📖 Chapter 10 – Die Inside, Return Outside
The cold wasn't real.And yet, he felt it in his marrow.
When the door to that new dungeon opened, there was no landscape, no dojo, no guiding voice. Only a dense, silvery mist and an air so heavy it seemed to have weight. The inner world had changed.
Rei blinked. His clothes were different now—a tight, sleeveless black tunic. No weapons. Only his body.
Suddenly, the ground trembled. Something moved within the fog.
A silhouette emerged.
It was himself.
Or rather, a taller version, with lifeless eyes, ashen skin, and black veins running along his arms. His lips didn't move, yet Rei heard a voice:"You don't know what you are. And because of that… you will die here."
Rei stepped back. The other advanced.
The fight was brutal—and short.
Rei defended himself on instinct, improvising. A blow to the ribs. A knee to the chin. The ground vanished beneath him. He fell. He rose again. Another strike. Each hit hurt more than it should have.
Is this real? His mind screamed.
Blood. Metal. Nausea.
Then, the other seized him by the throat.
Rei kicked, clawed—but there was no escape.
"This is not a dream," his double said.
Then… darkness.
Death wasn't instant.It was a fall.An endless spiral.A void where the body wasn't a body, yet it hurt. Where thoughts slowly dissolved, and fear devoured him like an abyss that would not answer.
And then… a pull.
As if an invisible rope dragged him back.
Rei woke up screaming.
His whole body was drenched in sweat. The sheets were torn. His mother wasn't there. Shuri stood at the door, looking at him in horror, kunai drawn on instinct.
"Rei!" She rushed to him. "You're bleeding."
His nose, his lips, and small cuts along his arms. Not deep, but real.
"It wasn't a dream…" he murmured. Breathing was hard.
Shuri wrapped him in a towel and held him in silence, like an older sister without words. As if she understood that what he had faced had no name.
Hours later, Rei stood in the yard, under the rain. The water washed over his face.
His eyes were empty.
Inside, he remembered the pain—not as a nightmare, but as a warning.
You are not invincible.You don't know what you're playing with.You can't move forward unless you truly know how to lose.
He walked to the garden wall, where he marked each dungeon with symbols.
Next to the new mark—a dark door with a closed eye—he wrote:"Dying also teaches."
Then, in red ink, he added:"But I must not die for nothing."
That night, Rei didn't sleep.
For the first time, he feared himself.And for the first time… he knew he had to grow stronger not just to win, but to survive what he still did not understand.