The boy wouldn't stop bleeding.
Sol watched him from across the temple floor, her small hands pressed against her chest where something warm and golden still pulsed beneath her skin. She didn't understand what she was. She didn't understand why she'd woken up in this ancient place that smelled of ash and endings, with memories that weren't hers pressing against the inside of her skull like shards of glass.
But she understood death. She had seen enough of it in the village before soemone had carried her away.
"He's dying again," she said. Her voice sounded strange—too young for the words, too old for the face.
Nero, the storm-grey wolf, raised his massive head. His golden eyes met hers. This wasn't animal intelligence; it was an ancient, weary awareness that had witnessed the birth of stars.
He always dies, the wolf seemed to say, the thought vibrating in Sol's mind. That's the blessing. That's the curse.
"Can we help him?"
We can wait. We can witness. We can—
"That's not enough."
Sol stood. Her legs were unsteady, muscles forgotten by time, but she walked anyway. Each footfall left a faint golden print on the ancient stone. She knelt beside the broken body.
The fire had left the building.
The passenger has departed, Nero's voice resonated in Sol's mind, low and grim. The vessel returns to its owner.
"But he's still broken," Sol said, stepping forward.
"Wake up," Sol whispered.
Nothing.
"I said wake up!"
She pressed her palm against his chest. The golden cubes pulsed weakly beneath his torn robes.
"You carried me through a battlefield. You walked through an army. You faced a god." Her voice cracked. "You don't get to die now. Not when I just woke up."
She knelt beside him. The boy—Anko—lay in a pool of his own blood. His left arm was a cauterized ruin, a jagged reminder of a battle his mind hadn't fully witnessed. His breathing was shallow, a rhythmic struggle for oxygen that the [Semi-Immortal] trait was barely maintaining.
The status screen above him stuttered, the golden glow of the Firekeeper replaced by a sickly, flickering red.
[SLAVE KNIGHT: ANKO]
[Trait: Semi-Immortal]
[Status: Death (Temporary)]
[Resurrection Protocol: Initiating]
The body jerked. It wasn't the fluid, predatory motion of the Firekeeper. It was a violent, uncoordinated spasm.
Anko's eyes snapped open. Both of them. They weren't grey. They weren't gold. They were a dark, muddy brown, clouded with terror and the sheer, agonizing weight of physical pain.
"A-ah..."
A sound escaped his throat. It wasn't a cynical remark or a tactical command. It was a whimper. A sound of a boy who had spent his life under a brand and had just woken up in a nightmare he couldn't explain.
His right hand clawed at the stone, dragging his body back instinctively. He saw Sol. He saw Nero. He didn't recognize them. He saw the bone-white walls of the Ashen Temple and the piles of dust that used to be a Guardian.
"Who... where..." Anko's voice was a shredded rasp.
He looked down at his left side. His eyes widened, pupils dilating until the brown was swallowed by black. The scream that followed was thin and high-pitched, the sound of a child realizing he had been butchered while he slept.
"My arm! My arm is—!"
Sol reached out, her hands glowing with a faint, instinctive warmth. "Please. Stay still. You're bleeding."
Anko didn't hear her. He was hyperventilating, his remaining hand clutching at the air where his limb should have been. The muscle memory was there, but the flesh was gone. To him, the last thing he remembered was the darkness of the shrine and the cold eyes of the Divine Blood priests.
Now, he was in a ruined temple, missing an arm, staring at a girl who smelled of gold and a wolf that looked like a storm.
"Did I... did I do this?" he choked out, staring at the shattered remains of the army visible through the temple gates.
Nero stepped forward, his massive head lowering until his nose touched Anko's forehead. No, little slave. A god borrowed your bones. You merely paid the price.
Anko looked at the wolf, tears carving tracks through the grime on his face. He didn't understand the words, but he felt the pity. He felt the weight of a debt he hadn't asked for.
"I want to go home," Anko whispered, his head thumping back against the altar. "I just... I want the loop to take me back."
"The loop is broken," Sol said, her voice steadying. "The one who saved us... he's gone. He said he was going back to a prison."
Anko closed his eyes. The pain was a living thing now, gnawing at his shoulder, demanding his attention. He was no longer a Firekeeper. He was just Anko. A nameless slave with a broken body and a destiny he couldn't carry.
In the silence of the temple, the only sound was the weeping of a boy who had survived a war he never fought.
...
I hit the marble floor like a sack of broken promises.
The Grand Auditorium. I recognized the smell first—synthetic ozone, floor wax, and the sterile scent of "perfection." The same floor where De Vellandorian had stood, where shadows had bent toward me like dogs to a master.
I was back. And I was still alone.
"This must be karma," I muttered into the cold marble, my voice sounding disturbingly youthful. "The universe's way of saying 'get back in your cage, pup'."
My body was... wrong.
I flexed my fingers. Both hands responded. The left arm I'd lost in the mountains, the one that had been a ragged, cauterized stump, was whole. Soft. Unmarked. It felt like an insult. My brain kept expecting the phantom itch of the missing limb, the agonizing heat of the regeneration. Having it back felt like wearing a prosthetic made of lies.
But the Curse of Greed... that didn't reset. It churned in my gut like a parasite made of liquid acid.
[Grace]: Phase One complete.[Grace]: Returning to origin point.[Grace]: New objective—
The text flickered. Corrupted. Dissolved into digital static.
"Grace?"
Nothing.
"Grace, don't you dare ghost me now. Not here."
