I found myself standing in the ruins of a palace.
It was burning.
It was also freezing.
Great marble halls stretched endlessly around me, their once pristine floors fractured and split open, veins of molten fire glowing beneath the cracks. Above, the ceilings were broken and collapsing, massive slabs hanging precariously as flames licked upward in slow, wavering motions, as if even the fire itself was struggling to exist properly here.
Layered over the inferno was ice.
Frost clung to shattered pillars, creeping up them in crystalline veins that glimmered faintly blue against scorched stone. Ice webbed across blackened walls, spreading unnaturally fast, as if trying to reclaim everything the flames touched. The snow drifted lazily through the air, soft and weightless, melting into steam before it could ever reach the ground.
Fire and ice coexisted in defiance of all reason. Neither winning nor yielding.
Figures moved through the palace, blurry silhouettes rushing past fallen columns, clashing steel against steel, bodies stumbling and collapsing onto the frozen marble.
None of them reacted.
None of them even noticed me.
They could not see me.
I should have been afraid.
I should have panicked.
Instead, I was calm.
Unnaturally so.
As I stood there, memories surfaced uninvited and vivid. The sea of flowers. The golden glow. The coffin at the altar within was my own face staring back at me. The blood-curdling scream. The way the world had glitched, collapsed, and died at my touch.
What disturbed me most was not the memory itself.
It was the fact that remembering all of it did not shake me.
At the center of the great hall, beneath a fractured dome where embers and snow fell together, a fierce fight was unfolding.
The same boy stood there.
No, he was not a boy anymore.
He was a teen now, his figure taller, broader, closer to my own. He stood with his back half turned toward me, posture tense, movements precise and controlled, like someone who had fought this battle more times than he could remember.
In his hands was a massive scythe.
The same weapon that had decapitated me before.
Across from him stood a figure whom I could only assume was a king, a figure draped in a long, flowing cape, its edges frozen stiff and scorched black. A crown sat crookedly atop his head, cracked and dulled. He wielded a spear, its tip crackling faintly with frost, ice crawling along the shaft each time he tightened his grip.
His movements were sharp, but it was obvious what was happening.
He was losing.
The scythe moved with terrifying grace, its wide arcs tearing through the air itself. Each swing warped space around it, freezing fire mid-flicker and shattering ice into static-like fragments that vanished before hitting the floor. Every clash sent shockwaves rippling through the hall.
Off to the side, something else moved.
A teen lady.
She crawled across the broken marble tile, dragging herself forward with trembling strength. Her long hair trailed behind her, matted with soot and frost. One of her arms was gone, torn away completely. She had sealed the jagged stump with hastily formed ice, frost crystallized thickly around the wound to stop the bleeding.
Where her arm should have been was only jagged crystal and blood that refused to fall, suspended unnaturally before evaporating into mist.
Her mouth was open wide.
At first, no sound came out.
Her screams were silent, eyes stretched wide in terror and desperation, face contorted as she tried to call out.
Then her voice returned all at once.
"Please.... I can still fix this...No. No. NOOOO!!!!"
Her plea echoed through the hall.
The boy turned.
Just for a moment.
He hesitated.
The king saw the opening and took full advantage of it.
He lunged.
The spear slashed across the boy's head, too fast to react to. Blood sprayed in a thin arc as part of his ear was sliced clean off, dissolving into glittering frost.
The boy did not scream.
Instead, the scythe twisted in his hands.
Metal groaned and folded in on itself, reshaping mid-motion. The curved blade straightened, and the shaft was shortened. The weapon became a sword.
And without hesitation, the boy drove it straight through the king's chest.
The crowned figure froze.
His cape fluttered once, then stilled. His crown slipped from his head, striking the ground with a sound that echoed far longer than it should have.
The girl screamed again.
This time, it shattered the air.
She slammed her remaining hand into the ground.
Crystal erupted outward violently, jagged and uncontrolled, racing up her body. It wrapped around her missing limb, constructing a crude spear-like arm, edges serrated, glowing faintly blue with unstable energy.
The marble floor beneath her exploded.
She launched herself forward at a terrifying speed, body screaming through the air, crystal arm drawn back to strike.
Something inside me snapped.
The same jolt.
The same pull.
Before I even realized what I was doing, my feet were moving.
Just like before, my body no longer felt like my own.
