by TIME, S. O.
Kou activates his own energy and glances in Hitori’s direction. She’s kneeling in a pool of my blood, trying to revive my body. Eiji… no… I can feel the uncertainty in Kou’s heart as anguish and anxiety struggle for dominance. Kou reaches into his pockets and takes out two syringes. Isao’s serum. I feel a shock of disbelief even as I sense—no, experience—remember?—his fatalistic certainty. Two will give me the power I need—and will hopefully burn me out before I can turn on my friends.
Sharp pain shoots through our body as he plunges a syringe into either leg. The serum releases a powerful, invasive liquid—it feels like lava ripping through our veins, searing every cell. We scream in agony and drop to one knee. The red aura around us shrieks into a fiery storm that rages out of control, cracking the ground and splintering out in random directions, destroying whatever lays in its path. The serum interacts with our energy and I can feel the power coursing through us. I wonder if this is going to make us lose our mind. I wonder if this is going to make us burn to a point where our skin begins to bubble. But it never happens. I feel something trying to make its way into our head, but our mind is already too crowded. The strange, black energy from Kou’s abnormal crystal washes through our mind, allowing the two of us to force away the serum’s influence.
We remain intact and the liquid that had just dropped us to our knees now makes our body feel incredibly light. Kou stands and straightens his back. We look around and see everyone’s eyes glued to us. I can feel the horror in their energies, though one person stands out from the rest. Hitori. She leans over my lifeless body. The turmoil in her energy is deafeningly loud, even from this distance. And beside her, eyes dark, floats Naomi. She stands beside my body, watching us.
There’s no turning back.
There’s no turning back.
“I see you’ve found a way to make this more interesting,” Isao says.
We turn to him as he rises and shifts into a fighting stance. Kou holds his position and lowers his center of gravity, trying to concentrate on controlling this newfound strength. In a flash, Isao launches at us, and Kou barely has time to react. We jump out of the way—but not before taking damage from the aftermath of Isao’s attack. The explosion of his energy blasts us a few meters away, searing our skin as the force shudders through our bones. We land hard, but only have a half-second to catch our breath before Isao’s next attack sends us scrambling. His attack didn’t even hit me directly, I hear Kou think.
Isao strikes the ground and a large cloud of dust springs into the air as the earth crumples beneath his fist. He launches himself at us as we struggle to blink the dust from our eyes. Kou’s new power is easily amplified four to five times what it normally is, but even now we can barely dodge Isao’s attacks, let alone fight back. The commander’s combination of strikes and energy bursts crash over us like an avalanche, and it takes every bit of speed and coordination we have to evade the crushing attacks. There’s nothing I can do. Blow after blow, Kou struggles to dodge, suffering minor hits and burns without ever once putting Isao on the defensive. The serum increases our energy output, but it’s costing us our stamina. Time is not on our side—if we have any hope of winning, it seems to be slipping away every second we delay a counterattack.
“Is running away all you can do?” Isao shouts.
He launches a series of small energy blasts into the ground. Instead of simply impacting the dirt, they sink in, and glowing red tendrils of rock and dirt spike out of the ground in our direction. We jump aside and dash to a nearby sand garden to wait for Isao’s next attack.
When he rushes us again, Kou uses the sand that flies into the air as cover, charging his energy as we dodge. He then sprints through the sand and manages to land a strong, heavy blow on Isao’s chest, igniting the sand around us as the blow launches Isao back toward the main building. The force of the punch sends Isao through the wall, causing the side of the building to collapse. Kou exhales raggedly but doesn’t slow down. He lunges into the building after Isao, readying his next attack as Isao scrambles to regain his balance. Kou slams his fists into Isao’s abdomen, causing the air to physically pulsate with each impact.
