The air was thick with fog and silence.
Izuma walked with his shoulders hunched, shirt tied around the lower half of his face, the rough fabric barely clinging to his cheekbones. It wasn't his first choice. But his mask…
He sighed, the sound barely escaping the cloth.
"Damn… and now I've gotta cover my face with half my shirt because when they threw me out the damn gate, my mask broke."
The thought echoed bitterly in his mind, sharp with resentment. He adjusted the knot at the back of his head, tightening it. Sweat ran down his neck. His legs were sore, his back ached, and every step echoed in his skull like footsteps through a cavern.
The palace behind him was distant now—hidden behind layers of twisted alleys and shadowy corridors. The memory of the Council still weighed heavy: the voices, the looming thrones, the fifth figure who never spoke but watched. Judging. Measuring. That stare had carved itself into the back of his mind like a scar.
He moved through the maze of the lower districts, dark and sleeping. The moon hung low, casting a pale, near-dawn glow. Vendors had closed up their stalls. Windows were shuttered. The few people he did see either didn't notice him or turned away.
He was invisible again.
Almost.
But even that didn't feel like safety.
He cut through another alley, boots crunching gravel and filth, his breath visible in the cold.
The street forked.
He pulled out the map Rinji had given him—creased and worn, ink faded at the edges. He furrowed his brow, holding it beneath a dim lantern.
Left… then right?
He turned left.
Wrong turn.
He didn't know it yet. But this mistake would cost him everything.
Footsteps.
He heard them too late.
"Lost, aren't you?"
A voice—cold, male—spoke from the shadows.
Izuma turned too fast. Six figures appeared behind him. A seventh stepped out in front.
Faces shrouded. Blades glinting.
"I don't want trouble,"
Izuma said, hands up halfway.
"I'm just trying to get home."
The one in front chuckled.
"Home? Didn't know humans had homes in our city."
Izuma's heart dropped.
"Another one."
"Kill him quick."
"Humans are too powerful to be kept alive."
Humans too powerful? Me? What the fuck are they on about—
He glanced at a wooden slab near a broken barrel.
If I can just grab that—
He lunged.
He never made it.
~WOOSH –
– SHNK ~
A blade pierced his side.
He gasped. Before he could scream—another.
Then another.
Steel plunged into his chest, his shoulder, his thigh. He collapsed to one knee, blood spraying from everywhere, staining the alley.
A hand yanked him up.
A blade entered under his rib.
He spasmed, eyes wide, breath rasping.
"Why—?"
A knife slid into his stomach.
He dropped.
Another. To his neck.
His hands reached out—grasping for the wooden slab. Fingers barely touched it.
Then another knife.
Into his back.
"Ghhhk—"
Then his eye.
The world burst into static.
I don't want to die...
He thought, but even that voice in his head was fading.
He hit the ground. One foot twitched. His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Pain eclipsed everything. It wasn't the sharp agony that broke him—it was the duration. It didn't stop. It kept going. And going. And going.
He tried to plead, but no words came. Only gurgles, broken gasps, weak twitches.
He begged in his mind.
Please... just end it...
His thoughts slurred.
Please... kill me already...
The voices blurred. He heard them through a tunnel of collapsing consciousness.
"He's dying."
"Let him."
"Freak should've never been born."
One last knife.
Straight into his heart.
He stopped breathing.
The world went black.
Silence.
Then—
—STATIC—
– INITIATING PROTOCOL : RE:SPAWN –
Another strange text flickered, but it was unreadable.
Then—
Time warped.
Reality split.
Izuma gasped.
He was lying on his back.
Same alley. Same position.
But it wasn't the same moment.
He blinked rapidly, chest heaving.
He sat up slowly, gripping his stomach, expecting blood.
Nothing.
But when he looked down—
The blood was still there.
Dark, dried. Soaked into the stone.
His own blood.
The same wooden slab sat nearby, stained and broken. Even the knife that ended him was there.
Reality didn't reset, not this time.
Only he did.
He stood, knees trembling.
"It's not a rewind."
His voice cracked.
"The world kept moving. I came back."
He wiped sweat from his brow, noticing for the first time that his clothes were clean. No blood. No tears. Just his knotted shirt tied around his face.
But everything else, He remembered.
Every shadow. Every wall.
Every drop.
He looked at his hands.
"No scars… no blood."
Then down at the knife.
"But that's real."
His mind spiraled.
"What the hell is this ability?"
He staggered to the wall, bracing himself. The bile in his throat rose but never came out.
"Respawn… That's what it said, right?"
"Then why the hell did I do a time leap last time..."
He dropped to his knees, fists clenched in the dirt.
He continued,
"This is...."
He stammered.
"Not a blessing."
He looked up.
"Not a gift."
He trembled.
"It's a punishment."
"A curse...."
His voice grew smaller.
"I don't want to die."
He stepped away from the alley.
"I don't want to die again."
His breath hitched as a final thought crawled through his brain:
"And if I meet them again…
...I'll die the same way."
A shiver crawled up his spine.
His voice cracked in the dark:
"Not again."
"Not ever."