He had gotten good at measuring time in pills.
Morning: the yellow one, small as a grain of rice, washed down with water that tasted more of metal than metal had any right to. Noon: two white tablets after whatever his stomach could actually keep down. Evening: the heavy artillery—the ones that made his skin crawl and turned his thoughts slow and thick as honey.
He was twenty. He had been twenty for what felt like forever.
He lived in a small, self-contained apartment crammed with things that had outlived their usefulness. Both he and the room looked uncomfortable. Both of them, suffocating.
His mother called at six o'clock, like always.
"Dr. Chen says there's a new trial," she said.
"Mmm."
"Son."
"I know, Mom." He watched a moth slam itself against his reading lamp again and again. He could relate to the frustration. "I'll think about it."
He wouldn't. His body had become a country under siege, and he was tired of being the battlefield. The treatments had taken his hair, his dignity, his savings, his dreams—everything, even the hope he once believed they couldn't touch.
That night he didn't sleep so much as unravel. The pain was small but sharp, constant in a new way. He had learned to endure it, but this felt different.
Around three in the morning, the pain didn't stop or fade. It simply became… truer. His breathing, shallow and desperate for months, suddenly felt optional. Like he could choose to let go anytime he wanted.
Oh, he thought. This is it, then.
He wasn't afraid. Only embarrassingly relieved.
He was gone not long after.
The feeling of death was strangely nostalgic.
---
Burgstein, Northern Province, Holy Aurelian Empire
He woke to a pounding headache. He lay naked on a metal table, the icy surface raising goosebumps across his skin. He sat up slowly. The table was wet, slick and warm.
What the…
The air reeked of rot: spoiled flesh, feces, and the thick, metallic tang of old blood. Flies droned lazily everywhere. The darkness was absolute, so complete it felt like something he could reach out and touch.
The memory of his own death still burned in his chest, yet here he was, breathing again.
He pissed himself. He had never handled the dark well.
He shoved the questions aside—how am I alive? How am I uninjured?—and focused on escape. His fingers groped blindly across the floor until they brushed something solid: wood and slim, cold metal. A revolver. A sob tore from his throat. He kept searching. His hand met something else; cold, unmistakably human skin. He lifted it. A severed limb.
The realization crashed into him like a hammer. He dropped to all fours and vomited until nothing was left but bile and raw terror. He just wanted to vanish. To disappear completely.
"What did I tell you about cleaning up the torture chamber?" a deep voice growled from outside the room.
"What? I didn't hear," came a second, lighter voice.
"Well, now you've heard it from me. Get to work...unless you want to be the next thing they wheel out of here."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm on it."
Metal scraped and clanged. Keys rattled. A lock clicked. The door swung open and blinding light flooded in, searing his eyes. He hadn't seen daylight in what felt like lifetimes.
"Jesus. Back to this stinking shit-hole…" The lighter voice paused. "Hey. Come here. Look at this."
"What's the problem?" the deeper voice asked, footsteps approaching.
"Why is this body on the floor?"
"Bobby, how the hell should I know? Maybe someone left it there."
"No. Not possible. I was here the last time this room was used. It was definitely on the table."
"Whatever you say. Start with that one. Wheel it out through the passage."
At the word "passage," he turned his head just enough to peer upward. His vision was still swimming, but he could make out the horror surrounding him: body parts hanging from chains, others stacked on shelves like macabre trophies. No wonder the stench was unbearable.
He turned again and met the stares of the two men.
The first was tall and powerfully built—the bossy one whose voice matched his frame. The second, Bobby, was grotesquely overweight, sweating even in the cool air.
"He… he just moved!" Bobby stammered.
"I saw it," the bigger man replied, expression hard. He picked up the revolver from the table and walked over to him. "I'll finish him off. Looks like he's suffered enough already."
He tried to speak, to beg, to scream that he was alive, but the words wouldn't come.
Bam.
Blood sprayed from his skull.
"Well, he's dead for sure now," the man said, tossing the revolver back onto the table. "What's your problem?" he asked Bobby, who still looked stunned.
"The problem is… he was already dead," Bobby whispered. "I saw the young master shoot him in the forehead myself."
"Sure. He's dead now. Get to work."
They stuffed his body into the wheelbarrow along with the other severed parts, packing him in tight. Somehow, consciousness flickered back, briefly—between the headshot and the darkness that followed. He felt the jolting motion as they wheeled him down the passage. Blood loss dragged him under again.
This was the second time he had died.
And he was still awake.