There was no blackness, no pause, and no moment of silence. There was just the sound of his skull cracking beneath the hammer, but he was floating above the sound now. He had no body, but he could see and hear.

He rose up, floating higher. The black knight’s men shouted and laughed. Elise screamed.

Elrick faced toward her. He didn’t have a head to turn, it was more like willing his field of view to shift toward her. He could hear everyone speaking, but he no longer understood their words. The foreign language he had been speaking since he came to life in this world was truly foreign to him now, as if he’d never spoken it at all.

Despite the arrow jutting out of her leg, Elise lunged forward, grabbing a dagger from one of the horse’s saddlebags. She got a hold of it, but before she could even swing it, a man drove a spear into her back.

The dagger fell from her hand as the spearmen twisted his weapon inside her.

It was difficult to watch, but not just because it was painful. The men fell in on her, cutting her to pieces. It took concentration just to keep the world in his view. If he stopped focusing, everything shimmered away, and an infinite void on the edges of his consciousness poured in, swallowing up all the light. This world—all worlds—were so small compared to that void.

He could go into that void, he realized. He could stop focusing on the world he’d just left, and the void would seep in. It would be like closing his eyes and just going to sleep.

Choose Death!

He snapped back to the world. Elise was dead on the ground now, and the men were mounting up once again. They moved on without burying her, just as they must have left the other alchemists’ bodies behind the night before.

Elrick tried to call out for Elise, but he had no voice. He thought he might see her rise up into the void with him as she died, but there was nothing. He was alone here.

He should have asked more about what happened when you died. He hadn’t planned on dying, but now that he had, he knew nothing. He could get resurrected, that much he knew, but how could he even ask for help if no one could hear or see him? He couldn’t even see other dead people, how could the living see him?

He thought of the city, and time shifted. His presence warped toward the city, and he knew time passed, but he didn’t experience the passing of time like he used to. He was aware that the time had passed, but since nothing of note happened on his way, it felt almost as if he had just traveled the entire distance in less than a second.

He was in the city. He was surrounded by people. They walked through him, so he floated up above them, not wanting the stark reminder of his bodiless form.

There was a brilliant white spear jutting out from somewhere near the Agora. He moved toward it.

The white spear was coming from the cathedral with the towering spires and obelisks. The entire side of the building was made of stained glass panels. Each panel was the width of Owen’s house, and three times higher. There were twelve in all: the first showed an infant in its mother’s arms. Each subsequent panel followed the story of the infant’s life as it grew. The fifth panel showed the infant—now a young man—sickly and dying. In the sixth panel he floated above his body as a white orb. In the seventh, men and women in white robes brought the orb back into his body, and then the final panels showed the man living out the rest of his lift. He died peacefully in his sleep on the final stained glass window, which was several hundred yards from the first window where he had been born.

Elrick understood. The white spear of light was for the dead. It was a beacon to draw those like him to it, and now he was here. The stained glass was for both the living and the dead.

The stained glass story showed the man picking up right back where he left off before he’d died. There was no indentured servitude or slavery in the rosy vignettes of the stained glass. Maybe the Black Knight and others were being overly cynical, or maybe this idealized picture of the benevolent healers was mere propaganda.

It was Elrick’s only choice besides giving up and letting the void seep in. He considered giving up. He’d failed on Earth, and his run on this world had not been wildly successful. He had no legs in his ghostly form, but the memory of his leg shattering beneath that hammer was still fresh. Still haunting. He could let go now and never feel any pain like that ever again.

Each time he’d tried to help someone, he’d messed it up. First Yulfria, and now even worse with Elise. He’d even messed things up for Owen and Marianna. Owen wasn’t going to get a penny for that armor unless Thaalia decided to go find him and pay him for it. There was a fat chance of that.

He’d been sent to this world for a reason. It wasn’t like on Earth when people thought they were there for a reason. On Earth people had read some old book that told them that they had to believe and have faith that there was a higher purpose and an afterlife.

Elrick had spoken face-to-face with a literal god of this world, and a god of Earth. He’d been told it was all just a simulation, but didn’t that make whoever ran the simulation a god? God had spoken to him and told him that he was meant to do something here.

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If this were a game, Elrick would load up and try again, frustrated at his loss. He’d hit things again from a new angle, and learn from his mistakes. He would never trust someone like Taalia again.

Suddenly he’d remembered what Elise had told him, what he’d barely paid any attention to as he’d readied himself for death at the end of the Black Knight’s hammer. Taalia owed him. Elise had told him that when she was certain he was going to die. That must mean that Taalia could help Elrick even as a ghost.

The cathedral shifted away, and the landscape melted around Elrick, the city shrinking behind him. Time shifted too. He was going backward in time now, back to the time he’d died. Toward the Black Knight’s forest, but not back to where he’d died. He instead thought of Taalia, and was surprised to realize that she was in the same forest he and Elise had died in.

He came up behind Taalia. She was on horse, her saddlebags packed full. She moved fast, and deep lines were on her face, making her look much older than he’d remembered. Her revealing clothing was gone, traded for a thick cloak. Her hair was covered and tied back.

She must be looking for her daughter. For Elise. She’d sent Elrick there to create a diversion for Elise to escape, and now Thaalia was hoping to find Elise fleeing the tower.

