Silence had no sound, yet it was heavy.
There was no smell of burnt lime, no thick, metallic taste of blood filling his mouth, nor the dull roar of hundreds of tons of granite crushing his spine and skull.
The impact of death, which only a moment prior had ripped his life away in a carnage of shattered bones and viscera squeezed onto stone, had dissolved like snow thrown into fire.
Hayjin opened his eyes.
Above him was not the sky of the capital, choked with black smoke and illuminated by fires. There was a clear immensity, a blue so pure and devoid of gradients that it seemed almost fake, crossed by light wisps of white clouds floating stationary.
Beneath his back lay not the blood-soaked gravel of Opes. He felt the cool, damp softness of tall blades of grass, and the sharp, almost dizzying fragrance of wild flowers in full bloom.
He was back.
Air rushed into his lungs with a sudden sharp intake. Hayjin bolted upright, his heart hammering against his ribs like a frantic bird in an iron cage. He immediately slapped his hands to his head, his cheeks, his neck, running his fingers feverishly over his skin to search for fractures in his skull, eyes squeezed from their sockets, blood pouring from his ears.
Nothing. His skin was smooth, intact, completely clean.
A sudden, violent surge of nausea rose from his stomach to his throat. The phantom memory of the stone block crushing his chest, the visceral sensation of his entrails exploding under the castle's weight, and the sight of Zhilian's head mashed against a step slammed into his mind like a sledgehammer.
Hayjin bent forward, digging his elbows into the grass, and opened his mouth, ready to vomit everything in his stomach.
His abdominal muscles contracted in a painful spasm, but nothing came out except a thin trail of clear saliva and a puff of warm air.
"Hold it together... fuck, hold it together..." he whispered to himself, his voice reduced to a hoarse rasp. He clenched his teeth, closing his eyes and forcing himself to take deep, steady breaths. "Inhale. Exhale. You're here. You're back here again."
The scent of honey, pollen, and damp earth from the meadow gradually overlaid the stench of burning that still haunted his nostrils. It took several minutes for the uncontrollable trembling wracking his fingers and knees to even begin to subside.
Hayjin sat cross-legged in the tall grass. Around him, as far as the eye could see, stretched the usual, endless green expanse. A motionless sea of vegetation, dotted with small white, yellow, and blue flowers, beneath that eternal sky seemingly without a sun, yet perfectly illuminated.
The trauma of death sat like a boulder crushed into his chest, but his mind, by now accustomed to the brutality of the incomprehensible, mechanically began to analyze the situation.
He chose not to stand up immediately. He needed time. He needed to process the horror of what had just happened in the capital and, above all, to understand.
Eyes fixed on his clean hands hands that only moments earlier had been clutching the severed head of the crown princess Hayjin began to reassemble the pieces of his curse.
The loop, he thought, running a hand through his soft, dust-free hair.
Now I have definitive proof. Every single time my heart stops beating, every time I am slaughtered or destroyed, I don't instantly jump back into the past of the real world. There is a junction. There is this place.
He looked toward the endless horizon, where the meadow seemed to meet the skyline directly.
This expanse of grass is essentially a transit station. A kind of limbo. A mandatory checkpoint before my consciousness or my soul or whatever it is gets re-projected back down the timeline. This is where my body pauses before being sent back.
But the more he tried to apply logic to the phenomenon, the more the questions multiplied, turning obsessive and suffocating.
But how does it actually work? What is the core rule behind this? Why am I being sent back? Is it a curse? Divine intervention? A sadistic game played by the Cult or someone else? And above all... how far back do I go, exactly?
Hayjin squeezed his temples with his fingers. Up until now, the respawn points had seemed entirely arbitrary. Sometimes he woke up days prior, other times only a few hours before the disaster was triggered.
Are the reset points random? Do they depend on the level of trauma I endure before dying? Or is there a specific anchor, a fixed point in time set by whoever runs this place? If I could control where I respawn, I could prepare... I could save everyone right from the start. I could stop that feline bastard from ever setting foot in the fortress. I could save Zhilian. I could save little Wren before those monsters rip her apart...
The memory of Wren being eaten alive by deformed wolves and Zhilian's decapitated head pierced his brain like a red-hot needle. Another shiver of terror and fury wracked him.
He remained there, curled up in the grass, for nearly two hours. Two hours of absolute silence, broken only by the sound of his breathing slowly evening out and the dark thoughts rotting inside him.
Then, the stillness became unbearable. The need for answers outweighed the paralysis of trauma.
Hayjin stood up calmly. His feet sank into the green carpet. He looked around three hundred and sixty degrees: the landscape was identical in every direction. No stones, no trees, no landmarks whatsoever. Just field and grass as far as the eye could see.
