Chapter 83

  Death

Sylas sat on the edge of a wall, his gaze vacant, sight hazy and blurred. He’d lean forth and back often like a drunk—largely because he was one, at the moment. A jug of wine hung in his hand, swaying alongside his body. He stared emptily at the snow, recalling the distant memories. Most of them have turned into blurs. He’d forgotten. Forgotten everything.

Taking a swing, he realized he finished the gourd, growling in anger before heaving it as far as he could. In the process, he slipped and fell, crashing on his back. He didn't feel the pain—but he felt the weight of it all crush upon him.

“AAAGGH!!!” he screamed madly into the dark sky. He couldn’t—not anymore. He’d died so, so, oh so many times. He’d watched them die so many times, in so many ways. In so many ways.

He'd lived the same life infinitely. Over and over. Memories he couldn't recount no longer. Days and weeks and months and decades all became one, his mind adrift among them. Lost. Haunted. Harrowed. Nothing mattered anymore. Alone. Weak. Lost. Broken.

He wanted to die. He tried dying. But he couldn’t. Every time he’d wake up back at the same place, at the same time, with the same goal. He wanted to die. To end it all. But the world wouldn’t let him. He was certain. This was hell. This was his hell. He had to repent, he had to repent, he had to repent. What made him even more certain of this… is that he’d started seeing them. At first, they were just shadows in the trees. Voices in the dark. Distant, broken, inconsistent.

But, as his mind began to slip, they sharpened. Shadows became temporary faces, and faces became figures. They judged. They wept. They cried. Again. There they were. They sat on the ledge, hand in hand, staring at him with pale faces.

"No, no, please, go away, please, please, please," he mumbled, weeping, dragging himself back as to escape but realizing it was pointless—they stayed the same distance, no matter how hard he tried to escape. They were always there. Sitting. Watching. Their pale, blue eyes were like the portals to the memories he'd buried. Or thought had buried, anyway. But he hadn't. On top of everything else, his mind snapping allowed them to surface. To come from the boiling bottom of the catalog of his memories and to haunt him. "I can't… please… no, no, go away… go away… go away…"

Cradling his head into his knees, he rocked back and forth, crying, shivering, shaking. He wanted them to disappear. To vanish. To retreat back into the depths of his guilted and gilded memories.

“Daddy.”

“NO!” he screamed, pulling back. “NO! NO! GO AWAY! YOU’RE NOT REAL!! YOU’RE NOT REAL!!” his voice was a roar, a bolt of thunder booming out into the world. He screamed so loudly his throat hurt. But that hurt was invisible beneath the weight of a mountain. He didn’t dare open his eyes—but it didn’t matter. She was there. Dark or not. She was there. Standing. Sitting. Crying. Looking. Pleading.

“It hurts, daddy.”

“NO! GOD, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!! LET ME DIE!!! PLEASE!!!” he stumbled over his feet and slipped, cramming over the railing and toppling off the wall.

You have died.

It was cold. Colder than the cold itself. It bore into his soul, into his heart, into everything that he was. They were there still, even after he died. They sat on the branch of a tree. They hid in the shrub. They were faces in the roaring fire. Voices in the crackling flames. Shadows cast by the light of the faint moon. He couldn’t. It hurt. It hurt beyond hurt.

“Hell, this is hell; God’s final punishment. Yes, punishment. I deserved it! Deserved it!” he echoed madly, tears and snot freezing on his face.

“Daddy.”

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“I’m sorry, I’m so, so, so sorry,” he broke down in tears once more, reeling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he repeated into infinity, mumbling it like a prayer. Even the eternity, he felt in his soul, wouldn’t numb him. Not to this. And not to that. Not to her. Never to her.

“Daddy.”

…

He was gasping for breath, rolling in the feverish delirium. Strobe lights flashed everywhere, his body feeling alien. He heard voices, familiar and unfamiliar. Distant. Close. Worried. Happy. Anxious. Joyful. Dreadful. Harrowing. He had to escape. He had to escape this hell. He couldn’t. Not anymore. He didn’t want to. Every day hurt. Every day ached. Every breath he took seemingly set his lungs on fire.

