I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight

"You should never have trusted the Joker."

"Hah?" Valisera gasped, her mind spinning in a vortex of madness.

"Who would trust a thief? Who would trust a killer, for hell’s sake?" Kyle leaned slightly to look into her broken crimson eyes.

"You’re stupid, Valisera. A stupid teenager dazzled by her cosmic power, who thought subjugating a demonic entity meant she could control humans. You believed absolute power was everything. And that hiding my secret under your wing would keep me a loyal and useful pawn."

Kyle smiled — a smile that shattered the last wall of his humanity.

"Thank you. You helped me a lot. Thanks to you, and to your arrogance that made you accept a weak recruit into Alpha Squad so you could toy with him... I joined the FBI. And thanks to you, here I am, at the bottom of the hospital you wanted to destroy."

Valisera’s eyes widened as if they would pop out of their sockets.

"You... you planned this... from the beginning?"

"I knew I would join," Kyle said with the confidence of a killer revealing his winning card.

"Because I knew you would be stupid and arrogant enough to accept my presence."

"Ka... yl..."

The word left her mouth like a death rattle. The betrayal was not a stab in the back; it was the demolition of everything she built, all her pride.

"Are you angry?" Kyle asked, his tone carrying icy mockery.

He straightened his posture and looked down at her like a god judging an insect.

"It doesn’t matter. What could you possibly do while pinned like that? Nothing... absolutely nothing. And I won’t die here. Nor will you."

Kyle looked at the gray rainy sky.

"That’s what fate said."

"Kyle!" Valisera screamed again, crying bitterly, her tears mixing with the rain and washing the cathedral’s dust from her cheeks.

"Why? What did I do to you for you to betray me like this?! I helped you! I saved you from Kirion! I saved you from the FBI discovering your identity! I kept the Forgotten Blade secret! I protected you as one of us!"

"That’s why... you’re stupid, Valisera."

Kyle answered with painful simplicity.

"In Elysium, the one who protects you today sells you tomorrow."

Kyle turned as if remembering something trivial and added coldly:

"And by the way... Alexander Vance is innocent of betraying you."

"W-... what?" Sia’s crying stopped for a moment from the shock.

"I falsely accused him in the warehouse.

Alexander never cooperated with Ilarion to wipe you out. The assassination we faced was orchestrated... yes, but not by command. It was by Saint Ilarion, and I forced you to storm this hospital that I claimed contained a harvesting operation."

Everything... everything was a lie.

Alpha Squad was not destroyed because of government corruption.

It was destroyed because of a lie from a thief who wanted to reach the bottom of the hospital for a reason known only to him.

"You’re wanted by the Foldirs, Valisera," Kyle continued, looking at the old man waiting with a hunched back.

"I don’t know the exact reason. Maybe because of the entity residing inside you. But they want you alive. And I... am just a courier delivering the package, in exchange for... my reward."

"Are you even human?!"

Sia screamed with a hoarse fury that tore what remained of her vocal cords, crawling through the pool of blood, looking at Eva’s half-corpse beside her.

"Do you have a heart, you monster?! Damian burned! Aiden was cut apart! Eva was split! They trusted you! Damian protected you with his shield!"

Kyle fell silent.

The rain stopped washing the mask and began washing his face.

Is he human?

He answered with terrifying calm:

"Yes... human. A human whose humanity is eroding because of this filthy world that stole my family and left me to ashes."

Kyle looked at his face reflected in a puddle formed by the rain.

Why does he feel this weight in his chest? Why this hidden sadness tightening his throat like a noose?

He did everything correctly. Planned, manipulated, betrayed, and survived. He achieved his goal.

But... Damian. Aiden. Eva.

They truly trusted him. Valisera, despite her harshness, treated him as one of the herd that must be protected. Damian sacrificed his flesh for him.

He cooperated with one of the Foldirs’ followers — the strongest underworld guild — even though he did not know the details of their grand deal, nor why one of the six Foldirs came personally to receive Valisera.

He did not know why they chose this hospital specifically as the delivery point. But he did it. He survived with his life and weapon.

Did he do something wrong? Yes.

Did he start to feel regret?

Maybe... a little. Very little, in the deepest point of his dead soul.

Kyle stood silent for a long time amid the heavy rain descending from the gray sky to embrace the corpses of his companions.

He raised his head high toward the sky, closing his crimson eyes. Raindrops struck his cold lashes.

"I’m sorry..."

