He had slammed against the door until his shoulder popped; until he bled from his palms and his knees and his knuckles. He had turned his blade on it, the edge digging into the rotted wood to no avail, no matter how hard he hacked at it.

The sword was dulling, silently enduring the pain as through gritted teeth he tried, tried and tried.

Nothing.

The pain in his shoulder caught up to him, blood pounding in his ears as all he could do was scream through his teeth. Scream and scream. Eventually, that failed him too, breaking down into yelps and whimpers as his voice gave out to silence.

The look on her face; he knew that look all too well—the look of a last realisation, where sense finally seemed to triumph over everything else, and his men had finally understood that nothing was worth death.

Nothing was worth eternal life, least of all him.

And yet she had followed him, marking him as a worthy cause to complete her duty. Once again, he found himself admiring her courage, lamenting her honesty and cursing her selflessness. If only she hadn’t followed the zombie, the spent man with no future….

Angel and her miracle were lost on him, and he had failed to repay both favours.

He gripped the hilt of his sword, wondering just how many people he was worth, how many people he could trade his life for. How many of his men? Amadea and Céline?

Even if it were only Céline, he would make the offer. The bright-eyed girl who never batted an eye or turned her nose up to the soul walking on nothing but despair. Sixteen. Sixteen was no time to start thinking of the afterlife.

He traced the runes on the sword, the delicate sensation like the skin on Amadea’s hands he had never gotten to hold. Childish fantasies and hopeful romance—even the sliver of a prospect at happiness was what he was being punished for.

He got to his knees, bones quivering weaker than any rusted puppet’s. Five fingertips were all he had left to haul himself off the ground. Barely, just barely. He felt as though his undead legs had one more place to take him.

Each step was a goliath task. He couldn’t count the number of times he had run into the wall, eventually climbing with his shoulder against it, his cold and muddied shirt scraping along the brickwork.

He squinted when the real moon greeted him, inviting him under its watch for the evening. It would sink, the sun would rise, and time would move on. It would continue unrelenting, leaving an unlucky few behind each day. To a place where the mountains were valleys, where they sang with the angels or wallowed with the demons, where nothing would ever change.

He walked under the ruins of the old castle, the soles of his boots crumbling the ancient, overgrown stone underneath. Barely shelter, the place had long since lost its battle with nature. Yet its bones remained fossilised, watching the valley grow for a small eternity.

He fell to his knees again, his legs giving out in the ruin’s centre. The blade clanking against the cobble as he let it go.

Matthieu raised his head. He was in the presence of a statue, head missing and single hand outstretched in a show of salvation. In the middle of nowhere, amidst the thick of nature’s reclamation, the divine seemed to have a mind to mock him.

Something dropped from his breast pocket as the final strands of cotton tore. It fell to the ground like rotten fruit. A folded piece of paper, once drenched but dried since. His letter to Amadea.

He watched it, life drained from the paper and ink soaked through. He was thankful. The words written in them would have made him sick.

It had stayed in his pocket along with a pen, intent on adding amendments as he travelled. Matthieu would have saved her and delivered the letter in person. He would have watched her smile and thank him. Or perhaps find it unsatisfactory.

Matthieu reached for the fountain pen in his pocket, his cold fingers trembling as he undid the lid and drew across his finger. The ink still ran. He unfurled the paper and put his pen against the blank side, but it did not move.

What had never required thought since he was five years old now felt impossible.

He thought there were a thousand things to say, a million to apologise for and nothing that deserved forgiveness. That he loved her, he had wished to see her again and spend his life with her. That he apologised for being such a burden when she was simply doing her job. That he had fallen for the way she stumbled over her words when she spoke and how she had never been afraid to be firm when he rejected her treatment.

He knew, however, that there was only one. Each letter would be more painful than the last.

He wondered how Céline had intended to grow up. How the girl wanted to use her sparkling character to take over the world and make it her own. If there was anyone who could, it would have been her. She would have been more than a miracle to only him.

The mountain tops are snow-white this year. I wish you and Céline could see them for yourselves.

The pen had torn through the damp paper, and the ink had blotched with every stroke’s end. He screwed the pen’s cap back into place and left it to rest on the paper. His apology to the two who had kept his feet trudging when they should have stopped long ago.

He apologised one more time. Despite their efforts, they could not walk any longer.

