The Mantra of the Tortoise

  Aryan gritted his teeth and started to run.

  "Things would be simple if your bodies were normal. But you are walking disasters," Markus said, his voice cutting through the cold morning air. He fell into step beside them, his grey robes fluttering. "Let me repeat the structure. Start slow. Run fast. Finish slow. It sounds simple. It will be agonizing."

  Aryan looked to his left. Markus was running between him and Amara, acting as the center of gravity for their three-person orbit. The Monarch’s face was serene, his breathing undetectable.

  "What?" Aryan asked, panting slightly—not from exertion, but from the weird buzzing in his veins.

  "You'll find out," Markus said, looking straight ahead. "As I say... run... slow."

  He emphasized the word slow with the weight of a spell.

  "Slow? Okay. Will do," Aryan muttered.

  They jogged at a pace that an elderly person could match. One step. Two steps.

  "One. Two. Three. Done," Markus counted, his voice acting as a metronome. He repeated the word like a chant. "Slowly. Run slowly."

  It started as an itch.

  As Amara and Aryan moved, the disturbance in their veins began to rise. The Greed Vessel, which had just gorged itself on a feast of high-density Dark Matter energy, did not want to jog. It wanted to burn. It wanted to consume distance.

  "Now," Markus whispered. "Circulate your Dark Matter into your veins... slowly. Remember the word. Slowly."

  Amara frowned. Her brow furrowed in concentration. Her blood was screaming at her. It felt like trying to drive a Ferrari at 5 miles per hour in first gear. The engine was overheating.

  "Move fast," a voice whispered in the back of her mind. It was hoarse, hypnotic, and sounded terrifyingly like her own inner monologue. "Why are you crawling? You are a Hunter. Move. Forward."

  "Slow," Markus commanded again, his voice snapping like a whip.

  Amara flinched, snapping out of the trance. She looked at Aryan. Her brother’s golden eyes were wide with the same terrified recognition.

  "What is going on?" Aryan gasped, clutching his chest. "Is this another side effect? Side Effect Number Two?"

  "Smart kid," Markus said, not breaking his rhythm. "Slow."

  "Nine, Little Parent... why not explain this to me?" Aryan pleaded internally, fighting the urge to sprint.

  Instead of Nine, Sam replied, his voice grave. "It’s the Greed Vessel Effect, Kid. It showed no effects at first because we detected none. The Vessel demands output. It hates patience. This isn't just training; this is an exorcism."

  Nine chimed in, looking at their vitals with alarm. "Your adrenaline is spiking to lethal levels. You probably want to die faster than this."

  The voices in their heads grew louder, drowning out the Systems.

  "Faster. Move. Faster!"

  The Greed spoke not with words, but with impulses.

  "Show your capacity! Mere three hundred rounds? You should run them in three seconds! You are Rank Five! Show your power! Show them what you are capable of!"

  Amara and Aryan clenched their fists until their nails dug into their palms. They gritted their teeth, fighting a war against their own legs.

  The voice shifted tactics. It stopped demanding and started mocking.

  "Going slowly gets you nowhere," the voice hissed, sliding into Aryan’s deepest fears. "You have 89 days. Tick tock. You are jogging while your time runs out. You will find no cure at this pace. You will never survive."

  It slithered into Aryan and Amara’s mind, back and forth.

  "Hahaha. You call yourself a protector? You are too slow. You can never see your mother again. You can never save Aryan. He is going to die because you are slow. Unleash the strength. Save him!"

  The logic shattered.

  The blood in their veins boiled over. Their brains went blank, white-hot instinct taking the wheel. Their eyes turned from gold and violet to a glowing, starving crimson.

  BOOM.

  The sound barrier shattered instantly.

  Nine and Sam screamed in the System Space. "Stop! Aryan! Stop! Amara! Wake up! You will explode like this! We forbid you from using your powers!"

  But the words arrived too late. Sound was too slow.

  In a fraction of a second, Amara and Aryan vanished from the starting line. They didn't run; they tore through the air, their bodies blurring into streaks of violent energy. The ground beneath them cracked, glass shards exploding from the pressure of their acceleration.

  They were moving at supersonic speeds, aiming to finish the 300 rounds in a single heartbeat.

  They felt powerful. They felt godlike.

  Then, they felt a wall.

  Markus didn't shout. He didn't panic. He even looked bored and lazy. And then he simply didn't exist where he was a second ago.

  Just as they reached peak velocity, a figure appeared directly in front of them—not blocking them, but intercepting their trajectory with casual precision.

