THE LAST KEEPER

Chapter 249: 249. TRAPPED II

”...no,” The word came out low. He knew where he stood at the moment. It was no doubt an illusion, and he knew that. All he had to do was break it and return to reality. Just how did the illusion know to bring him to his worst memory?

Perhaps that was the cruelty of an illusion trap. If one had the strongest sensitivity to their surroundings, they would recognize the shift in reality. Even worse if one had strong emotions regarding a certain moment in their life, whether happy or sad, then the illusion could just use it and did not need to create a new illusion.

The first to reach his ears was laughter. It was close and in the silence that had been holding the place down. Sagiri turned swiftly to look where the laughter was coming from. They stood there. Northern warriors armed with bows and arrows. His mother was kneeling to the side with three arrows launched into her torso, and she was now laughing at him, too?

What twisted illusion was this?

One of the faceless northerners tilted his head slightly, studying him as if nothing about this moment was unusual.

”Well,” he said, almost amused, ”look who made it back.” he laughed. He was faceless, but Sagiri had never felt a bigger urge to kill someone. Another laughed, louder this time.

”Thought you’d be dead with the rest of them. So there still lives a N’folu.” Sagiri didn’t answer, but his body trembled with rage.

”Make it stop!!” he could not bear to see the faceless northerners laughing at him or the odd laugh in the face of his dying mother. His eyes moved past them to the ground.

Bodies. Familiar faces he had seen in the archive memory. They hadn’t been arranged. They still lay dead in fatal positions on the sand, their life sipping into the soil. Somewhere they fell. Others dragged. The scene wasn’t chaos anymore; it was an aftermath.

And they were laughing at him. At all of it.

”You see it now, don’t you?” one of them said, stepping forward slightly. ”What happens when you’re not strong enough?” his body was mutilated, and half his face was gone. Another voice, sharper.

”You ran and left us for death.” This one was a woman whose clearly pregnant belly had been torn in half, and a baby was hanging from it.

”I didn’t run! I was a child!” Sagiri defended. It was as if his own clan was not blaming him for being alive. Sagiri’s gaze snapped back to them.

”I didn’t run...” he repeated in a broken voice. His voice was low. But it trembled at the edges. sagiri had asked himself the same question over and over. Why did it have to be him who survived? Why him?

They laughed again.

”Yet you haven’t come back after sixteen years. ” How unfilial,” another sneered, laughing.

”You weren’t there,” one of them replied. ”Same thing.” Something inside him tightened. ”Yet now you are in the company of those who killed us, and you plan to protect some of their kin.”

The laughter didn’t stop. It grew and got layered. Not only the faceless northern warriors, but also his mother and all his dead clan. More voices joined, some he didn’t even remember, all of them carrying the same tone, dismissive, amused, certain.

”I am only doing this to get back to you!” Sagiri said, sinking to his knees while he clutched his head in his hands.

”Do you think this changes anything?” One of them said, raising his weapon lazily. ”You’re still too late.”

”stoop! Get away from me!” Sagiri screamed in agony. He could not see his clan this way. They were peaceful people who had died to protect the echo archive. He was going to kill whoever created this illusion.

”Still angry,” one of them said, stepping over the fallen body like it meant nothing. ”Good. Makes this easier.” They moved all at once, pointing fingers, blaming him, and mocking.

”Stop!!” Sagiri yelled, but the illusion did not break

”Nokai!” Sagiri called, and his weapon tore through the archive and fell into his hands.

”They are not real! They are not real!” he chanted, but it seemed like the more he tried to resist the illusions, the more real they got. He swung Nokai around, but it seemed to cut air. Of course, they were not real. He knew they were not real, yet these had been real members of his clan.

”Are you planning to kill us, too? Have you been corrupted by your clan so much that you want to kill us?” They laughed and mocked him even more. sagiri could not take it anymore. The anger inside of him and the agony grew to levels he could not take. This needed to end either forcefully or in another way. The markings on sagiri’s body crawled violently and accumulated like rings of energy on his wrists, hands, and feet.

Sagiri shot through the air, going as high as he could. He twisted his body through the air to add as much momentum to his fall when he finally reached the peak of his ascent. The archive cackled with his descent, so much so that the air froze and its particles tore to just let him through.

For a suspended instance, Sagiri hung above the ground before landing on all fours. His fists and feet were fully charged with the archive. There was a pause even in the illusion before everything disappeared. Sagiri had never used this much force before, even when he flattened the small village south of the Haku tribe. this time in the most agony, and whoever had pushed him into the illusion could feel his anger.

The impact split the earth outward in four violent lines, cracks racing from each limb like jagged veins as the ground buckled and tore under the weight of the charged descent. Everything around him shook as it got swept away by the impact, swept away and flattened. Trees were uprooted from the roots, and some split into thousands of pieces. The impact went on for thousands of feet, clearing everything in its wake before it finally stopped.

The illusion broke, and Sagiri finally snapped his eyes open.

He, in a moment, had flattened masses of land, and even the graves had sunk, and were nowhere to be seen.

Even with this, Sagiri was still angry.

His anger could burn until he found whoever cast such a cruel illusion. Perhaps it had been his fault for being too agitated and falling for it, but that was still no excuse.

Where is everyone?