Isao switches to a defensive position and brings his arms up to his face and chest as Kou pours everything he has into his punches. If we’re going to beat Isao, it’s going to be here. He’s hurt, I can do this, Kou thinks. Kou’s attack appears to work, and even I think he’s bested Isao until the older warrior abruptly channels his energy into his arms, knocking us back as he strikes the ground on either side of him. His attack splinters the ground and cracks the foundational pillars that hold the building up. He raises both of his fists and strikes the ground once more, so furiously that the pillars break. Forced to escape the crumbling building, we turn and sprint, losing sight of Isao in the rubble.
We make it out unscathed, but right as we turn back toward the destroyed building Isao grabs us by the throat. Despite the thrashing Kou unleashed on Isao, the Commander still manages to move faster than us. He lifts us and punches us repeatedly in the chest. I can hear Hitori shouting Kou’s name in the distance, as if she can feel our pain. Every blow feels like it’s breaking our bones into tiny pieces. The energy that had enveloped us disappears and the weight of our body returns tenfold—even keeping our eyes open becomes impossible. Isao throws us to the ground and stomps on our back repeatedly before giving us a powered kick that sends us several meters.
“Is that all you have? Is that how you planned to keep Hitori safe?” Isao spits on the ground as we lie, helpless. “What, you thought you could just go on a little adventure and come back strong enough to beat me? Did you think ‘the power of friendship’ would help you?” he scoffs. “Did you expect me to do nothing and just wait for you to get stronger? It doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way. I’ve been training every day since before you were even born. You never stood a chance!”
He strides forward and kicks us again. Our vision dims as we slam into a broken wall. The colors of our surroundings have long faded and it takes all we have just to keep breathing. All is lost. Hitori… Kou thinks. Hitori. We watch as Isao walks toward us. This is the end.
It’s then that Try races behind Isao and strikes him with an energy blast at point-blank range. Isao dodges enough that the attack misses his chest, but it still tears through his shoulder, leaving him with a gaping wound and a useless arm. He takes several steps back as he is bombarded with attacks by Try as Cortez runs up and shields us. The pain, the exhaustion. It’s hard to remember my own name. Do I have a name? What was it?
Maybe if I just close my eyes.
Maybe if I just close my eyes.
I wake up gasping for air behind Naomi as she watches Try and Cortez fight a losing battle against Isao. Even short a limb, the commander manages to rally against them as they lose their initial advantage of surprise. Kou lies limp on the ground, his body broken and unmoving.
“What the hell was that?” I demand.
Naomi looks ahead, unresponsive.
“What did you do to me?” I feel myself growing hotter as I clench my fists and take a step in her direction. She finally turns to me.
“I did nothing to you. You died all on your own.”
I look over at my lifeless body in Hitori’s hands. My blood is everywhere.
“You experienced a memory link. The same way I share minds with my other lives from different timelines,” Naomi continues.
“That’s impossible…that would mean—”
“That you and Kou are the same person,” she interrupts. The mask on my face cracks further and the ringing noise fills my head. I face the battlefield and see Kou lying on the ground. I felt that so vividly. I… The ringing persists and snippets of memories I never experienced here fly through my head. Images of Hitori’s smile, of her healing me, of her lying next to me. Of her promising to always be here for me. My mask crumbles, and I feel my face, uncovered, for the first time in...centuries.
“Th-That’
s impossible. I’m taller than Kou and our voices are different. How do you explain that?”
“The gravity from your planet is lighter than the one here. Your bones thinned and you became taller over time.”
“What about my voice, then?”
“I don’t know. A change in atmosphere perhaps. But does it really matter? You know it’s true. You must be remembering your life as Kou.”
I pause briefly, desperately trying to understand what’s happening.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I have. In previous timelines. Nothing changes. You always die. In fact, the sooner I tell you, the sooner you find a way to either die or destroy the whole timeline. The only difference is the nymians. More every time.” She smiles, a miserable, dark, defeated smile. I remain silent as thoughts and questions race through my mind.
“If this has happened before, why do I always forget? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t think that’s your fault. We were never truly compatible enough to be Death to begin with. We’re just a byproduct of terrible circumstances.”
“We?”
