An invisible force, colossal and utterly merciless, slammed into him. He and the motorcycle were launched from the road like toys, careening into the dense woods.
The bike cartwheeled through the air before smashing into a granite boulder with a deafening crunch. It exploded instantly, a blossoming flower of orange fire and shrapnel that lit up the forest for a split second.
Bradley himself was a rag doll in the storm. He flew backwards, his body twisting, and connected with the thick trunk of an ancient oak with a sickening, wet crack that echoed louder than the explosion.
He tumbled to the ground, landing in a heap on the snow.
"Aghhhhh, fuuuck!" The scream was torn from him, raw and primal, the sound of pure, unadulterated agony.
[Are you alright?!] Spirit Bradley materialized, his form frantic, phasing through the dissipating smoke.
"Do I fucking look alright?!" Bradley spat, blood speckling his lips. He gestured weakly with his head towards his legs. "Look, I just broke my back and my limbs!" His legs were bent at impossible, nauseating angles.
[Fuck, you and that damn mouth, you just had to jinx yourself!]
Spirit Bradley knelt, his translucent hands hovering over Bradley's ruined body. He funneled the very last, dregs of their shared energy into the wounds. A faint, golden light sputtered and died almost immediately. It was enough to partially knit the bone in one leg to stop the bleeding from being instantly fatal, but nothing more. Spirit Bradley's form wavered, becoming so transparent he was almost invisible.
[I have no spirit energy left...] he whispered, his voice faint with exhaustion and despair.
"It's fine..." Bradley tried to push himself up, but a white-hot spear of pain lanced up his spine, stealing his breath. "Ugh, for fuck's sake. Who the fuck hit us??"
As if to answer his question, the very air changed.
A heavy, suffocating aura slammed down upon the clearing, so dense it felt like drowning in tar. It pressed the oxygen from their lungs.
A chill, colder than the deepest winter night, raced down their spines. This presence wasn't just powerful; it was a fundamental wrongness. If the nurse's aura had been terrifying, this was absolute, soul-crushing dread. Every instinct in Bradley's body, every cell, screamed at him to flee, to hide, to cease existing in the face of this thing.
W-what the fuck? What the hell is this?
Footsteps. Soft, almost silent crunches in the snow, but each one carried an impossible weight, vibrating through the ground and into Bradley's broken bones.
Then, she emerged from between the trees. An old woman, her waist-length hair as white as the snow she walked on, her eyes burning with an unnerving, solid crimson light. She was barefoot, dressed only in a simple, threadbare white robe, untouched by the cold.
The aura radiating from her was not merely powerful—it was pure, raw, primal evil. A malignant force that had existed for millennia, far exceeding anything they had ever faced or even imagined.
Bradley struggled, his teeth gritted, grinding against the pain. His one good arm flailed, fingers scrambling through the bloody slush, trying to reach the hilt of his katana, which lay just inches away.
Then, she was there.
She didn't walk the remaining distance; she simply was, standing in front of him in the space of a single, skipped heartbeat. Those hellish red eyes locked with his, and he felt frozen in place, not by magic, but by a terror so profound it paralyzed him on a genetic level. His body trembled uncontrollably.
Icy sweat traced paths down his grimy back.
For the first time in his life, Bradley felt true, instinctive, and utter terror. This was not a fight. It was an execution.
The old woman stared, her expression one of mild, ancient curiosity. A hand, pale and skeletal, emerged from her sleeve. The nails were long, sharp, and blacker than obsidian. It reached slowly, deliberately, for his face.
Move your body, you bastard! Spirit Bradley bit his own lip hard enough to draw ethereal blood—a desperate, last-ditch effort to clear his mind.
He threw himself forward, a translucent shield rushing to intercept the woman.
She didn't even look at him.
With a casual, dismissive flick of her wrist, her hand connected with his chest. The impact wasn't loud; it was a soft, final thump.
Spirit Bradley was hurled backwards as if hit by a cannonball, his form rippling, crashing through a line of young pine trees and vanishing into the darkness.
