The battlefield was silent.
Guts stained the stone like spilled paint, steaming in the cold air. The stench of rot and divinity clung to my skin. I stood in the aftermath, clutching the blade that had cleaved a god in half, and I felt nothing.
No relief.
No victory.
Just… stillness. Like the moment after a scream, where your ears ring and the world forgets how to breathe.
Edward's body lay at my feet, still warm. His eyes—glass orbs staring nowhere—reflected me. Not the me I used to be. Not Theresa.
Something else.
Something hollowed.
I knelt beside him, fingers trembling as I closed his lids. They didn't stay shut.
I couldn't remember how many times I'd done this. Closed eyes. Whispered prayers. Promised revenge. Died. Came back.
Every time I returned, I remembered all of it.
Every scream.
Every fracture.
Every face of someone I loved—splattered with blood like a canvas painted in panic.
The goddess stood beside me. Smiling.
"You're breaking."
Her voice was soft. Too soft. Like it wanted to crawl into my ear and coil around my brainstem.
"I'm not," I whispered. I didn't recognize my own voice.
"You are. Look at you. Carrying godhood like it's a crown when it's a noose. You see too much. You feel too deeply. That's your curse."
I turned to her. "Then take it back. Take all of it. The Godsense. The sword. The knowledge. Take it."
She tilted her head. Her smile grew wider. It shouldn't have been able to. Her cheeks cracked as they stretched, revealing glistening muscle underneath like a puppet too worn to smile cleanly anymore.
"You think I gave it to you?" she asked. "Theresa… my sweet ruin… I was born from you."
The world spun.
My knees gave out.
"No… I met you in dreams. I heard you before the fractures started. You were a voice, not me."
"You dreamed of something stronger to survive your own death. You carved a goddess from your trauma. You prayed for a power that wouldn't let you die. And so…" she crouched, eye level, her face inches from mine, "…I was born from your need to never be powerless again."
The screams came back. I didn't want them to. But they flooded my head like ghosts clawing at the inside of my skull. Issac, burning. Felix, begging. Edward, dying.
Again and again.
I clutched my head. My hands were shaking. No—trembling. No—tearing at my scalp.
Blood. Under my nails. Mine.
"I can't keep doing this," I gasped.
"Then let go," she cooed. "Give me the reins. Sleep. I'll keep the world safe. Let the goddess in your skull take care of it all."
I wanted to.
I really, truly did.
But something in me screamed. A part of me buried under years of pain and love and terror.
The part that was still human.
I staggered to my feet, vision splintering—lines cracking across space, the world like stained glass about to fall.
"Keep the power," I told her. "Keep the divinity. I'll keep the guilt."
"Why?"
"Because if I give it up now…" I looked at Edward's body, at the blood I wore like war paint. "Then they died for nothing."
She stopped smiling.
The world quivered.
For the first time… she looked afraid.
"You really are the worst kind of god," she whispered. "One that remembers being human."
And then the darkness folded inward.
And the next battle began.
It was excavation.
A slow unearthing—memories clawing their way up through layers of dirt and trauma, gasping for breath in the open night of my mind.
I shut my eyes for what felt like seconds, maybe hours. It didn't really matter. Time had stopped obeying anything except for grief.
I was dreaming.
But I wasn't alone.
I found myself in an endless corridor lined with locked doors, each one radiating heat. The walls seemed to bleed. I could hear something screaming behind every frame.
A child's voice.
My voice.
"Make it stop."
The door closest to me creaked open, just a crack. Enough for me to catch a glimpse of her—a version of myself no older than seven, curled up in a fetal position, surrounded by the twisted remnants of reality.
Her eyes were gone, replaced by dark sockets pouring ink. Her limbs were broken in ways that bones shouldn't be. Her mouth was stitched shut with red thread.
She turned toward me without moving. The air grew cold.
"You gave me the gift," her voice echoed in my mind. "You became the god so I didn't have to die. Why did you let me live like this?"
I took a step back.
Another door swung open. A flickering hospital room. I watched myself—older, maybe seventeen—flatlining on a blood-soaked bed. No doctors. No beeping machines. Just a girl with gaping wounds in her arms, mumbling apologies to no one.
Door after door.
Each one a death.
Each one a version of me that had died wrong.
Then… the hallway twisted.
Space folded in on itself, and from the farthest door came footsteps. Calm. Heavy. Rhythmic.