“I was never meant to be Death either. You need a certain temperament for this job. A specific type of vibrational harmony with the universe. Neither of us have it. We were both made into Death due to a kind of cosmic emergency. Who knows what that’s done to our minds. I don’t know how long you’ve existed, but the brain can only store so much information before it starts to delete old knowledge for the new. That’s why you’re always oblivious when you get here. And yet, somehow you make it back, again and again. What is it that brings you here?”
I think back to the two souls from Vale. I think back to the feelings I had when I reached out for that woman’s hand on the transport tube.
“No matter what I did, I felt hollow. Alone. Like I was missing something. Like there was something I wanted so terribly I couldn’t function without it. It’s not until now that I finally realize what that something was,” I say as I turn to look at Hitori. “I wanted a family. With the love of my life, on a house at the edge of a waterfall.”
Naomi watches me.
“That’s a pain I know all too well,” she responds.
“What do you mean?”
She doesn’t answer and her gaze lowers to the ground, her shoulders stiffening. I change my question.
“How do I become Death? How did this all begin?”
“You never win the fight against Isao. It’s when you die that the darkness of the lost souls comes and humanity is swallowed whole. Very few survive. I open a new timeline in the hopes of giving humanity a better opportunity at survival, but it drains me. So much that the timeline doesn’t hold unless I select a new Death to take my place. Kou—you—are the only person that is even remotely compatible with the energy we use. With your black crystal—the only black crystal in this world—you’re the only candidate I have. However unfit you are to be Death. Just like me. As Death you flee with the survivors in Hana’s ship and I don’t know what happens after that.”
Naomi shudders briefly before wrapping her arms around herself.
“All I know for sure is that you come back. Every time. And everything manages to repeat itself one way or another.” Naomi closes her eyes briefly and takes another deep breath. “I’ve searched for someone—anyone else who could take your place, but there are no other options in this era.”
A couple of Isao’s generals have now joined the battle to assist Isao. The situation is becoming more hopeless as time progresses. It won’t be long now before Isao has his victory. Naomi ignores the scene, staring blankly off into the distance as she continues. I thought at first she was offering me an explanation, but it feels more like a confession.
“I guide fewer souls every rewind. I’m sure it’s making this darkness even stronger. That has to be why we have more nymians now—and why they’re all...sick. They’re infected with the Lost, the dark, destructive energy of those that were never guided. Now I don’t even have the strength to go back.” She looks at me now, weariness and guilt heavy in her eyes. “And then this time around, the world was destroyed early. Right after you arrived, when you touched Hitori’s shoulder. It was too much for me, too soon after remaking everything from the last loop. Starting a new timeline nearly killed me. That’s why I made you mortal. I needed to take your energy to stay alive. I didn’t actually know what would happen to you—I guess I didn’t care. I’ve spent all this time waiting for the repercussions of my actions to catch up to me. It looks like they finally have. All I wanted was to exist long enough to see this end one last time.”
I look away from Naomi, burning with guilt. My eyes fall on Hitori, as she lays me on the ground and gets up. She wipes away her tears and takes a step toward the battlefield. Without warning I’m flooded with memories of being with Hitori, of fighting for Hitori, every timeline, every death. I see it all until the last memory returns to me.
I can’t let her get close.
“Hitori, run away! Get to Hana at the portal!” I shout at her. But she doesn’t respond. She just keeps staring at Kou and quickening her pace as she moves toward him.
“She can’t hear you. You’re a soul now,” Naomi speaks behind me.
I ignore her, running to stand in front of Hitori. “Don’t go, I’m begging you, please run away!”
Hitori sprints right through me as Isao and his generals fight Try and Cortez. Anxiety takes full control of me and I move forward, racing to make it in time to stop her, but every time I manage to reach her she speeds right through me, oblivious.
“No! Hitori stop!” I hyperventilate as tears begin pouring down my face.
