I used to think this world owed me greatness.
Turns out, it owed me a front-row seat to the greatest suicide ever.
Funny how that works huh?
If I had the chance to start over, I would choose to live a life that was truly my own.
Let's rewind things back to see where it all went wrong.
Picture a scrawny kid with skinned knees and a head too big for his body.
That was me.
A literal twink.
Just barely twelve years old, standing in a guild hall that reeked of incense and arrogance, while some robe-draped quack peeled back my life like a rotten fruit.
"Amplification Healing," the guild doctor said, lips curled like he'd tasted sewage.
"A rare gift indeed. It's a pity your mana pool's shallower than a puddle in summer."
WAHAHA!
The other mages chuckled.
One muttered, "Hero material," and the room erupted.
I didn't cry, even though they were tarnishing my dream.
I knew well to not let my emotions get the best of me.
So instead of calling this ability 'Amp Healing', I named it something more nicer.
'Tuning'…
You see… in this world magic, swordsmanship and shard powers exist and I alone was born with one of the curses. Not the cool, mysterious, collectible curses, either. Not the kind that drove you mad with bloodlust or gave you fangs or made your shadow walk around on its own.
No, mine was the sort of curse that got you pitied by old women and used as a living cautionary tale at school assemblies.
I didn't even get a badass name in the history books.
Just "the boy with Tuning," which everyone assumed meant I was only good for fixing orchestra instruments or mending broken radios.
It sounds pathetic, right?
In this whole 'gist' I had a useless ability.
But even so… the world continued to spin and I worked my ass off to perfect my gift to the point where nothing would ever be a problem for me again.
I found out techniques I never knew and multiple other variations of utilizing my gift.
Turns out, "Tuning" wasn't just about fixing wounds.
It was like discovering a whole new instrument after years of playing only one broken string.
The first breakthrough struck when I was fifteen, a moment teetering on the edge of death.
A bandit's blade tore through my arm during a caravan escort, leaving me bleeding out beneath a canopy of indifferent stars.
In that desperate moment, I turned my gift inward, striving to amplify my body's natural healing.
Suddenly, something clicked. My blood slowed, and I felt the rush of tissue knitting together at an accelerated pace.
It was as if my gift resonated with every cell, every fiber of my being.
I could tune myself.
Before long, I wasn't just healing faster; I was becoming stronger, quicker.
My reflexes sharpened as I amplified the connections between mind and muscle, each movement more precise.
My senses heightened, too, as I fine-tuned the delicate structures of my eyes and ears.
Each breakthrough felt like unlocking another door in a mansion I had inhabited but never fully explored.
By twenty, I'd grown tired of being the background character in other people's heroic journeys.
The healer who waited at camp while adventures unfolded elsewhere.
"If they won't let me be a hero," I told my reflection one morning, "I'll forge myself into one."
During those days, I became an apprentice under a grizzled mercenary who laughed at my soft hands but took my money anyway.
With training that nearly broke me I had daily beatings disguised as sparring, endless drills until my muscles screamed.
But each night, I'd tune my body, accelerating recovery, reinforcing bone density, optimizing muscle memory.
Where others needed weeks to master a technique, I needed days.
Not from talent, but from the unholy marriage of stubbornness and my peculiar gift.
Swordplay came later, at twenty-five.
My first instructor called me hopeless.
My second quit in frustration.
The third was a one-eyed woman with more scars than smooth skin, she simply nodded when I explained my method.
"Magic or not," she said, "the sword only respects persistence."
Ten years passed like water through fingers.
My 30th birthday arrived without ceremony.
Then my thirty-fifth.
No wife, no children, no legacy.
Just a room of walls lined with weapons and medical texts, and a body honed to near-perfection through relentless tuning.
The Guild that once mocked me now hired me for difficult jobs, though they never quite acknowledged what I'd become.
Not a mage. Not quite a warrior.
Something in-between, like a man who could fight for days without tiring, who could take wounds that would kill others and be combat-ready by morning.
Still, I waited for my moment. The chance to matter.
It was said that history speaks of peaceful eras with nostalgic reverence, but I felt the disquiet beneath our world's surface.
Ancient texts mentioned cycles, warnings.
The longer the peace, the more terrible its breaking.
I studied these omens while others celebrated prosperity, preparing for a storm I couldn't name but could feel approaching.
When the first rift appeared in the northern sky, a wound in reality bleeding darkness ruptured our world.
I wasn't surprised when my eyes first laid on those beings it only validated my true inner thoughts.
And within months, the world I knew crumbled.
Creatures from the abyss poured through tears in the fabric of reality.
Demons walked cobblestone streets.
Things with too many eyes and impossible geometries nestled in the ruins of once-proud cities.
The seven nations, after centuries of posturing and petty squabbles, finally united against an existential threat.
Finally, heroes were called. Armies marshaled and parties formed to strike at the heart of the invasion.
And there I stood, fifty-five years old, back straight, eyes clear, when the High Council announced the formation of the final strike team.
A party of 5 to face the Abyssal King, to seal the merger of worlds before it became irreversible.
My name was called last.
Not as the vanguard, not as the strategist, not as the battle mage.
"Bam Montclair Caesar ," the Councilwoman intoned, "Healer."
Healer.
Even at the end of the world, that's all they saw.
But I didn't argue. I took my place among legends and watched them fall, one by one, as we carved our way toward the throne of nightmares.
The final battle...
I try to remember it now, and the memories splinter like glass in my mind.
There was fire. Or was it darkness that burned?
The Abyssal King was humanities natural enemy.
But I've never settled on a shape of that thing with my mortal eyes.
All I remember was the mage Reina screaming something about the Merger device, her voice swallowed by a sound like reality tearing itself apart.
Ack...
Pain. So much pain.
My hands, slick with blood that might have been mine or might have been the kings but all I knew was what came next.
An explosion. White-hot and blinding.
BOOM!
The sequence breaks apart when I reach for that memory.
They were fragments surface like bodies from a river.
All I heard was the Abyssal King's laughter, a sound that shouldn't exist in any world.
Someone calling my name…
""Bam, BAM, you—" and then silence.
I died without knowing what came next.