The forest was quiet—too quiet, even for death.
The wind had stopped breathing, the trees no longer swayed, and the sound of insects—the constant whisper of life—had long since learned fear.
Qaritas stood in the clearing where he'd died ten thousand times.
Once by fire. Once by teeth. Once by the mercy of exhaustion. And countless more by his own unwillingness to stop fighting.
His body showed nothing of it now—no wounds, no scars. Not even dirt clung to him. The Develdion always reset the vessel.
But his mind—his mind refused to reset.
Every scream, every broken bone, every drowning heartbeat lived behind his eyes. The silence pressed on him like a bruise that would never fade.
He exhaled and almost laughed. "You know, it's funny. After the first thousand, I thought I'd get used to it."
From nowhere, and everywhere, Zcain's voice came—low, even, and no longer the voice of a god commanding, but of one remembering.
"I believe that hell isn't just a place, Qaritas.
Hell is the room you lock yourself in when you can't forgive your own reflection."
Qaritas turned slowly, though there was no one to face—only trees and light that refused to commit to being real.
"We build our own pyres—one memory at a time," Zcain continued.
"Some find the door and walk out. Others… stay, because leaving means forgiving themselves."
The words sank into him, too steady to ignore.
He laughed once, hollow. "So what's the difference then? Between punishment and penance? Between survival and sin?"
For a long while, there was only the faint crackle of unseen embers—like the world thinking about how to answer.
Then Zcain spoke again. His voice carried weight this time, as if it remembered every battle he'd ever lost.
"Punishment ends when pain does.
Penance begins after.
And survival…"—a pause, almost tender—
"Survival is just sin in motion."
The forest seemed to breathe with him, the trees bowing slightly, their bark creaking like bone under pressure.
Qaritas closed his eyes. His heart was beating too fast, too loud.
"Then what am I surviving for?, What's my Sin?" he whispered.
Zcain didn't answer.
And somewhere in that silence, the forest began to move again.
The forest began to move again—but not the way living things should.
The shadows shifted first, twitching like they were learning how to breathe. The sound came next—a whisper just out of sync with the wind.
Qaritas turned sharply, every muscle tensed.
Nothing. Only the slow, wet pulse of distant roots.
Then—a breath behind him.
He spun, hands raised, though there was nothing to raise them with. No weapon. No light. Just instinct.
The forest went still again.
Hypervigilance. That's what mortals called it, wasn't it?
His eyes kept tracking every rustle, every imagined step. Every heartbeat that wasn't his own.
Then the whispers started.
Eon's voice slid through his skull, smooth and venomous.
"Still alive? Or just pretending again?"
But this time… there was another voice.
His own.
Colder. Sharper.
"He's right. You keep dying because you want to. You like it."
He pressed his palms to his temples, breath ragged. "Shut up. Both of you."
"You don't need to fight it," Eon purred.
"You are it," his other self whispered.
"Shut up!" Qaritas roared into the trees. "You're not real—you're just another lie in this place!"
Something cracked—not wood, not bone, something deeper. The forest flickered.
Reality blinked.
Bodies hung from branches.
Waterfalls bled.
Every leaf bore an eye that watched him with memory.
And then—he was dying again.
It came in flashes now.
A blur of deaths and rebirths, stitched together like a film burning through its reel.
He was torn apart by the Bzluagh—claws digging through his spine until his ribs sang.
He was dragged into the black river, lungs bursting, hands clawing for a surface that no longer existed.
He was devoured by the Nythraen, its teeth grinding his bones like meal.
He was falling, again and again, from cliffs that had no bottom.
Each death ended with the same sound—his own voice breaking on the edge of disbelief.
And each time he woke, the forest looked the same.
Untouched. Eternal. Patient.
Even the monsters began to hesitate now, lingering in the treeline as if afraid of him—of the thing that refused to stay dead.
His body healed faster with every cycle—cuts sealing, bones knitting, blood evaporating before it could cool.
But his mind…
His mind stayed broken.
The whispers multiplied—Eon, the other him, maybe both.
Their laughter followed him through every resurrection.
Until, finally, he stopped counting the deaths.
Because counting meant remembering.
And remembering was worse than dying.
He didn't remember when the forest turned into a storm.
Only that the ground had vanished beneath him and now there was nothing but the roar—endless, furious, drowning everything but pain.
Qaritas clung to the slick edge of the waterfall, his fingers digging into stone that bled water like veins.
Two Bzluagh hung from his legs, their claws buried deep into muscle, ripping down to bone.
He screamed, voice shredded by the sound of the falls, by the agony chewing through him.
The water below churned crimson, thick with blood that wasn't entirely his.
Eon's laughter slid through the air like a blade wrapped in silk.
