Tired and unable to feel anything, Lear dropped the bloody axe and fell to his knees.
On the patch of ground in front of him, a sigil had been drawn with blood, with two bodies lying at its edges. Bloody trails from them led to other corpses scattered here and there along the path to the cliff.
Breathing heavily, Lear picked up a small dagger, folded his hands in a prayer-like gesture and raised it to his face.
"Please... make this end."
With these words, he drew the dagger across his throat in one sharp motion. Blood spurted to the side as Lear's vision darkened and his body fell to the ground, completing the sigil and the ritual.
***
Lear woke up so abruptly that he sat up in bed, clutching his throat and breathing heavily. Finding no wound, no blood, no scar, he slowly lowered his hands and stared ahead.
He was in a painfully familiar spacious room, on a comfortable four-poster bed. To the right next to him stood a similar bed, the only difference being that it was curtained. In the other two corners there were two more of the same.
Looking around, Lear froze and stared into space.
'Am I dreaming this? Or have I finally died for real and this is the afterlife?'
He looked around and shuddered when he finally realized where he was.
Lear couldn't believe his eyes. Quite a while had passed since he had been here last. This was a dormitory bedroom of the state academy, or the Academy of the Heavenly Guardians, perhaps the most elite educational institution for guardians in the entire Empire. Lear had never graduated from it in his time, but he remembered it very well. It was one of the few places that brought back good memories, maybe even the only one.
At least, that's what it seemed like to him before.
'Maybe this is what heaven looks like? Like a place you once missed?'
At this thought, Lear drew his knees up and buried his face in them. Memories flashed before his eyes one after another.
He didn't understand since when, but he had been crying. And at first, the silent crying turned into intermittent sobs.
The curtains on the side quickly flew open and a head stuck out from behind them, angrily grumbling:
"We're trying to sleep here, actually, what's wrong with you?"
Lear slowly turned around. For a second or so, he didn't understand who was in front of him. Yuni, with his strawberry hair, cut very short as always, immediately changed his expression, seeing his friend crying in the middle of the night.
A recent image appeared before Lear's eyes. Yuni's blue eyes, dull and lifeless, were frozen forever, just like him.
Lear's mouth opened uncontrollably. Yuni was in front of him, alive and well, and even younger than the last time they met, and clearly agitated.
"Um... sorry, are you okay?" He climbed out of his bed and carefully sat down next to Lear.
He was not only alive, but also not angry with him?
"Is everything okay?" Yuni tried to pat Lear on the shoulder encouragingly, but he flinched and pulled away. "Hey, why are you crying?"
Another man appeared from behind the next bed, taller than Yuni and with wavy bangs that almost covered his eyes.
Feste. Also alive and well.
Not a bleeding, cooling corpse, as he had been the last time.
It was all starting to feel like some kind of unoriginal mockery.
Was this how the Stars punished him for what he had done? By showing him his recently deceased friends when they were still carefree students at the Academy?
Why did the afterlife look like this? Or was he still dying, and these were hallucinations that his brain had produced?
Feste, who looked the same age as Yuni, slowly walked up to him and stood next to him. He silently looked at his short friend, who only shrugged in response.
"Lear, what happened?" Feste asked quietly, his voice soft.
He didn't try to touch him, for which Lear was unconsciously very grateful. Right now, he just wanted to be alone. But on the other hand, this prospect scared him.
And maybe, somewhere deep down, he missed them. Even after everything that had happened.
'Or did none of this really happen?.. Maybe it was... a very long and most terrible nightmare?'
Lear looked at his old friends. They looked the same as they had four years ago. They behaved the same. This room was the same, and all of this was unbearable.
These thoughts brought tears to the surface with renewed vigor.
"I don't understand anything..." Lear squeezed out through sobs, covering his face with his hands. "...I think I just had a terrible dream."
Feste and Yuni moved closer at the same time, the former hugging him by his shaking shoulders.
"What's wrong? Everything is okay. You scared the shit out of me, actually. I thought you were sick or something." Yuni said in a calmer tone, watching them.
