Void swallowed me for a moment, then that void snapped into a silent scream inside my chest — and something unknown was blown into my soul: a merciless Curse of Resurrection. I no longer counted pain as an opponent but as a tool that sharpens me. I rose as one who buries himself and then stands — as if the grave had given me not rest but a new memory: no need for pity, no room for regret.
She was still standing where I had fallen, thin, her gaze wavering between stunned disbelief and rising fear. I remembered her face before the blade — a face that never owned what it had done — and a black hunger swallowed me: to make her feel everything I had felt, to melt whatever humanity remained inside her.
I chased her through the alleys; the night watched in silence. My footsteps had a single rhythm: steady cruelty. It was not merely a physical pursuit; it was a hunt for something deeper — a hunt for memory, a hunt for the right to claim the ending. When I caught up with her, I did not reach blindly; I seized her shoulder like one who grips a cold corpse to confirm it is not a dream.
I kept silent, then whispered in her ear a line that cut the tongue of mercy from every limb of her body: — "Do you think your visions grant you grace? You gave me evidence, and I will make it a verdict."
I did not start with blows. I struck at hope. Long, cold, deliberate words — needles used to dismantle a person piece by piece. I told her of nights she never knew, nights I cried with no hand to hold me. I told her of promises eaten by time. I spun for her deep tales of injustices she had never lived, as if putting a mirror before her that showed the world's cruelty, then told her that the world she knew was nothing compared to what I would teach her now.
The pain I planted with my words was sharper than any strike. Each sentence was a blade that drew hope from her; each mention of erased pasts stole her breath. She wept, but the tears did not save her; there was no room for repentance — repentance had become for me a shroud, a cover that deadened feeling.
I raised my voice once, savage and precise: — "Let me make one thing clear: mercy is not an inheritance gifted to the weak. Mercy is a choice made by the strong — and I am no longer one of yours. I am the chooser."
Then came the final act. I did not give her a heroic end or a mercy-kiss of death. I took a single breath and closed her window of speech like closing a book that will never be read again. I left her no scream to bring her back; I took from her her self — not with the lurid brutality the eyes imagine, but with a resolve that cut every possibility of return. Her body surrendered, and I stood above its new stillness as one who signs an irrevocable page.
I looked at her face and said, voice flat of both mercy and doubt: — "You said my future was to die by your hand. You were partly right. But you didn't give the world an ending — you gave me a beginning. I will write the endings now. They will not be justice. I will make the void my throne."
I smiled a smile a human knows only in the moment he frees himself from every barrier. I left, my ears catching the whispering wind saying one name: "The King."
I no longer kept the letters of mercy in my lexicon. Mercy is gone — vanished as if it had only ever been a dream I shed. Now cruelty remains as a weapon, and a name is written on every passerby's tongue: Kim — the writer of endings, the lord of the void.