"This reminds me of the kingdom I turned into a crawling nest," he said, his tone almost fond.
"I cut their legs off, replaced them with insects—made them crawl to their god. Good times."
"Shut up!" Qaritas bellowed, voice breaking against the thunder of the water. "You're just a prisoner! You lost your right to speak the day you killed our mother!"
That silenced Eon for a heartbeat.
Then his voice returned—cold, venom dripping between the words.
"You know nothing about her… or me. Hrolyn and Hex weren't saints. What I did to you was mercy."
White light exploded behind Qaritas's eyes. His skull felt like it was splitting open.
Pain turned to fire. Fire turned to sound.
Reality tore apart.
His vision split open like glass under heat—light bleeding through the cracks.
Every nerve in his body screamed, his pulse hammering so hard it sounded like thunder in his skull.
For a heartbeat, he thought he was dying again.
Then came the light—cold, metallic, and far too clean for any world he knew.
He woke—or dreamed—inside a room made of cold light.
No forest. No water. No air that wanted him dead.
Just the hum of something sterile and wrong.
Eon lay chained to a bed in the center of the room, thrashing against restraints carved into his own skin.
The metal links pulsed like veins, glowing with divine poison.
And beside him stood her.
Hex.
Her hair shimmered like wire in the sterile light, her face too calm, too motherly. She smiled as she lifted a vial of liquid light.
"You've been such a good boy," she crooned, forcing the vial between Eon's teeth. "The experiments are working. Soon, you'll be clean. Just kill that whore who took my place."
The sound that came from Eon wasn't human.
It was grief turned to rage.
He ripped the chains apart, skin splitting, eyes burning with a mix of hatred and something Qaritas couldn't name.
When he spoke, the room itself dimmed.
"You see, little brother," Eon said, stepping forward, "evil isn't born—it's made. Sometimes it wears a crown. Sometimes it wears a mother's smile."
He kept walking. The floor trembled with each step.
"Mortals, Ascendants, gods—it doesn't matter. All touch evil. They just pretend they don't see it."
"Murder. Abuse. Torture. Silence." He smiled bitterly. "That's why evil never dies—it adapts. It feeds on those who look away."
He stopped inches from Qaritas. His breath was ice and fire both.
His voice softened—too calm. Too knowing.
"You call me your curse? Fine. But remember this—there are worse things than me. And one day, you'll beg me to help stop them."
He smiled, and that smile cracked open like a wound.
"For a price."
The walls melted. The chains reformed.
The light folded in on itself—screaming.
Qaritas jolted back into his body, the sound of the waterfall still echoing through his skull, unsure if he'd escaped a nightmare—
—or stepped deeper into it.
The scream never finished.
It fractured into breath.
Then—silence.
Qaritas jolted upright, gasping so hard his ribs ached. The pod around him was shattered—glass curling outward like a chrysalis torn open from the inside. Smoke drifted through the cracks, shimmering faintly with violet light.
He tried to sit up, but the world tilted. The air here was too clean.
The forest was gone. No trees. No blood. No sound.
He was lying on a white bed, in a room that hummed softly with invisible machinery. The walls pulsed faintly, alive in that sterile way—like even the light had been sanitized.
His chest heaved. Each breath burned, like fire through wet lungs. For a terrifying moment, he wasn't sure whose lungs he was using.
Then came the voices.
Not one. Two.
Layered.
Overlapping.
Zcain: "You've touched your hell."
Eon: "And it touched you back."
The words tangled in his skull, their tones blending until he couldn't tell which god owned which thought.
He looked down at his hands. The veins beneath his skin glowed faintly violet—slow, rhythmic pulses, as if his blood had learned how to breathe fire. Each throb carried a strange warmth, a whisper of something that wasn't entirely his.
His reflection stared back at him in the broken glass of the pod—eyes wide, unfocused, somewhere between man and something else.
He whispered, voice shaking but certain:
"If hell is within us… then I'm already there."
The glass hummed. His reflection flickered—half his face his own, half Eon's, the eyes shifting color with every heartbeat.
Through the still-active mental link, Zcain watched. His expression unreadable—neither pity nor pride, only a quiet, ancient understanding.
"Good," he murmured. "Now you can begin to understand what mercy costs."
The silence that followed wasn't empty—it pulsed, slow and heavy, in rhythm with Qaritas's heartbeat.
Zcain's reflection shimmered faintly in the broken glass, his eyes distant, almost sorrowful.
For a moment, god and creation breathed in unison, the hum of the Develdion syncing to that fragile, shared rhythm.
Then the light dimmed, and the machine forgot their names.
The hum of the room deepened. The lights dimmed.
And as Qaritas's reflection stabilized, his eyes—his shared eyes—flashed once, black over violet.
Then the screen of the Develdion faded to black.