The Essence Flow

Chapter 188: The Boy From The End Of The World

Elliot sat hunched in the library, the glow of lamplight casting long shadows across the pages before him.

Normally, words leapt to his command, knowledge unspooling like lightning in his grasp.

But tonight—

His mind wouldn’t focus.

Lyris’s absence loomed, a silent accusation. He should’ve asked her to join. She’d have pushed back, needled him, forced him to articulate the chaos in his head.

Instead, he was alone.

Alone with the ghost of his brother.

"Is he… really gone?"

The whisper cracked in the stillness, raw with a hope he couldn’t suppress.

"There must be a way to bring him back."

His fingers clawed at the next book, its spine creaking in protest as he scoured for answers—anything on timeline displacement, soul transference, possession by alternate selves.

Nothing.

"Damn it…"

The curse hissed between his teeth, too loud in the hollow quiet.

"This can’t be the first case EVER."

But the shelves offered no solace.

Except—

Haeren.

The memory jolted him.

He’d dug through archives these past days, unearthed a case from 25 years ago—another student twisted by Corruption, another "impossible" anomaly.

Similar.

Not identical.

But a thread.

A frayed, fragile thread—

—and Elliot would cling to it until his fingers bled.

Elliot’s fingers stilled on the page.

A thought uncoiled in his mind, serpentine, too terrible to ignore.

"Is it… possible for Corruption to generate alterations on reality?"

The question echoed, monstrous in its implications.

His mind raced, months of research colliding with half-formed theories, stitching together a nightmare:

Cracks.

Not in stone. Not in flesh.

In the world itself.

Spaces never meant to exist, gaps where reality frayed—

—and if something, someone, stood outside it all—

Could they slip through?

"But… how is something outside of reality?"

His throat tightened.

"What the hell is inside Towan?"

The hypothesis twisted, almost complete, yet unthinkable.

A being unbound by time.

A shadow cast from a place that shouldn’t be.

He didn’t know about the previous timeline.

Didn’t know the war, the collapse, the countless iterations that had come before.

But in the silence of the library, with only flickering lamplight to bear witness—

Elliot trembled on the edge of revelation.

Elliot’s footsteps echoed through the academy halls, too fast, too loud, his usual precision shattered by urgency.

He needed Lyris. Her sharp mind, her surgical skepticism.

Or Sylra, who’d seen the impossible and lived.

Or even Rellie, whose empathy might pierce the veil of whatever wore his brother’s skin.

Anyone.

"I have to alert everyone—"

The thought choked him, not with duty, but with something raw, something terrified.

Scared.

A word foreign to his tongue.

But the fear clawed at his ribs anyway—the dread that Towan was gone, truly gone, and the thing left behind was just a hollow mimicry, a puppet strung up with stolen memories.

His brother.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The one who’d fought beside him since they could walk.

The one who’d taken the blows meant for him, who’d grinned through split lips and dared the world to try harder.

Who was wearing his face now?

The question burned, unanswered.

Elliot swerved sharply, cutting toward the training grounds—a shortcut, he told himself.

But beneath the rationalization:

Faster.

Before I lose him forever.

At a distance, Sylra balanced a swirling sphere of wind above her palm, her brow furrowed in fierce concentration as she willed it to spin. The air whined in protest, the sphere stuttering, threatening to burst—

—until Elliot’s voice cut through the tension.

"Sylra… nice."

He took a step forward, ready to call out, to demand answers, to beg for help—

—when movement flickered at the edge of his vision.

A shadow.

A silhouette.

Towan.

He stood half-shrouded by the pillar, the sunlight skittering away from his skin as if repelled, leaving his face drenched in unnatural gloom.

"I must say…"

His voice oozed forward, smooth, almost amused.

"You’re way sharper than what I remember."

The words hung in the air, weighted with something unspoken, something old.

Not a compliment.

A judgment.

And for the first time—

Elliot wondered if his brother was still in there at all.

"You… who are you?"

Elliot’s voice broke, the words splintering as they left his lips.

Towan’s lips curved, just slightly.

"I can’t lie to you, Elliot," he said, tilting his head with a chilling familiarity of his brother’s casual ease. "I’m Towan."

A pause.

"Can’t you tell?"

The mockery in his tone was unmistakable, a knife twisted in the wound of Elliot’s grief.

"Where is my brother?" Elliot demanded, ignoring the taunt, his voice raw, desperate.

Towan’s smile vanished.

"Dead."

The word landed like a guillotine.

"He died—against that corrupted student." A shrug, too casual for the horror it carried. "I just took his place."

A step closer.

"I finally got out of that void."

Elliot’s body locked, his breath stolen, his face draining of color.

The world narrowed to a single, shattering syllable:

"...What?"

Towan burst into laughter.

The sound ricocheted off the training grounds, too loud, too bright, too alive for the grim confession he’d just made.

Elliot stared, his mind stuttering, unable to reconcile the tears pricking his eyes with the grin splitting Towan’s face.

"I’m just messing with you,"

Towan wheezed, wiping at his eyes. "You should’ve seen your face!"A beat.

"Sorry, I had to do it."

Elliot’s voice emerged hollow, disbelieving.

"You were… kidding?"

