[RATING: MA 15+]
The sky above Lugunica stretched endlessly, a canvas of fading azure bleeding into salmon pink as the sun descended behind distant mountains. Subaru Natsuki stood at the balcony of the manor, watching clouds drift like forgotten memories across the horizon. The wind carried the scent of autumn—earthy, melancholic, tinged with something he couldn't quite name. Perhaps it was the weight of time itself, pressing down on his shoulders with invisible hands.
One year.
One year since the flames consumed the City of Water. One year since he'd watched friends fall and rise again, since he'd died and returned, died and returned, until the cycle became a prayer he recited in blood and tears. The scars on his body had healed, but the ones carved into his mind remained fresh, raw, like wounds that refused to close no matter how much time passed.
"Subaru?"
He turned. Emilia stood in the doorway, her silver hair catching the last rays of sunlight, or a ghost of someone he'd failed to save in another timeline. The thought made his heart tighten.
"Just watching the sunset," he said, forcing a smile that felt like a mask over crumbling stone.
She approached slowly, her purple eyes searching his face with that gentle concern that simultaneously comforted and wounded him. How many times had she looked at him like this across countless loops? How many versions of himself had she mourned without ever knowing?
"You've been distant lately," Emilia said softly, coming to stand beside him. "Is something troubling you?"
Everything, he wanted to say. The memories of deaths you'll never remember. The weight of choices unmade and futures erased. The growing hollowness in my being that feels like I'm becoming less human with each reset.
Instead, he said, "Just thinking about the future. What comes next, you know?"
It wasn't entirely a lie. The peace they'd won felt fragile, temporary—like the calm before a storm he could sense gathering just beyond the horizon. In quiet moments, when sleep eluded him and the manor settled into darkness, he'd feel it: a wrongness in the world, distant but approaching, inevitable as winter following autumn.
Emilia placed her hand over his. Her hand was warm, real, grounding him in this moment, this timeline, this version of reality where she still lived and smiled. "We'll face it together," she said. "Whatever comes. You don't have to carry everything alone."
But I do, he thought. Because I'm the only one who remembers. I'm the only one who knows how much it costs to keep this moment alive.
The days that followed blurred together in comfortable monotony. Subaru trained with Wilhelm in the mornings, his body moving through sword forms with mechanical precision while his mind wandered through labyrinths of memory. Rem remained comatose in her room, and Subaru visited her daily, speaking to the sleeping friend who held fragments of a relationship only he remembered. Ram watched him during these visits with eyes that saw too much, understood too little.
Beatrice would appear in flashes of irritation and affection, clinging to his sleeve and demanding attention he gladly gave. Otto complained about paperwork with theatrical exasperation. Garfiel's boisterous energy filled the halls with noise that felt like life asserting itself against the silence of forgotten timelines.
But beneath it all, that wrongness persisted—a low frequency hum at the edge of his consciousness, growing louder with each passing day.
It was Otto who brought the news.
The merchant appeared in the manor's study one evening, his normally composed expression troubled, eyes shadowed with something Subaru recognized: fear trying to masquerade as concern.
"Natsuki," Otto said, setting down a leather satchel stuffed with documents. "I've been hearing... disturbing reports from the merchant caravans coming through the northern territories."
Subaru looked up from the book he'd been pretending to read. "What kind of reports?"
Otto hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "There's a region called Crimson Bay—a coastal area that's always been somewhat lawless, but recently..." He pulled out a folded map, spreading it across the desk. His finger traced a location far to the northwest, where the kingdom's borders blurred into wilderness. "The merchants are calling it a 'blood city' now. Apparently, some kind of organization has taken control. They're running... games. Death matches. Public executions disguised as entertainment."
The air in the room seemed to thicken. Subaru felt ice crystallize in his veins, that familiar prickling sensation that preceded disaster. "Games?"
"Gladiatorial fights, from what I understand," Otto continued, his voice dropping lower. "Forced participation. People disappearing into the city and never returning. The merchants who've passed through say there's a cult controlling everything—former members of the Witch Cult, according to rumors, but different. More violent. More..." He struggled for the word. "Organized."
The Witch Cult. Those words alone conjured memories that made Subaru's hands shake—twisted fingers reaching from darkness, madness given human form, the scent of corruption and the Witch's miasma choking the air. He'd thought that nightmare was over for now. He'd thought—
"They're calling themselves the Cult of Crimson Bay," Otto said. "Led by six individuals they refer to as 'Bishops.' Sound familiar?"
Too familiar. Sin Archbishops. Witch Factors. Authorities that bent reality into grotesque shapes. Subaru's mind raced through possibilities, each more horrifying than the last. A splinter group? Survivors? Or something entirely new wearing the Witch Cult's skin?
"We can't ignore this," Subaru said, his voice harder than he intended. The words tasted like ash. "If there's even a chance this is connected to the Witch Cult—"
"Natsuki," Otto interrupted gently, "I know what you're thinking, but this isn't your responsibility. The kingdom has knights, the royal candidates have their own forces. You've already done enough. More than enough."
Have I? Subaru wanted to ask. What about the people I couldn't save? What about the timelines where everyone died because I made the wrong choice? What about Rem, still sleeping, still waiting for me to find a way to wake her?
Instead, he stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. "I need to talk to Emilia."
He found her in the garden, kneeling beside Rem's bed, which they'd moved near the window so she could feel the sunlight. Emilia was reading aloud from a storybook, her voice soft and melodic, each word a prayer offered to unhearing ears.
"—and the princess discovered that true courage wasn't the absence of fear, but the choice to act despite it," Emilia read, then paused as she sensed Subaru's presence. "Oh, Subaru. I didn't hear you come in."
