Blood pooled on the cold marble floor, dark and thick, staining the pristine white of Cian Archdemon's shirt. His pale skin, already delicate and almost translucent, looked ghost-like now under the harsh artificial lights of Blackthorn Academy.
The hooligans had backed away long ago, unnerved by his calm, his terrifying detachment, his empty, crooked smile.
But the damage was done.
Bites, bruises, fists — they had pushed his fragile body beyond its limit.
And now, as the halls emptied, as their laughter faded into distant echoes, Cian's small frame collapsed to the floor — limp, bloodied, broken.
The impact sent a faint splatter of crimson across the marble.
His eyes remained half-open — grey, glassy, unfocused.
But inside his head… it never stopped.
"Neural degradation… Vision blurring… Blood loss exceeding seventy percent… Hypoxia imminent…"
His mind, the same terrifying machine that had always drowned his pain, kept spiraling — even as his body shut down, even as his heart slowed, even as his breath weakened to shallow gasps.
The world grew darker.
His limbs went numb.
But the overthinking — the science — the obsession — it stayed.
"Cerebral oxygen deprivation… fascinating… I… wonder… how long… the brain… keeps… processing…"
Memories flickered.
His parents — their smiles blurred in his fading vision.
The little girl — Emilia — safe, gone.
The bullies — cowards, distant, irrelevant now.
His own body — useless, shutting down.
His mind… still racing.
Still calculating.
Still clinging to curiosity, to understanding, to science — the only thing that never abandoned him.
"Brain death… occurs… after… how many… seconds…? If… consciousness… persists… can… thought… remain…?"
His breathing stopped.
His vision faded entirely.
His small, bloodied body lay still on the floor, eyes glassy, mouth faintly parted.
Dead.
And yet, in the silent void that followed, in that space between life and death…
Cian's mind — his genius, his obsession — whispered one final fragmented thought:
"Hypothesis… confirmed…"
Then… everything went quiet.