Her focus returned solely to Bradley, as if she had just swatted a fly.
One of her black nails, as sharp as a butcher knife, traced a shallow line down his cheek. The cut was minor, but the pain was disproportionately agonizing, a searing, acidic burn that felt like it was flaying his soul.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, why can't I move? he screamed inside the prison of his own mind. It was as if an invisible, cosmic force had pinned him to the ground.
The old woman finally opened her mouth.
"You."
That single word was a physical blow.
It wasn't loud, but it carried a frequency that shattered something inside him. Bradley's ears instantly began to bleed, twin rivers of hot crimson streaming down his neck.
The sound felt like a swarm of metallic insects burrowing deep into his brain, a pain so intense it eclipsed the agony of his broken back. Blood trickled from his nostrils, and the world turned red as his eyes, too, began to weep tears of blood.
"You smell like my daughter..." the old woman's voice was like grinding stones, each syllable an assault. "Were you the one who killed her?"
Ah. So this is what that bitch meant by others coming for me... her mom. But how the fuck did she find me already??
He felt the aura pouring off her; she was a higher-ranked evil spirit, but in a completely different dimension of power compared to the nurse. This one was a concentration of pure malice and ancient wickedness.
Bradley, insane even in the face of certain, agonizing death, forced a bloody, cracked smile onto his lips. "Y-yes, I did. I killed your bitch of a daughter."
Insulting a being of this magnitude was pure, unadulterated madness, but he was long past caring.
"I-I could make you join h-her as well—wherever she went—probably hell." He grinned, a macabre rictus of blood-stained teeth. May she and her daughter go fuck themselves.
The old woman tilted her head, a flicker of genuine confusion in her hellfire eyes. "You? Kill me? You're funny." Then she smiled, and it was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen. It revealed a mouthful of sharp, needle-like teeth, rows upon rows of them, designed for shredding and tearing.
And then she laughed. It was not a human sound. It was a dry, rasping cacophony that shook the trees, making the branches rattle and the snow fall in sheets. It echoed through the forest, a sound of pure, unhinged amusement.
The fuck is she laughing for?
She wiped a non-existent tear from the corner of her eye. "I have not laughed like that in millennia."
Bradley knew, with a certainty that was as cold as the grave, that he couldn't win. She was beyond his understanding, a force of nature.
Then her hand moved. It was so swift it was barely a blur.
Spurt.
A fountain of arterial blood painted the snow in front of him a deep, vibrant red.
Thud.
Something heavy and solid landed in the gore. Bradley's disbelieving eyes drifted down.
It was his right arm, severed cleanly at the shoulder, the fingers still curled in a death grip around the hilt of his katana. The reality of the loss took a moment to register, and then the pain hit—a white-hot, all-consuming inferno that swallowed every other sensation.
It hurts, it fucking hurts! His scream was a silent, internal shriek, lost in the vast, uncaring darkness of the woods.
The old woman's hand shot out again, this time closing around his throat. She lifted him effortlessly into the air, his broken body dangling like a marionette with its strings cut.
"Well, she only died because she was weak," the woman said, her voice cold and devoid of any emotion, as if discussing the weather. With every word she uttered, fresh blood wept from his wounds, his ears, his eyes. "The stronger devour the weak, and weakness is a sin."
How cruel, he thought, the words distant in his mind.
"Just like how I am going to kill you here effortlessly, blame your weakness," she continued, her crimson eyes boring into his soul. "There is always a bigger fish in the sea. Try to remember that in your next life—if you have one."
Spurt.
There was no warning, no tensing of muscles. Her other hand, fingers curled into a claw, tore through his chest. It wasn't a punch; it was an eruption. A large, ragged hole appeared just below his sternum, a window into the ruined cavity within.
Bradley's body convulsed. He coughed, and a torrent of hot, coppery blood filled his mouth and spilled over his lips. His eyes lost their focus, the world blurring into a smear of dark trees and a bleeding sky. His legs kicked out in one last, spasmodic jerk, then went completely, utterly limp.