As I look around wildly in search of some way to stop her, I see one of Isao’s generals catch Try and shove him to the ground. Isao fires an energy beam through Try’s chest, turning away as Try drops and Cortez screams in rage. The other general takes advantage of Cortez’s distraction to break through her shield, sending her skidding along the ground. She begins to rise, but Isao grabs her by one arm, lifting her off her feet. Vicious red energy ripples along his arm as he throws her, and she disappears into a pile of rubble as the wall she hits collapses around her. Isao then turns back to Kou and sees Hitori making her way to him.
“Let him go already!” he shouts as he prepares to launch an attack at Kou. I sense Try’s energy flicker, some last fragment of will holding his soul within his body. He summons the last of his energy and expels it in the form of an energy blast that kills him instantly. Isao stumbles from the blast right as he launches his own attack at Kou.
The commander fires the bolt into the ground, causing the soil to explode with a rush of tendrils that race through the ground toward Kou. The time around me slows to a crawl and the sounds around me disappear. I yell Hitori’s name but not even I can hear my words. The tendrils swerve out of control in Hitori’s direction—she has no way of slowing herself down in time to avoid them. Instead she summons all of her energy to a single point in her hand and closes her eyes as she reaches forward for Kou.
Fear, hope, anger, regret, pride, joy. Love. They all mesh and race through her body until she’s hit by the tendril wall and stops in place. Her energy spikes for a single moment, flaring like a brilliant star, and then ceases to be.
Silence.
Absolute silence fills the void. I can feel the cold wind chilling the tears on my cheeks. Nothing comes to mind. No words, no thoughts, no feelings, no anything. I drift toward Kou as his energy begins to build. A soft white glow fades from his body as he starts to heal.
“Hitori…” I hear Isao whisper.
I come a few yards from Kou when he finally opens his eyes. He doesn’t notice me as he looks up at Hitori.
“Hitori? H-Hitori… wake up. It’s no time to be asleep.” Kou says, disoriented as he crawls closer to her. “You have to wake up.”
Hitori’s arm dangles in his direction and he reaches for her limp fingers.
“Hitori?” he asks
again, eyes widening. He drags himself to his feet and shakily touches her cheek as her blood pools around his feet. He shudders and carefully pulls her off of the tendrils, dropping to his knees once her body is free. Ear-shattering static runs through his energy. Sporadic, spiking emotions overlap each other as his feelings break away from all sense of control like massive waves crashing in the deepest parts of the ocean. Thunder fills the sky above us, their roar finally breaking the silence. Light raindrops fall as Kou cradles his best friend.
“Hitori…” he begins. “I… I…” tears now stream down both of our cheeks. “Please wake up… please…” Kou’s black crystal, now darker than ever before, activates as he speaks.
“We were so close. We could have left through mom’s portal. We could have built that house you designed near a waterfall, just like you wanted.” Kou lowers his head. “I couldn’t save you…” He struggles to breathe. “I was supposed to take you away from this!” he shouts. “I should have been stronger! Hitori please…”
Crack
A fissure appears in Kou’s condenser.
“Stay with me.”
Crack
The fracture spreads.
“I need you.”
Crack
“I can’t lose you like this.”
Crack
“Please come back to me.”
Crack
Kou reaches into his pocket and takes out a ring. It’s simple, a bright silver set with a single, small sapphire.
“This was for you…”
He takes the ring with one hand and holds her hand with the other. Shakily, he moves to place the ring on her finger, but with the blood and the rain it slips out of his hand and falls through cracks in the earth, out of sight. He stops, holding his position, frozen.
Shatter
Kou’s condenser fragments and his crystals break into pieces. He pulls Hitori’s body in toward him, holding her tightly with both arms. He shuts his eyes and yells with all of his might, but in that instant, lightning strikes the ground so furiously and loudly that it drowns him out. As if the lightning is acting as his haunted scream. The rain instantly turns into a heavy downpour and Kou becomes consumed by a black aura. It converges on him and then violently expands, as if repelled by his cry. It swells with such force that a round crater is formed underneath Kou and Hitori, lowering them several meters as the energy being released tears through the ground. The violence of it obliterates everything in its path, turning stone and plant to dust. It sends the torrential rain away for a brief moment and shakes the ground.