"I'm sorry, brother... at this point, no one can help you. You're on your own." Al's words stabbed into Natsuki Subaru's heart like a dagger. The sound echoed in his ears, shattering the last remnants of hope within him. They lingered like poison, gnawing at every thought, every fragile piece of courage he had once clung to.
"You're on your own..."
Those words didn't just echo—they carved themselves into him. Subaru's cries for help rose to the sky, desperate and ragged, but the heavens remained silent. No hand reached out to him. Neither Anastasia's sharp mind, nor Crusch's unyielding honor, nor even Priscilla's imperious pride extended toward him. All had turned their backs. All had left him adrift. Each of them walked their own paths, leaving Subaru stranded in his.
Leaning against a wall before Priscilla's mansion, he felt the weight of her disdain carved into his flesh. His ribs still ached where her kick had landed, and blood dripped steadily from his nose, dark against his pale skin. The copper taste lingered on his lips as each drop struck the ground with a sound that felt too loud in the emptiness around him. His indifferent eyes, dulled and lifeless, stared not at the street, not at the sky—only into an abyss no one else could see.
"I... I'm weak. Why... why can't anyone understand me?" His voice broke, stumbling over the words as if they carried lead. "I couldn't save anyone... Rem... she was killed over and over by that damn Archbishop..." The tears came hot and relentless, carving paths down his cheeks. Each sob tore open wounds that had never healed, only hidden. The darkness he had tried to keep at bay closed in completely now, swallowing the last flickers of resistance. He had surrendered. After hundreds of deaths, hundreds of returns, he was bound by the same invisible chains. There was no escape. No victory. Only repetition.
With trembling effort, he pushed himself up from his knees and began to stagger through the capital's streets. His body dragged forward like a broken puppet, joints heavy, breath shallow. Every step landed like a hammer striking nails into his chest. His mind became a battlefield, torn by a thousand clashing voices—accusations, whispers of despair, the hollow laughter of failure. They screamed louder than the city's bustle, louder than the beating of his heart.
"Emilia abandoned me..." he muttered, voice trembling between rage and grief. "I loved her. I threw away my pride, I erased myself for her... And what did she give me? Nothing. Not even a goodbye. Not even a thank you. Just... silence." His lips twisted, torn between a sob and a bitter smile. "How foolish... how utterly foolish I was..." Hours slipped away unnoticed. He wandered into backstreets swallowed by shadow, places where laughter and light dared not reach. The joyful noise of merchants, of children playing, of friends laughing—it all belonged to another world, one he no longer recognized.
Night fell, and with it came a suffocating stillness. He collapsed to his knees in a forgotten corner of the city. Stone pressed against him, cold and merciless. The air carried the stench of rot and dust, but he barely noticed. His eyes, once fiery with stubborn will, were hollow caves now. No spark. No light. No future.
"Ah... that's right." His voice was flat, detached, almost mocking himself. "Why do I even care about them? Rem killed me countless times... For that half-elf, I embraced death again and again. Why? Why did I throw myself away for their sake? Why didn't I just defy the entire kingdom from the very beginning? Feelings... love... trust... who cares? It's all worthless. Empty. I'm so tired... so tired. I just want... I just want to go home. To where I belonged. To where none of this ever mattered."
Natsuki Subaru—broken, weary, drowning in the mire of loneliness and futility. A boy chained to a destiny he had never asked for, suffocated beneath the weight of choices that had never been his to make.
Slowly, with hands that would not stop trembling, he rose to his feet. From his waist he drew a short blade, its metal glinting faintly in the dim moonlight. He stared at it for a long time, eyes searching for an answer in the cold reflection of steel. There was none. Only emptiness gazed back. A frail whisper left his lips, fragile as dying breath:
"I hope it doesn't hurt too much..."
The chill of the blade brushed against his throat, and in that moment, nothing else mattered. Not memories, not regrets, not even fear. Just the steel, and the promise of silence. The lights of the world dimmed. Darkness surged, vast and complete, and swallowed him whole.
