Mist was no longer gray.It was bleeding.
Renji stumbled through the collapsing edge of Gravepath, the ground splintering beneath his boots like shattering glass. The air around him pulsed with red light, every heartbeat echoed by the distant groan of something vast and dying. His lungs burned; the air here was too thin, too alive.
He didn't know how long he had been walking. Maybe minutes. Maybe centuries. Time didn't matter anymore—not in the Mist. Each step forward peeled away another layer of reality. The world had become translucent, and through the cracks he could see veins of white light writhing like serpents beneath the surface.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
"Subject 047—Renji. Recursion limit exceeded."
The voice rippled through his skull like static. Mechanical. Calm. The same one that had whispered during every death. But this time, it wasn't inside his head—it was everywhere.
Renji looked up. Above him hung a void that hummed like a machine breathing. A colossal sphere of light spun silently within it, broken pieces orbiting like moons. Each fragment reflected a scene—a city burning, a field of bones, a woman reaching out. Yurei's face appeared for a heartbeat, her lips moving soundlessly.
"Yurei?"
The image shattered.
A surge of pain lanced through him. His vision blurred. The red light around him began to twist, condensing into lines that formed a path—a bridge made of pulsating veins. Beyond it lay the Origin Field, where the Respawn System pulsed like a living heart.
He stepped forward.
The first touch sent fire crawling up his leg. He hissed but didn't stop. The veins pulsed brighter, reacting to his presence, sensing something that wasn't supposed to exist. The light around him warped, forming shapes—silhouettes of people screaming in silence, hands reaching out, grasping for him.
"You shouldn't be here…"
The whisper came from everywhere, and nowhere.
Renji's eyes darted across the endless expanse. Shadows moved within the light—thousands of figures trapped within translucent walls, each frozen in the moment of death. Their eyes glowed faint blue, tracking him as he walked.
"Respawned…" he murmured. "All of them."
Something snapped behind him.
He turned—and the Mist was gone. Replaced by something darker. Something that breathed. A mass of black tendrils crawled across the ground, forming a crude shape that mirrored a human body. Then another. Then dozens.
They rose, twitching, crawling toward him.
"You escaped the cycle…""We didn't."
Renji drew his cracked sword, its dull edge humming faintly. The figures lunged—no screams, no footsteps, only the wet sound of flesh tearing as they moved. He slashed the first one clean through. Its body burst into dust—but the dust crawled back, reforming behind him.
"Persistent bastards…"
He swung again. And again. Each kill meaningless, each strike feeding the field itself. The ground began to glow beneath him, veins of light spreading outward like infection.
Then he heard it—the heartbeat.
Deep. Rhythmic. Alive.
The world tilted. His vision fractured. The bridge ahead opened like a wound, revealing a vast chasm beneath—a hollow world filled with floating bodies and machine-like roots burrowing through them.
At the far end stood a figure of light. Tall, motionless.Watching him.
Renji stumbled toward it, sword trembling in his grip.
"Who are you?"
The figure didn't move. The light around it pulsed once—and a voice, smooth and emotionless, spoke directly into his mind.
"Welcome to the Origin Field, Residual Instance 047.""Prepare for system extraction."
The ground split apart.
Renji fell.
There was no sky. Only light.And within that light—screams.
Renji crashed onto a field of white stone. The surface rippled like liquid, absorbing his impact, and cold shot up his spine. Around him, colossal pillars rose into the void, their surfaces engraved with faces—some human, some monstrous, all shifting slowly as if alive.
He staggered to his feet. His sword was gone. His reflection warped across the ground beneath him, flickering between dozens of faces—his own, but from different lives.
"How many times have I died…?"
No answer came, only whispers. The walls themselves seemed to breathe.
"All instances accounted.""Consolidation in progress."
Then the world moved.
The stone field rippled outward, reshaping itself into a corridor of white metal. The transition was seamless, organic—as if reality itself obeyed a command.
Renji's heartbeat quickened. He had seen fragments of this before—structures hidden in the haze of his deaths. Cold corridors, impossible machinery. This place was the core. The heart of everything.
He walked.
Every step echoed for miles, bouncing between the shifting walls. The deeper he went, the heavier the air became. Strange glyphs crawled across the metal, glowing faint red.
Then he saw it.
At the corridor's end, suspended by cables that looked like veins, floated a human-shaped figure encased in glass. The body was motionless, featureless—no eyes, no mouth, just a blank shell of silver skin.
Above it, a voice thundered through the void.
"I am The Architect.""And you, Renji, are the anomaly that should not exist."
Renji clenched his fists. "So you're the one who made this hell."
"A necessary construct. Death was chaos. I gave it order.""You were never meant to retain memory. You were never meant to remember Yurei."
The sound of her name sent a pulse through him. His chest tightened, a flicker of warmth beneath all the pain.
"Then why can I still hear her?" he growled.
"Because love is the most efficient error."
The cables descended, slithering like living things, wrapping around his arms and legs. He struggled, pulling against them, but the harder he fought, the deeper they bit into his flesh.
"Your existence corrupts the cycle. Every respawn consumes energy reserved for creation. Every emotion you feel is deviation. You are entropy, Renji."
Renji spat blood, eyes burning with defiance. "If that's true… then I'll burn your system down with me."
The glass chamber pulsed. The Architect's voice grew louder—thousands of voices layered into one.
"Then let us see if the anomaly can defy its creator."
The floor beneath him cracked.
A surge of blinding light swallowed everything—
—and in that light, for the briefest moment, he saw her again. Yurei, standing among the shards of reality, reaching out with a trembling hand.
"Renji… wake up."
His world exploded.
The Origin Field collapsed into static.
And as the light consumed him, he screamed her name—not out of love, but out of rage.
"YUREI!"