Amidst Baith's screams and his weeping over Kim, he realized he didn't truly know this man. For any living creature, life and immortality are a reward; for Kim, this reward was a curse. He was branded with the Curse of Resurrection. Immortality was merely the burning frame of his existence.
Kim's body fused back with his neck. He woke, he exhaled, and slowly opened his eyes. Hahaha... Hahahaha...
Baith was terrified. He whispered in a trembling voice, "Kim... are you... immortal?"
Kim ignored him. He summoned "The Silver" into his hand—a dark energy erupting like tongues of black flame. He placed it upon his head, and the flame began to consume him, eating from his skull down to his feet until he was nothing but ash.
Baith lunged forward in horror. "What are you doing?! Why?! You fool, you returned to life only to die again!"
Only seconds passed before Kim's body reformed once more. His eyes were void of anything; his expression was that of the living dead. His body was ice cold—did blood even run through him? Baith rushed to stop any further madness, but Kim cast a gaze at him and erected a barrier.
Baith pounded against the wall, screaming and sobbing, but it was useless. As Baith wailed, Kim's mind raced: If I am cursed with Resurrection, it must have a limit. If I continue to die, perhaps it will break. If immortality has a capacity, I will exhaust it.
Kim died over and over. Again and again.
The villagers and Baith tried to breach the barrier to no avail. Eventually, hope vanished. Kim realized the bitterest truth: everything has a pre-ordained end, no matter how much he tried to change it. If his fate was written, what was the point of living?
He calculated his happy days and found them to be a mere 1%. The rest was hatred, sorrow, agony, regret, betrayal, and poverty. Intelligent people avoid a path that fails at the first attempt, but since birth, Kim had no choice. He had only one road. He had clung to it hoping it would change, but no matter how far he traveled, the result was the same. The road itself seemed to mock him: Are you a fool? You try again and again, a hundred times, a thousand... how do you have this much hope? No—it isn't hope. You are just a fool.
Kim stopped burning himself. Not because hope had found its way into his heart, but because the ash itself was weary of returning. The black smoke cleared, revealing a body standing in the center of the barrier. It was not entirely human; it was like a statue of cold wax, carved from the remnants of painful memories.
The barrier fell. Baith collapsed to his knees, his voice gone, his vocal cords as dry as his soul. He crawled toward Kim, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the hem of his charred robe. Kim did not turn. His eyes were fixed on a horizon only he could see—a place where time and space were nothing but faded lines.
Baith whispered in a shattered voice: "Why? I gave you my loyalty... I gave you my tears... is that not enough for you to live?"
Kim turned with a strange slowness, his neck bones grinding like stone. He looked at Baith. There was no hatred in his eyes, but something far worse: Absolute Emptiness.
Kim spoke, his voice like the rustle of wind in an abandoned graveyard:
"Baith... you weep because you fear the end. I weep because I do not have one. You see in that one percent of happiness a reason to stay; I see in the ninety-nine percent of my hell a reason to vanish. I have conversed with Death a thousand times in the past few minutes, and every time, he turned his face away in shame... because he has no place for someone like me."
Kim raised his hand and looked at a palm that no longer held flowing blood, but the curse of existence. He took one step away from the village, away from Baith, and away from all meaning. With every step, the grass beneath his feet charred—not by fire, but by the sheer despair saturating his being.
Kim was no longer searching for death. He had realized the bitter truth: he was neither alive nor dead. He was merely a black hole in the fabric of fate, condemned to drag the weight of his agonies forever, while the world watched him try to commit suicide from life... and life mocked him, refusing to let him go.
He left Baith and the villagers behind, not as a hero who saved them, but as a terrifying memory of something that was once human—before realizing that hope is the greatest lie the mind ever invented to endure the hardship of a failing road.