I woke up to the smell of sugar and warm wax.
For half a second, hope flickered. Not the bright kind, just the stubborn reflex that shows up before reality finishes loading. And then the System did what it always did.
A translucent window appeared at the edge of my vision.
[Date Confirmed: 04.12]
[Age: 21]
[Checkpoint: Birthday]
[Death Count: Active]
I stared at the last line with a deadpan look as if The System could see my expression.
Active. Right. Active. Is there anything new?
No number. No explanation. Just a status, like a task that refused to be closed.
So it was this day again.
Outside my room, someone moved around the hallway. Footsteps, a soft hum, the clink of a plate. My mother, timing everything as though trying to be casual.
In the corner of my vision, my stats hovered the way they always did.
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Vitality: 1
Intelligence: 47
Luck: minus infinity
The last line pulsed in red.
It blinked like a warning light on a machine no one wanted to repair.
I sat up slowly. My body felt normal. It always did after a reset. No bruises, no lingering pain, no sense that months had just vanished. The System cleaned the slate with the same blunt efficiency as a clerk stamping forms.
I swung my legs off the bed and stood. Another window surfaced, then faded.
[Daily Advisory]
[Recommendation: Avoid fatal outcomes]
I let out a quiet laugh. The sound came out dry.
That advice had followed me since childhood. It never changed, even after I started dying in ways that made no sense. Falling objects with no source. Escalators snapping. A loose bolt at the exact second I walked beneath a beam. A dog lunging at the wrong time. A stranger stumbling into me as a train arrived early.
Luck minus infinity meant the world did not need a reason. It only needed a moment.
I walked to the mirror and looked at myself.
Theo Finley. Twenty-one.
Pure silver hair that never stayed in place, no matter how often I tried to tame it. A face that looked ordinary at a glance, the kind people forgot the moment they turned away. If someone actually stared, they might notice the balance, the lines that leaned closer to attractive than plain, but luck ensured no one ever did.
My eyes were the problem. Or the secret.
Deep gold, unnatural enough to draw attention, yet almost no one had seen them clearly. I kept them hidden beneath the brim of a worn baseball cap, lowering my gaze out of habit. They were too steady, too calm, for someone who had already died more times than the law said was possible.
My features were a blend of my parents. Same bone structure, same coloring, same familiar resemblance. Except the eyes.
Even my parents did not know where they came from. They assumed an ancestor, buried somewhere far back in the family line, from a time before records mattered. After all, mine were the only colored eyes anyone in our family could remember.
By all logic, that should have flagged something.
It did not.
Thanks to my luck or rather the bad part of having one, or whatever passed for it, not even the government division that handled the System marked me as important. No alerts. No investigations. Just another unlucky citizen with decent intelligence and nothing worth watching.
I brushed my teeth. I washed my face. I practiced breathing like a normal person.
My parents had never treated me like a curse. That was the strange part.
From the day my stat sheet printed red, doctors warned them. Counselors advised distance. Risk analysts suggested emotional detachment, just in case. A child with luck like mine was statistically unsustainable.
My parents ignored all of it.
But… No one knew. About my real condition. The abnormality in my Personal System. Not even my loving parents.
To them, I was just unlucky. Dangerously unlucky, yes, but still within the range the System allowed. They were told early on that my Luck stat was abnormal, that accidents would follow me more often than others. Doctors explained it gently. Officials explained it with numbers. Risk counselors suggested coping plans, safety routines, and constant supervision.
What none of them said was that I was doomed.
So my parents did what parents do. They adapted.
They watched me more closely. Walked a little faster when I crossed the street. Double-checked locks, railings, schedules. They blamed the world instead of me. Every scrape, every incident, every narrow escape became just another example of how cruel chance could be.
They never saw the deaths. They only saw a child who survived.
As I grew older, my Intelligence stat climbed at a steady pace. Every year, without fail. The government noticed that part. They always did.
In their reports, it was labeled compensation. A statistical balance.
Negative Luck often came with heightened cognition, they said. A survival trait. A mind sharp enough to predict danger, plan ahead, and reduce risk. When my grades improved, when I buried myself in books and practice, no one questioned it. They assumed I was working harder because I had to. Because I was scared. But… I'm not.
At some point, I stopped being afraid of dying.
I do not remember when it happened. Fear does not vanish all at once. It wears down, chipped away by repetition, until there is nothing left to protect.
The first few times, death was terror. Panic so sharp I could taste metal. I screamed, begged, promised myself I would do better next time.
Then it became frustration, irritation. Now, it was just another part of the day.
Like breathing.
You do not panic when you inhale. You do not celebrate when you exhale. It happens because it has to. Death was the same. An expected step in a routine I never agreed to.
I learned its patterns. The way the world paused before something went wrong. The subtle wrongness in timing. A sound arriving half a second too early. A shadow where one should not exist.
When that feeling came, I did not run. I sighed. Because running never helped.
I did not fear the pain either. Pain has a limit. I knew exactly how long it lasted before everything went dark. I had memorized the countdown without trying.
If anything, death had become inconvenient.
It interrupted meals. Conversations. Trains. Sometimes sleep.
The real annoyance was not dying. It was waking up again.
Back on my birthday. Back to the same candle. The same messages. The same worried faces that did not know why my smile never quite reached my eyes.
People say surviving changes you. They are wrong. Dying repeatedly does.
After a while, death stops feeling like an ending.
It starts feeling like background noise. And when something becomes background noise, you stop listening for it.
