Chapter 103: Wake up

The memory cut off abruptly, leaving Bunny’s fingertips trembling in shock—the scene had been sickeningly bloody and cruel.

Finally, she understood what Brandon had meant when he told her, "The one who hurt you wasn’t her."

Astin had been sadistically tortured and left permanently disabled by another Guide. That harrowing ordeal had cast an indelible shadow over his life, instilling in him a visceral revulsion and active resistance toward anything related to Guides.

Bunny was about to resume mending his spiritual network when disaster struck.

A severe rift formed between Astin and his spirit guide. While the little crocodile was eager to bond with Bunny, Astin’s raw instinct fought back relentlessly.

This internal conflict trapped him in a dangerous feedback loop between his subconscious and self-identity.

As Bunny had pried into his memories, Astin himself was drawn into a vortex of total disorientation.

Sensing something was wrong, Bunny severed her connection to Astin’s spiritual sea, only to find his physical body slumped in a state of pseudo-coma.

"Astin! Wake up, Astin!"

Astin’s consciousness was now imprisoned deep within his own mental landscape—trapped because he could never make peace with his past self.

Through a veil of blinding white mist, a woman in a flowing white dress called out to him softy, "My sweet boy, come into Mommy’s arms."

A tiny, young Astin sprinted toward her, throwing himself eagerly into her warm embrace.

Yet in the very next instant, the woman vanished, her back turned as she drifted further and further away.

He scrambled frantically to catch up, tears streaming down his face.

"Mommy, don’t leave! Don’t abandon me!"

Young Astin ran until he crashed onto the hard ground, scraping his knees raw. Piercing pain shot through his body, but he didn’t dare slow down.

The only response he received was her icy detachment. "You should never have been born, Astin. I never loved your father. My true love is on Earth, and that’s where I belong. I’m leaving."

The scene shifted in a flash. The woman was still wearing that lovely white dress, but now her wrists were slashed, her blood pooling around her body on the cold floor.

Astin’s father raised him until he turned sixteen, then walked away without ever looking back.

Young Astin knelt in the vast, empty white void, sobbing his heart out.

Until that familiar, demon-like screech echoed behind him once more. "Are you still refusing to be my dog?"

Terrified out of his mind, young Astin ran with all his might. But in this trackless expanse of nothingness, there was no way out.

Bunny tried every trick she knew to snap Astin out of it. If a Sentinel lost their way inside their own mental landscape, they would never wake up again.

After all, a mental landscape was fundamentally built from a Sentinel’s deepest nightmares and personal demons.

Panicking, she realized that no one except a Guide could enter a Sentinel’s inner domain.

"Hey! Wake up, big guy! Don’t fall asleep on me!"

She pinched the groove under his nose and slapped his cheeks repeatedly, but Astin showed zero signs of returning to consciousness.

She had no choice but to go in and drag him back herself.

Re-entering Astin’s spiritual sea, Bunny found the young crocodile waiting for her. It guided her straight into the deepest layer of his mental graph.

— The Illusion —

Young Astin was utterly spent, his legs giving out as darkness crept up from behind.

The woman grabbed him with a cruel, mocking laugh, her fingers locking around his throat in a vice-like grip.

The terrifying sensation of suffocating to death washed over him like a tidal wave.

"Since you refuse to be my dog, you can just go die!"

A fraction of a second before Astin passed out, a solid fist struck the woman, sending her flying backward.

Screaming like a vengeful ghost, she lunged forward again, only to be hit with a brutal kick from Bunny, who had just rushed into the illusion.

"Get the hell away from him!"

Since this was merely Astin’s nightmare, Bunny felt zero fear.

Dark shadowy figures began solidifying into physical forms, threatening to drag Astin deeper into the abyss.

Bunny launched into motion—throwing a left hook, a right jab, and executing a soaring spin kick that scattered the snarling phantoms in all directions.

Scooping up tiny Astin in her arms, she sprinted toward the exit.

The glowing white doorway ahead was already narrowing. If they failed to break through in time, both of their minds would be trapped here forever.

Adrenaline surging through her veins, Bunny pushed herself to the absolute limit, channeling every ounce of stamina from her college 800-meter dash days. A split second before the door slammed shut, she executed a desperate leap of faith, hurtling through the opening with young Astin tucked securely against her chest.

As the dark haze cleared, Bunny collapsed on the ground, gasping frantically for air. In just a short time, this kid had managed to wander dangerously far; if she had arrived a moment later, she might never have brought him back.

The thought gave her chills—she had come dangerously close to turning a routine soothing session into a full-blown medical catastrophe.

In her arms, tiny Astin was chewing his fingernails, staring up at her with huge, innocent eyes.

"You really love making trouble, don’t you, kid?"

Bunny tapped his forehead affectionately. But to her complete surprise, tiny Astin threw his arms around her neck, nestling into her chest.

In a soft, milky voice, he cooed sweetly, "Mommy."

Bro, are you out of your mind?! Calling people ’Mom’ randomly isn’t cool these days, okay?

Bunny had zero interest in raising a kid right now.

She gently pushed him away, but the little guy stubbornly clung right back to her. When she tried pushing him off a second time, his mouth twitched, and the waterworks started immediately.

"Waaah..."

The toddler’s tears came on demand, like shining little pearls clinging to his long, curled eyelashes before falling onto his rosy cheeks.

"Mommy... hold me..."

Little Astin’s seaweed-green curls were soft and fluffy, with a stray tuft of hair sticking up on top of his head. His emerald eyes stared up at her, swimming with tears.

Deep within his eyes was the overwhelming terror of being abandoned once more—a fragile, broken sadness that looked as though it would shatter at the slightest touch.

Astin’s mother had never loved him—or rather, she hadn’t loved him enough.

Her union with Astin’s father had been a forced compatibility match. She didn’t love Astin’s father, so naturally, she couldn’t bring herself to love the child born from that man.

The one she truly loved was San’s father—her first husband, the man who had rescued her from a pile of corpses.

Regrettably, when vast distances tore lovers apart, uncontainable resentment invariably spilled over onto someone else.

Astin and his father were merely collateral damage in that tragedy.

His mother refused to get close to him and rarely spent time with him. Astin had been raised entirely by his father—from bottle feedings and bedtime stories to his education and playtime. The complete absence of a mother figure only intensified his desperate craving for maternal affection.

And what about San, who grew up in the Tower? Hadn’t he suffered the exact same fate?