And then—he opened his eyes.
The world returned in cruel mockery. He was inside Crusch Karsten's mansion. The same room. The same suffocating emptiness. The same trap. The silence weighed heavier than the cacophony in his head, pressing down until it threatened to crush him.
"Here again... the same nightmare... I don't want this anymore... I DON'T WANT THE SAME NIGHTMARE!" Subaru's scream ripped through the air, raw with desperation. His trembling hands reached for a knife resting on the table. He gripped it so tightly his knuckles turned white, and without hesitation, he pressed the blade to his throat.
He opened his eyes. He took the knife. He pressed it to his throat.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
And Again...
Each attempt brought with it the same searing pain, the same hollow despair. Death, return, death, return—a spiral with no end. With every repetition, a fragment of his soul was ground into dust, leaving less and less behind. His eyes were voids now, blank mirrors reflecting only the abyss. His heart was a bottomless pit, echoing with emptiness that no one else could fathom.
"Please... stop..."
The words drifted through his mind, fragile yet piercing. A voice. Not his own. Soft as velvet, soothing as a lullaby. It carried a warmth he hadn't felt in so long, a warmth that wrapped around him like a mother's embrace. In the midst of death's bitter chill, for the first time, something other than despair reached him—a spark of comfort, faint yet undeniable.
Subaru glanced around, as if begging the shadows for an answer that would never come. His chest rose and fell unevenly, each breath scraping against his throat like sandpaper. A bitter smile twisted across his lips, though it was closer to a grimace than anything resembling joy. His eyes were bloodshot and weary, gleaming with a feverish, maddened light that betrayed just how fragile his mind had become.
"I think... I'm starting to lose it," he muttered to himself, the words spilling out in a broken whisper. "Death... can it really intoxicate someone? Heh... hah... maybe it's starting to feel almost fun... a sick kind of thrill that numbs everything else..." He chuckled, though the sound was hollow, stripped of any real humor.
"No, you're not losing your mind. And please, stop hurting yourself. Watching you suffer... it hurts me too." The voice cut through the silence like a trembling string. It was a woman's voice, soft yet cracking under the weight of emotion. Every syllable quivered, as if carrying the echo of an unspoken tear.
Subaru froze, the blade in his hand trembling. Slowly, he lowered it from his throat. The faint glimmer of steel reflected back his own image—eyes dulled, hollow, stripped of vitality as though life itself had abandoned him long ago. For one terrible heartbeat, he saw himself as a corpse that still pretended to breathe.
"And who... are you supposed to be?" His voice rasped, broken, torn between suspicion and surrender. "Why won't you just let me die in peace?"
The walls around him rippled like water and then collapsed into nothing. The room vanished. Darkness spread outward, unraveling into a vast, silent void that pressed against his chest. When it finally dissolved, a strange, alien landscape stretched around him, dim and unreal like a half-formed dream.
There, ahead of him, stood a woman. She was short, delicate in frame, her body draped in a simple one-piece dress that clung to her like the whisper of fabric. Snow-white hair cascaded to her shoulders like a thin veil, swaying gently as if stirred by a nonexistent breeze. And then—her eyes. Icy blue, sharp as shards of glass, unrelenting as they pierced through him, stripping away every mask.
"Because I care about you. Watching you die... it tears me apart," she said, her hand rising to brush away tears from her cheeks. The words were too gentle, too personal. They burrowed deep, stabbing into Subaru's heart like needles laced with a sweetness he could not bear.
Subaru narrowed his eyes, his steps heavy as he drew closer to her. His entire being trembled with rage, despair, and suspicion. "You... the one who keeps dragging me back, every damn time... The Witch? Is it you?"