  Markus stood there. He wasn't in a running stance. He was standing perfectly still, one hand raised, palm open.

  The War Within

  "I said," Markus whispered, his voice cutting through the roar of the wind like a razor blade. "Slow. Run faster if you want to die fast."

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  But Aryan and Amara couldn't hear him.

  The sonic boom rippled around them, a deafening thunderclap of displaced air, but inside their minds, the noise was different. They were being hypnotized by the one thing they couldn't fight: their own suppressed emotions.

  The Greed Vessel wasn't just burning calories; it was burning their inhibitions. It dredged up every fear, every tear, and every scream they had swallowed over the years and weaponized them.

  "Run!" the voice screamed in Aryan’s head. "You are weak! You are a Rank One burden! If you stop, you die! 89 Days! Tick Tock! Your mother will die. Your sister will die. The future you saw will come true."

  "Protect him!" the voice hissed in Amara’s mind. "You are too slow! Your mother died because you weren't fast enough! Aryan will die because you are resting! Move! Kill! Survive!"

  They were fighting a war against themselves.

  One second, their eyes flickered with golden and violet sanity, their wills clamping down on the surge. The next second, the red haze of Greed washed over them, drowning their logic in pure, animalistic panic. They were engines redlining, vibrating on the verge of self-destruction.

  In the System Space, Sam and Nine watched the biometric readouts scream into the red zone.

  "Nine," Sam’s voice boomed, losing his usual arrogance. "It shouldn't be a problem for them. Aryan is inexperienced, I get that—he’s a civilian in a war zone. But what is going on with Amara? She is a Platinum Hunter—Rank Five! She has discipline of steel. Why is she cracking so easily?"

  Nine looked at the screens, her digital face etched with sadness.

  "That is exactly why, Sam," Nine replied softly. "Think about it. They have been running and running. From the slums, to the demons, to the nightmare loop. Even now, the enemy is standing right in front of them."

  She pointed to Amara’s vitals.

  "Amara hasn't truly rested in years. She has been the shield, the sword, and the strategist. And now she has repressed her fear to keep Aryan calm. She has repressed her grief to keep moving. The Greed Vessel isn't attacking her strength; it’s attacking her exhaustion. She is at her peak physically, but spiritually? She is hanging by a thread."

  Sam crossed his arms, the golden glow of his body dimming slightly. "They are too cautious. They are trying to control a tsunami with a spoon. And now... there may be nothing left to be cautious about if they lose their minds right here."

  He looked at the external feed, watching Markus stand calmly in the path of the two supersonic projectiles.

  "But Markus..." Sam muttered. "He initiated this. He should handle this. As for how..."

  "Only Markus knows," Nine finished, her voice tight with tension. "But if he doesn't stop them in the next millisecond, we are going to have to reboot a pair of corpses."

  "The Fratricide Illusion."

  Markus took a single, elegant step back from the two supersonic disasters.

  He didn't block. He didn't dodge. He simply raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

  SNAP.

  The sound didn't echo; it dominated. The laws of physics in the immediate vicinity bent to his will. The Dark Matter leaking from Aryan and Amara didn't vanish—it solidified. The air turned into invisible molasses.

  Time slowed down by 10x.

  To the outside world, they were moving normally. But inside the field, every millisecond was stretched into an eternity of agony.

  "Kill. Defeat your enemy. Markus is right there. Defeat him. Protect your Sister. Show that you can change the future you saw. Aryan." The voices in their heads intensified, screaming over the sound of their own slowing heartbeats.

  Then it shifted to Amara. “Move fast. Hesitation kills. You always decide after the damage is done. Don’t arrive late again.”

  They were lost in the red haze. Their eyes, once golden and violet, rolled back, replaced by a swirling chaos of Dark Green and Blood Red—a corrupted Yin and Yang of pure, unadulterated instinct.

  Amara and Aryan lifted their fists. They launched kicks. They threw punches with the force of a collapsing building.

  Skills didn't matter. Techniques were forgotten. To use a skill, one needs sanity. To use a Technique, one needs calculation. The brother and sister had neither. They were puppets dancing on the strings of their own suppressed trauma, lashing out at the "Enemy" their minds had conjured.

  From the sheer impact of their exertion, their blood vessels began to bulge. Tiny cracks appeared on their skin, leaking luminescent energy. They were breaking themselves apart to kill the target.

  "Stoooop..."

