'Tempus eda rerum.'
Time devours everything.
Lucky for me, I'm probably the exception—if what happened wasn't just another cosmic joke. But how else would one explain all this ,maybe a dream .
"Dain?" I remember Fin saying.
Then boom—I'm here.
Not that I'm complaining anything would have been better than having a conversation with those two, even if it's an unending pine forest where every damn tree looks cloned from the same depressed template.
Tall. Straight. Lifeless. Like nature itself ran out of creativity halfway through.
The air smells of resin and déjà vu. I've been walking for what feels like hours, but the scenery refuses to change, like I'm stuck inside a looping screensaver. The silence isn't peaceful—it's mocking. Every step feels like the forest is watching me lose track of myself.
I clicked my tongue in frustration.
If this is the afterlife, someone needs to fire the architect.
The sun was setting in the distance—bleeding gold through the trees, the kind of light that makes everything look sacred for five seconds before the dark swallows it whole.
I was too busy watching it die to notice the whistle.
Then pain. A scream that didn't sound like mine.
The arrow buried itself deep into my leg—clean through the muscle, snapping bone.
I collapsed before my mind could even register what happened.
The ground was damp, cold, and smelled of pine and iron.
My body moved before my brain caught up.
I clawed at the shaft, tried to pull it free, but the moment I touched it, the pain detonated—raw, electric, primal. I tasted metal. My vision pulsed white.
Another whistle.
Then another arrow.
This one hit my shoulder, spinning me sideways, pinning me to the dirt like an insect under glass. My breath came out ragged, sharp. My heart slammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape before I did.
Shapes moved between the trees.
Three, maybe four of them. Men. Bare-chested, painted in soot and ash, wearing tattered hides. Each carried a bow or blade that looked older than the forest itself.
They didn't shout or speak. Just approached with that slow, deliberate calm of people who already knew how this would end.
I tried to crawl back, but my leg was a ruined mess. The mud clung to me like it wanted to keep me still for the show.
One of them crouched beside me—his eyes reflecting the dying sun.
He said something I didn't understand, a language that sounded like broken glass and wind. Then he smiled—thin, tired, ritualistic.
The dagger glinted once before plunging into my chest.
Cold.
It wasn't pain anymore, not after the first cut. It was deeper—like the air itself had been sucked out of me. I could feel my heart tearing free, the wet sound of it leaving my ribs.
I thought I'd scream, but nothing came out. Only the sound of my heartbeat—then not even that.
For a moment, I saw it in his hands—my heart—pulsing weakly, painted red by the last light of the sun. He whispered something over it, almost reverent, before lifting it to his mouth.
"You're back."
The voice came from behind me — level, calm, and annoyingly certain.
I turned.
The thing standing there wasn't a man, though it tried to pass as one. Smooth skin where a face should've been. No mouth. No eyes. Just the faint hint of features under a white hood stitched with gold lines that pulsed like veins. His robe flowed to the floor, weightless — too perfect, too still.
"So that's how you look " I said perplexed.
I wasn't expecting coming back here.
It felt kinda anticlimacti.
"so if I keep dying I'll have to ask for your permission every time I want to go back?"
I asked it seemed clear that this wasn't the autonomy I asked for.
With a sigh
"You haven't opened your third eye yet" he said
"The third eye ?"
I don't know but the eye of Horus seemed to be the first thing I thought of.
That sounds like some acult stuff . I wondered
"No, the third eye is the sixth sense in a way " he said "it's a realm between thought and spirit, where 'we' - I dwel,blocked from humanity but if autonomy is what you seek then I'll have to pry it open. "
"'Pry' doesn't sound great."
"It isn't."
He stepped forward and placed both palms on my forehead. Cold seeped in instantly — not the kind that chills skin, but the kind that freezes meaning.
Then everything split.
No scream, no blood. Just separation. I was watching myself open like a broken zipper, body parting cleanly from skull to crotch. I wasn't dying. I wasn't even hurting. I was just... dismantled.
The space around me folded outward. The forest vanished. The world blinked out like someone had unplugged it.
Light — rivers of it — moved across the sky and through me. Every stream carried sound, whispering words I didn't understand but somehow remembered. Colors bent. Space twisted. My thoughts lagged behind reality.
It wasn't peaceful. It wasn't divine. It was raw data. Existence stripped of packaging.
For a moment, I saw how small everything was — time, flesh, the entire joke of "life." All of it pretending to matter.
"Goodbye Dain"
Then something pulled. Hard.
The stars collapsed inward, rushing through my eyes. The pain hit like static. My lungs filled. The air stank of pine and rot again. My body reassembled itself one shiver at a time.
I coughed, spat blood, stared at the dirt.
Alive. Again. Naked but I wasn't about to complain.