"The first time I died, no one noticed. The second time, the monster inside me did."
The city didn't sleep anymore.
It groaned. Concrete moaned under the weight of a world that had already collapsed. Skyscrapers leaned like tired skeletons. Lampposts blinked with the last flickers of forgotten electricity. Somewhere in the distance, a siren screamed not the kind that saved people… the kind that warned you they wouldn't come this time.
Rain bled from the sky, thick and grey, mixing with ash that refused to settle. And under a broken shelter made of torn billboard sheets, a boy was digging through garbage. He moved slowly, with the hesitation of someone who had been taught again and again that hope had a cost. His coat, stitched with wires and dried blood, clung to him like a second skin. His left shoe was missing. His fingers were blue from cold, black from infection. But his eyes? His eyes were the only thing alive in the ruins. They didn't search for food. They searched for silence.
Somewhere nearby, something growled. Not like an animal. Not like a machine. Like a memory trying to breathe.
The boy didn't flinch. He simply pushed aside another plastic bag and pulled out a half-crushed protein bar. He sniffed it. Mold. He bit it anyway. This was Kaien Valegrave. And this was not the worst day of his life.
He moved through the alleyways of Sector 9X, where buildings crumbled like old paper, and rusted hunter signs still glowed dimly:
ZONE-C | ENTRY = CONSENT TO DIE
Kaien stepped over bones. Human ones. A cracked hunter badge lay next to them, flashing red once every six seconds. He didn't look down. He didn't have to. He'd seen worse.
Then a rustle. Kaien froze. Something had shifted the wind. Not the air, not the leaves. The wind. He looked up slowly, heart sinking. Down the alley, slumped against a wall, was a dying man in a shredded hunter suit. Blood pooled beneath him like tar. His chest rose once… barely. Kaien stepped closer, cautiously. The man's face was shredded clawed open, like something had tried to peel back his skin and look inside. And still… he spoke. "Don't… let it speak your name."
Then he died. Just like that. No scream. No struggle. His hand dropped. Clink. A glass shard hit the ground stained with some glowing black fluid. Kaien stared at the body. "Another hunter gone. Another whisper left behind," he muttered to himself, voice barely a breath. He knelt, not to loot. But to listen. And then… he heard it. The voice. Not a monster's growl. Not a beast's roar. A voice. Soft. Familiar. Cold. "Kaien." He froze.
Rain dripped from the rooftops in perfect rhythm. The world hushed. And that voice came again. "Kaien… why didn't you save me?" His eyes widened. No. No no no no. That can't be real. That voice is dead. He turned around.
A figure stood at the edge of the alley. Shrouded in smoke. Taller than any man. Cloaked in twisting shadows, its face hidden behind hundreds of floating teeth that opened and closed like the ticking hands of a clock. Its chest pulsed. With every second, it whispered another truth Kaien never said out loud. "You hated them all." "You smiled at the funeral." "You wanted to burn with them." Kaien stepped back. His fingers trembled. It knows. It knows everything. And it sounds… like her.
The monster took a step forward, bones cracking beneath it. Its arms were stitched together from arms of other hunters, bound by sinew and sorrow. And where its heart should be a mirror. Kaien saw himself in it. But he was smiling.
His breath caught. And then the voice changed again. Softer now. "Why didn't you scream when they died, Kaien? Why didn't you stop me?"
His knees buckled. The monster towered over him now. Close enough to touch. To devour. He couldn't scream. Because the voice… was his mother's. "You didn't cry when they burned. You watched."
The monster's voice wasn't a sound. It was a stain on his bones, on his breath,on every part of him that still tried to believe he was human. Kaien couldn't move. His knees were pressed into the cold asphalt, his palms digging into broken glass, but he didn't feel the pain.
Because the pain had already happened, years ago. This wasn't the first time he'd heard that voice.
FLASHBACK
There was fire. Not the kind that roared. The kind that whispered. The flames danced slowly around the locked steel door, licking at the rusted frame. The room was small maybe a supply closet.
Kaien had been seven."Mama…?" "Mama, it's hot…"
She'd shoved him in. Slammed the door. Bolted it shut from outside. And then… she screamed. Not at him. At the thing that was coming. He'd heard her scream. Then silence. Then… the smell of burning flesh. And then… laughter. Deep. Wet. Non-human. Kaien had clawed at the metal door until his nails peeled off. No one came. No one ever came.
FLASHBACK ENDS
Back in the alley, the monster stepped closer. Kaien looked up, eyes glazed. His lips moved. "She… she died protecting me."
The monster tilted its head. The teeth on its face began to rotate faster like gears trying to remember something long forgotten. "Then why do you hate her for leaving you behind?" Kaien's jaw clenched. Rain now fell sideways.
Time felt crooked. The world tilted just slightly to the left as if gravity itself wanted him to fall forward into the thing that haunted him.
The monster raised a hand. Its fingers dripped black mist. And inside that mist…Kaien saw himself. Not now. Not yesterday. But versions of him that had never existed.
One where he screamed. One where he begged. One where he laughed as it burned.
"STOP!" Kaien shouted, the first real sound from him all day. But the monster wasn't done. It spoke again. "We're not here to kill you. We're here to make you remember."
