Moments later, William entered, handcuffed and flanked by two guards. Despite the years and the fatigue visible on his face, it was definitely him.

"William..."

He sat down opposite me, and for a moment we remained silent, absorbed in each other's presence.

"What happened, William?

"..."

"Are you all right?"

"..."

How did you get here?"

"..."

But he didn't answer.

"Speak, dammit!" I shouted, emotion getting the better of me.

After a while, William finally decided to answer me.

"Oh, it's you, Luca. It's been a long time since the last time," he said nonchalantly with a smile. However, his eyes expressed no emotion.

"What do you mean, 'hi'? You owe me an explanation."

"Before we continue, could I ask how your brother is doing?"

"Are you talking about Kim and me? Kim's become a doctor. He couldn't make it because he has to operate on a patient, and I'm a lawyer."

"So, you were successful?" he said, reassured, before adding, "That's a relief."

"Stay on topic and tell me what happened."

But William paid no attention to my request. He merely looked at a timer set in front of him.

"We don't have much time, so I'll be as brief as possible," he said, adopting a less cheerful tone.

"I'm listening."

William raised his head toward the ceiling, as if trying to recall old memories.

"Do you remember Ben?"

"Ben? You mean the person who kidnapped us?"

I remembered him very well, but why was William talking about this guy?

William didn't care about my confusion and kept talking. "When I ordered you and Kim to run away, I made a deal with Ben."

"An agreement?"

"Yes. Initially, I threatened to kill his client if he didn't leave us alone, hoping that would be enough. However..."

William suddenly clenched his fists, frustration visible on his face, before adding:

"However, against all odds, Ben deliberately killed his own customer by throwing a blade."

"What!? Are you sure he didn't miss by mistake?"

"No, I'm certain that this attack was primarily aimed at his client and not me."

It didn't make any sense. Why would he kill his own client rather than William?

Seeing my inability to understand his intentions, I slumped back in my chair and let out a long sigh.

"I, too, was as shocked as you were at the time," William continued, not letting me digest the information. "But Ben didn't stop there. He threatened to tell his father that we were responsible for his client's death."

"But his father..."

"...is the head of a criminal organization," William said, finishing my sentence with a hint of bitterness.

"Consequently, he offered to turn a blind eye to the matter if I performed a few services for his organization, for a time."

"By 'services', do you mean risking your life?"

"..."

Seeing his silence, it seemed I was right, nevertheless...

"Why didn't you ask us for help? We could have..."

"How could I ask for help from someone who's never taken a person's life?"

"So what?" I shouted angrily.

"Believe me, killing someone is harder than it looks."

What difference does it make if I take out one or two people? Anyway, this world is just an illusion created from scratch by the Sanctuary, it's like an augmented reality video game, nothing too difficult.

Wait! Wait! Wait! For a while?

"You mean the person who adopted you was..."

"Wow, you're catching on fast I see," William said, regaining his usual smile.

The old man who had come to the orphanage for William was actually in cahoots with Ben.

Nevertheless, this reaction on his part irritated me to no end.

"William, do you realize the situation you've put yourself in?"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"So what?" replied William, his smile still intact.

"That's what pisses me off the most about you."

Even in my previous life, William had always adopted this kind of expression on his face. Even when he was being bullied, he always found a way to be optimistic.

I thought that... no, I thought that in the face of death, he would change his attitude and finally be honest with himself.

While I was lost in thought, the timer alarm sounded in the room, warning us that time was up.

"Before we part, I'd like to make it clear that nothing is your fault, everything I did was my own initiative, and no one else is responsible."

"Stop bullshitting me," I replied.

A few seconds later, the two guards who had brought William returned to look for him, striding forward. But William paid them no heed.

"And also," he added, "keep in mind that you can't change the past. Your lives will continue to move forward, with or without me."

Even before the guards told him to leave, William stood up on his own and headed for the exit.

"Where the hell are you going? I'm not done with you!"

William stopped in front of the door and calmly replied, "Before I forget, tell Kim that her big brother left with a big smile on his face."

However, as he turned to say these words to me, although he was smiling, a tear ran down his face, escaping from his regret-filled eyes.

At that moment, a question kept circling in my mind.

Why did he always have to be the one to sacrifice himself?

William had always been the one to blame for my mistakes. He took it all in stride, never complaining.

He'd always solved my problems behind the scenes, and by the time I realized it, William had already fixed everything.

"William, wait! Just one question... Why go to such lengths for Kim and me? We're not even related by blood."

In this life, we barely have a month of interaction, and that's not enough for him to risk his life for us!

He paused, seeming about to answer.

"Because you're..."

But just as William was about to finish his sentence, he froze. No, in fact, the whole environment froze.

Time itself seemed to have stopped flowing. Even the guards, who had hitherto seemed unstoppable, were now subject to this strange suspension of time.

"What the..."

As I tried to make sense of the situation, a text-filled sign appeared before me, engraved with the symbol of the Sanctuary.

As soon as I realized it was the work of Sanctuary, I let out a long sigh of relief, dropping to my knees, exhausted by this world that had trapped me for so long.

