The sun (or whatever oversized fusion reactor this system called a star) dipped lower, painting the savanna in long amber streaks and turning the pollen clouds into floating embers. Tiger and Lily had migrated a few dozen meters upstream to a flat slab of warm stone that overlooked a lazy bend in the river. Tiger sat with his legs dangling over the edge, boots skimming the water. Lily lay flat on her back beside him, arms spread like she was trying to hug the entire planet, staring straight up at the deepening lavender sky.
A long, comfortable silence stretched between them—the kind only possible when both parties know nothing really matters anyway.
Lily broke it first.
"So what's the dumbest way you've died this cycle?"
Tiger didn't miss a beat. "Tried to surf a plasma storm on a scavenged cargo hauler. Thought the magnetic fields would hold me up like a board. Spoiler: they didn't. Got turned into a very pretty cloud of ionized meat confetti. Took two days to pull myself back together. Woke up tasting copper and regret."
Lily snorted so hard she almost choked on her own laugh. "Okay, that's solid. Mine was stupider. I bet a void-trader I could outdrink a sentient nebula. Turns out nebulae don't have livers, but they *do* have supercritical ammonia storms. I spent three weeks as a floating smear of protein paste before the winds spat me out near a black market refueling station. Still smelled like burnt hair for a month."
Tiger tilted his head toward her. "You win. That's next-level dumb."
"Pride of my resume." She propped herself up on one elbow, dark hair falling across her face. "You ever try to bait an Ender? Like, on purpose?"
Tiger's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes went a little distant.
"Once. Early in the cycle. Thought maybe if I pissed off Discipline enough, he'd just… erase me properly. No respawn, no coming back. Clean exit." He shrugged. "Turns out he doesn't do mercy kills. He just built a perfect cube around me—every face a mirror, every angle mathematically flawless—and left me there for subjective years. Said it was 'corrective symmetry training.' I clawed my way out eventually. Mostly because the boredom was worse than the geometry."
Lily whistled low. "Romantic. You're lucky he didn't make it a Möbius strip."
"Trust me, I checked."
She flopped back down, arms behind her head again. "I tried with Love once. Not on purpose, exactly. She was fixated on this guy—some poet type floating in a derelict habitat ring. I told her she was being creepy. She didn't like that."
Tiger glanced over. "And?"
"She rewrote my nervous system so every emotion I felt looped back into longing for her. For three subjective months I was in love with her so hard I couldn't breathe without crying. Then she got bored, snapped her fingers, and I forgot what her face looked like. Woke up in a crater on some ice moon with zero context and the worst emotional hangover of my life."
Tiger let out a slow breath. "Yeah. She's… thorough."
They both stared at the sky for a minute. A few faint auroras were starting to flicker at the edges of the atmosphere, like the planet was blushing.
Lily rolled onto her side, facing him. "You think she's watching us right now?"
"Probably. Or someone else is. Doesn't change much."
"Doesn't it?" Her voice was quieter now, the joking edge dulled just a fraction. "We're just… background noise to them. New faces every few million years. Same stupid jokes, same stupid deaths. They remember everything. We don't even get to keep our own scars."
Tiger plucked a long blade of grass and twirled it between his fingers. "Maybe that's the mercy. If we remembered, we'd be like them. Stuck carrying ghosts that don't exist anymore."
Lily considered that. Then she reached over and flicked the grass out of his hand.
"Poetic. I hate it."
He smirked. "You started it."
She sat up suddenly, brushing dirt off her charred jumpsuit. "Okay. New rule for this planet: no more Ender talk. No more cycle bullshit. We're calling this place… Regret Island. And the only things allowed are fruit, bad jokes, and jumping into rivers when we get bored."
Tiger raised an eyebrow. "You're naming it after my fruit?"
"Damn right. It's the only thing here with personality."
He laughed—real, low, surprised. "Deal."
Lily stood, stretched until her spine popped, then offered him a hand. "Come on. Let's see if the river's deep enough to drown in properly. Loser has to admit the other one's death was dumber."
Tiger took her hand. She yanked him up with surprising strength for someone who'd just cratered the planet.
As they walked toward the water, shoulders brushing, the sky above them stayed perfect—too perfect, too quiet.
Somewhere far beyond the atmosphere, in the cold between stars, a faint shimmer of warm light lingered for just a second longer than it should have.
Then it was gone.
For now, Regret Island stayed peaceful. Two broken humans laughed, splashed, and pretended the universe wasn't already counting down.