But he knew someone else was in this place. He knew because he had seen her before.
The girl. That ethereal figure with long blue hair, eyes of the same shade, and a pure white dress that seemed woven from light. He had met her on the two previous occasions he had fallen into this limbo.
She might know something... Hayjin thought, his jaw clenching until his teeth ground together. She might be the key to this strange prison. She might be directly connected to the loop.
He took a step forward, then began to walk. But his slow stride quickly turned into a frantic march, and the march into an erratic run.
"HEY!" His voice tore through the silence of the field rough, loud, loaded with pent-up tension that threatened to detonate him. "WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?! ANSWER ME!"
He kept running through the tall grass, flailing his arms, looking around with eyes wide from nervous agitation and rage.
"DO YOU ONLY SHOW UP WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE IT, OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF A COWARD TO SHOW YOUR FACE?!" he screamed again, his throat starting to burn from the exertion. "ANSWER ME! I KNOW YOU'RE HERE! I KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING ME!"
He walked and ran at random, aimlessly, shouting like an unchained lunatic, his voice swallowed by the empty vastness of the landscape without even producing an echo. The lack of any response was driving him insane. Blood pounded in his temples with sledgehammer force, as paranoia and fury over the capital's slaughter fused into a toxic brew.
He stopped abruptly, panting heavily. No one. Only grass and sky.
"Is this a joke?!" Hayjin roared into the void, clenching his fists in blind fury. "ARE YOU HAVING FUN, HUH?! IS IT AMUSING TO WATCH ME DIE AND FORCE ME TO WATCH THE PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT GET TORN TO PIECES?!"
Rage locked his fingers with such force that his fingernails pierced the skin of his palms. The inhuman pressure of his grip tore the flesh: strands of warm, red blood began to ooze between his fingers, dripping slowly downward and staining the blades of green grass at his feet. Yet Hayjin felt no pain. His mind was entirely consumed by a pure, deafening, primordial hatred.
"SHOW YOURSELF! TALK TO ME, FUCK!"
He spun sharply on his heel, ready to bolt in the opposite direction.
And that was when he saw her.
The girl was there. Standing less than a meter away from him, materialized out of nowhere without so much as a rustle from the grass beneath her feet.
Her long, stunning blue hair cascaded softly over her shoulders, brushing against the light, pristine fabric of her white dress. Her eyes two gems of deep, crystal blue stared directly at him. But what froze the blood in Hayjin's veins was her expression: the girl was gazing at him with a radiant, happy, serene smile, entirely devoid of any trace of suffering or awareness of the hell he had just endured.
That smile, in that context, was the spark that ignited the powder keg.
"YOU!"
Hayjin lunged forward like a wounded beast.
He closed the gap and grabbed the top of her white dress with both bloody hands, crumpling the fabric and shaking her with unheard-of violence.
"WHY... TELL ME WHY ME?!" he screamed directly into her face, with immense, total, inhuman rage, the veins in his neck bulging like ropes. "WHY DO I KEEP GOING BACK?! WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO WITH ALL THIS?! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?! ANSWER ME!"
The girl offered not the slightest resistance to his violent shaking. She didn't lose her balance; she didn't show fear. She simply continued to stare into his eyes, maintaining that happy, calm, peaceful smile, as if Hayjin were a tiny child flailing his arms without any real strength.
"ARE YOU WITH THE CULT?!" Hayjin continued to shriek, spittle flecking the corners of his mouth as he spat all his despair at her. "ARE YOU THE ONE SENDING THOSE MONSTERS?! ARE YOU THE ONE WHO SENT THAT DAMNED BASTARD?! SPEAK! SAY SOMETHING, DAMN YOU!"
No words. Only that serene, motionless, infuriating smile.
The total absence of any reaction stripped Hayjin of his last shred of self-control.
He ripped his right hand from her dress, pulled his arm back, and threw a devastating punch aimed directly at the center of the girl's face, putting all his body weight and all the rage inside him into the blow.
The punch never reached its target.
The girl didn't even move. She merely raised the index finger of her right hand with extreme slowness.
The moment the tip of her finger brushed the air inches from Hayjin's fist, an invisible shockwave of terrifying, titanic gravitational force unleashed instantaneously.
BOOM!
Hayjin was literally launched into the air. The force of the impact knocked the wind right out of him and hurled him backward through the air for over twenty meters. His body tumbled heavily across the grass, bouncing two, three times before crashing to a halt among the flowers, his back aching and his lungs emptied of air.
"Ghh... k-kah..." Hayjin coughed, struggling to fill his chest again.
