier, right?"
El narrowed her eyes slightly. "They didn't die?"
"Half-bitten." Rak spat it out bluntly. "Too risky to drag them to the treatment zone, so I had them chained up in the training field."
He pushed off the back of his chair and glanced at Zan. "Perfect chance to see how far your power responds."
His tone was indifferent, but his gaze didn't see Zan as disposable resources.
How far can I take her?
That was the measuring look in his eyes.
Zan nodded curtly. Running had never crossed her mind.
Rak led the way, with El and Zan following. As they descended the crumbling tower stairs, the dried blood and ash in the floor cracks grew thicker underfoot.
The training field still reeked of battle. Black scorch marks scarred the ground everywhere, and the traces of plague mist lingered like fresh, stinging wounds.
On one side, two demons were chained with temporary iron links. They were still breathing.
But things that could hardly be called flesh crawled over their skin. Black blotches welled up from within, tearing at the surface as they grew, and with every exhale, rotten blood mixed with mist rose from their mouths.
El grimaced slightly. "That's why you couldn't take them to the treatment zone?"
Rak replied curtly. "It's already packed. Throw them in like that, and it'll infect everyone inside."
His gaze slowly turned to Zan. "Let's see if you can save those two."
Zan quietly observed the chained demons. The way the plague devoured their flesh overlapped with the rashes spreading across children's bodies back on the surface. Faces burning with fever, flesh rotting away, whimpering pleas for prayer.
And the children who didn't survive.
Zan's fingers twitched unconsciously. Out of long-ingrained habit, her hands slowly drew toward each other, seeking one another.
The motion she'd performed countless times in cathedrals, on battlefields, atop railings. The posture for clasping hands in prayer.
But just as her palms were about to touch, Zan's shoulders trembled faintly.
Stop...
Her hands halted right before clasping.
Rak narrowed his eyes. "Did you stop yourself?"
Zan blinked once and steadied her breath. "......Yes."
Rak's voice lowered slightly. "Good. You decide that much."
It wasn't a rebuke.
Good. We'll start from there.
It was closer to that.
Zan added quietly, "I won't pray anymore."
The moment the words ended, red light sparked from both her hands.
At first, it was just points of light. Thin red specks rose between her finger joints, in the crevices of her palms and the backs of her hands.
Soon, they took the shape of shards, like splintered glass fragments.
The light wasn't pure. Not radiant like holy light, nor darkly blazing like hellfire. It was the color of dried blood, red tinged with gray ash. As if the words she'd poured out in countless prayers, layered with the weight of death upon them, had reformed into something new.
El leaned forward. "......Is this your power now?"
Zan couldn't answer. Before she could, the red shards lifted from her hands and began orbiting around her.
No clasped hands, no recited prayer—yet it was unmistakably power from within her.
Rak half-raised his arm, then lowered it. He wouldn't stop her. He'd watch.
The red shards swirled once around Zan's body.
Then they spread outward quietly.
Brushing over the training field's floor, the scorch marks, the wall scars, sweeping through the lingering plague remnants in the air, slowly expanding in a circle.
The red shards reached the two plague-infected demons.
The first reaction came from their skin. The black blotches crawling over it flinched as if encountering an unfamiliar heat.
The blotches' edges halted for an instant. Their burrowing slowed.
Little by little, ever so slightly.
The plague's energy, digging deeper into the flesh, began pushing back toward the surface.
One demon shuddered violently and let out a short scream. "Kk... hngh!"
Its skin couldn't withstand the internal pressure and burst open in small spots. Black blood and misty clumps sprayed out.
But this time, they couldn't burrow back in. Red shards encircled the boundaries, blocking them.
The other demon reacted the same way, a beat later. Each inhale brought a rasping from its chest, but where the red light touched, the affliction couldn't advance further, leaking out bit by bit with its breaths.
El's eyes widened. "It's stopping the spread."
The other demon soldiers around the training field noticed the change too.
"Breathing... feels a bit easier."
Someone muttered awkwardly from over there.
Rak ignored it, watching Zan instead.
An awkward focus etched Zan's face. Not the upward-straining expression of prayer.
The face of someone tracing a newly forming line with their hands.
Rak called quietly. "Zan, can you hold it? Cut it if it's too much."
Zan was breathing a little hard but nodded. "......Yes. It's a bit heavy, but it's not being pulled upward like before."
The word upward conjured stairs, ledgers, and voices.
Moments later, the red shards' glow began to fade.
Rak gestured. "Stop. Don't push it."
Zan inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly.
The shards lost their light one by one, dispersing into the air.
The two demons' breathing steadied somewhat.
Not out of danger, but no longer sinking deeper. Clearly better than before.
El approached one demon and prodded its forearm with her fingertips. "The burrowing... it's stopped."
Rak spoke slowly. "Your recovery stops things from dying."
El nodded. "Keeps them from dying, as much as possible."
Rak's gaze shifted to Zan. "Zan slows and blocks the spread."
He spoke in a tone that had already confirmed his conclusion. "Whether plague or curse, when it tries to spread somewhere, it slows the path itself—and if possible, shoves it back down."
El thought for a moment, then opened her mouth. "......A divine authority?"
Rak's lips quirked faintly. "Something like that."
His eyes deepened toward the battlefield. "Balrag weighs down the front lines, and Zan slows and blocks the spread from behind."
"Even if they send power from above, we can shave off its speed before it arrives."
El glanced at Zan. "No more begging to save anyone now."
Zan shook her head quietly. "......This isn't prayer."
"It's more like blocking it from coming over, instead of lifting up like before."
Rak nodded. "Good."
A strange, solid strength laced his voice. "From now on, if you see any sign of plague or whatever spreading in the base, slow the path from inside and push it back."
Zan stared straight ahead. "......Understood."
Rak added one more thing. "But don't let the power flow loose like this."
"Practice controlling the range, intensity, who it touches and how much."
He glanced at Zan's hand. "From now on, you're the one drawing the line—not them from above."
Zan fell silent for a moment.
She looked down at her palms. Only the empty space remained where her prayer habit had been.
"......Breakage."
She murmured low. "It feels like breaking what I used to lift up."
Rak nodded curtly. "Good. We'll call it that."
On the way out of the training field, El strode up beside Zan. "How's it feel?"
Zan thought briefly before answering. "Before, every prayer felt like I was being pulled somewhere upward."
"No matter what I asked for, it felt like it was already decided from above."
She clenched and unclenched her fingers once. "Now... it's like the things pulling me up are shattering from my hands and falling back down at my feet."
El smirked. "Then we're good. We're stealing what they used from above and using it ourselves."
Rak walked a bit ahead of the two, turning thoughts over in his mind alone.
The heavens. Ledgers. Numbers. Voices.
"The surface is probably still managed like that."
The side believing the war ended was the surface; the side pulling out the "ended" war as records was the heavens.
Rak reached a brief conclusion. "If the hand gripping the prayer strings manages the surface..."
"We start by cutting those strings before they reach hell."
Rak murmured very softly. "This time, we draw the line first."