The first thing I felt was the cold.
It crept up my fingers, slid along my arms, and wrapped itself around my throat as if the forest itself wanted to choke the breath out of me. My legs stiffened, my lungs refused to move, and all I could do was stare.
"Wh-what… what is this…?"
The words stumbled out of me—thin, broken, barely mine.
A man lay sprawled at my feet, his body twisted unnaturally against the roots and moss. His eyes were still open—wide, glassy, unfocused—staring at something far beyond this forest. Blood seeped from the side of his skull in a slow, thick ribbon, crawling through the dirt like a red worm.
Then the smell hit me.
"Thwack!!"
I doubled over and vomited, one hand slapping against a tree just to keep myself upright. My stomach lurched again, threatening another wave, but I forced myself to look back at the body. I should have looked away. I should have closed my eyes. But something inside me refused—whether fear, shock, or something darker, I couldn't tell.
My gaze stayed locked on the man's expression.
Lifeless.
Or… not?
"Hu…"
A tiny gasp escaped his lips. So faint, so fragile, I almost dismissed it as my imagination. My entire body froze. My heartbeat crashed against my chest. He was alive. He was actually still alive.
So why couldn't I move?
Why were my legs nailed to the earth?
It felt like invisible threads tied me down, holding me still even as the man wheezed again.
"Cough—! Cough—!"
The sudden, violent coughing shattered the trance. My legs trembled, but I forced them forward, dragging myself to him until I fell to my knees beside his broken form.
"I… I don't know what to do," I whispered—maybe to him, maybe to myself, maybe to the trees that watched silently like an audience.
His head was bleeding. Badly. That much I understood. But how? Why was he alone? What did this? My thoughts collided and dissolved into meaningless noise.
I reached out with trembling hands, desperate to help.
But he raised his arm—slowly, weakly—and pushed my hands away.
"…Ha…"
A tiny shake of his head. Barely a movement, but unmistakable. He didn't want help. Or maybe he already knew it was far too late.
His cold fingers closed around my forearm. His mouth opened, forming a word his failing lungs couldn't release. His throat tightened. His eyes softened… and then his grip fell away.
His hand hit the earth like a stone.
This time, he was truly gone.
I stared at him—the abrupt end of a life right in front of me—trying to swallow air that wouldn't go down. My throat burned. My eyes blurred. My heart felt like it was shrinking inside my chest.
Why am I so calm?
Why am I not screaming?
I tore my gaze away, scanning the forest as if someone—anyone—might step out and explain this. But the trees stood tall and silent, their shadows stretching endlessly between them. No movement. No answers. Nothing but the heavy thud of my heartbeat in my ears.
When I looked back at the corpse, the truth dug deeper.
"This is… this has to be a dream, right?"
But the words did nothing. It was a lie I wanted to grab onto—a fraying rope in a storm. Reality doesn't soften just because you shut your eyes.
He didn't look peaceful. He didn't look like someone who died quietly. Whatever happened to him… it wasn't gentle.
My body flinched—and—
Bang!
"Ouch—!"
My leg buckled, dropping me to the ground. I tried to stand, but my strength drained away like water through cracked stone. I lay there, breaths going shallow, limbs growing heavier by the second.
My fingers tingled.
My arms went numb.
Oh.
I knew this feeling.
It was the same sensation as when I killed myself.
Back then, my body had gone quiet exactly like this—numb without pain, heavy without fear. Almost… familiar.
"I'm… dying again," I murmured, letting out a bitter, breathless laugh. "Just like before…"
I couldn't even be upset. Not really. I'd wasted my first life, and this new one… this one had barely begun. Five years old. Five years, and death already knew my name a second time.
If I counted both lives together… I'd be twenty-two.
Twenty-two years alive, and what had I done with any of it?
My vision blurred at the edges, darkening like ink spreading through water. My thoughts slipped away one by one before I could grasp them.
I tried to remember something—anything.
My mother's smile.
My father's laugh.
Lila's tiny footsteps.
Their voices echoed faintly in my mind, fading like distant static.
What was I saying again…?
"Sorry… Mom… Dad… Lila… everyone…"
My chest tightened one last time.
"I guess this is it… for the second time."
Darkness swallowed everything.
Part two
"Jake… Jake… Jake…"
The voice drifted toward me like a gentle tide—soft, warm—brushing against the darkness that held me. It tugged at something deep inside me: memory, comfort, the fragile outline of a life I once lived.
My eyes fluttered open.
"Mom…?"
The world formed slowly around me. A small hospital room. Pale curtains. Sunlight slipping through the window in thin golden beams. And there—lying on a bed wrapped in impossibly white sheets—was my mother.
Alive.
Beautiful.
Exactly as she had been before everything fell apart.
She smiled the moment our eyes met, and the sight hit me harder than any blade, any fall, any death ever had. The tightness in my chest loosened, replaced by a warmth that burned behind my eyes.
Without thinking, I rested my head on her lap. Her fingers brushed through my hair—light, soft, familiar.
"What's going on with you?" she laughed softly. "You fell asleep the moment you got here. And why is there a bandage on your face?"
Right. The bandage.
Instinctively, I turned my head away, not wanting her to touch it, not wanting to explain. But I forced myself to answer.
"Oh, that… I got it while cooking. Hot oil spilled on me."
I lifted my head and tried to smile.
She gasped. "Oh my, that sounds serious!"
She reached toward the bandage, but I caught her wrist gently.
"Don't push yourself," I said quickly. "You need to save your strength."
Her expression softened into a proud, glowing smile. "You might be the kindest soul I've ever seen, you know that?"
"…I don't think I'm kind." My voice trembled. "I think you're more incredible, Mom."
She chuckled. "Then I suppose both of us share that as a common trait."
I held her hand tighter. Her skin was warm—too warm, too real. This felt too vivid to be a dream, too comforting to be a hallucination, yet too impossible to exist.
A sudden buzzing shattered the moment.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
My watch alarm.
The vibration crawled up my wrist, and a faint dread whispered in the back of my mind.
"It's time for you to head back to school, Xavier," she said, brushing her hair back with that small habitual gesture I remembered so well.
"…Yeah. I guess I should."
I stood slowly, reluctant to leave the warmth of her presence. But as I moved toward the door, something tugged at me—an itch, a whisper, a piece that didn't fit.
Xavier.
My steps halted.
A strange heaviness settled in my chest. I turned back.
"Hey, Mom?"
"Yes?" She tilted her head, curious and playful—the exact way she always did when I was confused.
"…You just called me Xavier."
She blinked once. Twice. "Did I?"
"Yeah. And… it wasn't a slip of the tongue. 'Xavier' and 'Jake' don't sound anything alike." I hesitated. "And when you said it… it felt right. Like the name belonged."
Her expression didn't change at first. She just watched me—too calmly. Too still.
"Oh?" she whispered. "Interesting."
A chill crawled up my spine.
"My mother," I said slowly, "has never once mistaken my name."
Her silence thickened.
"So…" My breath trembled. "Who are you?"
The room dimmed.
Not abruptly—like a slow eclipse, as if the sun outside was being swallowed. Shadows stretched across the floorboards toward her bed.
My heartbeat pounded louder than the ticking clock.
She smiled.
And it wasn't my mother's smile anymore.
Not even close.
The corners of her lips curled a little too high. The expression was too smooth, too perfect—crafted rather than felt. Her gentle brown eyes held a glint I had never seen in her before.
Something ancient.
Something curious.
Something cold.
"What a perceptive child you are," she said softly. The voice was hers… but layered, echoing faintly underneath, like a second speaker hid inside her chest.