The scene shifted again, but this time, it was not to a memory. It was not to a battlefield, nor a home, nor even a fragment of my past life. No—this was something deeper. Something far more suffocating. I returned to the void. An endless darkness with no light, no warmth, no horizon to follow. 'Where had the light gone?'
I stood—or thought I stood—in nothingness. My mind asked questions it had no answers for. Was it true that 'God had died? If so, what did that mean for me, who had been reborn by her hand? What power had she given me, and what was the point of granting a gift yet hiding its nature?'
Questions circled like vultures, gnawing at the frayed edges of my sanity. 'Do all gods only speak in riddles? Or was it my own ignorance that made their words seem incomplete? And then came another question—one far more terrifying. What were those memories I had witnessed? Were they simply echoes of what had been.'
A sharp sting interrupted my spiral of thought. I raised my hand to my cheek and felt wetness slide down my skin—blood. A fresh cut, though I had felt no blade. I barely had time to comprehend it before the wound closed itself, skin knitting together as though reality itself sought to confuse me further. I realized, then, with a slow and dawning horror, that this place was not just in my mind—it was my mind. My soul had form here. My pain had weight. My suffering was real, even in this place of nothingness.
I could bleed here. I could hurt here. But how could I escape this place? How did one walk out of a dream made flesh? I wandered forward, but every step led only to more darkness. There was no horizon to follow. No door to find. Just blackness stretching into infinity. Time lost meaning.
Then, without warning, slashes began opening across my body—arms, legs, chest—ribbons of red flowing freely as if my flesh had become paper. The pain was immediate and sharp, but before it could root itself deeply, the wounds vanished. No scars, no trace. But I had felt it. I had screamed. I had bled. Again, cuts appeared. Again, they healed. Over and over until I could no longer count how many times I had been torn apart.
And then, the horror worsened.
I looked down and saw my arm lying several meters away, severed cleanly as if by some unseen force. Blood pooled at my feet, rushing outward like rivers breaking from a mountaintop glacier. Pain unlike anything I had ever known screamed through me, sharp enough to steal breath, raw enough to make me cry out until my throat bled. My legs followed. One by one, my limbs were torn from me, scattered into the void like offerings to something ancient and cruel. I fell. Down, down, endlessly down, with no ground to catch me, no end in sight.
And then—like the snapping shut of cruel jaws—it ended. My body was whole again. My limbs restored. My feet found ground, though I could not see what I stood upon. The darkness pressed in tighter, thick as tar, suffocating. Pain bloomed anew within me, searing through muscle and bone as though my very soul had been set aflame. My screams filled the void, echoing back at me like mockery, until they became a cacophony loud enough to tear through thought.
Was this hell? Was this the punishment for the sins I carried beneath my skin?
Seconds became minutes, minutes stretched into hours, hours unraveled into something longer, something darker. I lost all sense of time. Perhaps it had been days. Perhaps centuries. There was no sun here to mark the passing of anything. Only pain. Only torment. Only endless, gnawing agony.
And yet… I survived. Somehow, through the fire and blood, I endured. I grew numb to the screams, to the tearing of flesh and bone. I stopped begging for it to end. Slowly, I became something else—something harder, something colder. Pain became my breath. Agony became my heartbeat. And when my eyes finally opened again, I was not in darkness.
I was in my newborn body once more.
The world above me was a ceiling of worn wooden planks, familiar in its simplicity. Faces hovered above me—faces I recognized. My parents. My new parents. Both of them were crying. Tears streamed down their cheeks as they clung to each other, as if they had been standing on the brink of losing me and had only just pulled me back from that abyss. I could not understand their words fully, but I could feel their fear. Their love. Their pain.
And then I felt something cool against my cheek. A drop of water, but no—it wasn't water. It was my own tear. I was crying, though I did not know why. Perhaps for the pain. Perhaps for the loneliness. Or perhaps because, after everything, someone still held me as if I mattered.
My mother scooped me into her arms, clutching me against her chest as though she feared I would vanish if she let go. Her voice trembled, thick with unshed sobs. "Please… don't scare your mother and father like this again."
Her warmth wrapped around me like light breaking through clouds. After everything I had endured, this simple act—a mother's embrace—felt like salvation. I clung to it as best a newborn could, letting her heartbeat soothe the echoes of screams still rattling inside my soul.
I had only been in this world for some days, and already, so much had happened. I had glimpsed my past in fragments, spoken with a dying god, been given powers I could not understand. I had tasted pain enough for lifetimes, seen visions of blood and betrayal and death. Yet here, now, I was held by people who laughed, who cried, who worried for me simply because I existed.
Was this the difference between this life and the last? Was this the meaning of rebirth? My father's voice broke through my thoughts, softer than I remembered it being. "Honey… what should we name him?" For a moment, I thought I already had a name. Ray. That was what my mother had called me before. Wasn't that settled? But she smiled and shook her head gently. "Hmm… Ray, yes. For others, you decide."
My father scratched his head, pacing the floor like a man wrestling with the weight of something more important than he knew how to express. "What about… Rayon? Isn't it good?" My mother gave him a look of mock offense. "That's a surprise! You've got good taste in names." My father only laughed, soft and fond. "Oh? And what else do you think of me, my dear?" Their laughter filled the room like sunlight after a storm, soft and healing. I listened, and for the first time in what felt like eternity, I felt no fear. No anger. No pain. Only warmth. Only a fragile happiness I had thought lost to me forever.
How long had it been since I'd heard laughter that wasn't cruel? Since I'd been touched with tenderness instead of blades? Back then, after Rohald's death, no one had cared. No one had smiled. I had become a knight—no, a monster. Nova, the Death Reaper. They had called me devil, demon. I had earned those names. I had worn them like armor. The armies I'd slaughtered, the cities I'd burned—those sins could not be undone. I had been a machine of war, more feared than the kings I served.
And in the end, I was betrayed. Left to die by the hand of the one I trusted most. Why? Even now, I had no answer.
[Two Years Later]
I opened my eyes to the soft light of dawn, my feet finding solid ground beneath me. My body had grown swiftly. By nine months, I had learned to walk. By eleven, to speak with clarity. Now, at the age of two, I moved with a purpose born not from curiosity, but from necessity.
Today, I sought knowledge. I ventured to the storage room alone, searching not for toys or idle distraction, but for books. I needed to understand this world—its people, its history, its magic. I needed to prepare. Because though I had been reborn, though I lived now as Rayon, the bloodstained shadow of Nova still lurked within me.