I was running.
Desperately.
My feet pounded against the marble, frost shattering beneath each step. I reached the boy just as he was pulling the blade free from the king's chest.
I grabbed his coat.
Yanked him backward with everything I had.
He staggered, dragged off balance, forced away from the dying king-
But the girl did not stop.
She could not stop.
I turned.
But I was too slow.
The crystal arm tore through my torso and burst out of my back in a spray of ice and blood. The impact lifted me off my feet, my lungs emptying in a soundless gasp as the world snapped out of alignment.
For a fraction of a second, everything ceased to exist for me.
Then...
"K̷̛͉͓͚͙͕͛̿̒͝R̵͚̪̙̲͐̔̿̇̈́ͅR̴̨͖̩̻̍̈́̾̾͠Ḁ̸̠̳̬̒̇͌̐͠A̷̛͓͙͖̩͂͐̇͆A̸͕͎͕͍̋͊̕͠Ä̷̛͇̮͓͎́̎͝A̷͉̟͛̒̏͘ͅA̷̖̤͔̅͂̄Ā̸̛͇̘̈́̐A̸̝̠͗̓͠A̵͖̻̬͋͑̐H̵̛͍͕̰̐̓H̵̬̻̗̄͂̿̇Ḧ̷̛̠̯̲́̿H̴̫̩̯͗̅̽H̷̛̼̙̠̿͆!̸̬͉͍̾̐͝!̷͕̿̒!̷͍̟̈́͌!̷̬̄̕!̴͕͗͠!̸͎͗̎"
Another blood-curdling scream jolted me in place.
It echoed again and again, layering over itself, scraping against frozen fire and shattered stone until it became unbearable. With its sound warped, the palace seemed to recoil from it.
The boy screamed.
A raw, gut-tearing scream that shook his entire body.
At the same time, the girl screamed too.
Both of them convulsed violently, bodies locking and spasming as if something unseen had sunk its claws into their nerves and twisted hard.
The crystal arm was still lodged straight through my torso. Frost crawled outward from the wound, spreading through my chest, my ribs, my spine. Every breath scraped like broken glass.
I was in pain.
Pain so vast it swallowed thought, and yet the girl screamed as if what she was experiencing eclipsed even that.
I forced my hands against the crystal embedded in me.
My fingers slipped in blood.
I screamed as I wrenched myself free.
The pain detonated all at once.
I crashed onto the ground, the impact knocking the last air from my lungs as blood poured freely beneath me. The crystal clattered away across the frost-covered stone, breaking apart into shards of light that flickered and vanished.
I coughed.
Blood splashed across the ice.
"No…" I choked, my voice barely a sound.
I dragged myself forward.
My arms shook violently. My nails scraped uselessly against the floor as I crawled toward him, leaving streaks of red across frost and ash.
Then his body began to break.
His form glitched violently.
He split into flickering copies of himself, overlapping, desynced, tearing apart, and snapping back together as if reality could not decide which version was real.
Then his body shriveled.
Right in front of me, his flesh dried and collapsed inward. Skin tightened against bone, cracking audibly as it overtook what remained. His frame turned brittle.
And then it fractured and collapsed into dust.
Gray.
Lifeless.
Just like before.
Just like the flowers.
My breath was shattered completely.
"No… no, no, no, no. Not again."
My voice broke apart as I clawed at what remained, trying to gather him, trying to hold him, trying to save him, trying to do anything that mattered.
But my hands dug only into fine gray dust.
It poured through my fingers like sand.
The more I touched it, the less there was.
I coughed again, blood burning my throat as it spilled freely onto the floor.
"Nooooo!" I screamed hoarsely. "Not like this. Not again. How many times? How many times do I have to watch this?"
My vision blurred, the palace folding inward at the edges.
"How should I…" I gasped. "How can I… how should I save you?"
Fire froze in place.
Ice shattered into nothing.
Sound stretched thin and tore apart.
"Matt!"
A voice cut through the void.
"Matt!!"
Hands grabbed my shoulders, solid and real.
"Matt!! Are you okay??"
I jolted awake with a strangled gasp, heart pounding violently as I sucked in air, drenched in sweat.
Someone was leaning over me, face pale with worry.
"Matt!! Matt!! Are you okay??" Nagi worriedly asked.
The echo of that scream still rang in my ears.