Thud.
She opened her hand, and his body dropped to the snow like a sack of meat. She turned without a second glance and walked away, her bare feet making no sound, her white robe soon swallowed by the shadows between the trees.
Bradley lay on his back, staring up at the patch of night sky visible through the canopy. His vision was clouding at the edges, a tunnel closing in.
Ah, so this is how it feels to bleed out in the snow....
A strange, profound numbness was spreading through him, a cold peace that was seeping into his bones, warmer than any blanket. The searing pain was gone, replaced by a heavy, welcoming stillness.
It feels peaceful...
His lifeblood continued to pump out onto the white canvas, a deep, spreading crimson that soaked the frozen earth beneath him.
It was a good and bad life, I guess. Mostly bad.
Memories, not of battles or pain, but happy ones, flashed behind his eyes: his parents' smiling faces, Kirby's stupid, infectious grin, the fierce, loyal presence of his other self. So the theory about your brain showing you your best memories before you die is true, huh...
He felt something warm and wet tracing a path through the blood and grime on his cheek. Tears.
Was I a good son, Mom and Dad?
Was I a good friend, Kirby?
Thank you all for putting up with me...
Bad-dump. His heart struggled, a slow, labored drumbeat in the silence.
I'm sorry, Vuitton, for leaving so soon, and thank you for everything...
His heart rate slowed to a crawl. Despite the gaping, mortal wound, there was no more pain. Only a deep, numb peace, an invitation to rest.
I know I'm a sinner, but if there really is a God up there... I only ask to meet up with my parents on the other side...
With that final, quiet thought, he drew his last, shuddering breath. His heart stuttered, fought for one more beat, and fell silent. The last of the light faded from his eyes, and his vision succumbed to an infinite, welcoming darkness.
His soul, a faint, flickering spark of light, slipped free from the ruined vessel of his body. It ascended, weightless, drifting up past the skeletal branches, through the cold, thin air, past the clouds, aiming for the distant, indifferent stars.
But before it could travel far, something in the cosmos shifted. A hand, vast as a nebula and woven from the very fabric of stars and constellations, reached out from the void. It was gentle, impossibly so for its size, and it closed around the tiny, fading spark of Bradley's soul.
[[You can't die yet... my child, you still have a lot of things]]
A voice, ancient and profound, like the sound of galaxies being born and dying, filled the infinite silence. The being was gargantuan, a glorious, living tapestry of cosmic energy, its form dwarfing the entire Milky Way.
[[I am sorry for robbing you of your long-desired wish, but I hope you will understand one day—why I've done this.]]
A torrent of warm, dazzling, cosmic energy—the stuff of creation itself—wrapped around Bradley's soul, mending its tears, infusing it with a light it had never known.
[[This is a second chance, an opportunity that I am giving you; there will be no third chances. I hope you find a reason to live, oh, my apostle.]]
And then, Bradley's soul vanished from the being's star-strewn grasp.
---
Inside a small, dingy room that smelled of dust and decay.
A boy sat slumped on a hard wooden chair, his head lolled to one side, unconscious. So still, so pale, he could have been mistaken for a corpse.
Suddenly, his body jolted. A gasp, sharp and ragged, dragged into his lungs as if he were breaching the surface after a lifetime underwater. His eyes snapped open, wide and wild with a terror he couldn't yet name.
"Where am I?" a raspy, unfamiliar whisper escaped his chapped lips.
A sharp, stabbing pain slammed into the side of his head. He winced, his hand flying up to touch the source of the agony. His fingers came away wet, sticky, and dark.
It as blood.
"Huh, what?"
His gaze dropped to his right hand, which was resting in his lap, gripping something cold and heavy. His eyes, struggling to adjust to the dim light, widened in sheer, unadulterated disbelief.
It was a revolver.
"What in the actual fuck?!"