His fingers found the sword’s horn hilt and, with all the strength left in them, he brought the chipped blade to his throat. He knew where to aim it; he had watched countless die at the hands of a lucky bayonet.

The edge was cold against his jugular, but it did not bite for it, nor did it retract. Like a faithful servant, it did his bidding with no questions asked. He pressed against the dull edge, slowly but surely waiting for the pain to climax.

But the familiar pain was drowned out by something else. Something warmer. Like whiskey through his body.

Matthieu eased the pressure on the sword, turning his head to look at the blade. The runes running down its spine had refused to stay complacent for much longer. They glowed gold, Deathseer gold.

The light channelled from rune to rune, running through the blade and to the sword’s tip until, like a lighthouse, the golden hue spilt from the sword, making a beeline for the statue. It found the tips of the outstretched fingers, then followed the crevices of the stonework, revitalising its divinity. The light reached the severed upper body of the shoulders and—with its flawless memory—began to redraw what once was.

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Sketching lines and filling spaces like the arbitrary pictures one would imagine between the stars of a constellation. The statue came back to life. A picturesque face with hushed features and calmly closed eyes now greeted him from the past, its offer of salvation still standing. But the light refused to stop there. It was having too much fun.

It sprouted from the top of the statue, bursting into thousands of strands like shooting stars. They followed invisible lines through the air, each of no importance until another came to give it context. The ruins rebuilt themselves, transforming into a temple with high arch rooves, hundreds of ornate wooden beams and supports creating patterns from whichever way he looked at them. The windows in the ancient stone walls were small, funnelling the sun's rays from both sides into delicate lines.

The altar before him was still overrun by vines, living in cohesion with nature while a hundred candles softly burned at its base. The robed figure looked to be a young woman, although an avatar of what Matthieu had not the faintest clue. She looked at peace, however. Gentle and endearing, like a universal mother.

The doors behind him creaked open, and Matthieu watched as a man entered. He imagined the man’s tunic was once some colour other than blood red and that the shield he carried on his back had once been whole. He limped closer, travelling through the path carved out between a sea of candles climbing high up either wall.

The warrior unshouldered his shield, which snapped and splintered as it fell to the ground, and he tore off his helmet which clanked uselessly, the iron barely holding together. The man continued, refusing to pause for even a moment while his eyes remained fixated on the statue. The way they glinted with rage and how his teeth ground against each other spelt out a potent, all-consuming, one-minded desperation.

The warrior collapsed beside Matthieu, falling to his knees like he had. The look never left him, staring at the statue with vitriolic madness, but he still knelt, subserving to his god and ready to plead and beg.

“All my men are dead,” he said, blood still pouring from a gash in his forehead. “They all died in battle.... Is there any glory in that, my lady?”

The warrior let out a howl of pain through his teeth as he clutched a wound to his side. His eyes never strayed from the statue.

“We were outnumbered. Their arrows thinned our numbers, their swords…their swords cleaved us limb from limb.”

His breathing was ragged, each exhale carrying with it spots of blood. His lips were already saturated, so were his nostrils, and the blood from his head had run into his eyes. Yet he dared not even blink.

“Were their deaths worth anything, my lady?” he asked. “Was there any reason they were so scared when we were encircled. Is it because there isn’t anything after we die?”

The warrior crawled forward on his hands and knees, the trail of blood pooling underneath him as he went. He reached the bed of candles by the statue’s feet and swept them out of the way, leaving room at the altar for himself. Struggling, he grasped the hilt of a sword from his beltline and drew it.

Pearlescent white. Golden runes. Horned hilt. Bloodstained beyond reason.

The warrior lay his weapon at the god’s feet, letting it go with shaking fingers that lingered for a moment as though parting with a portion of his soul.

“Give my men somewhere to go, my lady. Awaken from your slumber. Promise my men somewhere to rest…besides oblivion….”

The warrior planted one foot on the ground and hauled himself up halfway, stumbling as he tried to raise his other knee.

“Bless us your godly power and…promise me. Promise me a realm for my people’s souls….”

He grabbed the wound in his side as he stood to his full height, barely able to balance.

“With your strength, release them from mortal pain…and mem-memory….”

With the last of his strength, he turned his head to the sky so that all his gods could hear him.

“Cut these shackles and burn these ropes!”

The man’s final words reverberated through the temple, and once even the echoes died, once the air stagnated, he let himself fall to the ground.

