"No!!!! Ryon!!!" Julian shouted with despair.
For Julian, Ryon and Yuri were the only friends that he had. Ryon and him were friends since grade 6. Ryon was a naïve little boy who is very much an innocence guy.
Seeing Ryon's death with her eyes, Yuri was shocked and stuned. She almost forgot to breathe. Her hands and feet getting cold and feeling numb. Her vision getting blur. Fear of Death overwhelmed her. Don't pass out… Don't pass out… she though. If I pass out right now, I will die…
For Yuri, Ryon was like a little brother that she never had. Always smiling like a child. A scaredy cat who want to hid from hardships. A pure and kind hearted person.
Julian is at his breaking point. He has watched a vision of Yuri's death, and now he is watching the actual, slow-motion murder of his best friend. This is the "Extreme Pressure" required for Stage 1: The Glimmer to fully ignite.
Julian's vision blurred with tears, but his mind did the opposite. It went cold.
He didn't hear the screams of the SIT agents or the sound of the blood hitting the floor. He only heard the Smile. The wet, jagged sound of the silhouette's grin.
"The Unknown belongs to us," the creature hissed.
The dark dagger descended toward Ryon's throat. Time didn't just slow down for Julian—it became a physical substance, thick and heavy like syrup.
No, Julian thought. Not with anger, but with a terrifying, hollow authority.
Be. Still.
[Stage 1: The Glimmer — Full Awakening]
The "Tranquility" symbol on Julian's palm didn't just glow; it screamed with a colorless, freezing light. A shockwave of "Silence" exploded from Julian's body.
It wasn't a blast of wind. It was a blast of Nullification.
The silhouette froze mid-strike. Cynthiya's laugh was cut short, her mouth open but no sound coming out. Even the blood spraying from the SIT agent's arm stopped in mid-air, hanging like rubies in a display case.
Julian stood up. His feet didn't make a sound on the floor. His white hairs were spreading, a streak of pure snow-white running through his black hair.
He walked toward the silhouette. The "Shadow" hands around his feet didn't just break; they dissolved into nothing, unable to exist in the "Perfect Stillness" Julian was radiating.
He looked the smiling monster in the eyes.
"You're too loud," Julian whispered.
The atmosphere in the café didn't just go quiet—it ceased to exist.
The hum of the refrigerator, the distant sirens of the "Mirror World," and even the sound of Julian's own frantic heartbeat vanished into the white noise of The Glimmer. Within this radius of absolute nullification, the laws of physics were being rewritten by an eighteen-year-old boy who just wanted the screaming to stop.
Julian reached the silhouette. Close up, the creature wasn't solid; it was a flickering glitch in reality, a piece of Nothingness wearing his best friend's face like a mask. The dark dagger was a mere centimeter from Ryon's skin, but in Julian's presence, the darkness was brittle.
Julian didn't punch. He didn't use force. He simply placed his glowing palm against the silhouette's chest.
The colorless light from his palm surged. Where it touched the shadow, the *"noise"* of the creature's existence was cancelled out. The silhouette didn't scream—it couldn't—but its wide, bright-toothed smile contorted into a mask of pure agony before it shattered into thousands of silent, black glass shards that evaporated before they hit the floor.
As the shadow vanished, the pressure in the room shifted.
The "Stillness" began to retreat toward Julian, and as it did, reality rushed back in with the force of a tidal wave.
The scream of the SIT agent returned in a deafening burst. The blood that had been hanging like rubies splashed onto the floor. Ryon's body, no longer held up by the shadow's grip, slumped completely.
Julian fell to his knees, gasping for air that felt too heavy to breathe. The streak of white hair at his temple was now a stark, brilliant silver, contrasting sharply with his black hair. His left hand was trembling so violently he had to grip his wrist to make it stop.
Behind him, Yuri gasped, her lungs finally remembering how to draw breath. Because of her connection to the "Eternal" symbol, she had seen everything. While the SIT agents had been "paused,"
she had watched Julian move through the frozen world like a ghost.
She saw the silver in his hair. She saw the terrifying, cold godhood in his eyes.
"Julian..." she whispered, her voice cracking. "You... you stopped it."