Feste gave him a short, disapproving glance, after which his attention immediately returned to Lear.
"Forget about him, please. Better tell me, should I get you some water or something? If you're not feeling well or want to be alone..."
Lear interrupted him:
"I-I'm fine, thank you... both of you, really. I'm just... a little out of it, I guess. Sorry..."
Seeing how he was about to burst into tears again, Feste hugged him tighter.
"It's okay, you're safe."
Lear buried his face in his shoulder. Yuni looked confused, but joined them.
"It's okay..."
Lear continued to shake, sobbing, and Feste and Yuni held him in their arms. They just sat there for a while, until Lear decided he wanted privacy.
Whatever was happening, it was wrong. And he felt guilty.
In the bathroom, Lear finally noticed his appearance.
In the mirror, he saw himself at the age of sixteen. Scarless, skinny, small and weak. The only thing that gave away how he felt inside was his heavy, piercing gaze. If someone saw those red eyes now, they would think that their owner had gone a little crazy.
It seemed that way.
Had he finally gone mad and was now seeing the past? Or had he gone mad and thought he had seen the future, but it had just been a very long and very realistic dream? As he thought about it, Lear looked at his body in the reflection. There really was no trace of war, no long imprisonment, no torture. He was shorter and less fit, as if all his combat experience had simply disappeared.
Lear didn't have time to be upset or happy about this fact, because he noticed something strange on his wrist.
He looked closer, and froze for a second, while his thoughts tried to keep up with his eyes.
'What? Nonono-'
It was the sigil of the cursed star. The only star that demanded blood sacrifices in its honor in exchange for the fulfillment of wishes. The sigil from his dream, or memories.
Lear did not know anyone who worshiped it. Except for one person.
Not only was it illegal, it was pointless unless you were willing to kill people all the time. The bigger the wish, the more victims were required. And after becoming a servant of this star, anyone lost the ability to not only serve another star, but also to get rid of the cursed mark.
And now Lear was like that too?
He unconsciously rubbed his wrist and blinked just in case, but the sigil was still there.
'So this is forever,' sounded somewhere in the subconscious. Lear's mind had not yet realized what was happening. Or he simply refused to believe that he had become a lifelong servant of a cursed star, whose service consisted of one single thing - murder.
This was very bad. Because it was punishable by law, because Lear did not want to kill anyone else, because he had served another star all his life, because it meant that everything that had happened to him was true.
He performed a ritual, turning to the cursed star, and it answered. Was this how it fulfilled his wish? By sending him back in time, 4 years ago?
'I wanted everything to stop. Thank you, dammit.'
Angry at himself and the world, mentally cursing the stars that always ignored his pleas and prayers, Lear aggressively tried to erase and wash away the sigil, but it was as if it were burned into his skin.
Did everything that had happened in these four years no longer matter? Everything except this terrible mark? Was everything meaningless, all the suffering and hardship?
Nothing passes without a reason, after all.
The symbol of the cursed star now always had to remind him of this. Lear felt his eyes water again. The air in his lungs suddenly became insufficient, so he jumped out of the bathroom and quickly walked along the dark corridor.
Only moonlight illuminated the floor through the arched windows. Seeing nothing in front of him, Lear walked to the exit by memory, when he almost crashed into someone.
'Fuck, why now.'
And why didn't he hear any footsteps? Perhaps he was too preoccupied with his recent discovery, but not so much that he failed to notice and hear the man right in front of his nose. Lear immediately tensed.
It took only a second for the man he had just almost collided with to recognize the man in front of him.
"Hello, Lear," said a silky voice.
' Fuck, this can't be.'
"Where are you going after curfew?"
Lear froze, not looking up from the floor.
Of all people, why did it have to be him?
'Fuckfuckfuck.'
Of course, he had to be alive at this point, Lear remembered. He carefully looked up.
Even in the darkness, it was impossible not to recognize his cold blue eyes. Richrass, one of the four chairmen of the Academy's faculties, looked down at Lir, and the emotions that overwhelmed him made him want to scream, cry, punch and sink into the ground.
