“I respect you too much to end this fight in death,” I said to the swordsman with a trembling breath.

But he merely chuckled and said, “It makes no difference; I’m already dead. I appreciate the act of mercy, but I’m too realistic to believe that this ends in any other way. If I cannot run, then I am destined to die. If I cannot fight, then I am destined to die. There is no coming back from an injury like this. Either another cannibal will devour me, or a monster will harvest me for the little life I have left. Without my leg, I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

Despite the weird wiring which winds in my mind, I still wanted to protest his judgment. Although the realist inside me catalyzed the cold conclusion that he would die a gruesome death, I desperately wanted to deny the reality and declare that he could hide himself away in the badlands. I wanted so desperately to defend his life despite that he had spent it in trying to kill me. He had a unique simplicity to the way he saw the world, one well worth withstanding this worthless wasteland. But just as this simplicity was the reason I could not accept his end, it was also the reason he acknowledged the finality of his injury without wasting a worried moment.

“If you can make it down this hill, then this will not be your grave. If you can give yourself the will, then you can hide inside a cave. This starlit world is merciless; it is not worth your life,” I said to the swordsman with frantic bloodshot eyes.

With a deep breath, he struggled to say, “We both know that I die today. But even now at the end of my life, I find myself desperate to cling onto this fleeting reality. Perhaps you could call it distrust in either God or the world—whichever it is that damned me to wander this worthless world in agony. If this is my life, then I wouldn’t dare to envision the afterlife that awaits a man like me. That’s why I said what I said; it must be you who kills me.”

“Wouldn’t that still send you to the very same place?” I asked as two tears descended his face.

But the swordsman stared into my eyes and said, “I can sense the darkness dwelling inside your head. I have seen the shambles of slaughtered cities; I’ve seen the remains of fallen civilizations scattered through these plains. It was long ago when a shadow demon descended from the starlight and shattered everything this world once was. It did not waste the lives it ended; it instead assimilated them into itself, and their screaming souls echoed endlessly in a tempest of agony. The victims were bound by the creature which killed them as eternal puppets. I can see in your emerald eyes that this demon dwells in the darkness deep inside your heart. You are from the city, yet you have taken a life. You do not even know the power you possess. But just as the shadow demon makes puppets of its victims, you are also cursed to carry your victims on your shoulders. If you are to kill me, then I am bound to you forever, and then together we will wander this worthless world. It may be an agony, but it beats the ambiguity of an unknown afterlife.”

I nodded slowly, though I doubted his words. I sighed and lightly clashed our two swords. The dying man convinced himself of an illusion, but he already accepted his conclusion. I asked him with a quiver in my eye, “Are you sure that you are ready to die? If I am to kill you, I must know your name, if for nothing more than to bury the blame.”

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“I am Aziel, and together we will force upon this world the future we seek,” he answered as the last words he would ever speak.

It was in that moment that I thrust my silver sword into Aziel’s chest. The cannibal swordsman seized as my sword shattered the bond between his body and soul. His brown eyes widened with shock, and a small splash of blood settled in his mouth. His knotted hair danced in the forceful gusts, and his extremities fell limp. As if there were a battle between gravity and the dying strength left in his body, his sword trembled to support his weight until it finally fell. Aziel dropped to the ground in that moment, and his blood drenched the sand beneath him. I stared momentarily at the sword and the swordsman left in the sand. Both the blade and his body were worn with countless years of battle. Broken chips scattered his sword, and several scars stained his skin. My weapon was in better condition than his, so I turned my head and concealed the carnage with my hair as it flowed in the sandy breeze.

But like two roaring flames converging in a fiery spiral, I felt a cataclysmic change. I had left Aziel behind in the badlands, but I carried a part of him with me; I inherited his merciless ambition for myself. I could feel the last lingering shred of my civility surrender itself to the monomania which drove us both. I still saw the same future I envisioned before, the one where Alyssa and I meet again and dance as twin flames in an endless spiral, but a flash of light now illuminated the path in my mind. Instead of seeing a tunnel through the darkness that led to a distant glow, I saw a trail of bodies along the way. When the light faded back to the shadowed tunnel, and the distance became darkness, I clung to the shadows for security. I could feel the change in myself. Aziel had staked his life when he cast the cosmic dice as a celestial gambler, but he fell into my event horizon and traded an instant for eternity. I assimilated Aziel. I inherited Aziel. I was a different man than I was the day before. I cast my sword aside and instead retrieved the chipped blade with which he had fought me.

With the strength of our polymerized souls, I cast aside my inhibitions and recommenced the journey back to Bones City. The arms of an angel awaited me, and I already assured her that we would meet again. Though we were destined to meet one day on the shores of Ember Bay, and though her memories had fallen away and faded to gray, a part of me feared that her immortal soul might not recognize mine. The man she once knew stayed clear of blood and war, but I was no longer the man I was once before. If our incarnations found each other on that shore, a part of me feared she would not want me anymore.

My spiritual fusion did more than simply inherit the merciless barbarism of the swordsman in the plains. More importantly, it proved him right. It proved that a darkness dwelled in the depths of my mind, and this darkness made puppets of the victims who dared to stand in my way. But the way that I assimilated Aziel was a detail of the same shadowed soul with which she had fallen in love in countless past lives; it was not a detail unique to this iteration. She had surely seen the shadows in my soul in the cycles of our lives long lost, and yet we were still bound for each other. Perhaps it was because of my darkness that we were destined for each other in the first place. Perhaps anyone with a weaker will would wilt and wither when the world forced them to fight for their ambition. We loved with a love that was greater than love, which meant that no force in any world could ever keep us apart.