If you wanna die, follow me.
Ever since the day I met that old man in that cave my life has taken an awful turn. Memories I don't remember myself in hunt me as if I own them, twisting into my dreams and staining my waking thoughts. Sometimes I feel like I've lived a thousand lives, but none of them are mine. The town I live in has started feeling… wrong. The walls groan at night. Shadows move even when there's no light. It's like the streets are watching me, waiting for the perfect moment to swallow me whole.
Did I just die again?
The thought hits me like a cold knife in my skull. My chest is heavy, lungs dragging for air. The last thing I remember is the roar of the Stump Gate's guardian — that voice like broken glass — and then nothing.
"Mam, you alright a—aa—aha?"
My vision clears just enough to see him: a boy, maybe between seventeen and twenty-one, standing over me. His clothes are patched, worn, the kind of gear you'd expect from someone who's had to survive too long in a place like this. In his hand is a chipped metal cup, steam curling from the liquid inside.
"I found you near the Stump Gate, barely alive," he says, voice rough from the dust. "Drink this, it'll help you heal faster."
I sit up slowly, every muscle stiff. The air here smells faintly of dust and burnt wood. I take the cup but only sip enough to wet my mouth — bitter, earthy, like ground herbs left too long in standing water. Then I set it aside.
I reach for my coat draped over a steel stool, slipping it on with a practiced motion. My sword leans against the wall, its hilt familiar beneath my fingers. The weight settles against my hip, and with it, the old instinct to move. I step toward the door, boots echoing in the cramped room.
Just before leaving, I glance back. He's still standing there, expecting something more.
"Get out of this area before noon," I tell him, my tone flat but final.
"I'm coming with you," he says without hesitation.
I stop. The words hang in the dusty air, heavier than they should. Making companions… that's something I stopped a long time ago. The pain of knowing they won't make it but you will — even if you die — is a wound that never heals. And the truth is worse: even when I regress, I can't save them. I've learned to stay cold, to treat people as passing objects in a long, endless road. If someone helps me, it doesn't mean they belong beside me. If keeping them alive means slowing me down, I'll let them fall.
I turn fully, meeting his gaze for the first time. There's no fear there, only stubbornness.
"If you wanna die, follow me."
"Am Jason, and you are? I've never seen you before."
"You don't need to know my name. And I'm heading back to confront the Stump Gate guardian. Again. If you die there, there's no saving you."
Jason blinks. "What, again!? You wanna die? What's your goal anyway?"
"You chose to follow me blind," I snap, eyes forward. "So just shut up."
We walk. Every step grinds pain into my bones. My whole body aches, a dull, relentless throb. Even though I regress, the injuries from my death still remain, stitched into my nerves like scars carved from memory. Each time I die, the pain comes back with me, as if the world itself wants me to remember. But this time will be different. I replay the fight in my mind, every swing, every feint, every strike of that beast. Its defenses, its illusions, its mistakes. This time, I'll finish it.
The Stump Gate rises before us — a twisted arch of roots and stone, pulsing faintly with a sick glow. But something feels… wrong. Heavier.
What could it be?
"Long time no see, Katlo."
The name freezes my blood. My name. No one should know who I am. After every death, every memory of me is erased from the people I know. I walk alone because I do not exist to anyone anymore.
I whip my head left, right — scanning the treeline, the jagged rocks, the shadows of the Gate. Nothing. No source for that voice. Jason's face pales, confused, like he didn't hear it at all.
Then the ground beneath me cracks and shudders. Roots burst from the dirt, shooting upward, twisting like serpents trying to drag me under. I leap back, boots slipping on loose stone, my sword flashing out by reflex.
And then I look up.
She's there. Perched above the arch of the Stump Gate like a ghost reborn. Her hair wild, eyes burning with something I can't name. My chest clenches, not from pain, but something far older.
Her. Once, my only friend. The one I thought had died when that cave collapsed and buried us both beneath a thousand tons of stone.
