Chapter 25:BITTER PAST

Darkness, a thick cloak, smothered the room. No light dared pierce its depths. A solitary figure huddled on the frigid floor, the damp stone leaching warmth from his bones. Weeping. Each sob a ragged gasp, a desperate attempt to breathe air that tasted of despair.

Hot tears, a salty counterpoint to the chill, streamed down his face, tracing paths through the grime. His once-golden eyes, now clouded with sorrow, stared sightlessly at the floor inches from his nose. He wrapped his arms around his knees, a futile attempt to silence the tremors racking his body.Letting go. The thought echoed in the vast emptiness of his mind, a ghostly whisper bouncing off walls slick with misery. Each breath, a Herculean task, weighed him down further. Was there even a point to breathing anymore?

Aether squinted into the gloom, his vision slowly coaxing the room from an inky void. Chaos reigned supreme. Bedsheets writhed like angry waves, the comforter a shipwreck upon the stormy mattress. A lone laptop, a sickly bioluminescent beacon in the darkness, clung precariously to the edge of the bed, its charger a forgotten lifeline snaking across the floor. In the distance, a chair overflowed with discarded clothes, a tangled coral reef of neglected responsibilities. Scattered across the floor, like the wreckage of a thousand escapist dreams, lay a battlefield of anime CDs and light novels.A wave of self-loathing washed over Aether. "I hate them all," he seethed, his fist clenching tight. The phantom ache in his bruised body, a probable broken rib singing a dull chorus of pain, intensified with the anger. Muffled cries escaped his lips, punctuated by sharp hisses as his body rebelled."Just because that idiot's girlfriend looked at me," Aether spat, desperately searching for justification. But the words felt hollow, even in the quiet of his room. It was a flimsy shield against the truth – these attacks were regular occurrences, a cruel ritual of his classmates. A truth that festered in his gut, as bitter as the bile rising in his throat.The last whimper of his muffled cries dissolved into the suffocating darkness. A sudden cacophony shattered the fragile peace – a relentless pounding on his door. The voice that followed was a familiar storm cloud, its fury echoing off the walls."You little menace! Get down here right now and clean that mess you made on the wall!" It was his foster mother, her voice a serrated blade scraping against raw nerves.Aether squeezed his eyes shut, hands instinctively flying over his ears. He desperately tried to build a soundproof barrier, to mute the torrent of insults. Images flickered behind closed eyelids – a woman with a cold, hard gaze, her voice a constant storm."I'm warning you, boy, or there'll be consequences. I told you, didn't I? You worthless brat!" The relentless tirade continued, devoid of sympathy, laced with venom. "Just wait until Eric gets home. You'll regret this trouble you keep stirring up!"A desperate plea echoed in the confines of his skull: 'Please, just go away!' But his pleas were lost in the downpour of her words. Aether felt like a trapped bird, its cries swallowed by the tightening coils of a constrictor. He was powerless, suffocating under the weight of her relentless cruelty.Aether's mind was a battlefield. "It wasn't my fault!" he screamed silently, the echo trapped within his skull. "Blood on the walls? Come on, did I ask for a beating ?" His voice was a prisoner, unheard by the storm raging outside his door.His foster mother – a woman who saw him as a burden cloaked in the unwanted responsibility of "family consultants." To her, he was a stray, tolerated only out of financial necessity. Abandoned, tossed between foster homes like yesterday's trash. A bitter truth Aether had grown accustomed to.Why couldn't he have the warmth others received? Why was he an outcast – shunned by peers, belittled by adults? Despair, a cold serpent, coiled around his throat. Life felt like a cruel joke, a never-ending cycle of pain.His fingers, stained with frustration, tightened around his throat. "Just... let go," a voice whispered in the desolate landscape of his mind. Death, a morbid comfort, beckoned with the promise of an end to the hurt. But then what? A cruel victory for them? A final laugh at his weakness?A twisted smile split his face – a defiance born of despair. "To hell with them," he rasped, the words devoid of hope, but laced with a dark humor. This wasn't about a brighter future. No, that was a childish fantasy. He held on. Not because he believed things would change, but because it was the only act of rebellion left.Aether slumped against the wall, the concrete a cold, unyielding echo of the emptiness within him. "Sleep," he rasped, the word a tattered flag of surrender against the relentless siege of exhaustion and despair. Pushing himself upright, each muscle a throbbing testament to the day's battles, he stumbled towards his bed.The floorboards creaked a mournful symphony beneath his leaden feet, each groan a chorus of his own weary spirit. Collapsing onto the crumpled sheets, he pulled them tight, a flimsy shield against the twin chills of the room and his own shattered heart.His eyes, heavy with unshed tears, drifted closed. Maybe, just maybe, sleep would be a traitor to his waking reality. Perhaps it would weave a tapestry of dreams, vibrant and fantastical, a temporary escape from the harsh monochrome of his life. In the realm of dreams, he wouldn't be the ostracized boy at school, the burden in his foster home. He could soar on the back of a majestic griffin over emerald landscapes, or wield a legendary blade against mythical beasts like in his favourite anime and novels. Here, sorrow wouldn't stain his soul, and loneliness wouldn't be his constant companion.A faint, desperate hope flickered within him. Sleep, the great deceiver, might offer a stolen moment of solace, a brief reprieve from the relentless storm. He clung to this hope, a fragile ember in the darkness, as sleep's embrace finally claimed him, pulling him towards the unknown realm of dreams.