Suddenly the sky ripped. A sound like glass screaming echoed across the sky. The rain reversed for half a second droplets flying up into the clouds, frozen in mid-air. Kaien gasped. The mirror-heart in the monster's chest pulsed. A wave of pressure hit him like a train made of shame. His body convulsed, spine arching backward. And then…he saw her. Standing in the fire. One hand on the lock. Tears on her cheeks. And lips moving silently:"Forgive me."
Kaien screamed. Not because he was afraid. But because he realized something worse than fear. He had forgotten she tried to save him. That memory wasn't missing. It had been taken.
He collapsed onto the ground, twitching. His breath came in gasps. His ears rang with a low hum the hum of a name he didn't know, but somehow remembered. "You are close…" the monster whispered. "So close to opening the first gate." Kaien blinked. First gate? But before he could ask anything more the monster lunged.
Its body split into shadows mid-air,becoming a black veil of screams. Every part of it carried a different voice from his past. His father, shouting. His sister, sobbing. His own voice, begging for death. Kaien didn't run. He couldn't. His body wouldn't obey. But something else did.
As the monster's claw tore toward his chest. The world shattered. Like someone had cracked a glass dome over reality. And suddenly…he was underwater.
Not really. But it felt like it. Everything slowed. The air turned thick. Raindrops hung frozen like tiny mirrors. The alley turned black. Not dark black. The kind of black that tasted like ash and sounded like mourning bells. Kaien floated in the silence. A voice not the monster's spoke from inside him: "The Void remembers all who forget themselves." His eyes opened wide. He wasn't in the alley anymore. He was in a place that smelled like dust and echoes. The floor below him was made of names thousands of them, glowing faintly in the dark.
He looked down…And saw his name erasing itself.
Kaien Valegrave
Kaien Valegra
Kaien Va...
"No!" he screamed. "I'm still here!"
The world answered. "Then take what the Void offers.And pay what it takes." Kaien's heart stilled. Then pulsed once backward.
His chest lit up with a ring of black fire. No stats. No interface. Just pain. And in the center of it… a whisper burned into his spine:
⚫ [Evel Unlocked: Exist Between Death]
→ Phase I: "Breathe where others have stopped."
→ Duration: 9 Seconds
→ Cost: Unknown
Kaien's eyes opened. The monster was inches away claws mid-swing. But he was no longer in that moment. He was beneath it. Beside it. Outside it. He had stepped between time and death. And for the first time in his life…Kaien Valegrave was unseen by the world.
Time had stopped. But pain had not. Kaien Valegrave stood in a world where gravity didn't exist, where light didn't reach, and where his name had just… vanished.But he was still here. Somehow. The monster had lunged. Its claws should've ripped through his lungs. But they passed right through him like he wasn't there. Because he wasn't. Not fully. He had entered something older than systems. He was breathing inside the silence between deaths. "Exist Between Death Phase I: Active."
For nine seconds, Kaien was invisible. Untouchable. Forgotten by reality.
He looked down at his hands. They glowed faintly, as if outlined in the ashes of burned dreams. His breath misted, not because of the cold but because he wasn't alive enough to need warmth.
The monster twisted midair, confused. Its claws passed through Kaien, its body ripping against brick and iron as it crashed behind him. Kaien turned around slowly. His heartbeat… was no longer beating. Instead, there was something else pulsing inside him a rhythm made of screams and fire.
The monster howled. Its form shifted becoming less human, more grief. Its many voices shouted louder: "You don't deserve to live." "You were supposed to die with them." "You're the reason they burned."
Kaien picked up a rusted metal rod from the ground. His hands trembled not in fear, but in something worse:acceptance. I wasn't meant to win today. But if I'm going to fall...Then I'll fall screaming.
He ran. Not away. Straight at it. The monster reacted too late. It swiped missed. It screamed too slow. And Kaien drove the jagged rod straight through its chest right into the mirror.
CRACK.
The mirror didn't shatter. It broke inward, like a door being pulled open. And then the world bled. Not with blood. But with memories. Thousands of them. Hundreds of them. All flooding out of the monster's body like ghosts screaming through glass.
A girl crying in a flooded hallway. A soldier laughing while shooting. A child whispering "Don't tell papa." A mother locking a door and saying "Forgive me."
They weren't Kaien's memories. They were stolen ones.
The monster writhed, dissolving into smoke and sorrow. Kaien dropped the metal rod, fell to his knees. His nine seconds were up. He gasped. Breath returned. Pain hit all at once like someone dropping an entire building on his lungs. He coughed black mist. His vision blurred. "Evel Phase I Duration complete."
The alley was silent again. Only the rain remained. Kaien stood up slowly, limping. Where the monster had been, there was now nothing except a single tooth, made of pure obsidian. He picked it up. It burned his skin. And still… he kept holding it. Because somehow, he felt less alone with it.
He looked at the wall where the dying hunter had spoken. The body was gone. So was the badge. So was the glass shard. Like it had never existed. Like this whole thing hadn't happened. But Kaien knew better.
As he walked out of the alley,the world looked the same. But he didn't. Something in him had shifted like a lock had opened somewhere deep inside his soul, and now everything broken inside him had space to scream.
Just before he left the alley,he looked up. And saw writing on the wall. Old. Scratched in with fingernails. Barely visible. But real. "The truth hunts those who remember."
Kaien smiled bitterly. Then let it hunt me. Because I'm done forgetting.