I held my breath, my chest tight.
She appeared—the Other Me.
Her body was shrouded in living shadows, tendrils wrapping around her neck like leeches. Her skin was pale as moonlight, cracked like porcelain. A bloodstained crown floated just above her head.
Her eyes were gold.
Not mine.
"You woke up too soon."
Her voice was like jagged glass.
"I'm… not supposed to see you yet, am I?" I asked.
She smiled. It was just like mine. Or the one I used to wear.
"You're not the only Theresa who tried to become a god."
I swallowed hard. "How many of us are there?"
She brushed past me, her fingers gliding along the walls of the hallway—blood and memories crackling at her touch. "Countless. And most of us didn't make it."
The shadows behind her murmured. They screamed. They laughed.
"But I did." Her eyes sparkled with a fierce light. "I took down every god in my world. Even the ones I cared about."
"…Why?"
She leaned closer, her breath chilling the space between us.
"Because I was done with praying."
I felt the urge to flee. But my feet were rooted to the spot.
She circled around me. "You think grief gives you strength. It doesn't. It just makes you fragile enough to pretend."
"What do you want from me?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Her hands found my throat—not squeezing, just resting there. It felt oddly familiar. Intimate.
"I want you to die like the rest of us. Or to kill like I did. Either way, you'll finally become real."
But the rules were all wrong.
The floor felt like flesh.
The sky was bleeding.
I was awake—but the dream had followed me into reality.
I glanced down. My hands were stained with the same black ink that had seeped from the stitched-lipped child's eyes.
"Theresa," the goddess beside me murmured, though her voice had changed—deeper, more tangible. "You saw her, didn't you?"
I nodded in response.
"Then the multiverse is bleeding."
My stomach twisted. Edward's body was still lying nearby. But something felt off.
His chest was rising.
He was breathing.
I rushed to him—only to find his eyes blinking open, pitch-black and grinning.
"Hey, Tee."
My heart sank. "That's not him."
The goddess nodded. "No. That's her. The other you. She's here."
Edward—not Edward—rose to his feet, bones cracking like dry twigs. His mouth stretched wider than any human's should.
Inside: rows of my own teeth.
"Let's put an end to this god-game, shall we?"
The wind had settled into an eerie stillness.
Too still.
The battlefield around me resembled a scene from a madman's nightmare—space twisted into bizarre shapes, the ground throbbing like living flesh, time frozen in silent convulsions.
It called itself the God of the Fifth Realm. No name, no backstory. Just a deity with no beginning.
"How do you kill something that has no vulnerabilities?" I murmured, blood bubbling up from my lips. My leg was torn open. No—peeled back, like an orange. I hadn't even seen the blow land.
My hands shook as I reached down to feel the exposed muscle. No pulse. No warmth. Just a raw, slick agony.
The worst part?
Godsense was gone.
My only connection to making sense of this shattered universe had snapped. The threads of fate, once visible to me as golden strands in the air, now twisted into dark, inky wires, hissing and spewing smoke. Space had been rewritten. I couldn't decipher it anymore.
I was blind once more.
Trapped.
"Theresa."
Her voice—mine, yet not mine—echoed in my mind. She never raised her voice. She didn't need to.
Three ritual circles blazed around me, drawn in black hair and marked with golden crucifixes, flickering like candles at a somber funeral. I was the only one there.
"Fight like this and you'll revert."
Her tone was calm. Clinical.
"You'll cease to be a goddess."
And then—
I laughed.
A harsh, ragged sound clawed its way from my lungs like shattered glass.
"Good," I whispered. "I never wanted to be one."
The expression on Edward's face caught me off guard—relief. Not pity, not sorrow. Just a quiet admiration, as if he saw something human stir back to life in my hollow shell.
"You know," he said, smiling through the pain, "most of us craved power to do wicked things. Not you. You just wanted peace."
Peace.
The word felt like ash on my tongue. There had never been peace. Only rebirth. Only failure. Only witnessing everyone I loved perish, over and over.
But just as I felt the threads of clarity begin to weave together—
Everything shattered.
My arms.
Gone.
Cleanly severed at the elbows by something I never laid eyes on. The stumps gushed like fountains. My katana clattered to the dirt with a wet thud, and my vision wavered.
Then—
My head slipped from my shoulders.
Yes. You read that right.
