"What do you remember about him?" Tatsuo asked, voice soft as he leaned against the doorway, as if afraid his weight might break this fragile illusion.
Vera's small hand clutched my sleeve, her eyes straining upward through a pained expression, searching me for something she hoped was still there.
I, however, felt nothing. My face was carved from stone.
"I remember," I began quietly, "he's a sarcastic, demanding piece of work. Cares more about women with long legs than food or morals. At least... that's how I know him in the other place."
I hesitated, the weight of memory like static behind my eyes.
"I also remember he's been with me since before I could remember anything. The only one who made me feel like I wasn't truly alone, even when I was suffering. He was always there... like he was my shadow."
Tatsuo grinned, as if I'd just passed some invisible test. "That ticks all the boxes I know."
"...What do you two know about him?" I asked, narrowing my gaze. "Why isn't he here with me?"
Vera was the first to speak, slow and cautious.
"Thorn was an Australian raven you rescued from an abusive owner... your adoptive older brother, Cayde Barbaten. Or as you always called him in your book..."
"Corvus," I said without surprise.
Vera nodded, the motion sluggish, reluctant. "When you were nine, you ran away from home with Thorn. You did tricks in alleyways for scraps, saved change just to eat. Then you started hopping cruise ships and airlines. You lived that way for thirteen years—traveling the world with Thorn."
"You became a VTuber at fourteen," she continued. "A travel vlogger. People loved you two. Especially the Everest climb... that's still my favorite."
She faltered, her voice dropping lower.
"In January 2020... your eldest brother, Silven, tracked you down. Asked you to come home. You refused. Then—during an argument—Cayde attacked you. Thorn tried to protect you but..."
Her words caught.
"...Cayde drowned him. Crushed his head underwater."
I didn't flinch. No scream. No denial. No grief.
I knew already.
In the other world, I saw it happen. And then Thorn and I met again. He was reborn in hell, latching onto me like a parasite, bitter and broken, yet still there. We were both twisted... but never truly apart.
Vera stayed silent, unsure if her words had broken something or meant nothing at all.
I met her hesitation with a steady gaze. "Then, not long after, COVID hit. And I broke down in an airport, didn't I? Doctor Sathuna told me."
"You're... okay?" Tatsuo asked, visibly disturbed. "Not even gonna lose your mind this time? Last time we told you about Thorn, you ended up in solitary. Kinda cold of you, don't you think?" He said it with a grin, but his eyes searched me for the missing reaction.
"Solitary..." I echoed, my voice tight, jaw clenching. "You mean that white room? Where they stripped me of identity until I was less than an animal?" My teeth gnashed together. "Did you tell me that nine times before?"
"Yeah..." Tatsuo's confidence flickered.
"W-Well," Vera interjected quickly, "it wasn't us directly. The doctors handled it. We just... gave them the context. We didn't want to say it ourselves. We loved you too much to say it out loud when you were already slipping."
"...Huh." I looked down, fidgeting with a knight figurine on Sathuna's desk. With a flick, I knocked it over. "That would mean so much," I murmured, "if this was real."
They both stared at me, not with shock—but expectancy. Like they wanted me to say that. To snap. To break.
"What makes you so sure?" Tatsuo asked, his voice shifting—deepening. His robes shimmered. One blink and they were those of a Buddhist monk. Another blink and they shifted into the ragged ronin robes he wore in the Ring of Heresy. All that was missing was his tachi katana.
"You've never called me by name," I said. "Not once. Not even a nickname. Too quiet in here too. No chains rattling in the walls. No fish skulls biting at the air. No whispering madness crowding the edge of my hearing."
I stared at them, cold and certain.
"You haven't even begged me to stay yet."
"M-Maybe we're just being careful," Vera said, bashful now—caught off guard, like a child exposed in a lie. Her modern clothes shimmered into a Roman toga. The same she wore in the Ring of Greed. "Doctor Sathuna told you, right? About the reflection thing. About your name."