One time. He just had to succeed one time. He didn’t care how—skill, luck, a hand of God—it didn’t matter. He had to beat back the army. Save the castle. Get a save. He needed a new save. A point to move on. He couldn’t stay. Couldn’t stay. Couldn’t stay.

You have died.

Four talismans blew one after another, shredding across the army of the dead, thinning out their numbers. But it wasn’t enough.

You have died.

He staggered the talismans and used them as efficiently as he could, but the number was too overwhelming. It wasn’t enough.

You have died.

It was a brutal struggle, all around. Men fought bravely. Like heroes pulled from a painting. One defeated five-six ghouls before falling. But… it wasn’t enough.

You have died.

“Just one. Please. Just one.”

You have died.

“Something. A stroke of luck. Please. Please. Please.”

You have died.

“Anything.”

You have died.

“Please.”

You have died.

“Daddy.”

“NO!!!”

You have died.

“I beg of you…”

You have died.

He was entirely unfeeling, unthinking, autonomous. He let his instincts guide him, his heart incapable. Dead. Brutalized. Raped by the vestige of infinity and memories. He was a man broken, but with no tools to fix himself. All he could do… was watch himself being broken into more and more pieces.

But he awoke from the stupor—halfway through the battle. It was here. The possibility. He felt it. They'd endured for four hours on only two talismans. They were beating them back. Many, many, many were dying—but so were the Ghouls. Their numbers were clearly thinning out. There was a chance. A possibility. His heart, as though injected by serum of life, began beating boldly once more.

“Please.”

He joined the frontlines, fighting. He took on more Ghouls than anyone. Ten, fifteen at the time.

“One time.”

Their numbers were lessening. He could almost dare hope, alighting one of the two remaining talismans, reinvigorating the still-surviving once more.

“I beg of you.”

The flames swept like tidal waves yet were snuffed out quickly by the incessant cold. The fighting was brutal—corpses piling into ashen, bleeding mountains. Dead were everywhere, all manner of them.

“I can’t… please…”

He glanced at the last talisman and the fewer than ten thousand dead still attacking. Lighting it up, it was akin to a flare of hope—a pillar of light from the Gods themselves to banish the darkness, to bring about a new dawn.

“Please. Please. Please.”

Praying. Fighting. Praying. That was all that mattered for the remaining hour. And then it all stopped. Silence reigned. Amidst the corpses, eighty or so survivors stood, most bent and bleeding. But the dead… were no more. They were defeated. Sylas glanced about, looking for the familiar faces—Ryne, Valen, Tenner, Derrek, Cyrs… they were all there.

Ryne rushed out into the light and, fighting the bleeding horror, ran toward him. Valen, Derrek, Tenner, Cyrs, and many more lined up opposite of him, the look in their eyes one of awe.

“Please,” he mumbled, tears cradling the corners of his eyes. “Save point. Give me a save point.” For the first time, it seemed, his prayers were answered. Just as Ryne stopped by him, her gaze widened, a window appeared.

New save point—

Without even thinking or reading, Sylas pressed ‘Yes’. Just at that moment, just as his finger tapped the tiny letters floating in the air, a boom akin to that of thunder broke out. A hand whose fingers were the size of towers bled out from the void itself, sweeping through the already-broken courtyard.

The world froze. Sylas could see it all—every single little thing that happened at that moment. Every bit. But he couldn't stop any of it.

The hand swept just behind Valen, Tenner, Derrek, Cyrs, and others, directly blowing many of the people into smithereens—Tenner and Cyrs among them.

He saw Derrek being shoved into the air, a gush of blood sweeping in a trail, the man’s left arm separating from the rest of his body midflight.

He saw Valen scream in pain as a wooden stake lodged itself into the young boy's lower spine. The shrapnel flew everywhere, in a ring-like fashion. Just then, he heard a scream that tore what little sanity he had left out of him. Looking to the side, he saw Ryne was covered in blood, tiny bits and chunks of wood and rock infesting her body. But, worst of all, where once a pair of beautiful gems looked on hopefully… now stood bleeding, gaping holes of darkness.

The reality shattered as another window appeared just as the hand vanished on the other end of the courtyard, destroying an entire set of smaller buildings and a portion of the wall in the process.

New Save Point ‘Death’ has been initialized.

END OF BOOK I