The world spun sideways. My body slumped. The dirt greeted my face. Warm blood painted everything in shades of red.
The goddess—my shadow-self—screamed. Not like a divine being. But like a girl witnessing her own demise.
"What have you done!?" she cried out.
And from behind her, the other me—detached, observing with icy eyes—whispered:
"What was necessary."
My vision dimmed.
No pain.
Just the familiar hush of death.
…Respawn.
I blinked.
Clean air. Untouched trees. The sun still shining bright.
"Issac?" I croaked.
He turned, a smile spreading across his face. "Hey, Theresa."
Edward stood next to him, arms crossed, eyes calm. No tension. No death. No circles. Just… peace.
False peace.
I could smell it.
Like decay masked by perfume.
"I'm… human again," I murmured, touching my chest. No sparks of Godsense. No pressure behind my eyes. Just a heartbeat. Breath. Fear.
"She's here," I whispered.
Issac looked puzzled. "Who?"
But I didn't need to respond. She was already there—standing at the edge of the clearing, wearing my skin. Only her eyes were different.
They didn't blink.
They watched.
"He won't die this time," she said. Her voice was sweet as sugar, but her grip on my wrist was iron. "This loop? I've already broken it."
Her hand tightened. Veins bulged. Her nails dug into my skin.
"You don't belong here anymore," I hissed.
"I am you," she said, stepping closer, our foreheads nearly touching. "The part of you that stopped pretending. You wanted peace, but you were too weak to make it happen."
Issac and Edward stood still.
They couldn't see her.
I was alone again.
"I killed for this timeline," she growled. "And if you mess it up again—if you dare to reclaim your godhood—I'll take more than your arms. I'll erase your very soul."
"And the worst part. You'll thank me?"
She smiled sweetly.
I felt myself fading away more and more.
The sun was a fake.
I realized it the moment I opened my eyes.
Warmth shouldn't feel like a judgment. Light shouldn't seem like it's watching me.
But that's how it always felt after a reset.
The world—my world—was too bright, too perfect.
Like a stage set for a grand illusion.
"Theresa."
The voice came softly, like water trickling through a crack.
Issac.
My body reacted before my mind could catch up. I lunged toward him, wrapping my arms around his chest, grounding myself in the familiar scent of sweat and dust. Real. He was real. I could feel the tremor in his ribs.
He was alive.
But…
My arms felt too long.
My heartbeat was too slow.
The world moved like thick syrup.
"You're back," Issac whispered.
I didn't respond.
Because I wasn't sure what "back" meant.
Was it me?
Or was it her?
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Nothing," I lied.
I lied because if I told the truth—if I admitted that I remembered being decapitated, that I saw my divinity stripped away like flesh, that I could still feel the smile of a version of myself who wanted to erase me—he'd never look at me the same way again.
No one would.
Later, I found myself sitting at the edge of the crater.
The one that used to be a village.
Now it was just charred bones and whispers.
Phoenix wandered nearby, muttering incantations, trailing fireflies made of ash.
He was trying to fix it.
Like he always did.
"You're quiet," he said without glancing at me.
"I died again," I replied flatly.
"Huh."
"This time, I chose it."
Phoenix turned, the embers in his palm flickering.
"You remember it all?"
"Every second."
He paused for a moment. Then:
"That's not godhood, Theresa."
"That's hell."
I didn't reply.
Because he was right.
That night, I woke up in a cold sweat, my throat raw, breath hitching.
I had screamed in my sleep again.
But this time… someone else screamed with me.
I turned.
In the corner of the bunker room—bare walls, flickering light—stood her.
Not the goddess.
Not the Other Me.
A child.
The seven-year-old me.
Mouth sewn shut. Bleeding eyes. Pale feet that didn't touch the floor.
She pointed at my chest, her voice rattling out from her broken mouth:
"You let us suffer."
I opened my mouth to respond, but the words just faded away.
How could I defend myself? She wasn't wrong.
I allowed every version of myself to suffer for a future I couldn't even guarantee.
I let them die alone, their screams echoing in my mind.
For what?
Some half-baked dream of salvation?
Some flicker of hope that maybe this time, I'd actually save someone?
"Go back to sleep," I murmured.
"You don't belong here."
She grinned, and I noticed needles piercing her lips, drawing blood as she moved.
"Neither do you."
The next day, I spilled everything to Edward.
All of it.
The resets.
The goddess.
The alternate selves.
