SSS-Rank Awakening: My Talent Multiplies Everything novel Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Lyra.

The memories didn’t come gently.

At first, it was only fragments. A voice here, a face there, a strange feeling he couldn’t place. Then, without warning, everything crashed in at once.

Kael dropped to the floor, his back pressing against the bed as if it could hold him together. His knees drew up instinctively, palms flat against the cold tiles. His eyes remained open, but he wasn’t seeing his room anymore instead he was seeing something else entirely.

Lyra at eighteen, sitting on the worn couch in their living room. A hunter’s badge rested proudly on her chest, catching the light as she smiled through her exhaustion. She told him they didn’t need to worry about money anymore now she had became a hunter.

The memory unfolded vividly in his mind, as if he were reliving it through his own eyes. And in that moment, he felt the emotions.

Not happiness nor proud, it was rather something darker.... Jealousy.

The memory shifted, time moving forward like a scene he couldn’t pause. Lyra returned from the tower again and again, each time more battered than the last. Bruises, cuts, exhaustion written all over her, yet she never stopped. She cooked, cleaned, held the house together, and still found the strength to visit their mother at the hospital.

And him?

He saw himself too. Sitting in front of a screen, lost in games, day after day. Doing nothing. Contributing nothing. Just existing while everything around him slowly fell apart.

The days blurred into years, repeating the same pattern until one day, something changed.

That memory was sharper than the rest.

Lyra came back worse than usual. This time, she didn’t bother hiding her injuries behind oversized clothes and a forced smile.

There was anger in her eyes. Real anger, the kind that had been building for a long time.

They argued.

No, they shouted.

Her voice trembled as she told him to at least help, even a little. She was the one earning, the one suffering, the one carrying everything. The least he could do was not sit around all day.

Kael’s chest tightened as he heard his own reply.

Cold.

Harsh.

Every word hit harder as the memory replayed. He wanted to stop, to take it back, but it didn’t slow down.

It just kept going.

He felt his chest clench at the words leaving his own mouth. They were cruel words.

At the end Lyra turned away and walked into her room.

That was the last time he saw her.

Lyra had always been careful. No matter how hard things got, she never entered the tower without recovering first. Sometimes it took weeks, sometimes months, but never less than a few days.

Except that time.

Maybe she was too angry. Maybe she just needed space. Maybe she was simply tired.

She went back into the tower the very next day.

And she never came back.

The years that followed felt distant and blurred, like watching someone else’s life. There was alcohol, regret, and bills piling up faster than he could handle. When the money ran out, he was forced to act.

Odd jobs at first. Then harder choices.

Their mother’s medical bills kept rising until they became something he could no longer ignore. So at twenty-five, he made a decision.

He became a hunter.

It was dangerous, but it paid. Or at least, it could.

But it was already too late.

He had started too late.

His potential was gone before he even began. He struggled, survived, barely moved forward while everything else kept slipping through his fingers. His mother died not long after.

And years later, so did he.

On the fiftieth floor of the tower.

The memories ended there.

Kael gasped as he returned to himself, his body soaked in sweat. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he reached for it, expecting pain, expecting something.

There was nothing.

No wounds. No blood.

Just his body, whole and untouched.

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