But before he could even push himself up onto his elbows, the girl's figure dematerialized and reappeared directly above him.
She delicately crouched at his side.
Before he could react or pull away, she reached out both hands and placed them with infinite tenderness on Hayjin's filthy, contorted cheeks. Her fingers were warm, soft, completely weightless. She began to caress his face with slow, maternal, almost healing gestures, locking her gaze onto his weeping eyes.
That contact, so delicate, so terrifyingly at odds with the brutality Hayjin felt inside, broke the final dam of his sanity.
Blind rage fused instantly with an excruciating, devastating pain that ripped open his chest.
"NO!" Hayjin roared, his voice cracking on the first of a series of violent sobs.
With a harsh, desperate motion, he threw up his arms and angrily tore her hands from his face, shoving them away with force. He burst into tears a torrential, inhuman weeping, accompanied by a blind fury he had never experienced in his entire life. Tears washed down his face in rivers, blending with the blood from his palms that had smeared across his cheeks.
"WHY?!" Hayjin shrieked, his voice breaking into a piteous high-pitched wail as he stared at her through the veil of his tears. "WHY IS ALL OF THIS HAPPENING TO ME?! WHAT DID I DO WRONG?!"
He slammed his bloody fists against the ground, sending blades of grass and clods of earth flying.
"Why won't you help me?!" he kept screaming at her, gasping for the air he lacked. "Why do you just stand there?! Why don't you say a single word?! You just look at me! You look at me and smile while I die! While Zhilian is torn to pieces! While Wren is eaten alive! You leave me all alone in this hell without telling me a damn thing!"
The girl remained crouched before him.
Hayjin clutched his head, running his bloody fingers through his hair and pulling as hard as he could, as if trying to rip it from his scalp to drown out the internal agony.
"Tell me what I'm supposed to do!" he screamed, his voice now an agonizing plea, stripped of any pride or dignity. "Tell me what the fuck I have to do to save them! How do I stop that bastard?! How do I save everyone?! Tell me! PLEASE, TELL ME!"
His body could no longer withstand the tension. His knees gave out entirely, and Hayjin collapsed face-down in the grass. He continued to cry hysterically, sobs wracking his entire spine. Then, unable even to remain face-down, he rolled over slowly, lying flat on his back in the center of that endless expanse.
He covered his face with both bloody forearms, sobbing uncontrollably, letting his muffled screams of anguish fade into the unyielding blue sky of the limbo. He was broken. Completely, hopelessly shattered in soul.
Above him, the girl stood up.
She took a small step forward, positioning herself right beside his body lying in the grass.
Slowly, for the very first time since Hayjin had met her, the serene and radiant smile adorning her face began to fade. Her features betrayed no anger, nor sadness or pity. Her face assumed an extraordinarily calm, solemn expression neutral and deep as a primordial ocean.
She looked down at Hayjin, who was still trembling and weeping desperately beneath his arms.
She parted her lips. From her throat came a sound unlike any human voice: a clear, ancient melody an echo that seemed to resonate simultaneously inside Hayjin's head and through every single blade of grass in the universe.
She uttered a single word.
"Kill."
The sound of that word shot through Hayjin's brain with the precision of a high-voltage shock.
Hayjin's crying cut off instantly. His sobs caught in his throat. Slowly, he pulled his forearms away from his face, revealing red, swollen eyes wide with profound bewilderment.
He shifted his gaze upward, staring at the girl standing over him.
The girl maintained her calm, unsmiling gaze solemn as a goddess of war.
She parted her lips again, pronouncing the word a second time with the exact same imperturbable firmness.
"Kill."
Before Hayjin could formulate even a single thought or ask for clarification, the girl gracefully raised her right hand toward him, palm open.
An intangible shimmer of silver energy enveloped Hayjin's body. Without him having to make any muscle effort, the girl's magic gently lifted him off the ground, straightening him in the air and setting his feet back down in perfect balance upon the green meadow.
Hayjin remained standing, his mind drained, his rage and despair temporarily numbed by that concise, terrifying command.
The girl, without adding another word or resuming that happy smile, executed a quarter turn. With a fluid motion of her arm and hand, she made an unmistakable gesture: a silent invitation to follow her toward a specific direction in the field that, until then, had appeared identical to every other.
Then she began to walk, gliding across the grass without making a sound.
Hayjin paused for a second. He wiped his shirt sleeve across his eyes to clear the last traces of tears and blood. He took a deep breath, feeling the word uttered by the girl bounce off the inner walls of his skull like an indelible dogma.
Kill.
There were no more questions. There was no more crying.
Hayjin took his first step, and accepted following her into whatever awaited him.