Even the child with sewn lips.
I shared it all, bracing for silence.
Bracing for him to walk away.
But instead, he laughed.
"You idiot."
"What?" I replied, confused.
"You really think any of us are real anymore?"
He lifted his shirt, revealing a spiral of ritual brands burned into his ribs.
"I've died too. Just not like you. I die in smaller ways. Every single day."
"We all do."
"But you?"
He locked eyes with me, his gaze cracked and weary.
"You just come back louder."
That night, I found myself sitting next to Edward in the bunker stairwell.
The walls whispered secrets, and the air was thick with the stench of rust and mold.
"I don't want to be special anymore," I confessed softly.
He leaned his head back against the wall.
"Then don't be."
"Be broken. Be bitter. Just be Theresa."
"You don't owe the world anything."
I glanced down at my hands.
Still stained with godblood.
Still twitching with the memories of power.
"I think she's going to come for me," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
"The goddess?"
"No. The Other Me. The real one. The one who never broke."
"Then let her come," he replied.
"I'll kill her."
I turned to him, a genuine smile breaking through.
"You'll die."
"I know."
I heard the bunker creak. It wasn't supposed to creak like that.
Not like it was alive.
Not like it was breathing.
The others were asleep. Felix was curled up in the far corner, mumbling softly in his dreams. Phoenix sat cross-legged by the central generator, lost in meditation, smoke curling up from his skin. Edward's hand rested against mine, his fingers twitching gently as if he were reaching for something elusive in a dream.
Only I was awake.
Only I could hear it.
The walls were whispering again.
"Theresa… Theresa… Theresa…"
My name echoed, like a prayer or maybe a curse.
I stood up slowly, trying not to wake the others. Every floorboard—no, metal grate—groaned under my weight, the sound distorted as if it were echoing underwater.
I followed the noise.
Deeper into the bunker.
Past the ration storage.
Past the bloodstained door we had long since stopped opening.
Until I found it.
A door that shouldn't exist.
It was made of black wood, smooth and slick, as if it were weeping oil. Symbols pulsed across its surface, gold and red, twitching like veins.
This wasn't part of the bunker.
This was hers.
My hand reached for the knob.
I didn't even remember moving.
Inside, it was cold. Freezing. The kind of cold that feels like it could strip skin from bone. My breath crystallized in front of me, hanging in the air like a death sentence.
The room was… wrong.
It defied shape and gravity.
Chairs floated upside down in the air.
Mirrors lined the walls, but none reflected me.
And at the center—
A bed.
And on it—
Me.
But not me.
A version of myself in hospital scrubs, wrists scarred in crisscrossed layers like tree rings marking trauma. Her chest rose and fell shallowly, eyes wide open.
She didn't blink.
Didn't speak.
Didn't breathe.
Just watched.
"Why are you here?" I asked.
My voice didn't echo.
The sound was swallowed whole.
She didn't answer.
Instead, a second mirror snapped into place.
This one reflected me.
But I looked… wrong.
My face was smiling.
I wasn't.
"You wanted peace," the mirror-me said. "So you buried us here."
I took a step back.
The door had vanished.
In its place stood another bed.
Another version of me.
This one was gagging, eyes oozing blood.
"This is your asylum," a chorus of voices murmured. "Every time you looped, you came here. Every time, you left one of us behind."
They were all me.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
All sprawled out in various states of agony across the room. Hooked up to IVs. Bound in restraints. Dressed in wedding gowns, hospital scrubs, military gear. Some were laughing. Some were crying. One of them was softly humming "Happy Birthday."
"You're not supposed to be here," one of them sang, her teeth crumbling with each note.
I spun around.
Trapped.
"Let me out," I pleaded.
"No," said the bleeding girl. "Not until you make a choice."
"Choose what?"
"Which version of you gets to live."
Suddenly—
Three of them stood up.
The girl in scrubs.
The one with stitched lips and a crown of wires.
And… her.
The goddess.
Me.
All watching.
All judging.
"Pick one," said the girl with stitched lips. "One of us gets to move on. The rest… stay behind. Forever."
I took a step back.
"I'm not playing this game."
"You already did," said the goddess. "Every time you reset, one of us stayed behind. Don't act like you're innocent."
"I didn't know!"
"You chose to be ignorant."
The girl in scrubs stepped closer.
She reached out her hand.
"Please," she whispered. "I just want to go home."