His lips whispered the two words with fragile sincerity that changed nothing.

Then... with a final motion severing all ties with them... he placed the black smiling mask over his face.

The Black Joker returned.

And Kyle Valter disappeared forever.

The old man, "The Sleeper," finally moved.

He grabbed Valisera by the collar of her torn shirt with one hand as if she were as light as a feather.

She did not resist. She was broken, psychologically and physically, and her tears had dried.

"The window is open... time to leave..." the old man muttered.

With a simple motion of his katana, he split space before him, creating a dark spatial "gate," unlike the Samis’ gates, looking instead like a tear in the cosmic canvas.

The old man entered the gate carrying Valisera. Before it closed, Valisera cast one last look — completely empty, devoid of life — toward Kyle’s smiling mask.

Then the gate closed and vanished. They disappeared.

Three remained in the collapsed Cathedral of Flesh: the Black Joker, Ilarion’s severed corpse, and Sia Novilth.

Sia, the sadistic doctor who lost her entire squad, tried to rise.

Her body burned, her muscles refused to respond, and her rage boiled like lava.

"You damned... you traitorous bastard... you... monster!"

Sia screamed as she crawled toward him, clutching the remains of a broken dagger, trying to stab his boot.

She was incapable of doing anything but crying and crawling like a wounded worm.

The Joker did not look at her with pity.

He raised his foot, and with a harsh, swift motion, struck the back of her neck with calculated precision.

Sia collapsed face-first into mud and blood, instantly unconscious — spared from seeing what would happen next, left as the sole survivor to tell the story of the Joker’s betrayal.

The Joker turned.

The place would collapse soon.

Heavy rain began filling the bottom, and the foundations of the flesh cathedral started decaying without Ilarion’s Eitra supporting them.

And more importantly... FBI forces would surround the area within minutes.

The Joker stepped past Eva’s severed corpse without looking at it.

He walked toward Saint Ilarion’s body.

But he did not stop at the severed head or torso.

He passed the bone altar... and walked toward a very ordinary wall at the back of the cathedral.

A flesh wall identical to the others, no different in pulse or color.

But the Joker’s eyes — or rather the "information" he saw — knew the difference.

There was a very small, unnoticed slit between the fleshy tissues.

The Joker took out Saint Ilarion’s "severed right arm" from his pocket.

He held the cold arm and placed the dead saint’s palm, with its unique etheral imprint, directly onto the tiny slit in the flesh wall.

Tssssssss...

The living wall responded to its creator’s imprint.

The red tissues shrank back with a sticky sound, revealing a solid titanium metal door, handleless, partially open.

This was the place. The real target for which Kyle manipulated everything.

The secret Saint Ilarion hid from everyone.

The Joker grabbed the two pieces of Saint Ilarion’s body — the torso and the head — one by one, and carelessly threw them into the dark secret opening.

Then... he turned for one last look at the floor that witnessed Alpha Squad’s destruction, and at Sia unconscious under the rain.

He crossed the metal threshold, entered the secret place, and closed the heavy titanium door behind him with a mechanical "click," disappearing completely into the bowels of the earth, leaving Elysium to deal with the consequences of his crime.

But... what Kyle Valter, the Black Joker, who believed he arranged the chessboard perfectly, did not know...

Was that Elysium’s gray rainy sky was not empty.

Above the collapsed hospital, where the storm struck the black clouds...

Two figures floated in the air in absolute zero gravity, watching the massive fissure that split the earth and revealed the destroyed hospital’s bottom.

They were not from the FBI. Nor were they from mercenary guilds.

The first wore a black formal suit without a single wrinkle, his golden hair fluttering in the storm without a single raindrop touching it.

His eyes carried dominance that forced the sky to submit, and his etheral aura was "crushing" the surrounding clouds.

It was the Sami, "Kaiser Dravion." The absolute ruler of Elysium.

Beside him floated silently like death’s shadow itself, his right arm and personal swordsman. A man wearing a dark coat that swallowed light, his face covered by a dark metallic mask revealing only two glowing red eyes burning like embers in a cold night. "Dameron Valzark."

"We’re late,"

Kaiser Dravion spoke with calm lethality, looking at the smoking ruins below.

"The Foldirs took the gravity vessel..."

Dameron did not respond.

He simply looked downward, toward the dark fissure that swallowed the Joker, his glowing red eyes shining with a bloody promise that only the burning of the entire world could extinguish.

The game was not over.

It had just begun on the board of the true Samis.