But she's alive. She's been alive all this time.
And somehow… She remembers me.
"How… Do you remember who I am?"
She leaps down from the arch, landing softly beneath my boots.
"Is that all?" she asks, tilting her head, a smile tugging at her lips. "Aren't you happy to see I'm alive?"
My grip tightens on the sword hilt. The cold metal grounds me, but my thoughts scatter.
She smiles wider, the kind that hides more than it shows. "Oh, and about that beast you were fighting earlier…"
My eyes widen. My breath halts. How? How does she know that? My mind races — I've told no one. Each death, each regression, it's all been mine alone to carry.
She steps closer, eyes locking onto mine.
"Let me ask you something," she says. "What's your goal?"
I open my mouth… and nothing comes out. The question hits deeper than her words. What is my goal? I've been running, fighting, bleeding, dying — all to reach somewhere I can't even name. I only know that I have to keep moving, keep cutting through this world, because it feels like a cage tightening around me.
Her voice breaks my silence. "What's the stare for? Speechless already? Well, that old geezer didn't tell you everything, did he?"
My chest tightens. The old man… the one in the cave. The one who set me on this path.
She circles me now, slow and deliberate.
"You and I," she says, her voice low and certain, "are the same person… with different roles. You are the Destroyer — the one born to question the world, to see its cracks, to refuse it until your refusal tears it apart."
She stops in front of me again, eyes fierce as a storm.
"And I… I am the Guardian. The one meant to stop you from doing so."
"If you defeat me now," she says, "you'll advance to the next realm. Maybe there you'll find the answers you're clawing for. But if I kill you…" Her smile fades, leaving something solemn. "Then you die for good. No regression. No second chances."
With no warning, a dark-purple surge of energy tears through the air.
I reach for my sword—too late. My fingers brush the hilt, but the blast is already there, hissing and cracking the air.
Jason moves before I can stop him. "Get back!" he shouts, thrusting his arm forward as a thin shimmer of light forms in front of him. A shield skill—crude, barely stable.
The energy hits.
The shield shatters like glass. Jason doesn't even have time to scream properly; his body is swallowed whole, torn apart in a storm of violet shards.
For a heartbeat, his sacrifice buys me time.
I lunge forward, blade flashing from its sheath. The weight of my sword meets the crushing tide of energy, my arms trembling as I parry. Sparks explode. The ground quakes. The Stump Gate groans under the strain—then collapses in a roar of splintering wood.
"One more pawn of yours gone," her voice echoes through the dust. Cold. Familiar. Mocking. "How many does this add to…?"
"Shut your damn mouth!" My voice cracks like a whip.
I draw on everything—every thread of power left in me—until my body feels like it's tearing from the inside. One attack. That's all it will take. One clean, perfect cut.
"A slit slash!" I whisper through gritted teeth.
I vanish into motion, the world dragging in slow arcs of soundless air. I'm there. She's right there. My blade is a breath away from her throat.
—she vanishes.
A cold wind kisses my back.
Pain—searing, white-hot—rips through me as her hand pierces my spine, bursts through my stomach, and leaves a gaping hole in my torso.
Blood spills down my legs, warm and slick, painting the dirt beneath me. My fingers twitch on the sword hilt. My knees buckle.
Is this really how I die?
The thought crawls through my skull, faint and heavy, like a whisper from somewhere far beneath the blood roaring in my ears.
Each heartbeat is a hammer now, slowing… fading.
So this is it…?
A bitter laugh tries to claw its way out of my throat but only blood spills.
How pathetic… The taste fills my mouth. Killed my own cursed self.
The edges of the world fray like torn cloth, light bending, colors draining into nothing.
Her silhouette stretches across my fading vision, dark and sharp against the collapsing world. It reaches for me—not with comfort, but possession.
No… not yet… I think, but my lips don't move.
Then the shadow swallows everything.