[Grace]: ...can't... follow... here...[Grace]: ...find... the tree...[Grace]: ...he's waiting...
Silence. The golden text faded like smoke, leaving only the cold, indifferent blue of IO's standard interface. Which was also dark. Which was also dead.
"Perfect. Absolutely perfect."
I lay there for a moment, the silence of the auditorium pressing against my eardrums. The temple. The Asura. Seventeen dimensions. The little girl. I forced the memories back down, but they were too big now. They didn't fit in the "Kai Sterling" box anymore.
I pulled up the interface. "IO, Assistant mode."
Silence. No AI. No surveillance. Just the crushing, calculating loneliness I had spent eighteen years trying to ignore. I was in the heart of the Academy, but it felt like the bottom of a grave.
I controlled my breathing. Pushed myself up. My legs trembled—not with weakness, but with a manic, electric ecstasy. The Loop was truly broken. No one was coming to kill me. No one was coming to save me.
"Now I can do what I want," I whispered, the words tasting like copper.
The Curse of Greed flared. It wasn't hunger for food. It was a hunger for substance. For anything that could prove I wasn't just a glitch in the machine.
I didn't head for the exit. I headed for the girls' bathroom.
....
The bathroom was a mausoleum of pink tile and holographic mirrors. I looked at my reflection. Kai Sterling. Clean. Intact. The face of a boy who had never killed a man. I wanted to smash the glass.
De Vellandorian's locker was third from the left.
I'd known the combination for years. Marketing instinct—catalog the competition's secrets. I didn't need what was inside. I had no plan. I was acting on a jagged, desperate impulse to violate her space, to take what she cherished.
The lock yielded. Inside: silk, expensive textbooks, and the scent of jasmine. And buried at the bottom—
A jian.
Green-blue steel, hilt wrapped in ancient leather. Ceremonial. Suboptimal. A jian was a weapon of grace, of flowing movements and delicate precision. It was the complete opposite of the brutal, efficient tantō I had mastered in Anko's body.
My mind knew I should leave it. It would only slow me down. I didn't know how to use it properly.
But the Curse roared. Take it. It's hers. It's shiny. It's power.
"Useful," I lied to the empty room, strapping the blade to my hip. Its weight was awkward, pulling at my balance. I looked like a child playing soldier. I didn't care. Taking it felt like a small, petty victory against a woman who had already won everything.
Walking through the Academy was like navigating a dream that had rotted from the inside.
Empty. Silent. The drones were dead birds. Even the bioluminescent trees looked like they were bleeding light into the soil. The Grace event hadn't just cleared the campus; it had lobotomized it.
I passed the first courtyard. My hands were shaking. I was Kai, but I was thinking like a shinobi. I was looking for shadows where there were only ruins. I was terrified because there were no threats, and that made every silence a potential ambush.
I reached the sanctuary. At its edge stood the tree. Old. Sacred. A relic from before the prison was built.
I cut my palm. The skin was too soft, too easy to breach. I watched the blood drip onto the altar—the currency of a man who no longer knew the value of his own life. My fingers found the bark pattern. The hidden compartment opened.
Inside: Three clay vials. A handbook of debts. And a crystalline shard humming with enough power to make my teeth ache.
I knew this was a tragedy. A love story between a stranger and a human that had ended in ash. I didn't believe in love, but I was obsessed with the wreckage of it. I pocketed the items, the Greed in my gut purring as I accumulated more weight I didn't need.
The confidence of the mountains was gone. I was waiting for a battle, for an enemy I could understand, but the Academy offered only a hollow echo of my own footsteps.
The massive doors of the metallic fortress hung from broken hinges. Scorch marks and three-meter claw marks were etched into alloys that should have been impervious. Something had torn its way out. Or something had been invited in.
"An empty nightmare," I whispered.
I looked at my reflection in a piece of jagged metal. Dead eyes stared back. My "marketing smile" was a memory. I looked like trash. A palimpsest of a person, where the new ink was drowning the old.
The sky was a bruised indigo. Time was a wreckage. The Curse of Greed was the only real thing left. It was the anchor that kept me from floating away into the void of my own insanity.
"Fuck this world," I said to the indigo sky. "And fuck me too."
I tried to reach for the fire. For the golden cubes that had saved me.
Nothing.
This body was a dead circuit. Different rules. Different limitations. I was back to being a mediocre boy with a stolen sword and a stomach full of acid.
"Light. Grace." I said the names like a prayer. Or a curse.
I headed toward the old district. A park. A dump that the Academy had tried to bury. In every loop, someone was waiting there. Someone who represented a past I was finally ready to burn.
...
The old shrine was tucked behind abandoned warehouses. It was a pathetic thing, surviving only through the indifference of the system.
I followed the Curse. The hunger was a physical weight now, a demanding pressure in my sternum.
The doors were open. Inside, forgotten deities watched over a wooden bowl. It was almost identical to the one the Monk had given me. My hand moved before I could think.
I reached for it.
The Curse pulled. I felt the residual faith of centuries drain into me. It felt like drinking cold oil.
[...LERT][...urse ... Strengthened][...arning—]
The text dissolved into red static. But the warning was clear. I had just rung a bell that couldn't be un-rung.
Then, the voice. It wasn't an AI. It wasn't a glitch. It was music that had learned how to kill.
"Found you."
I spun, the jian nearly tangling in my robes. The shrine was empty. But the voice was everywhere—patient, amused, and terrifyingly familiar.
"Finally, finally found you."
"Little brother."