"Sorry for interrupting," he said, moving to stand beside Rem's bed. The sleeping kid looked peaceful, untouched by the horrors of the world—or maybe frozen in them, trapped in a nightmare only she could see. "Emilia, I need to talk to you about something."
She marked her place in the book and stood, concern creasing her features. "What is it?"
He told her everything Otto had said: Crimson Bay, the blood games, the cult, the bishops. With each word, he watched her expression shift—surprise, horror, determination. This was the Emilia he'd cared for so much over the years, the one who couldn't turn away from suffering even when the smart thing would be to preserve herself.
"We have to help them," she said immediately, predictably. "Those people are suffering. If there's really a cult—"
"It could be dangerous," Subaru said, even as part of him had known this would be her response, had needed it to be her response because it justified what he already wanted to do. "These bishops, if they're anything like the Sin Archbishops we fought before..."
He trailed off, memories flooding back: Petelgeuse's madness, the twisted gospel, the Unseen Hands that could crush bodies like paper dolls. Regulus's invincibility and casual cruelty. Capella's horrifying transformations. Each Archbishop had been a nightmare given form, and the thought of facing more—
But wasn't this why he had Return by Death? Wasn't this the price he paid for the power to rewrite fate?
"Then we'll face them together," Emilia said, taking his hand. Her touch anchored him, reminded him of why he kept fighting, kept dying, kept coming back. "You're not alone anymore, Subaru. You don't have to carry everything by yourself."
But I do, he thought. Because when you die, I'm the only one who remembers. I'm the only one who has to live with the weight of every timeline, every failure, every death I couldn't prevent.
Aloud, he said, "Yeah. Together."
They held a council that evening—Emilia, Subaru, Otto, Ram, Beatrice, and Garfiel. The map lay spread across the table, Otto's finger indicating Crimson Bay's location far to the northwest.
"The merchant caravans are avoiding the entire region now," Otto explained. "Trade has dried up. The few travelers who've returned speak of public executions, gladiatorial pits, and a pervasive sense of fear. It's become a place where violence is currency and death is entertainment."
"Sounds like a shitty place," Garfiel growled, cracking his knuckles. "These cult bastards need their faces kicked into their skulls together. 'Boss, ready whenever you are."
Ram, standing with arms crossed, said coolly, "Barusu's idiocy aside, this does pose a strategic concern. If this new cult is allowed to grow unchecked, they could become as significant a threat as the previous Witch Cult."
"Betty thinks this is dangerous, I suppose," Beatrice said from her position clinging to Subaru's sleeve. "These cultists are always trouble. But Betty will protect Subaru, no matter what."
Subaru looked at each of them—these people he'd died for, killed for, sacrificed timelines for. They trusted him, believed in him, followed him into darkness because he'd promised to bring them back into light. The weight of that responsibility felt heavier than iron chains.
"I won't force anyone to come," he said. "This is volunteer only. Otto, you should stay here and manage things at the manor. The rest of you—"
"Betty already said she's coming, I suppose," Beatrice interrupted firmly. "Don't be stupid."
"I go wherever you go boss," Garfiel declared.
Ram sighed. "Someone needs to ensure you don't die immediately. I suppose I'm volunteering to be that someone."
Emilia squeezed his hand. "We decided together, remember?"
Something warm and painful bloomed in Subaru's heart—gratitude mixed with guilt, emotions tangled with the knowledge that he might have to watch them die again. How many times could he endure it? How many loops until he became something other than human, until the weight of accumulated deaths crushed the person he'd been?
As many times as it takes, he told himself. Until everyone survives. Until I get it right.
"Thank you," he said, and meant it with every fragment of his fractured soul. "All of you. We leave at first light."
That night, Subaru couldn't sleep. He stood on the balcony again, watching stars pierce the darkness like holes in fabric, revealing something vast and incomprehensible beyond. The moon hung low and full, painting the world in shades of silver and shadow.
He thought about Makoto Sokuyami, the name Otto had mentioned in passing—the young figure rumored to be one of the cult's most dangerous members. Something about that name felt significant, though Subaru couldn't say why. A premonition, perhaps, or just paranoia born from too many battles.
"Can't sleep either?"
He turned to find Emilia approaching, wrapped in a blanket against the night's chill. She came to stand beside him, and for a moment they simply existed together in comfortable silence, two people watching the same sky, thinking different thoughts.
"Nervous," Subaru admitted. "Every time we face something like this, I wonder if it'll be the time I can't fix things. The time where everything fails, or I run out of chances, or I just... break."
Emilia looked at him with those kind, perceptive eyes that saw too much. "You carry so much, Subaru. Sometimes I wish you'd tell me what really haunts you."
He wanted to. Damn, how he wanted to tell her everything—about the loops, the deaths, the versions of her he'd watched die over and over until her screams became a familiar soundtrack to his nightmares. But the Witch's curse sealed his throat, and even if it didn't, how could he burden her with knowledge that would only bring pain?
"Maybe someday," he said softly. "When it's all over. When we've won."
"You always talk like there's an ending coming," Emilia said. "But life doesn't end, Subaru. It just continues, one day after another, and we face what comes together." In most timelines, it does end, he thought. Violently. Permanently. For everyone but me. But he smiled and said, "You're right. Together."
They stayed there until dawn began painting the eastern sky in shades of amber and rose—two people on a balcony, preparing to walk into darkness, neither knowing what horrors waited in the blood-soaked streets of Crimson Bay.
The journey north would take days. Subaru had Return by Death, his friends had their strength and determination, and somewhere ahead, a cult of violence and twisted faith awaited them.
In the distance, Subaru thought he could already smell blood on the wind—or maybe it was just memory, the phantom scent of deaths not yet experienced in this timeline.
Either way, morning came, and with it, the beginning of something terrible.
TO BE CONTINUED...