  In the System Space, the voices of Nine and Sam were distorted, stretched into a low-frequency drone. They were screaming warnings, but the time dilation reduced their desperate pleas to meaningless noise. If not for the slowdown, Aryan and Amara would have already exploded. There would be no Aryan and no Amara left to tell any tale.”

  Then, the impact happened.

  Amara threw a punch meant to shatter Markus's skull.

  Aryan threw a punch meant to crush Markus's heart.

  SPLAT.

  A warm, wet sensation splashed across their faces.

  It wasn't the feeling of hitting an enemy. It wasn't the satisfaction of victory.

  It was the searing, electric shock of familiarity.

  As the first drop of blood spilled onto the floor and splattered against each other’s skin, the illusion shattered. The red haze vanished as if struck by lightning.

  The fists that had accelerated to supersonic speeds stopped millimeters from impact.

  Amara’s fist was inches from Aryan’s face.

  Aryan’s fist was pressed against Amara’s throat.

  Their eyes snapped open, wide and trembling. The Green and Red swirled away, leaving behind terrifying clarity.

  They weren't fighting Markus.

  They were fighting the only person in the world they were trying to save.

  Markus stood five meters away, watching them with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing bacteria.

  "Good," Markus whispered.

  He waved his hand. The heavy, viscous pressure of the Time Field vanished instantly.

  The brother and sister stood there, frozen in their kill-poses, staring at the bruises they had inflicted on each other. The realization hit them harder than any physical blow could. In their blind desire to protect, they had almost committed the ultimate sin.

  "This is the consequence of not being in control," Markus said, his voice echoing in the silent training ground. "Power without perception is just suicide."

  The adrenaline crashed. The Greed Vessel retreated, satisfied with the violence.

  Aryan’s knees gave out. Amara’s legs turned to water.

  Together, they collapsed to the glass floor, gasping for air, their blood mixing on the pristine surface of the Tortoise's cage.

  "The Sound of Silence."

  The two collapsed onto the ground, lying still, their bodies trembling not from exertion, but from the aftershocks of the horror. Their eyes, wide and unblinking, locked onto each other, then drifted away, unable to bear the weight of the gaze.

  For the first time, no one spoke. Not even Aryan.

  Aryan, who had a quip for every monster, a joke for every death threat, and a monologue for every disaster, was completely silent. His mouth was shut tight, his jaw locked.

  “Talk. Say something, Kid,” Sam’s voice echoed in the mental void, sounding unusually frantic. “Don't be this silent. This is an order. The Great Sam commands you to make a stupid joke!”

  Still nothing.

  Aryan and Amara just gazed up at the transparent space. The sky above was a brilliant, carefree blue, mocking them with its peaceful beauty while a storm of guilt raged in their veins.

  “Aryan is in Extreme Mode, Sam,” Nine whispered, her brow furrowed as she watched the flatlining emotional graph.

  “Exactly, Nine! That is the problem!” Sam paced back and forth in the System Space, his golden body flickering with agitation. “He always talks. No matter how tough it is. Even at death’s door in the Void, he was yapping. He talked to Markus like they were drinking buddies! But now...”

  “Because it is about his sister now, Sam. This is different,” Nine said softly.

  Sam stopped pacing. He sighed, a sound that seemed too human for a System. “Don't you worry about Amara, Sis Nine?”

  Nine paused. She looked at Sam with a heavy expression, analyzing his data. “It is no use to worry about what has already happened, Brother Sam. But wait...” She narrowed her eyes. “Since when did you start worrying about them like a parent? And since when did you call me ‘Sister’? No wonder disaster struck. The System is glitching.”

  “That is just how this Great Sam is! I am multifaceted!” Sam blustered, waving his hand dismissively to hide his embarrassment. “This is not the time for psychoanalysis. Since I am showing such benevolence to you kids, you two should stop being so silent and talk already! If the guilt is too heavy, just apologize to each other! Scream! Cry! Just make sure you stay sane!”

  But the silence in the physical world remained unbroken.

  "You two are not entirely hopeless," a voice cut through the quiet.

  Markus sat down on a conjured chair of glass. With a lazy wave of his hand, the gravity around them shifted. Aryan and Amara were lifted from the ground like ragdolls and forced into a sitting position, facing the Monarch.

  "You managed to halt the execution at the most critical moment," Markus observed, his eyes scanning their traumatized faces. "That last millisecond of restraint? That was the only 'You' that exists. The rest was just the Vessel driving the car."

  He leaned forward.

  "Now. Breathe."