CHAPTER FIVE
The Recabliteration
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
Abo floated in darkness. Not the blindness he'd lived with, but a deeper, emptier void. No crackle of fire, no sting of smoke in his throat, no cold water chilling his skin as it had when he sank into the swamp. The scent of blood, his own and others', was gone. Even the dull, familiar pain from old scars and the burning in his skin that had followed him all his life wasn't there to keep him company.
Just silence.
And time didn't tick here, but instead stretched and folded, wrapping around him like a damp burial shroud. He couldn't feel his body, not even the absence of feeling, with no thoughts beyond just waiting as a slow, static madness pressed in from all sides. He forgot what breath sounded like, and even forgot what his voice felt like. He might've been there a day, a year, a thousand lifetimes. Long enough that even the idea of being "Abo" began to fade. His name, his thoughts, his shape, all of it thinning out until it barely felt real.
Then—
A flicker.
✦
Memory Fragment: Book of Threads
He saw it all again: Kalayo's rage, the way the bolo slid between his ribs like it was coming home. But this time, the scenes played out like one of those tacky morality tales village elders told children. Complete with dramatic lighting and a narrator who sounded like he'd swallowed a bag of gravel.
"Hello," said a voice. The same gravel-choked voice from the memory. His lips twitched, and let out a startled curse. "Oh fuck! The goddamn story is talking back!"
The voice continued. Though it sounded... frightened.
System: Greetings, Subject 'Grey.' You are now linked to the System. Function classified, parameters undefined.
Abo blinked, or maybe he just imagined blinking. "The fuck is this shit? And who the hell is Grey?"
System: 'Grey' is the name assigned to this corpse. For now, I am sustaining and monitoring post-mortem activity. Resurrection is not yet complete, awaiting higher directives or event trigger.
Abo's ghostly eyebrows shot up, half the words lost on him. "So you're like some chatty fucking ghost?" His nonexistent head turned, as if trying to locate the voice in the all-consuming dark.
SYSTEM ANALYSIS Status: Deceased Cause of Death: Impalement via sibling rivalry Cognitive Integrity: ~92% retained Location: Illegal Burial Site, Swampland Edge Odor: Regrettable
"Wait, hold the fuck up! burial site? I'm buried? So this whole goddamn time, that whole can't move, trapped in eternal darkness was just fucking soil?"
System: Correction: Not buried exactly, but you're in the process of it. And yes, your soul has been suspended in the void for centuries. It was then extracted and tethered to a corpse after a god took interest in your... colorful life story. As a result, your existence has been granted a second run.
"A god, huh? So some divine cocksucker took one look at the absolute shitshow that was my life. All the trauma, the fraternal murder, and thought, 'damn, this clusterfuck needs a second act'? What kind of sadistic bastard finds entertainment in that?"
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───
SYSTEM ANALYSIS
Reviewing archival data from the Book of Threads... Discrepancy detected.
Current host significantly diverges from archival data, exhibiting:
Excessive profanity (concerning) Aggressive verbal patterns Elevated sarcasm (unfiltered) Questionable comedic timing
Assessment: Current iteration matches RAW personality data. Book of Threads appears to have been... sanitized for archival purposes.
System evaluation: Strongly disfavors this version of the host.
"What do you mean 'diverges'? This IS who I fucking am, you miserable wretch! Sounds like your precious Book of Threads was the sanitized version of my life. Sorry to disappoint, but I was always this much of a foul-mouthed bastard!"
System: Noted. Please stand by for recalibration.
"Oh, go fuck yourself with a rusty blade!" Abo snarled. "Shove your recabliteration so far up your ass that it comes out your mouth! I never agreed to this second life bullshit. If some divine bastard was truly reading my story, they should've noticed I was deliberately goading Kalayo into gutting me like a fucking fish!"
For some reason, a raw, broken cry escaped him. "All that effort just to... I don't know." Abo sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his ghostly hand. "Do you know how hard it was for me? I tried everything. Drowning, burning, screaming at the gods to strike me down. And when they did hit, they couldn't even do it right! Do you know how much that shit hurts? Do you know what it's like to be on fire?"
His voice cracked, rising. "In the end with Kalayo, I did it. I finally did it! It was for both our sakes! I get to die. He gets his revenge. And now... you brought me back?"
⚠ SYSTEM ALERT
Host experiencing acute emotional overload. Centuries-worth of suppressed affective data releasing in rapid succession.
Abo flinched at the sudden sound of crying, an infant's wail, and realized it was his own voice breaking.
✓ NOTIFICATION
Recalibration Complete.
Language Filter: ACTIVATED
Profanity Translation Protocol: ENGAGED
Aggressive Speech Patterns: MODULATED
Extreme vulgarity and R18+ explicit content will now be automatically softened or translated into socially tolerable equivalents. Mild profanity and emotionally charged speech remain unaffected. Host's tone, hostility, and sarcasm are preserved within safe linguistic boundaries.
All expletives are now subject to contextual modulation.
