The battle of Herlem was no longer a war; it was a symphony of the damned.
Reine was wedged behind a heavy oak grain barrel, his knees pulled so tightly to his chest that his breath came in short, jagged whistles. Through the gaps in the wood, he didn't see soldiers—he saw meat being harvested. The "chaotic music" in his head had reached a fever pitch, a wall of distorted white noise that drowned out the screams of the dying.
Suddenly, a wet, heavy object thudded into the dirt just inches from his boots. It was the head of the veteran who had spent every morning of Reine's life mocking him. The man's eyes were still open, frozen in a final expression of indignant shock.
Reine broke.
He didn't just cry. He let out a hollow, rhythmic keening—a guttural, repetitive wail that sounded like a child trying to scream without air. His body rocked with such violence that he began to bruise his own forehead against his knees. Tears and snot smeared across his face, mixing with the dust of the plains. He was a sixteen-year-old boy who had watched his own death so many times that his soul had begun to leak out.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The heavy, metallic footsteps silenced the world. Reine tried to scramble backward, but his spine hit the barrel. With a crash, the wood gave way, spilling grain like sand in an hourglass. Reine collapsed onto his back, staring up into the sky.
The Dark Knight stood over him. But the world was warping.
The sky didn't look like a sunset anymore; it looked like a bruised, purple wound. The Knight's form began to flicker and stretch. His limbs became impossibly long, his armor pulsing like the shell of a living insect. This wasn't the man Reine had fought before. This was the Regression itself manifesting—using the image of the Knight to flay Reine's mind.
The "Knight" leaned down. The visor of the helmet was a void filled with shifting, oily shadows. When he spoke, it wasn't a voice; it was a vibration that crawled under Reine's skin.
"Look at you," the creature hissed, dripping with a sickening, otherworldly pity. "A worm trying to play God with time. Do you smell the smoke, Reine? That's the scent of your home burning. Every spark is a result of your cowardice."
The creature's gauntlet, now looking like a clawed talon, reached out.
"Your parents didn't die for a hero. They died for a mistake. They died so a pathetic, wiry-fit loser could sit in the dirt and weep while his siblings are sold like cattle into the dark. Can you hear them, Reine? Can you hear your pathetic sister screaming your name in the slave markets? She thinks you're coming. She doesn't know her brother is a ghost who lacks the spine to even hold a blade."
The creature's "face" leaned closer, the air around him turning freezing cold.
"All these men... the veteran... the Commander... they are dead because you are a glitch. You are a failure of the world. You have the power to change everything, and yet you chose to hide behind a barrel. You are not a regressor. You are a spectator to your own shame."
The creature raised a hand, and the entire sky seemed to collapse inward, the purple clouds turning into a vortex of screaming faces. The world twisted, the colors inverted, and the monstrous Knight grew until he blotted out the sun.
"Die again, Reine Vangalf," the monster whispered. "Die until the pain is the only thing left of your soul."
The creature's boot descended—not onto Reine's chest, but onto his face.
CRACK.
The mysterious, harmonizing chime played one last time, but it sounded like a glass cathedral shattering into a billion pieces.
[End of Chapter 4]