The woman tilted her head ever so slightly. A faint smile touched her lips, and in it lived mockery wrapped in tenderness. "Yes, it's me. How rude of me not to introduce myself sooner... Pandora. The Witch of Vainglory. A pleasure to finally meet you, Natsuki Subaru." As she spoke, her fingers traced delicately across the spot on his throat where the blade had rested. The touch sent a shiver down his spine, cold as the heart of winter.
Subaru stumbled back instinctively, revulsion and fear tangled in his veins. "So you're the one stopping me from dying. You won't let me rest... You keep binding me here. But I'm not fit for this! I'm weak, reckless... useless! I've accomplished nothing! I've lost all faith! I don't even want to help anyone anymore!" His voice broke, rising into a raw cry. "This world... it will never understand me."
In the blink of an eye, Pandora was behind him. He felt her breath against his neck, chilling him like the touch of a ghost. Her voice slithered into his ears, honeyed and horrifying. "But I do understand you, Subaru~ After all, who else has kept you from surrendering to death? Who else has remained by your side through every torment, every end? No one but me. You just... never realized it."
His face twisted, brows furrowing as he forced out words choked with defiance. "Why... why should I believe any of that? What proof do y—"
Pandora's voice cut him off, gentle but sharp enough to slice bone. "Miasma. It only exists in witches, does it not? Then tell me, Subaru, why do you carry that same scent? It clings to you... because of me. That is the proof. Now... do you believe?"
His fists clenched until his nails cut into his palms, blood dampening his skin. "Fine... then why show yourself now, Witch-sama? Why reveal yourself when I've already stopped caring? I don't want to save anyone anymore. On the contrary..." His voice shook, a storm of grief, rage, and disappointment clashing together in a torrent that nearly broke him apart.
Pandora drifted closer, her presence gliding across the space like a shadow made flesh. She reached forward and wrapped him in her arms. The embrace was paradox itself—ice-cold, yet somehow suffused with a warmth that threatened to unravel him entirely. "I know~ And that is why I've come. Because what I want... is not for you to pour yourself into others. What I want... is for you to finally love yourself." Her hand threaded gently through his hair, and her tone carried the tenderness of a mother cradling her child.
For a fleeting moment, something long-buried awoke inside Subaru. A memory not of events, but of feelings—the warmth of home, the fragile safety of belonging, the illusion that someone's arms could shield him from the world's cruelty. His throat tightened, and tears welled before slipping silently down his cheeks. When... when was the last time I felt this? he thought, trembling.
Pandora's voice curled against his ear like velvet, soft and poisonous all at once. "Yes... that's it. You've been carrying this weight alone for so long, haven't you? Always pretending, always forcing yourself forward... You're exhausted, Subaru. It's all right now. You can rest."
Her hand pressed against his back. At first, it was a gentle warmth, the caress of comfort. But then the warmth burned, shifting into a searing heat that consumed him. The heat sharpened into pain, deep and cutting, as though her touch itself pierced through flesh and bone, dragging him into a truth he could not yet understand.
Subaru jerked upright, his breath caught in his throat as if someone had stolen the air from his lungs. His chest rose and fell with panicked rhythm, yet just as suddenly as the pain had come, it slipped away, leaving behind only the ghost of its sting. His hand instinctively reached for his back, trembling. "What... what did you do to me?"
Pandora tilted her head ever so slightly, lips curving into a mischievous smile that carried the softness of mockery and the sharpness of a blade. A secret shimmered in her icy eyes, one she had no intention of hiding. "I gave you my Authority. The Authority of Vainglory... It is yours to use however you desire. And with it, the bond between us will grow stronger than ever."
"Why? Why would you give me something like that?" Subaru's voice cracked, ragged, as if dragged across broken glass. "All I told you... was that I wanted to die." Each word carried the weight of a thousand failures, heavy enough to drag his very soul downward. His despair clung to him, thick and suffocating, until even the act of speaking seemed unbearable.
