Why does this feel familiar?
Not to me—to this body. These are his people. Blues. Not mine. Never mine.
Red is the blood that flows through my veins.
“Long time no see, Arthur.”
The words slip from my mouth automatically, yet the expression I wear doesn’t change. Not a twitch.
The fire crackles, eating away the last scraps of paper between Arthur’s fingers. He leans forward, eyes reflecting flame. There’s an unsettling calm to him—too still, too knowing.
“Everyone,” he says, standing now. “This is Aston. He’ll be part of the missions from now on. Consider him a hidden agent. Spy. Call it whatever you like.”
“But most importantly...” Arthur gestures toward the scarred man, who still holds the last blackened ember in his fingers.
“He’ll be our financer. Our donor. Or, as Grim likes to call him...” A pause. Eyes piercing into mine. “...our money pig.”
A pressure builds behind my eyes. A pulse of pain. The headache sharpens, driving deeper.
The body stumbles. I feel it—hands trembling, vision wavering. Something wraps around me. Hands—not real ones, but something else. Something cold, clawed, and spectral. They press into me. Through skin. Into muscle. Into bone.
They aren’t touching Aston. They’re touching me.
Invisible hands tear through the body’s flesh, not leaving marks, but dragging. Begging. Grabbing.
Whispers flood my ears. Breath quickens. My chest burns.
Sweat beads at my temples. My hands start to shake. The world turns red. Then dim. Then black.
In a flash, all I see are those eyes. Orange. Green. Glowing in the dark.
They pierce me like knives dipped in oil.
I’m gasping. I—he—reaches for his chest, falling forward, stumbling blindly. But I’m slipping. I’m no longer inside the body.
I’m being pulled away.
Heartbeat after heartbeat, I drift farther. The bar vanishes. The people. The fire. The eyes. Gone. It’s not that they fade—it’s that I do.
My senses fail. One by one. Sight dims. Sound dulls. Touch melts into nothingness.
I feel nothing. I smell nothing. I am nothing.
And for a moment, I want to be afraid.
I’m motionless. Thoughtless. Shapeless. Floating in a void that knows no end. A silence where even the concept of screaming has no meaning. No shape. No sound. No edge.
That voice again. Crooked, familiar, hated. It comes from nowhere—everywhere. A whisper. A scream. A chant. A curse. It doesn’t stop.
Golden Reaper. Golden Reaper.
Over and over, relentless. A plea, a condemnation, a memory. It pierces through the void like rusted wire pulled through my skull.
This voice... it’s the root of everything, isn’t it? The fault of everything. Of this place. Of this fate.
Why was I in Aston’s body—the hanged man?
Why was I cast into the void?
It could be seconds. It could be weeks. It could be years. Time doesn’t work here. It’s a black hole, a prison. Am I in one? No. Maybe? The thought doesn’t help.
Sometimes, when I’m not thinking about the void, I try to remember my parents. Their faces blur. Slippery shadows. Gone. But Ren... Ren is vivid. Not clear—but present, like a single drop of tear lost in a storm. His face is distorted by the same waters that now fill me. A pool I’ve cried into so long that I no longer remember when I started.
I feel nothing. I feel lost.
Or maybe not. Everything feels like a dream, or the echo of one. What’s the point of my life? Of all of this?
Sometimes, I just... stare. Blankly. Into the dark, and it stares back at me. I don’t wish for rescue—no, that would be foolish. I wish for destruction. For crushing.
Wouldn’t that betray Ren’s sacrifice?
What sacrifice again? For me? He shouldn’t have. I wasn’t worth it. And now—now I can’t even cry. Not properly. Not one tear. I just know things, feel things, without truly feeling them. As if all emotion is a memory I’m trying to recreate with numb hands.
“Golden Reaper, I was in hell. I died only to see the truth.”
The voice again. Crooked. Scraping. A monologue that drills into the silence. It’s the only thing that gives me something. I don’t know what that something is—but it’s something.
“The truth of you betraying. Committing genocide out of vengeance. The blood you sheared equals the one you devoured.”
I stare into nothing. Hollow.
“My dear––” the voice splinters, glitching through the black, “––sorry.”
And then I feel it. A spark.
My eyelids flicker. Sweat pours down my cheeks. My fingers twitch, clawing at something sticky. Wet. Filthy. My body aches. And then—
A darkness. A real one.
I gasp, disoriented. Terror rises. Hatred too. Tears burst from my reddened eyes, uncontrollable. And for the first time in what feels like eternity—