I shook my head.
I couldn't.
I didn't want to choose.
I wasn't a god anymore.
I wasn't anything.
Just a girl haunted by too many faces.
And then—
The floor split open.
A hand seized my ankle.
Dragging me down.
Back.
Into the waking world.
I gasped awake on the bunker floor.
Edward loomed over me, his face pale.
"Theresa! You were seizing—what the hell happened!?"
I glanced down at my hand.
In my palm—
A hospital bracelet.
My name scratched out.
Only the word LIAR remained.
I dropped it.
Backed away.
The others were awake now.
Watching me.
They could tell.Something was different.
Not broken.
Replaced.
Issac burst into the chamber, urgency radiating from him. Something felt off, and I could sense it too—like a chaotic storm of realities crashing together in my mind.
Their gazes locked onto me. Edward, Phoenix, Star… they were watching me as if I had already transformed into something else. Like they knew. I could feel the weight of their stares pressing down on me, a cold sweat trickling down my back, my spine buzzing as if static electricity was dancing along it.
But I refused to break. Not yet.
"I broke the veil," I murmured, more to myself than anyone else. "All of them—every timeline, every lost reality… I've shattered the barriers."
Issac's brows knitted together. "Theresa, what on earth are you talking about?"
"Every world that existed—every possibility we buried—they're seeping into ours now."
I glanced up at the ceiling, half-hoping some deity would respond. But there was only silence. And then—him.
"Fate only brings forth the most haunting beings into existence, doesn't it, Theresa?"
My knees nearly gave way.
That voice.
I hadn't heard that voice since childhood—trapped behind closed doors, buried in silence and the numbness of dissolving pills on my tongue. My father. Or something that had stolen his voice and twisted it into a tool of torment.
Memories swirled—sharp, painful reminders of neglect, of wishing to vanish. That voice now coiled within me, writhing like a parasite with teeth. The bunker dimmed. The multiverse—fiction. A labyrinth crafted by a dying writer who drowned in his own narrative because reality offered nothing but despair.
And I was the aftermath.
"Theresa," Edward called, appearing at the doorway, blood staining his shirt. "They need you below. Now."
I stared at him as if he were a figment of a dream. Or a chapter I hadn't penned yet.
Was this real?
Was I real?
"Is it another attack?" I asked.
He nodded, flinching slightly as my hand brushed too close to the red stain on his torso. Our eyes locked, and I could see a hint of pink creeping onto his cheeks. "You sure you're not just using this as an excuse?" I teased, a half-smile breaking through my haze.
Edward chuckled, but there was a trace of unease in his voice. "I mean… I wouldn't mind if you were. But the attack's real. Probably."
When we reached the sub-levels, a grotesque sight awaited us—two civilian girls, no older than seventeen, had torn each other apart. Their lips were shredded, teeth sunk into throats, and blood pooled beneath their twitching limbs.
"Cannibalism is on the rise," I muttered, covering my nose against the iron stench. "We'll need to double the rations. We've got enough now. Let them eat before they start devouring each other."
Edward nodded, placing his hand over mine. His fingers felt colder than usual. Or maybe mine were just too warm.
"Your hands are shaking," he whispered.
"So are yours."
Hours slipped by. The bunker had fallen silent again, as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for the next scream.
Back in my room, I let the door click shut behind us.
"You okay?" Edward asked.
"Define 'okay'," I replied, slowly peeling off my gloves. "Do you know anything?" I asked, a ghost of a grin dancing on my lips.
He closed the distance between us.
I didn't pull away.
Our kiss wasn't gentle. It was desperate—haunted. Two people sinking into each other, trying to remember they were still alive. His touch roamed, warm and uncertain at first, then more confident—his hands brushing the edge of my waist, slipping beneath the fabric as if he needed to memorize the feel of my skin.
I gasped softly, leaning into him, breathless, flushed, feeling alive in a way I hadn't in months.
Clothes fell away. Barriers crumbled.
Our bodies collided with raw urgency—not like lovers, but like survivors. Like two ghosts trying to claim one another. I could feel him trembling just like I was—hands gripping, pulling, needing.
It wasn't perfect. It wasn't pure. But it was real.
When it was all said and done, I rested my head against his chest, tuning into the rhythm of his heartbeat.
"You feel so warm," I whispered.
"You're trembling again," he replied.
"I know."
Sleep eluded me.