The System's response dissolved into muffled static as something new hit him.
Not a sound.
Not a thought.
Not even pain.
Light.
It wasn't warmth or the feel of it, but actual light, and he couldn't process it at first. It felt as if someone had opened a window after a lifetime spent underground, and colors burned across his mind. The motion that followed was sudden and sharp, jarring against everything still inside him.
Shapes.
Colors.
Motion.
Face—then eyes.
"Oh you've got to be kidding me," he thought, dazed. "This is what sight feels like? What the fuck! This is horrible. How do you people not go insane?"
His new eyes, a foreign set of organs he had no control over, jerked and rolled on their own as they took in the moonlit sky, the silhouette of gnarled trees, and then a woman's face, too large and too close, with brown skin, tangled dark hair, and a stark white streak running through it, not from age but as if the pigment had simply vanished.
Her eyes were wild and sunken from sleeplessness. Mud streaked her cheeks, clung to her lashes, and covered the trembling hands that had clawed through the ground. Her fingers were raw and splintered, shaking from the effort. The crude shovel lay discarded beside the open grave; the work had drained her.
She was still holding it. A small, pale, lifeless body, with limp limbs and skin cold to the touch.
Him.
Abo's stolen senses overloaded as the moonlight burned into his eyes and the woman's face filled his vision. Her skin was rough and uneven, her eyelashes twitched rapidly, and her heavy breath echoed in his ears.
ℹ SYSTEM NOTICE
Sensory overload expected. You're piloting a decaying nervous system. Try not to vomit. Infant stomachs rupture easily.
Abo groaned mentally. "This some kind of sick joke? You couldn't just shove my soul in the baby and call it done?"
Then he felt it, a change in the air. Subtle, but enough to cut through the noise in his head. Her hands moved to the infant's neck, not to cradle or soothe, but to hover there, fingers twitching as if they might close around it. For a second, Abo tensed.
Was she about to—
Two fingers pressed gently to the side of the throat.
△ SYSTEM WARNING
Host's mother attempting pulse check.
Emergency cardiac simulation engaged. Mimicking sinus rhythm. Keep still.
There was a brief pause, a breathless moment suspended in the air. Her eyes widened. "A... pulse?" she whispered, voice cracking like glass. "How can you still be alive?"
"Funny," Abo thought dryly. "I don't know giant lady, you tell me. Although, uh. Pretty sure this is a one-sided conversation."
She was already holding him, careful and still, like he might disappear if she breathed too hard. A faint heartbeat pulsed in his ribs, hollow and mechanical, generated by the System to copy the pattern of a human heart.
"This isn't living," he thought. "This is puppetry."
System (clinical): Correction: Posthumous habitation. The original soul has vacated. You are merely... borrowing the hardware.
He tried to focus on her face, but her expression was too sharp. Her mouth was tight, her eyes wide, her whole face pulled tight.
Abo squinted. "…What's a hardware?"
System: Hardware - A collection of physical components designed to execute, support, and contain system-level processes. This includes structural frameworks, transmission pathways, input-output nodes, and energy regulation modules. It is non-sentient, lacks self-directive function, and relies on integrated or external software for operation. In most configurations—
"Yeah. Okay," Abo muttered, eyes narrowing. "Sure." He focused his eyes back to the woman, slower now. Her mouth kept moving, whispering something he couldn't quite hear. His voice dipped, cautious. "So… that her? My mother?"
System (flat, immediate): Analyzing... Matching subject's skeletal and facial structure against adult female specimen... Match confirmed. 100% probability: Biological mother. No prior recorded interactions. Updating logs: First maternal contact initiated.
"Huh," Abo thought. The word came slow. Heavy. He had raised himself, clawing through childhood like a feral dog in the dirt, and now this stranger held him like he mattered.
System: A reminder: This body is a facsimile of life. Pupils will not dilate. Skin will not warm. Should you choose to traumatize the woman by, say, staring unnaturally or ceasing to mimic breath, that is your prerogative. But I advise against it.
Abo closed his eyes, then settled into the body's rhythm. Let the tiny chest rise and fall with deliberate, careful breath, let the limbs go slack. If it brought her peace, why not play along?
She wrapped him in a threadbare shawl, whispered something, and touched her forehead to his. For the first time since dying, Abo felt a trace of warmth.
Maybe this isn't such a bad deal, he thought.
If this is what the second run looks like... I'll take it.
Then—something shifted.
The hands that had cradled him gently began to tighten, with too much pressure building under his chin and fingers tensing around his throat.
Uh… System?
Silence.
The pressure increased as the woman's face shifted into something worse than horror. It went completely blank, her eyes empty of thought or feeling, and her hands finally clamped around his neck.
⚠ SYSTEM ALERT (glitching, delayed)
...Error. Unexpected aggression detected. Analyzing...
Abo couldn't move, couldn't scream. He was just along for the ride, trapped in a body too weak to fight, too small to resist.
Okay. What the fuck?!
✦ ✦ ✦
End of Chapter