"I'd almost forgotten I was in the middle of a trial."

By dint of living in this world for what had seemed like years, even decades, I had lost the distinction between this artificial reality and the real world.

The pain, the memories, the emotions - it all seemed so real that I'd finally fallen for it.

Once I'd managed to stabilize my thoughts and calm my mind, I concentrated on the words engraved on the sign.

"Why the change?" I asked myself, carefully reading the options presented.

Option 1: Relive your trauma to move on to the fifth and final test.

Option 2: Forget all memories of William and live your life in peace.

Warning: If you fail the first option, you'll stay here for good.

I stood motionless, my heart pounding, in front of this choice.

As I analyzed the options more deeply, I realized the horror of the situation.

If I chose the first option, I'd have to relive the trauma, watch helplessly as Kim's condition deteriorated over the years, until he died of the disease.

Reliving every moment when I saw him suffer, every moment when I was unable to save him, despite my best efforts. It would be like making him relive that suffering, and me with it.

As for the second option, it was just as unbearable.

To forget William was to abandon him to his fate, to betray everything he had done for us, everything he had sacrificed.

It was thanks to him that Kim had had a chance, that he had been able to hope for a future, that he had been able to become a doctor, to save lives, to build something in spite of our past.

To erase William was to deny all that, to erase the one who had been our shield, our savior, the one who had always taken the blows for us.

The choice was clearly between my brother and my friend.

But how could I forget someone who had given everything for us, who had chosen to sacrifice so that we could have a future?

How could I erase William from my memory, as if he'd never existed, as if he'd never mattered?

And on the other hand, how could I have the strength to erase my own brother, to relive his agony, to lose him again, when it was precisely for him that William had done all this?

It was between duty to the one who'd saved me and loyalty to the one I'd sworn to protect.

"Kim... William..." my voice broke under the weight of those two names. Two names that meant everything to me, two souls that had shaped mine.

Throughout my previous life, my choices had always been dictated by emotion.

Every decision I made, every action I took, bore the imprint of my feelings, my regrets, my unfulfilled desires.

Maybe that's why I'd made Kim the main protagonist of the novel I'd written, why I'd made him the hero of a story I couldn't let go of, because in reality, I couldn't turn the page.

I'd clung to that past, to those memories that haunted me. And that's also why I'd asked William to help me with my writing, hoping, deep down, to recapture that feeling of nostalgia, of reliving those moments through words.

Honestly, I didn't really know why I'd done all this.

Was it a desire for redemption?

A desperate attempt to make up for what had been lost?

Or simply a way of clinging to what was dear to me, of refusing to let those fragments of my heart slip away?

However...

"I choose the first option," I declared, my gaze fixed on the sign in front of me.

Certainly, the second option would have allowed me to forget William, to erase from my memory everything he had done for me, and to continue my current life as if nothing had happened.

As if William had never existed, as if he had never been important. This choice would have spared me suffering, would have allowed me to live a peaceful life, far from the torments of the past.

Nevertheless, how could I abandon William in this world we had created together?

How could I let him die at the hands of one of the creatures I had conceived from my own thoughts, from my own mind?

It would be a betrayal of everything we'd lived through, everything he'd sacrificed for me and Kim. It would be to deny his existence, to erase his courage, his devotion, everything he had been to me.

William had been more than a friend; he had been a brother, a protector, an essential part of my life.

I knew that choosing the first option meant reliving the pain, the loss, the hardship.

It meant facing again the pain of seeing Kim wither away, the pain of losing him forever. But it was also the only way to preserve the integrity of what we had experienced together, not to betray William's memory.

I couldn't let his sacrifices be in vain, couldn't allow everything he'd done for me to be erased.

"William, I won't let you down, you've always been there for me, and now it's my turn to save you."

* * *

The village, once alive with the powerful songs of the orcs and the deep rhythm of the drums, was a distant memory.

Now, this once vibrant place of life and festivities was but a field of ruins, marked by destruction and imbued with terror.

In the midst of this desolation, a dark-skinned child who had not yet reached puberty moved slowly forward. His steps were heavy, his every movement a struggle against the pain tearing at his abdomen.

He pressed his hand against his wound, vainly trying to contain the flow of blood escaping from his wound.

All around him, the corpses of the orcs littered the ground, their massive bodies inert, their broken weapons beside them, testifying to the violence of the fighting that had taken place.

His eyes, once as bright golden as twilight, had taken on a sinister hue.

The bloody red of his pupils contrasted with the darkness of the falling night, reflecting both the physical pain and the pent-up rage that bubbled up inside him.

Each step brought him closer to the door marked number four.

This door, engraved with enigmatic symbols, seemed to be calling to him, promising both the end of his ordeal and the beginning of another.

Finally arriving at the door, he paused, his gaze rising to the number four.

Every breath was torture, every heartbeat a reminder of his fragility. Yet his red eyes reflected an unshakeable determination.

In a breath barely audible, but laden with hatred and promise, he murmured:

"I will find the person who created this cursed ordeal of sanctuary... for all the harm it has done me."