Izumi screamed himself awake.
The sound ripped through his throat leaving it raw, leaving behind a strong silence that echoed off the cave walls. His body moved as if still dying, choking, hands clawing at his chest. For a second, he was still there. The monster's teeth in his flesh. Elena's voice whispered "don't cry" against his ear as his blood spilled warm and endless. He could still feel the bite, the weight and then all of it flowed through him like fire.
Cold air struck him next. Real. Wet. Breathing.
He gasped for breath, dragging it in like a man surfacing through quick sand. The cave around him shined in and out of focus, walls beating faintly with the veins of green light that moved in sync with his heart. He jerked up too fast. Pain carved through his torso the same spot where the thing had torn into him and his hand flew there instinctively.
No gaping wound.
Just skin.
Not smooth. Scarred. Thick and twisted, his chest like something had stitched him back together from the inside.
Izumi froze, trembling so hard he felt his teeth chatter. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no, I… I—"
His words failed. His heartbeat was everywhere in his ribs, in his ears, pounding where there shouldn't be blood left to move. He dragged in air that felt like knives down his throat. Every sensation screamed alive. Too alive.
Water dripped nearby, steady like a left on faucet. Each drop was almost rhythmic, like it was counting something or someone.
Izumi looked around, mind spinning. The same fire pit. The same rough bedding. The faint trace of cold ash. It was all there again. Exactly how it had been before. As if everything that happened, the monster, the death, the system was only a dream.
Except… it wasn't.
The scar glowed under his palm, faint red light crawling through it like roots.
He couldn't stop shaking. "I died," he said aloud, but the word came out shallow, broken. He looked to the stream next, the only sound besides his heartbeat. And that was when he saw her.
She was crouched beside the water, again. The silver-haired girl.
Same dull bandages. Same hollow stare. Same scars that crossed over her features like she was sewn together by survival. She dipped a cup into the clear stream, and as she rose, the faint light caught on her eyes disinterested blue….
Izumi's breath slowed. It was like the scene repeating itself, frame by frame a cruel playback of a memory that wasn't supposed to exist.
His voice shaked and trembled. "You"
She looked up before he finished. Her expression didn't change, not shock, not curiosity, nothing. Just the slight twitch of her mouth, a barely-there frown that carried more disgust than of fear.
Izumi's throat felt dry. "Where…" He swallowed hard. "…where are we?"
This time, the girl tilted her head slightly, studying him. Her eyes darted down to his chest, right where the scar was. For a heartbeat, something in her gaze changed — a flicker of recognition, or maybe something darker. Then she muttered a string of words he still couldn't understand. Harsh.
"Wait—" Izumi reached out, desperate. "Please! I don't— I don't even know what's happening!"
Her reply came sharp and loud, words rolling off like broken glass. She picked up her satchel, moved impatiently, and flung it across her shoulder.
"Please…" Izumi whispered again, but the rest of it died in his throat.
The girl stepped back toward the tunnel opening. The shadows clung to her legs. And just before she vanished again into the dark exactly as before she turned around. Her face was unreadable. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she tossed something at him.
The stale bread struck his chest and fell to the ground.
And then she was gone.
Izumi sat in stunned silence, staring at the tunnel's mouth, waiting for anything her footsteps, her voice, the monster's dragging crawl. But there was nothing. Only waterHe pressed both hands to his skull, shaking. "This can't be real… this can't be again…"
But it was.
He could still taste blood at the back of his throat.
He could still feel the bite marks
The words from before whispered faintly in his mind—
"System function: Thanatophagic Rebirth active."
His stomach turned as something deep inside him, something that wasn't supposed to exist once answered again.
And for the first time, Izumi began to wonder whether he'd truly come back to life…
or if this was the beginning of death, repeating forever.
"System" whispered again
"System" Izumi whispers with a sense of trust
Izumi Armion
Level: 5
Health: 250
Mana: 25
Race: Human
Class: None
Stats:
Strength: 5Agility: 5Dexterity: 15Defense: 5Stamina: 3Charm: 5
Unallocated Stat Points: 10
Skills:Illusion Magic
Izumi stared at the screen until his vision blurred. The numbers glowed faintly, their glow reflected in the slick stone below him, turning his hands white. He blinked hard, but the panel didn't go away; it followed his eyes like something burned into his retinas. "No, no, no… this can't be real," he whispered, voice hoarse. His hands trembled as he waved uselessly through the air. "Games don't follow you. Games don't bleed. I died."
He pressed a hand to his chest, to the mark under his skin. The pain beneath it throbbed like an echo that wasn't his own, steady and heavy, like a second heart. The words in front of him shimmered—Health 249 → 250 → 249—as though the system could feel his panic. He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. "What are you… what happened to me?" His breath came ragged, every inhale hurting his throat.
The silence answered back.
It pressed in thickly, like the air itself was listening. The dripping of water resumed somewhere in the distance — that steady, the same rhythmic beat tap... tap... tap that felt too exact, too deliberate, to be natural. It grated against his nerves, each drop syncing with his heart until the sound became unbearable. The cave felt smaller suddenly, the walls breathing faintly in and out, glowing with veins of green light.
He tried to stand but his legs trembled, barely listening. The scar beneath his ribs glowed once, a flicker of red beneath the skin like a signal responding to some unseen command. The memory of teeth and blood came rushing back his own screams, the smell of rot, Elena's broken voice whispering you said you'd never leave me.
"Stop," he breathed, clutching his head. "Stop thinking about her. She's gone. She's dead. You're… not."
But then, faintly, behind the sound of dripping water, something else stirred. A scrape. Wet and uneven. Like flesh sliding across stone.
Izumi froze completely. The temperature dropped so suddenly that his next exhale came out white He turned toward the sound. Nothing. Just the steady hum of the labyrinth. Then again the noise, closer now a dragging weight, deliberate, slow. His stomach turned. His heartbeat thundered loud.
He moved backward until his shoulders hit the damp stone. Every nerve in his body screamed run, yet his body didn't move. His breath came in shallow bursts, the air breaking on his teeth. The cave grew darker at the edges, the green veins dimming as if the world was holding its breath.
The smell came next. Rot filled his lungs. His fingers dug into the rock, nails scraping against it until they split. There was a sound like bubbling breath something drawing air through a throat that shouldn't work anymore.
"Izumi…"
The voice slithered out of the dark behind him, soft, shaken, and familiar enough to break something in his chest. He didn't dare turn around. His vision danced. He tried to speak, but only a broken croak came out.
The air thickened, the heartbeat in his scar growing erratic, pulsing with him, warning him. He could feel it—something moving through the dark water of the cavern floor, slow and steady, dragging itself forward. The smell of death deepened, folding around him. And before he could take a breath, before his vision had fully adjusted to the dark, a figure began to crawl out of the black tunnel ahead.
Long, bent arms.
A faint, blue-glowing eye.
Half a face he recognized.
Izumi's knees buckled as that voice came again—sweet, broken, and wrong:
"Why… did you leave me?"
And the dark behind her began to move, alive with something bigger still.