They always said eyes were lifeless once their bearer died, but Matthieu tended to disagree. Like a broken wristwatch, they would forever bear the last beat of their heart. And so the warrior died with a smile on his face and a tear in his eye, never blinking in the face of death.

And death was impressed.

The sword offered to the altar began to glow in the same manner it had under Matthieu’s care. Deathseer gold. The same whiskey warmth ran through his body and the warrior's corpse, stronger than Matthieu had ever felt. Like a burning furnace, the heat assaulted him in waves as the small sun’s light grew too bright to bear.

The power faded after a short while, retreating back into the inscription that it called its new home. Matthieu was left in the still air again, together with the corpse. The corpse with joints for knees and elbows, skin hewn from tanned wood and irises sketched with fresh pigment.

The puppet’s wrists moved first, moving upward in unison as the elbows followed, then the shoulders, then the chest. It rose under the influence of something, floating into the air with arms outstretched as though crucified.

Then it dropped, planting its feet firmly on the stone as a man given a second life. Infinitely inferior to its former self, a shallow mockery. But moving—moving as though that was all that mattered, as though that was enough to constitute immortality, even an afterlife.

Matthieu thought it was hideous, making something move forever, to give it the curse of being conscious while it did so.

The thought of the world going by.

The thought of thinking that everything would be forever, and realising that nothing was.

The thought of realising how valuable life was in the face of death and how pointless it was in its absence.

The thought of knowing that those who died were better off being dead, their souls dying with their bodies.

That death was the reward and the punishment, the beginning and the bookend, the greatest thing that ever happened to man and the most terrifying.

Because death gave life to life, and no one deserved anything more or less after they breathed their last breath.

He watched the puppet walk to the altar and retrieve its sword, passing its eyes over it before sliding it back into its scabbard. Mindlessly, it turned and began to walk past the altar’s candles, and Matthieu followed it.

The puppet opened a doorway leading into the castle tower, and Matthieu slipped through just before it closed. He could barely keep up with the puppet’s pace. It wasn't fast but instead unrelenting, refusing to break its cycle no matter what.

They travelled down the staircase; the puppet only ever split seconds away from disappearing around the loop while Matthieu desperately stumbled through the dark, leaning against the wall as he trusted his feet to move him forward.

Drop after drop, the staircase felt longer than he could ever remember. Through the dark, his eyes would refuse to adjust beyond letting him the faintest glimpse of the puppet’s silhouette. Even that eventually disappeared around the corner and he quickened his pace as much as he could to recapture the glimpse.

Matthieu reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped, the puppet only a few steps away from him, at the cursed door he had tried to hack through only minutes before. The puppet’s feet had brought it there, but the pulling strings had since eased their influence. He stood there now, the body of a puppet but the mind and soul of a warrior, a human.

Even then, the puppet persisted.

While ramming its shoulder, it persisted in running away from the truth, the painful reality that would play out if he didn’t continue walking forward. Matthieu could not blame him.

The puppet leveraged his entire body into it once, twice, three times. The lock gave out on the fourth, and the light of a bright blue summer greeted him through the crack in the door. The puppet pushed it open further, speechless as he stepped through. Matthieu chased after him, finding himself pleading with the puppet to decline the offer and realise where they had both gone wrong.

But the door was shut.

Reality returned to Matthieu, ushering away the sword's magic and restarting the world's forward motion. It had started spinning again, and Matthieu was once again face up in the mud, waiting for something else to decide his—

He was still gripping the hilt of the warrior’s sword. There was still strength in his fingers, after all.

Strength an angel had given him and direction a miracle had gifted him.

Wasting it all. The lives that died under him that day, the two that he had failed to save. Wasting it all to die in some backwater town’s ruin was the ultimate insult. He was guilty, and continuing to live for a little longer would be his punishment—his punishment and his reward.

He ran at the door, slamming his already bruised shoulder into the wood.

The thought of watching the world go by.

He rammed it again.

The thought of knowing nothing was forever and relishing it.

He rammed twice.

The thought of realising how pointless life was without death and only appreciating it more.

He rammed it thrice.

If death was the reward and the punishment, life would be the work and play in between. If death was the beginning and the book end, then life would be the story that filled the pages.

He rammed it one more time, knowing it was only the strength in his two feet carrying him forward, nothing divine nor romantic. Anything else would be disingenuous.

And the door crumbled.