The monster's corpse lay cooling behind him, but he barely noticed.
He sat slumped against a broken pillar, knees drawn up, staring at his bloodstained hands. They didn't even shake anymore. That was the worst part.
He should be disgusted. He should be screaming.
Instead, all he could think about was how much he missed his room.
That dark, messy cube of a bedroom, the glow of his computer monitors the only light, empty soda cans littering the desk. The sound of rain against the window while he binged another season of whatever anime was popular that week. The way his mattress dipped in that one perfect spot where he'd curl up with novels until sunrise.
God, he'd give anything for one more lazy afternoon.
One more cup of cheap Japanese ramen.
One more pointless argument in some novel's comment section.
His chest ached.
In his previous lives, his biggest problem had been running out of a novel chapter during a marathon session. Now? Now he dreams about pillows. About air conditioning. About not waking up to the sound of something screaming in the distance.
A wet, broken sound escaped him.
Pathetic.
He'd survived horrors that would've broken soldiers. He'd eaten things no human should. But here he was crying like a child.
A life so small he hadn't even realized it was precious until it was gone.
"I'm sorry..."
The whisper was meant for no one. His dead father couldn't hear it. His mother, if she was even still looking, would never know he'd said it. And his little sister who is studying abroad... did she still send those silly selfies every weekend? unaware her big brother had vanished from the world.
The wind didn't answer.
But the blood on his surroundings stirred, as if remembering too.
Days passed in a blur of blood and survival, though no one knows how long it is.
He walked.
That's all he did now, hunt some and drink. The landscape never changed. Just endless ruins under that same bleeding sky. Until—
A bridge.
A simple wooden bridge. Hanging over a chasm so deep that its bottom disappeared into darkness. It looked normal. But that was what disturbed him most. No carved, screaming faces. No railings wrapped around flesh. Just... a bridge.
The end of the bridge was nowhere in sight.
His instincts screamed at him to turn back yet he chose to move forward.
He chose to cross it.
Step by trembling step, he advanced. His body grew heavier with each movement, as if the air itself had turned to lead. His consciousness blurred at the edges, thoughts slipping like sand through his fingers. A deep, unnatural exhaustion pressed down on him.
This is… dangerous.
I should… go back…
His hands fumbled for the edge, fingers clawing at the weathered rope to steady himself but his balance was already lost. The bridge swayed beneath him, or maybe it was just his failing strength.
Just… a little more…
Then—
His foot met empty air.
The bridge was gone.
The world dissolved into darkness as he fell, his vision swallowed whole by the void.
He fell.
He felt that way.
And fell again.
Time stretched into something meaningless. Seconds bled into eternities as the darkness cradled him in its hollow embrace.
Then, like a distant echo, a light flickered.
A sea of stars swirled before him, a shimmering tapestry of distant suns.
Memories erupted.
Fragments of his previous life emerged. It feels ordinary and fleeting.
The stories he'd loved, the games he'd lost himself in, the worlds he'd consumed in pages and pixels. It feels nostalgic. A lifetime of borrowed dreams, now surging through him like a collapsing star.
It burst. burning and gone.
So this is it, huh?...
The end.
I'm dead. really really dead.
I thought crossing worlds would mean something. Dragons, magic, or a damn purpose. But it's just another hell with prettier paint...
…But whatever. It's done. No more running. No more pretending. Maybe that's the real gift here.
…Hey, Mom. Sis. I hope you're okay. I hope you never knew how it ended for me. I hope you're laughing somewhere, warm and safe. That's all I want now.
Just… let Mom's garden keep blooming. Let Sis forget to text back sometimes because she's too busy laughing with friends.
…Let them be happy somewhere the darkness doesn't reach.
…Funny. I thought I'd be angrier. But there's just… sadness.
Sigh—
…Still. What a shitty deal.
Then the stillness came again.
He floated and drifted in the cosmic tide. The stars still glittered, but now their light had changed to crimson.
Every last one of them turned into bright red. A constellation of dying embers, pulsing like a slow, tired heart.
How beautiful…
His voice, if he even had one, was lost to the void. Yet the thought lingered, trembling in the silence.
One star flickered weakly, its glow dimmer than the rest. A strange ache twisted inside him. Without thinking, his hand reached out as if he could cradle its loneliness in his palm.
But before his fingers could brush the light, the darkness returned.
Swallowed him whole once more.
He fall again...
Some say the heart is just a muscle. A fist of flesh that clenches and releases, bound by the same crude laws as any other part of the body. But those who have stood at the edge of the abyss, who have known the hollow ache of despair or the searing forge of defiance, understand the lie in those words.
A hero's heart does not beat, it burns. It is not the absence of fear that makes him stand, but the presence of something greater.
Duty? Perhaps.
Love? Sometimes.
Or maybe just the quiet, unshakable truth that to step aside would be to deny the very core of his being.
He does not raise his sword because victory is assured. He raises it because to lower it would mean the death of his soul long before his body ever could.
And what of the demon king, the sovereign of ruin? His heart, too, is a furnace. The same fire that drives the hero to shield drives the tyrant to seize. Is it hatred? Pride? Or the terrible, gnawing realization that no throne is high enough, no victory vast enough, to fill the chasm within him?
The hero and the villain are hewn from the same stone. Only the sculptor's hand differs. One is shaped by sacrifice, the other by hunger. Yet both know this: a life without purpose is a slow decay, a ghost's existence long before the grave.
Yeah...
I've... felt that once.
History does not remember the cautious. It remembers those who dared, whether to preserve or to annihilate.
To etch one's name into legend is to walk a road of one's own making, every scar is a testament, every wound is a choice. To stare into the void and say: "If I must shatter, let it be for something worthy of the breaking."
"That's why I fought so hard... in that second chance."
But it was wasted. No—not wasted. Merely impossible.
"But to think that... I'd be given a third chance."
His consciousness unraveled, thin as smoke, drawn into something.
His eyes fluttered open. A pair of crimson eyes stared up at the ceiling, as the room held its breath.
A single tear falls. The eyes blaze not with grief, but with the undying fire of a soul that has grasped hope's ember once more and refuses to let it cool.
And then—
For the first time, a smile surfaced. Not the pigments of gentleness, but like a revelation in blood-ink. The baring of teeth by a wolf who has finally caught the scent of dawn after an eternity of hunting through midnight.
"Finally..."
The word comes out half-breath, half-blade.
"...seeing what color this world bleeds."
The last syllable lingers like the hum of a drawn sword.
For this is the moment when poetry becomes prophecy.
When the dreamer becomes the destroyer or the deliverer.
The sky itself seems to hold its breath, waiting to see whether the next words will be a prayer... or a war cry.