"In hell," I said, voice rising with clarity, "you both called me by something empty—but meaningful."
I turned to Tatsuo. "You called me Mumei in the Ring of Heresy." Then to Vera. "You called me Sine Nomine after we met in the Ring of Greed. Both mean the same thing: Nameless."
"But it was you two who gave me the name Strife. You said it suited me. All that inner war. And I held onto that name like a tether—tight enough that I almost started believing it was me. But even that... doesn't fit the hollow I feel. And Thorn... he knew that."
My voice shook—not from fear. From revelation.
"That's why he never called me Strife. Only pisspot. Princess. Idiot. He knew how fake names feel. But he never made me feel fake."
I looked at the two people before me. I had imagined this moment a thousand times. Dreamed of seeing them again.
"You're not them," I said.
The room trembled. Cracks splintered through the walls like broken glass. Chains burst through the floor and ceiling, stabbing into reality like anchors dragging my soul upward—back to where it belonged.
Tatsuo said nothing. He simply turned and walked out of the room, but he didn't storm out. He left like a ghost giving up the illusion.
"Do you really hate this world that much?!" Vera's voice cracked. She began to sob, her arms swinging as she hurled books at me. "What did we do for you to want to leave us?!"
She pounded her fists against my chest, voice raw.
"This is your life! Your truth! Not some... storybook!" Still crying, she whispered: "What is it about yourself you hate so much that you'd rather be lost in a dream than be here with us? I'm right here," she pleaded. "Why do you love her more? That version of me you abandoned?"
She stared up at me with bloodshot eyes.
"It's because you're a god in that world, isn't it? You'd rather rule a delusion than be ordinary!"
I shook my head. "I don't want to rule anything. I just want... peace. No more voices. No more nightmares. Just quiet. A quiet so deep I could go deaf in it."
Her breath hitched. She trembled. "You're asking to die, Nameless!!!" Vera screamed. "You go back there... you're going to keep dying. Keep struggling. No rest. No peace. But you'll still chase it. Chasing something you already have—us!"
"But it won't be any less real than this is to me." Stroking Vera's soft hair I remembered how i would always do this with her. Just like then this Vera leaned into my hand to accept the stroke. "How can i know what I'm choosing is wrong? I'm insane don't forget. I'm crazy about questioning whats real. But I'm just not done in the other world yet, and there's people waiting for me."
"You mean like Vita?" Vera asked, wiping her tears from her face. "She exists here too! The real her—she's waiting for you! You just have to go see her! You'll stay then, right? Once you see her. Please... don't abandon me again."
Slipping free from Vera i forced myself off from her. Even though it felt like ripping out my own skeleton. I did exactly as i had done once before and abandoned Vera as i walked out of the room.
"You know I won't let you leave that easily," Tatsuo said. He was waiting in the hall, back pressed against the wall beneath a flickering light. His gaze split between anger and something gentler—relief maybe. "This is where you need to be to get better, old friend. You leave, and you're tossing aside everything we've done for you."
"I'm not tossing you away." My smile was bleak, a wound poorly stitched. "I just want you to haunt me differently. I won't deny this world is real—at least, part of me won't. But I don't think it's mine."
Tatsuo pushed off the wall, stepping into my path with a cold steadiness. "You remember I'm a professional boxer, right? Military-trained, kendo ranking. You're not getting past me with a body that hasn't moved right in years."
I glanced down at my arms. My left arm a patchwork of scars, my right arm bound in a medical cast. I huffed a brittle laugh. "Yeah... you're right." Then I grinned, wild and splitting at the seams. "But you're forgetting one thing."
His brow twitched upward, just a second before he understood. That understanding came too late.
"I don't give a damn what happens to me—so long as I win!" I lunged, fist swinging wide and fast.
He dodged with grace, caught my wrist, twisted my arm behind my back, and slammed me to my knees. Pain lanced through me like old wounds being reopened.
