Aurex woke up in another house, his mind hazy and uncertain. He drifted into the kitchen, still piecing together his thoughts, when something unusual caught his attention, he was alone. No voices, no footsteps, no one else in the house. That was strange. He had killed someone the night before, and by the town's rules, that person should have woken up in the same house as him. Had they already left? Or was something else at play?
Nerrot wasn't there, which brought Aurex a small sense of relief. Still, that comfort didn't last. The more he wandered through the town, the more the weight of everything pressed down on him. Every street, every house, every person seemed to reinforce the same thought: this place might be a perfect prison. A cage without walls, where the black fence and the rules kept everyone trapped. And the worst part was, he couldn't see any way out.
Aurex stepped outside again, deciding he'd make it a routine, every day, he'd walk the streets, observe the people, and watch for anything unusual. It was the only way he could start to piece together what this place truly was. As he moved through the quiet streets, a sudden noise caught his attention. He turned to see a group forming, twenty, maybe thirty people huddled together in one spot. They weren't fighting or laughing like usual. They were just gathered. Curiosity pulled him closer, and he made his way toward the crowd.
As Aurex drew closer, the sound of a child's sobs cut through the murmurs of the crowd. A boy lay sprawled on the ground beside a corpse, his cries raw and unrestrained. Next to him, a woman in her thirties knelt in shock, her hands trembling as tears streaked down her face.
"Mom, why won't Dad wake up? Why didn't he come back like the others?" the boy wailed, his voice breaking.
The people gathered around watched in uneasy silence, some sad, others just sighing as if this wasn't the first time. Aurex turned to a man beside him and asked quietly, "What happened?"
The man replied, his tone flat, "He probably didn't die at the right time. If that happens… they don't come back. He's gone for good."
Aurex stepped closer, his eyes narrowing. Lying there in the dirt was the man he'd killed yesterday, the reckless father. Only now, there would be no waking up for him.
Aurex stood frozen, staring at the lifeless body. His thoughts churned, struggling to make sense of it. The man he killed yesterday should have woken up, just like everyone else had before. On his first day, even those he struck down returned the next morning as if nothing had happened.
But now… this one was truly gone. No regeneration. No second chance.
A chilling thought struck him. What was different about yesterday? Then it hit, he'd killed himself. Something about that act must have changed the cycle. Maybe by taking his own life, he had unknowingly broken the rules, dragging the man he killed down with him. The idea gnawed at him. If that was true, what else could happen if he kept bending the rules?
Aurex lingered at the edge of the crowd, the cries of the child and the sobs of the woman digging into him. Guilt twisted in his chest. He hadn't known that killing himself would take someone else down permanently. He hadn't meant for this to happen. As he turned and walked away, he kept muttering to himself, "I didn't know. It's not my fault. It's not my fault." But no matter how he tried to justify it, the image of the grieving family wouldn't leave him.
Still, beneath the guilt, another thought surfaced, a realization. This place wasn't just about survival or chaos. There were rules, deeper and harsher than he first understood. And now, he had another piece of the puzzle.
Aurex pieced it together slowly as he walked through the silent streets, replaying the last two days in his mind. The daily chaos, the killings, the way everyone returned the next morning, it wasn't just meaningless violence. There was a system behind it. The killings weren't about survival. They were a release, a way to burn through anger and hatred. The important part wasn't winning. It was dying. Everyone had to die by someone else's hand to keep the cycle going. That was the rule.
But now he realized something crucial: if the person who killed you went on to kill themselves, it broke the loop. The one they killed didn't come back. They were erased for good. Otherwise, as long as everyone was killed by someone else, the cycle kept spinning, each person waking up in a random house the next day as if nothing had happened. One act of self-destruction was enough to shatter that balance. And Aurex had just proven it.
Aurex's thoughts spiraled as he wandered deeper into the streets, trying to make sense of what he'd just witnessed. What if it wasn't just about the cycle? Nerrot had said that when they died, they shared their grief, anger, and all the violent emotions with one another, burning it away so that, by morning, everyone woke up clean. But what if killing himself had interrupted that? If no one killed him, there was no one to absorb what he carried. The emotions stayed locked inside him. And the man he killed, whose emotions should've been released through Aurex, never received that "purification." His energy had nowhere to go. It turned inward and destroyed him.
Aurex was far from certain. Maybe ten percent sure, at best. There were too many gaps in his theory, too many unknowns. Still, it was the only explanation that made sense for now. And if it was true, then every choice he made from here on could decide who lived… and who was erased forever.