I didn’t survive death.
It followed here.
Consciousness slid back into like a dull knife—slow, grinding, unwanted. Cold air crushed against my skin. My lungs forgot how to breathe for a mont too long, and my heart kicked hard, like it was deciding whether I deserved another beat.
I opened my eyes to nothing.
Blackness. Thick. Suffocating.
No mories.
No warmth.
No na I could claim as mine.
The mories weren’t gone. They were just unmoored—facts without weight, lives without a center.
“…fuck.”
A pathetic word for a shattered reality—but it works. Pain, rage, fear—fuck covers everything when you don’t even know who you are.
My body burned. Old scars throbbed like they rembered things I didn’t. The stone beneath bit with cold sharp enough to feel alive.
Water dripped overhead.
Drip.
Drip.
Drop.
A cavern.
Moss clung to the walls where thin streams ran down the rock, faintly green in the dark. My stomach twisted, hollow and angry.
“Guess beggars can’t be choosers.”
I scraped moss from the stone and shoved it into my mouth. Slimy. Tasteless. It didn’t kill , so I swallowed. I cupped cold water in my hands and drank until my throat burned, nearly moaning at the relief.
For a mont, I leaned against the rock just to breathe.
Then the weight ca back.
Twelve years.
That’s how long I’d been trapped in this life.
Reborn? Not blessed.
Reincarnated? Not chosen.
No golden finger. No divine system. No cosmic fairness.
People romanticize reincarnation. Call it a second chance.
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No one ever asks who had to die so you could be born again.
Because sothing did die. Sothing made room for . Whether that was fate or murder—I don’t know.
That thought keeps awake at night.
My eyes grew heavy. Too heavy. My body sank into stone like it wanted to disappear.
Sleep crept in.
Then a voice shattered it.
Cold. Familiar. Almost mine.
“Get up.”
I jerked upright.
A boy stood in front of .
My reflection.
Narrow face. High cheekbones. Tangled red hair, sun-bleached at the tips. Hazel-green eyes rimd faintly in gold. Scars everywhere. He wore a brown tunic—and my old wooden slippers.
I thought I’d lost those.
“You motherfucker,” I snarled. “How do you have my slippers? And why do you look exactly like ?”
He smiled.
It was my mouth—but colder. Like it had never learned how to soften.
“Look around,” he said.
The cave vanished.
My breath caught.
A hospital room replaced it—too clean, too bright. A woman lay motionless on the bed, skin pale as ash. A man clutched her hand, shaking, sobbing without sound. In the corner, an infant wailed.
The boy’s voice ca from beside .
“Your first sin.”
My chest tightened.
“Killing your mother just to be born.”
Rage tore through . “You bastard!”
I swung.
My fist passed through him like mist.
The room shattered.
Cold slamd back into my lungs. Stone pressed into my spine. The cave returned—damp, dark, slling of iron and wet rock.
I struggled to my knees.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
“Call your Sadhana,” he said calmly. “Your truth. Your debt. The mirror you keep avoiding.”
He snapped his fingers again.
The world twisted.
A street. Sunlight. Noise.
A seven-year-old boy ran ahead, laughing, ice cream dripping down his wrist. An old man hurried after him.
Screech.
Impact.
A body hit asphalt. Ice cream splattered red and white. Screams filled the air.
“Desire,” the boy beside said. “That’s what killed your grandfather.”
Excuses surged up—I was a kid, I didn’t know—but excuses don’t raise the dead.
The vision warped again.
A filthy room. A drunk man snarling, belt loose in his hand. Scars lined his arms—old, new, and healed wrong.
A twelve-year-old boy——stood frozen.
“Go on,” the man spat. “Bring my alcohol. Why are you still alive?”
The boy shoved him.
Desperate. Blind.
The man fell. His neck struck the stairs.
Stillness.
The cave returned.
“Third entry,” the boy said. “Your desperation killed your father.”
My fists clenched until my nails bit skin.
“What the fuck do you want from ?!” I roared.
He didn’t flinch.
“To stop pretending,” he replied. “To understand what it costs for you to keep breathing.”
He turned and pressed his palm against the cave wall.
The stone pulsed.
Light spread outward like a buried heartbeat. Shapes ford inside it—a hospital door, slightly ajar.
“The first gate,” he said. “Those weren’t mories. They’re places.”
Trials.
“What happens if I go through?” I asked.
“You face it,” he said. “You pay. Or you break.”
“And if I refuse?”
“The ledger keeps updating,” he replied. “The weight grows. Until you suffocate under it.”
I pushed myself to my feet. My legs shook. The stone was freezing beneath my palms.
I had no na.
No past worth defending.
No future worth imagining.
Just a door.
And the certainty that refusing would be another entry.
I stepped toward the light.
As I crossed, his voice followed —quiet, inevitable.
“The images won’t stop once you enter. They’ll multiply.”
I didn’t look back.
I stepped through the stone.
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