They laughed when I at my father's funeral. They laughed harder when I failed my final exams. But the loudest came when I fell from that rooftop - clutching my chest, breathless, useless, forgotten.
No one saw it coming. Not the heart failure. Not the sudden drop. Not the fact that I died... smilling.
Because at least in death, I was free.
Or so I thought.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in my apartment. Not one the hospital. Nor even in Hell.
I woke to the scent of rotting incense and blood-soaked soil. My fingers gripped cracked tombstones. And the sky above me? Purple, bruised, broken-not Earth's
"He awakens."
A whisper. Cold. Distant.
"The Soul Requiem lives again."
Another voice. Closer. Reverent. Terrified.
I stumbled to my feet. My hands were pale- too pale- and scarred with ink-like tattoos glowing faintly. Symbols I didn't know... but my soul remembered.
In the distance, black-robed figures bowed. Entire sects trembling. They didn't saw me.
They saw him.
----
"This can't be real," I whispered.
"Oh, it is," a voiced echoed inside my head. Calm. Cruel. "You're Rudraunsh Kurozane now. The one who once made Heaven beg, and Hell retreat."
I wanted to scream.
But the moment I touched the scythe buried in the ground before me, the memories surged.
Flashes of war. Ashes raining. Soul chains binding celestial beasts. The world burning with one name on their tongues:
Rudraunsh Kurozane.
I died a loser in one world.
And woke as a monster in the next.
A monster the world thought was sealed. Forgotten.
They should have left me that way.