The Hero's skull cracked like dry bark under my boot.
It wasn't dramatic. No heavenly chorus. No glowing ascension.
Just a wet, hollow crunch, and the distant echo of silence — the kind that follows when hope dies.
His golden sword lay shattered beside him. That thing had cut through dragons, titans, armies.
Now it was a rusted stick, steaming in blood.
He was already half-dead, bleeding out into the dirt. The sword that once gleamed like sunlight was broken beside him. Pieces of it still shimmered, twitching like dying nerves.
I didn't say anything.
What was there to say?
The Hero—the boy who was supposed to save the world, who did save it once—was gone. Just a mangled body. Face smashed in. Spine twisted. A thing, not a person.
I stood over him, watching the blood seep into the ash. My chest felt... heavy. Not with guilt. That left a long time ago.
This was something worse.
Emptiness.
It was over. The war. The gods. The prophecy.
I had won.
And I felt nothing.
I looked around. Fire still smoldered in the ruins. Corpses were stacked like garbage. The sky above us was a sick yellow, like it didn't know whether to rain or burn.
I had broken everything.
And still—I wasn't free.
Then I felt it.
A shift.
Like someone exhaling directly into the bones of the world.
The air thickened. The light bent sideways. My breath caught as a presence, cold and ancient, slid into the space beside me. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was there.
Not a god. Older.
And then I heard it.
A voice.
Not in my ears—in my head. In my blood.
"Try again."
I didn't even have time to scream.
I woke up choking.
My mouth tasted like bile and sour beer. The bed was straw, rough and itchy. The air was damp. My head throbbed like it had been split open and put back together wrong.
For a second, I thought maybe I was dreaming. That the war had been some kind of fever dream. But then I sat up, looked around, and everything came crashing back.
The wooden walls. The cracked window. The rats in the corner.
Carmine's Rest.
I hadn't seen this place in sixteen years.
I climbed out of bed, my body moving like it didn't belong to me. I reached for the mirror on the wall—dirty, fogged glass—and saw a face I hadn't worn in decades.
Younger. Sharper. No scar on the left cheek. No greying hair.
I looked like a man who hadn't yet done the things I had done.
"No…" I whispered.
But it was real.
The air. The feel of the ground beneath my boots. The ache in my shoulder where I'd been stabbed once—not by a sword, but by betrayal.
They sent me back.
I touched my chest, half-expecting to find the artifact that had once fused to my ribs. Nothing. Just skin. Just me.
But I remembered everything.
Every campaign. Every dungeon. Every death. Every whisper from the gods that turned out to be lies.
I remembered killing the Hero.
And now I'd been reset.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. No noise, just my breathing.
I wasn't angry.
Not yet.
Mostly I was tired. But underneath the exhaustion, there was something alive. Something sharp.
The Hero must still be alive, somewhere out there. Younger. Weaker. Still believing in hope. In people.
He'll pick up the sword again soon.
He'll gather his allies. The same ones I killed.
He'll walk the path that ends with me.
And now I had the chance to burn that path before he even takes the first step.
"Fine," I muttered. "If you want to play again…"
I stood.
"Then I'm not playing fair."
Downstairs, the inn smelled like ale and wet boots. The same as it always did.
A bard was singing badly in the corner, and some merchant was arguing over the price of bread. Nothing had changed.
And yet—
In the far corner of the tavern, I saw him.
Ragged clothes. Wooden sword. A bruise forming on his cheek.
The Hero.
Still just a kid. Still so sure the world is something he can fix.
No one noticed me walk in.
No one ever does, at first.
But I noticed everything.
Where the girl who would become the Flame Maiden sat—alone, scared, about to be recruited by the boy she thinks is her salvation.
Where the holy knight drank, cursing the church that would soon raise him like a weapon.
Where the map of the world still showed false borders—lines I would one day erase.
I took a slow breath, my hands still steady despite the storm inside.
"Let's begin again," I whispered.
"My way this time."