"Stay down," he ordered. "Don't fight it. Just listen and—"
Tatsuo recoiled with a curse as i cracked the back of my skull against his nose. Tearing myself from his hold, i scrambled up bolting down the hall. I slipped through the hallway, legs pumping on pure instinct, diving over the railing and sliding down to the bottom floor. Sprinting for the front door like a man possessed.
"Nameless!!"
His voice chased after me. I turned my head mid-run, just in time to see his fist. Colliding with my face and shattering my nose.
I went flying, tumbling through the institution's front doors and down the cement steps, finally crashing onto the path in the garden. My head slammed against the stone. Groaning, I rolled onto my side. The world spun violently as blood dribbled down my forehead and my nose bleeding in rivers.
"You still punch like you're throwing turtles," I slurred through the red mess, half-laughing, half-choking.
Tatsuo stepped through the doorway, tapping the tender spot on his head where my skull had struck him. He winced. "And you still fight like a damn bandit."
"I was one, remember?" I grinned, blood coating my teeth and eyes. "The doctor told me I was homeless in this world. Not much different from where I'm from. Just... new context."
Around us, the others began to gather. Patients from the institution, drifting in like fog. Their movements were stiff, their gazes wrong—hungry, empty, watching me with want. And then came the rattling. The fish skulls snapped at the air, unseen but heard. Chains dragged across every surface. Frenzied voices lacing the wind.
"—He's mad. Mad! Ha ha ha—"
"—We have everything here. He knows it—"
"—No pain. No pain. Just hush. Just hush—"
Tatsuo clenched his fists. "SHUT UP!!"
The crowd fell still. The chains and snaps didn't.
"Tell me why," he said.
"Why what?"
"Why do you want to hurt yourself?" He pointed behind me—to the towering stone wall, to the forest beyond that pulsed in a broken rhythm like three heart's. "You remember what's out there. The nine rings. The places that broke you."
Limbo.
"You were alone. For unbearably long years. You forgot how to cry after running out of tears."
Lust.
"They took you. Broke you. Smiling when you screamed."
Gluttony.
"Starved, frozen. And when you found food, they tried to eat you."
Greed.
"You fought for coins you never touched. You were forced to kill for entertainment."
Anger.
"They dragged you through swamps, burned your screams and fears from your throat."
Heresy.
"I saw your arm turn to charcoal. You didn't even flinch."
Fraud.
"They tricked you into love you didn't even believe in just to watch it rot. And laugh."
Treachery.
"You chose the cold. You chose it because warmth never lasts. You gave up on being held."
Tatsuo's chest heaved and his eyes were glassy. He was crying.
"But here I am! Telling you—you can feel warmth! You do deserve it! If you'd just stop punishing yourself and let someone love you for once!" He paused, breath hitching as his words soaked the air between us, eyes locked on mine.
"You've been through hell, and I was there for just a fraction of it. And every time I saw you, there were more scars—some I could see, others I couldn't. But you smiled anyway. Like it was all normal. Like you were normal. But you're really not. You're a paradox. You're kind—but ruthless. You shine like a distant star—but hide such a darkness it hurts to look at you. You fight like hell—then rest like the dead. You laugh and cry and go silent all at the same time!"
"You scare people because you never really show when you're in pain. You're impossible to understand," he said softly. "And we love you anyway because of that madness you bring to our lives that makes us happy. Just please... i am begging you. Love yourself."
The bleeding stopped briefly. I looked at him through the blood on my face, and I smiled. It was the smile of a drowning man who learned to breathe underwater. "Never," I said. "I will always be me. No matter what I become."
Behind me, the sky cracked like glass. A gargantuan silver-crimson eye stared down, inverted and defiling all that its sight landed on.
And still—Tatsuo didn't see it. None of them ever saw it. Because to them, this world was real.
And to me... it was a dream. One I had no right to live in—but one I could not stop living in.