For a fleeting moment, Pandora's expression softened, her smile curling into something fragile, touched with sorrow. Yet in her eyes lay an unfathomable mixture of sincerity and jest. "But I don't want that, Subaru. Now that I can finally speak to you... touch you... would it not be unbearably sad to part so soon? I gave you my Authority not to chain you, but to free you from weakness. Consider it... an agreement, whether you acknowledge it or not."
Subaru's face fell, his lips quivering, eyes shimmering with helpless resistance. His head sank low under the weight of his own despair. "But I never agreed to that... not yet." The tone was almost childlike, petulant, as though he were clinging to some final scrap of defiance. Yet behind it, exhaustion oozed through, undeniable and raw.
Like a wraith, Pandora drifted around him, circling, her presence brushing against his senses like a cold hand against bare skin. Every step was graceful, deliberate, the swaying of a predator weaving between amusement and threat. Her gaze glittered, sharp enough to freeze his breath. "Agreement?" she whispered, voice melodic, warm, yet edged with danger. She leaned close, her words ghosting against his ear. "You don't need to agree, Subaru~ Our pact already exists."
Subaru's eyes narrowed, his thoughts racing as fragments of memories and pain assembled into something coherent. His mind stitched together a cruel truth. "Ah... Return by Death... That's what it is..." The words cracked from his throat, laced with both realization and despair, as though uttering them sealed his fate.
Delight blossomed across Pandora's face, radiant and childlike. She clasped her hands together, her smile brimming with excitement. "Yes, yes, exactly! With the Authority I've entrusted to you, you can grow stronger. Everything now depends... on how you choose to wield it." Her voice was both a lullaby and a curse, wrapping around Subaru like silk threads too fine to cut.
A shuddering sigh left Subaru's lips, his chest trembling with a broken sob he could no longer contain. His body gave in, collapsing to the ground. Yet the surface was not merciless stone—it welcomed him, soft and yielding, as if the void itself sought to cradle his weary frame. For an instant, he felt something foreign, something nearly forgotten: safety. His body slackened, and with that, his eyelids fell heavy. He shut them, surrendering to the strange comfort.
But Pandora was not far. She lowered herself gracefully beside him, lying close enough that the distance between them thinned to almost nothing. Her presence seeped into the fragile intimacy of the moment, her breath grazing the curve of his neck. Subaru tensed, but there was nowhere to retreat.
"So... what does it do?" His voice wavered, frayed with exhaustion, yet deep within it lay a trembling flicker of hope. His lips were parched, each syllable scraped from the rawness of his throat.
Pandora blinked slowly, lashes falling and rising like the flutter of a bird's wings. A sly smile tugged at her lips, playful yet concealing truths she would never speak. "Who knows? Authorities are as unique as their bearers. Each one reflects the heart it belongs to. So, I couldn't possibly say what yours will become." She punctuated her words with a teasing wink. The mystery itself was a dagger of uncertainty, twisting deeper into Subaru's already fractured mind.
His eyes drifted upward, beyond the pale strands of her hair, beyond the void that stretched endlessly above. It felt infinite, merciless. "I see... Then I'll have to test it... later," he murmured, voice barely more than breath. Fear writhed in the depths of his chest, but entwined with it was something undeniable: a relentless curiosity.
Pandora leaned closer still, her face so near it blurred into his vision, until only the icy clarity of her eyes remained. Her long white hair spilled across him like snow, strands brushing against his cheek. Her cool breath caressed his skin, carrying a faint chill that sank into his bones. The glacial light burning in her gaze stabbed into him, piercing straight into the core of his being. "So tell me, Subaru... what will you do now?" she whispered, her tone silken, coaxing, yet edged with inevitability. "Do you wish to escape this prison? To seek vengeance against those who wronged you? Or..." her lips curved into a sharper smile, "will you choose instead to vanish once more, and let yourself be swallowed by oblivion?"
