"Ahh…" the boy exhaled, a dry, breathless gasp.
He had risen from the dead, after all.
"Where… am I?" he murmured, his expression clouded with confusion.
His voice trembled like a candle in wind.
"Wasn't I just… at the station? No, no—I was walking home. Shegio and his gang… they made me follow them. They beat me bloody and… and ki—"
His words faltered.
The sentence never finished.
Memories clashed in his skull, jagged and out of order. Some blurred by horror, others by pain.
He remembered dying. That was undeniable.
A part of him felt relief. Another part, rage.
But which was truly him—he didn't know.
He was no longer one. As human nature often is—he had become two.
He was An Xiao.
But he was also… someone else.
He rose shakily to his feet and began descending the mountainside.
He wisely shrugged off his blood-drenched shirt and school blazer—after all, a kid covered in gore wandering through the countryside would raise suspicions, as Not-An might say.
As he walked, he began sorting through the chaos of his memories, stitching together the frayed strands of two lives into something resembling a coherent self.
An Xiao.
Born in China.
Immigrated to Japan with his parents after his father's business collapsed—an enterprise that had dragged the family into quiet, stifling poverty. Running from Debts they came to japan
A well-behaved student. An exemplary one.
Vice-captain of the school's judo club. Strong, respectful, dedicated.
But none of that shielded him.
Outside the dojo, he was just the foreign kid. A outsider.
Mocked. Marginalized.
He faced prejudice. Hatred. Violence.
His death… was the result of one such act.
"Damn," he muttered with a bitter smile. "Lived a lousy life, huh?"
But the other memories—the ones that weren't his—spoke with the weight of an ancient soldier.
He was also Dante Stimato.
A Roman footsoldier. One who lived and died before his name could be remembered by history. Just another sword for an empire too large to care.
In death, however, he had not rested. His soul wandered, studied, evolved. He came to understand the flow of time in ways the living never could.
He, too, had met his end.
And yet…
Here he was. In flesh. On earth. Walking the high road as though nothing had changed.
Twisted, impossible, unnatural—yet undeniably alive.
The small town wasn't far.
He needed rest.
He needed answers.
And above all, he needed to understand what he now was.
Far below the veil of the mortal world…
In the depths of the River of the Damned—the black current where those untainted by supernatural rites or curses were meant to rest—something watched.
A presence.
With clarity unnatural and impossible, she observed the one who had escaped.
Souls had slipped from her grasp before.
Some reemerged as cursed spirits—vengeful, twisted, seeking violent restitution.
Others, through ritual or sacrifice, had never truly been hers to hold.
But this one…
This boy…
He had left her embrace in a manner never seen.
"Two… in a single era?" the goddess murmured.
Her voice rippled through the void—half whisper, half roar.
"The Honored One… and the Damned…"
She laughed.
It was not a sound for mortal ears.
Her form was beauty wrapped in horror, visibility cloaked in invisibility. She was only sensed in death, the echo of life felt in final breath.
A goddess unspoken. Unseen. Undeniable.
And now—
She was watching.