Instead, all that came out of his mouth in a voice full of hatred was:
"Hello, Ruan."
If he noticed Lear's tone, he ignored it.
"The correct way to address chairmen is by their last name, but I'll make an exception for you. This time."
Ruan smiled. You didn't have to see it to understand.
He thought he was so smart and noble.
That alone made Lear want to hit him. Everything else made him want to kill him.
'But... he hasn't done anything wrong... So far...?'
Time travel was still very difficult to believe, so Lear considered all the options at once. It could still be a dying hallucination. If that were the case, Lear wouldn't even be upset.
He just wanted it to end. Not start over. Over again.
But why was his brain giving him visions of Ruan? It really was some kind of torture.
It's no wonder Lear didn't hear him approaching. Ruan Richrass was the most outstanding of the chairmen and one of the most talented mages among the guardians as a whole, despite being very young and not having completed his studies. No matter how you looked at it, he was ideal in everything: good at science, smart, endowed with magical power and handsome. The entire administration of the Academy adored him, along with more than half of the female students.
With the help of magic, he could move absolutely silently, and by nature he was smooth and somewhat graceful in his movements.
He was also a terrible bore. This side of him was mostly only known to those who studied in the same faculty and were under his direct supervision. Lear was one of them. In his youth, he had praised Ruan more than anyone else.
Which made it all the stranger that he hadn't reacted to Lear's angry tone. Why wasn't he surprised by such a reaction from his most devoted fan?
"So what are you doing here at this time?" Ruan asked again, breaking Lear out of his thoughts.
'Why is this happening? I just wanted everything to...'
Ruan stepped forward, and Lear backed away faster than he realized what he was doing. The moonlight illuminated his face as he stood in front of the window.
"You... were crying?"
"What? No!"
The whole spell fell away at the same moment when he had to defend his honor. He couldn't let Ruan see him like this.
"I understand. There is nothing shameful about it." Was he trying to calm him down?
'You don't understand shit.'
That's all Lear had time to think when Ruan put his hand on his shoulder. He almost jerked away from surprise.
Was Ruan really trying to calm him down?
Whatever he was imagining, it was probably very far from the truth. But he shouldn't let him know that.
Besides, Lear didn't know what was true. None of the versions seemed convincing enough.
Ruan came closer again. Lear closed his eyes, not knowing what to expect. The next moment, he felt himself being hugged. Again.
So many hugs in such a short time. It hadn't happened in a long time, if ever.
Lear didn't resist, but simply let his arms drop to his sides and kept his eyes closed. The thought of being hugged felt good, but the thought of who was doing it made him feel sick.
He hadn't thought about Ruan in so long that he would have to strain to pull the memory of him out of his mind. Besides, it would be very painful. Lir didn't want to think about Richrass, because he had to choose between two options: to hate and be angry at him, or to be sad and mourn the fact that the person who was so dear to him was gone.
Or he never existed, and Lear had simply invented an ideal image of him.
In any case, he let it happen. He did not have the strength to break away from the embrace, nor even to think at all.
"You know that you can always discuss everything with me. In fact, you should, if something is bothering you," Ruan said softly and let him go. "If you have calmed down, go to bed. We can talk in the morning."
At these words, fatigue suddenly fell on Lear's shoulders. He did not even get angry at being treated like a child, or wonder what kind of inspection they were organizing at such a late hour, but simply obediently turned and slowly walked back.
'Obeyed him again like an idiot.'
He wanted to sleep more than anything now, although his consciousness was still making its last desperate attempts to figure everything out. Without even trying to analyze what had just happened, he returned to the bedroom and climbed into his bed. Yuni and Feste lay down again. The first one had even started snoring. Feste was still awake and waiting for Lear to return to make sure he was okay, but he didn't show it.
All of Lear's worries dissipated as soon as his head hit the pillow. Everything went black before his eyes again, and he fell into the deepest sleep he had ever had in a long time.