Elrick went in and out of focus, seeing only the moments that mattered. It played before him like a gruesome montage.

Taalia stopped somewhere miles away from the forest, on rolling plains that tapered off at the sea. The alchemist guild’s tower was small over her shoulder, and she faced it as she waited.

She was waiting for Elise, who Elrick knew would never come. Maybe she’d told Elise to meet her at this spot if she escaped?

Taalia waited a long time, the wrinkles deepening as the hours passed. Taalia shook her head, and pulled a potion out of her bag. Inside was a brilliant white light, just like the one Elrick had seen in the cathedral. He wasn’t sure, but he sensed that it would allow her to see him. He tried to shout to her, to tell her to drink, but she stared at it in hesitation.

She waited too long.

The horses crested a hill, and she shoved the cap in and stashed the bottle.

She tried to run, and she did. But the Black Knight’s men were faster. They pulled her off her horse and held her down.

The Black Knight towered over her, hammer in hand. He spoke to her, and she spit at him. Elrick couldn’t understand a word.

She had betrayed Elrick. If not for her, he wouldn’t have died. Still, he understood why she did what she did, and he forgave her. She didn’t deserve this.

Why had the Black Knight even gone to look for her? She wasn’t a part of any guild, and she hadn’t even entered his forest. Elise was just an apprentice and hostage. It made no sense to—

Taalia pulled a dagger from her boot and jammed it into one of the mens’ hands, pinning his hand into the dirt. She rolled back and threw something from within her cloak onto the ground. Three orbs of red light shot up into the air.

The men shouted and dove for cover, cowering down as Taalia scurried to her feet.

The red orbs hovered and hung in the air, then rushed downward, each trained on a target.

The first hit a man dead-center, blowing his body to pieces, and taking the arm off the one next to him.

The second swerved wildly and took out a horse.

The third hit about five feet away from the Black Knight. It evaporated two of his men, and the shockwave and debris blasted him several feet into the air, spinning his body as he fell.

A piece of shredded, molten-hot armor drove through Taalia’s leg like a spear. She wailed and crumpled to the ground.

The Black Knight crashed down just a few feet from her. His left pauldron had gone molten, and he ripped it off with a gloved hand. It lit the grass on fire as it fused together and cooled.

He roared, tearing his helmet off and swinging his Hammer down on Taalia. He crushed her just like he’d crushed Elrick. Without mercy.

When he finished, he hunched over her, his head down and his shoulders heaving. He walked forward in a limp, tore her cloak off, and wiped his face off with it.

That’s when Elrick saw his face.

As soon as he saw that face, he understood. When Elrick had tried to press the gnome about his reason for being here, he’d mentioned in passing something about “another very interesting variable.” Elrick had thought it through later and assumed that was just referencing the fact that they erased his memory of his skill selection. Now he understood exactly what the gnome had meant by “another interesting variable.”

The Black Knight was Hunter.

Suddenly realizing his mistake, Hunter fumbled in a daze for his helmet, found it, and put it back on. He growled, and his eyes narrowed as he looked from side to side, looking for a ghost that he couldn’t see, but knew might be there. He was looking around for Elrick’s ghost.

Hunter had almost succeeded in keeping his face hidden from Elrick. Had Elrick not seen, he wasn’t sure what he would have done. Now that he had seen, he was sure of what he’d do.

He would not choose death. He’d choose life.

It was dangerous to make too many assumptions about what the gnome and his kind had wanted Elrick to do. They’d said the world was stagnant and he needed to fix that. He didn’t know why they put Hunter into Antium as well. Did Hunter have the same mission? Or did another rival gnome send Hunter in to try to prevent Elrick from doing what he was supposed to?

Had Hunter killed Elrick out of pure spite and hate? Or did he think that killing Elrick would just help him do what the gnomes sent Hunter to do? Elrick had told himself that Hunter had “stolen” Laura from him, but that perspective had been greatly affected by the heat of the moment. The reality of the situation had been much more subtle than that, and from Hunter’s perspective, Elrick--or Adrian--had betrayed Hunter.

Elrick needed to get resurrected before he could do anything. Once he was resurrected, he’d need to get strong. He didn’t just need to get strong either. Hunter had a whole group of people on his side. Elrick would need that too if he was going to stand any chance at all.

Putting aside Elrick’s own personal feelings toward Hunter, it was clear that Hunter was an obstacle. Even if Elrick had been able to be the better man and forgive Hunter--which he wasn’t sure he could do--Hunter had just fucking killed him. He’d maimed his leg and then crushed his skull in with a hammer. He’d mercilessly slaughtered Elise for no reason, and then even Taalia.

Whatever Hunter had been on Earth: a rival or a friend, all of that was gone now. There was only the Black Knight.

He thought about what Hunter had told him just before he’d killed him. He said he’d “sold his soul.” It was permadeath. Hardcore mode. It was what Hunter always did when he could, and he’d been crazy enough to do the same thing in Antium. He’d chosen permadeath mode, and the Gnomes had probably given him a much stronger skillset, or higher starting abilities, or some other major advantage in exchange for the drawback he’d chosen.

It was crystal clear then what Elrick needed to do. He’d come back to life, and then he’d kill Hunter for good.