Towan waved a hand, the motion eerily casual for the bombshell he’d dropped.

"I mean, the part where your Towan is dead is a lie—his consciousness is just recovering from the shock of dying."

A shrug.

"I just took his place so his body wouldn’t die."

Another pause, then—infuriatingly breezy:

"Once he’s good enough to come back—and find the way—he will."

It took a second.

Then—

The realization hit.

This motherfucker had just pranked him.

Pranked him into thinking his brother was gone forever.

Pranked him with the single worst possible lie.

And the worst part?

It was the most Towan thing he could’ve done.

Elliot’s breath left him in a rush, a sigh of relief so deep it nearly buckled his knees.

This wasn’t his Towan.

“You little shi…”

But damn if he wasn’t his brother.

They sat side by side on the bench, the training grounds stretching before them—students laughing, Essentia flaring, a vibrant snapshot of a world still whole.

A world Towan’s eyes no longer recognized.

"Okay okay… let me get this straight," Elliot began, his voice threaded with disbelief, his fingers tapping an erratic rhythm against his knee.

He looked unhinged, like a conspiracy theorist connecting dots no one else could see.

"You’re telling me that in your timeline—Corruption took over the world, and the Corruptor wasborn."*

A pause.

"And… that we were some of the few survivors of the initial chaos—fought for years to take down the Circle. And when we finally did…"

His breath hitched, the next words lodging in his throat.

"...the Corruptionstilltook over the world?"

Towan didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.

Just nodded, slow and sure, like a soldier confirming a massacre.

"Yeah," he said, voice rough with memory. "That pretty much sums it up."

The silence that followed wasn’t empty.

It was full of screams.

Elliot’s hand froze mid-air, his fingers digging into his chin as if trying to physically anchor his thoughts.

"But then…"

The question clawed its way out, inevitable:

"How are you even alive?"

Towan’s gaze drifted, not to the sky, but to something beyond it—a place Elliot couldn’t see.

"Our master sacrificed himself to re-start the universe," he said, the words heavy with a grief that had no end.

A pause.

"I didn’t want to lose. So I just…"

His voice fractured, the explanation eluding him.

"Tried to survive the collapse of reality."

A shrug, too casual for the apocalypse it described.

"Ended up nowhere. Pure void. Outside of the world."

Elliot’s eye twitched.

The implications detonated in his mind—

—Selene would’ve combusted on the spot.

"How long… were you in there?"

Towan’s laugh was a dry, soundless thing.

"Who knows?"

A glance toward the students sparring obliviously in the distance.

"Enough for humanity to rebuild everything. Enough for you and your Towan to be born."

He stood abruptly, his shadow stretching too long in the setting sun.

"There were moments—brief ones—where his consciousness brushed mine. We’re the same person, after all."

A flex of his fingers, testing, remembering.

"But it was when he died that I felt… the gap I could fill."

A beat.

"Though I didn’t expect this."

Elliot rose too, his mind reeling, yet—

"That… explains a lot, actually."

The understatement of several lifetimes.

Towan’s gaze swept the academy grounds, taking in the unscarred walls, the unbroken students, the absence of violet rot creeping through the cracks.

"Many things are different here," he mused, voice laced with the weight of hindsight. "Like the Corruptor being born before the Corruption expanded—which led to its obvious defeat."

The words dripped with bitter irony, the tone of a soldier who’d fought a war already lost.

Elliot gulped, his throat tight with dawning horror.

"But the Essentia Warriors were barely able to defeat him. The whole of Solaris was destroyed in the process."

A beat.

Then—

Towan smiled.

Not a grin. Not a smirk.

A blade’s edge of a smile, sharp with absolute certainty.

"I could beat the shit out of that Corruptor."

No boast. No bluster.

Just fact, spoken with the calm of a man who’d already done the math.

And the unspoken truth hung between them:

In his timeline, no one had been strong enough.

Here?

He was.

“Wait.” Elliot held up a hand, eyebrow quirking. “What happened to me in your timeline?”

Towan blinked. Then his face did this weird twitch, like he’d just bitten into a lemon. “Pfft. What d’you mean? You, uh. Died. Obviously.” He waved a hand like it was no big deal. “Just like Sylra. And Alira. And, y’know. Your ki—”

He choked.

Elliot stared.

“—Kite! Yeah, your kite. Flew into a, uh. Time storm. Tragic.” Towan nodded solemnly. “Anyways, point is—most people don’t survive that. Super fatal.”

Elliot’s eyes narrowed. “…Did I have a kid?”

Towan’s entire body went rigid. “WOW LOOK AT THE TIME—” He spun around, addressing absolutely nothing. “Ohhhh hey, is that—? Yep, someone’s definitely calling me. Gotta go!”

The hallway was dead silent. Not a soul in sight.

Elliot crossed his arms. “Towan.”

“SEE YOU NEVER—I MEAN LATER—” Towan lunged for the nearest shadow like a man fleeing a tax audit. One step, and—poof—he was gone.

Elliot stood there.

“…I had a kid, didn’t I.”

Somewhere in the void, he could feel Towan sweating.

The silence that followed was so profound it could’ve been a funeral for Towan’s credibility.