As the bone-shivering cold permeated my flesh and soul, my brain, as if awakened from its slumber, began to think and commands my body took action once more.
My heavy eyelids slowly pried open, revealing the area ahead and around me, a nothingness, black as tar, buried beneath thick, skin-shivering thick mist as far as my blurry vision could reach.
"Where am I?" I asked myself. Then another, more important question followed."Who am I?"
I looked down at my body and found myself once more in my sleeping clothes, having become again the man known as Vincent.
As I slowly assessed my present situation, a single tear dripped from my eye.
"Is this hell?" I asked myself, remembering my second death, my consciousness slipping away on the bloodied floor of the inn.
"Well, at least I died protecting someone."I smiled as more tears rushed down my face like a torrent of sadness, yet mixed with happiness, knowing I died doing the right thing. That thought kept a small smile on my lips.
Then came the voice, as loud as thunder yet as clear as a church bell.
"We're not dead. At least, not for now…"
The voice paused for a moment before continuing.
"Follow the path!" it shouted.
A strange path made of deep crimson light appeared amid the thick mist of nothingness, urging me forward.
I had nothing else to do. The only thing I could do now was follow the path aimlessly. As I walked, I began to realize something. The path beneath my feet wasn't some kind of magical light. It was blood, glowing with the innate reflection of gunfire, cannon blasts, and war on an unimaginable scale.
"That's the path we may walk. Every step filled with conflict," the voice echoed from the mist, like sound trapped within a sealed cave.
Yet I continued forward, my heart filled with doubt.
Then came the screams. Pain, suffering, and pleas for death echoed throughout the void, sending an unexplainable chill down my spine.
"That's the voices of those whose suffering was caused by our actions, past, present, and future," the voice shouted once more. This time it was accompanied by the rumble of engines, grinding metal treads, and a religious chant in a language that might as well have been a deformed version of Latin.
And still, I continued walking, my mind filled with indecision.
Then the veil of mist began to clear, revealing the end of my path.
A mountain made of corpses.
Countless creatures of uncountable types, animals, beasts, insects, humanoids, mechanical beings, eldritch horrors, demons, angels, and more. Their numbers were so vast and their sizes so varied that the peak of the mountain was nothing more than a speck beneath the now mistless, jet-black, starless sky.
Multicolored blood from countless species flowed down the mountain like a raging torrent, merging into a shifting, rainbow-hued stairway that led straight to the summit.
"The mountain of life we may trample. Such triumph. Such sin. Our actions," the voice declared."Climb it if you want to meet me."
I gazed up at the peak and began climbing, my feet soaked in blood, oil, and countless ichors I couldn't recognize or understand.
The only way forward was up.
Like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill of Tartarus, I forced my body against the torrent of bloods. Yet unlike him, despite slipping and falling countless times across immeasurable stretches of time, I reached the summit.
Hours? Days? Months? Years?
Who knows.
The only thing I knew was that I had reached the summit.
At the peak stood a simple wooden table, two chairs, and a floating mirror-like panel.
Seated in one of the chairs was a young man, as enigmatic as he was familiar.
Hair white as snow.Skin pale as winter.Eyes blue, brilliant as glittering sapphires.
Libertas "Victor" von Vindia sat there, gesturing for me to take the chair opposite him.
"Please, be a guest of ourselves," he said with a smile I recognized as my own.
I slowly sat down and stared directly into his eyes.
"Who are you?" I asked with a cynical glare.
"What a ridiculous question. I'm you," he answered in the same tone I would have used.
"What?" I muttered in confusion.
"We're one another," he said, sounding annoyed. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
In an instant, his face and clothes changed to mine, while my appearance shifted to his.
"What the fuck?!" I exclaimed.
"Is it that hard to understand? We're inside our own mind. You read novels and watch anime. You should know the cliché."
"That makes sense. So who are you really?"
"I'm you, dumbass! Not some supernatural being or metaphysical nonsense. I'm your mind talking to itself!"
"Then you're also the dumbass who asked the previous question?"
"Yes. One mind, one body."
We both looked around the mountaintop in mirrored unison. I looked left, he looked right. He looked right, I looked left.
"So what do we do next, huh? Me?" my other self asked.
"Let's reflect on the path we've chosen," I answered instinctively, as we both turned toward the floating mirror.
The eyes are said to be the mirror of the soul. In this case, the soul was the mirror to the eyes.
The mirror lit up like a television screen and began to play my life.
My birth.My mother's face.My father's face.My childhood friend.
My family deaths in a freak accident.My life as an orphan.The abuse.The suicide attempt.The salvation I found in history and table top strategy games.My final moments, dying alone on a mattress in that godforsaken room.
The mirror went black for a moment, then lit up again.
Victor's life played next.
Daisy's panic when I first awoke.Nikos's pride in his garden work.John's smug grin when he presented his ragtag troops.My vow to protect the people of Vindia.My deal with Valeria.The battle against the beastmen.The ravaged village.Elena and her men showing up.Arina randomly arrived on my fiefdom.
Finally, the chaotic battle against the goblin in the inn.My fall as I tried to save innocent lives.And the deus ex machina, Arina and her men, arriving just in time.
The image grew grainy and began to stutter.
"Was it fun?" he asked.
"For a while. But in the end, we died, didn't we?" I replied with a grim smile.
"No! How would we be talking if we were dead?" he snapped back, pointing at the mirror."It's grainy, but it's still playing. We're alive!"
"If that's true…" I mumbled.
"Yep. We're just waiting to wake up. It might take some time, so let's talk first," he said in a serious tone. "When we wake up, what do we do? In the grand scheme of things?" he asked
As the story of my life, both modern and medieval, flashed through my mind.
An answer emerged.
"Humana Invicta…"
"What in the actual hell does that mean?" he asked, bewildered.
"You know it in your heart, you're me after all." I replied.
As my voice end, he grinned.
"Mankind versus the world with us leading the helm, eh?" he spoke as he stood up from a chair and walked to the edge of the mountain, gazing down at the countless corpses below.
"A long, harsh road paved with conflict and death awaiting at our future like a promise of oblivion, is that truly our choice?" he asked once again.
"Yes, after seeing how much humankind of this world longing for thier salvation. For thier hope, happiness and future, we must fight!" I sternly anwsered.
"I'm enlightened now. With all the modern day knowledge in our head. Why should we show kindness to those who deny mankind the right to live? We should teach them all, the might of a mere mortal men!" I continued.
As I finished speaking, the jet-black sky above us began to crack like an eggshell, a ray of white light pouring down onto the summit.
"Looks like it's our time to wake up, long road ahead huh?" he said with my familiar warm smile.
"It seems so, but we'll prevails" I replied, smiling the same way as him.
And then, I woke up.