Subaru flinched back slightly, his body moving on instinct before his mind could even catch up. His pulse hammered violently in his chest, like a drum calling forth the ghosts of his past. In that brief, unbearable moment, echoes crashed through his head—Emilia's face, fragile and gentle like porcelain; the desperate cries of friends torn away from him again and again; and the suffocating, metallic stench of blood that clung to his skin, never to be washed away. Every memory dragged against him like rusted chains, and with each heartbeat, the weight of his suffering twisted into something darker. Hatred swelled inside him, a tide of fire that consumed and gnawed at the fragile core of his soul.
"If I could just go back... back to the very beginning... maybe things would be better." His voice was barely more than a whisper, jagged and uneven. "If I had never met them... if I had never been pulled into their lives... then maybe—just maybe—I could finally look at this world without hesitation. Maybe then I could... claim it for myself." The words trembled with a strange stillness, carrying the edge of a resignation that was both cold and terrifying. There was yearning in his tone, but it was shattered, fragmented into something unrecognizable, a twisted shadow of hope.
Pandora's lips curved slowly into a thin, knowing smile. She tilted her head ever so slightly, and from her throat slipped a soft giggle. The sound was deceptively sweet, almost childlike, but underneath it lurked something ominous, an undertone that unsettled the air itself. It was a lullaby stitched with both tenderness and malice. The sound wound through Subaru's ears, curled deep into his chest, and tightened around his heart like an invisible cord pulling tighter with every beat.
Subaru's breathing faltered. Even as her warmth, or what felt like warmth, pressed against his senses, part of him recoiled instinctively. He didn't understand it. Was it true compassion he felt from her, or a mirage conjured to ensnare him in her will? The doubt ate at him. His chest clenched with unspoken questions, each heavier than the last. What are you really? What do you want from me? He didn't trust her. Not completely. Not yet. But beneath that wall of suspicion, a dreadful certainty whispered that, given enough time, she would force every answer upon him, stripping him bare whether he longed for truth or fled from it.
The weight pressing down on his mind grew thicker, heavier. Thoughts tangled into a spiraling web, dragging him downward. His eyelids grew heavy, like iron curtains sinking over his vision. He tried to resist, to keep his focus steady, but the world around him was already fading. Colors dulled, shapes dissolved into shadow, and sound stretched into muffled echoes. His consciousness slipped from his grasp like water trickling between trembling fingers, impossible to hold onto.
The very last image burned into his fading sight was Pandora herself. Those eyes—crystalline, ice-blue, flawless like cut sapphires glinting in the void. They locked onto him with an intensity that was both suffocating and irresistible. In their shimmering depths he glimpsed contradictions: salvation intertwined with damnation, tenderness veined with cruelty, the fragile promise of hope bound inexorably to the certainty of ruin. They were eyes that offered everything, even as they threatened to take all.
And then the void claimed him. Blackness swallowed his awareness whole, snuffing out thought and form in a single, merciless sweep. Subaru's consciousness flickered like a dying flame, sputtered once, and was gone. His body dissolved from the strange realm as though pulled away by unseen, merciless hands. All that remained was silence—endless, uncaring silence. The void enveloped him without pity, without meaning, without end.
Pandora stood alone in the aftermath. For a long while she did not move, her pale figure stark against the infinite dark that spread around her like an endless ocean. Her presence seemed both impossibly delicate and terrifyingly eternal, as though she were carved from the void itself. Finally, with languid grace, she lifted a hand to sweep her silken white hair back from her face. Her fingers lingered there, brushing strands aside as if savoring the moment. A secret gleamed at the corners of her lips, quiet and poisonous. Her gaze sharpened, narrowing with amusement, as though beholding a future only she could see.
Then came the sound. A laugh—low, muffled, and crawling with mirth that made the void itself seem to stir. "Kukuku..." The sound vibrated, a strange harmony of delight and menace that slithered through the air. "The first step is complete~." The words slipped from her lips like an oath, a declaration of inevitability. They spread outward into the emptiness, reverberating again and again, until they etched themselves into the very fabric of the void. Like a brand, like a seal, they hung suspended in the silence, destined to echo into eternity.