What my parents never questioned was the number of times I have reawaken. Because they did not know. But should, in case, only be one.
The System allows rebirth. Once, for every citizen. A safety net built into existence itself. Most people never even trigger it. A few do, then live the rest of their lives more carefully.
Realm workers are different.
Those who register for cross-realm activity earn more leeway. Higher clearance. More protection. The strongest among them can trigger rebirth twice. In rare cases, three times. That is the absolute limit. Anything beyond that is not recorded.
Anything beyond that is not supposed to exist.
I had never registered for realm work.
As far as the general System knew, I had one life. And I had already spent it.
Yet every time I died, I came back. Quietly. Cleanly. Without leaving a trace behind. No alert. No System broadcast. No red flag on any government screen.
To the world, I was a boy who studied too much to stay safe.
To my parents, I was a son who needed care, not suspicion.
To the System, I was apparently nothing worth investigating.
And to myself I was the only one who remembered how many times I had already said goodbye.
~~~
My phone buzzed waking me up from my thought.
A message popped up from my father.
"Happy birthday. Registration at ten. Do not be late."
He always added the last line. He believed punctuality could solve most problems, or at least keep them contained.
For him, this was my first twenty-first birthday. The day I officially stepped into adulthood. The week I graduated. The moment everything was supposed to begin.
For me, it was a return point.
I opened the government portal and logged in. My profile took a second longer than usual to load, as if the system itself needed to confirm I still belonged here.
IDENTITY: THEO FINLEY
CITIZEN CLASS: STANDARD
SYSTEM REGISTRY: ACTIVE
ANNUAL UPDATE: DUE TODAY
Below it, my stat history stretched back year by year.
Strength never moved.
Agility never moved.
Vitality never moved.
I was not overweight. Not skinny either. Just average. The kind of body that blended into crowds. But averages meant nothing when your stats refused to grow. I tired easily. My legs slowed before others did. My lungs burned faster. Long stairs, crowded hallways, standing too long in one place. All of it wore me down quicker than it should.
People noticed that. They always did.
Most people saw their stats as guidance. I saw mine as a joke that refused to land.
A soft knock came from my door.
"Theo, are you awake?" my mother called.
"I'm up," I said.
I opened the door. She stood there holding a small cake box with both hands, as if it might slip away if she relaxed. Her smile was careful. Her eyes carried the kind of tired that never fully disappeared.
"Happy birthday," she said. "I made the frosting lighter this time. You said you don't like it too sweet."
She remembered, she always does.
That memory came from another loop, another version of me who had said the same thing. To her, it was just good parenting.
"Thank you," I said.
She stepped inside and placed the box on my desk. A single candle stood in the center.
One candle had been my suggestion years ago. Twenty-one felt excessive. One felt safer. Like bargaining with something that never negotiated.
She looked at me for a moment, then at the side of my face, then away.
"You look pale," she said. "Did you sleep?"
"I did," I replied softly, trying not to worry her too much.
That was not entirely true though. Even when I slept, my mind stayed alert. Habit learned from too many nights that ended badly.
She nodded, too quickly.
"Your father's already downstairs," she said. "He wants to leave early. With graduation and registration happening at the same time, he's worried the office will be packed."
"It will definitely be, last time it's quite a chaos too," I said.
It always was.
Registration season turned the city into controlled chaos. Lines wrapped around buildings. People argued with scanners. Parents whispered about stat drops. Students refreshed their profiles like their futures depended on it.
For many of them, they did.
My mother hesitated, then reached out and wipe the fringes away from my eyes. Her fingers trembled just slightly.
"You'll be careful today, right?" she asked.
There it was.
Not fear of death. Fear of accidents. Of trips, falls, wrong timing. The same fear teachers had when they assigned me group projects. The same look classmates wore when they decided sitting next to me might be a bad idea.
I had learned early how to be quiet. How to keep my head down. How to endure the laughter when something broke near me and everyone decided it was my fault.
I looked at her. I wanted to tell her that careful did not matter.
That I had been careful the day a locker collapsed.
Careful the day a railing snapped.
Careful the day a classmate shoved me as a joke and the stairs ended too soon.
Instead, I nodded.
"I will, don't worry too much" I said.
She smiled, relieved, and left my room like she was stepping away from something fragile.
I closed the door and looked at the cake. The candle waited. So did the checkpoint.
I lifted the lid. Chocolate frosting, pale and smooth. She had remembered again. Even if the reason came from a version of me that no longer existed, it still mattered.
I lit the candle.
The flame reflected faintly on my phone screen. For a moment, my room looked softer. Safer. Like a place where nothing followed you.
I leaned forward. For a moment, I pretended everything is normal.
Then the System chimed.
[Checkpoint Reinforcement Active]
[Note: This date has been designated as a return point.]
[Reason: Unavailabol]
The word was misspelled again. It always was.
I blew out the candle. Smoke curled upward, thin and uncertain.
I grabbed my jacket and wallet, checking my pockets out of habit.
ID. Registry card. Emergency cash. A charm I did not believe in.
The government-issued band rested on my wrist. It verified identity, processed transactions, and tracked location. If something happened, they would find me quickly.
If there was something left to find.
Downstairs, my father stood by the door in a pressed shirt, shoes polished, posture straight. He looked at me and nodded once.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yeah," I replied casually.
My mother handed me a thermos.
"Coffee," she said. "You always forget to eat."
I took it. The warmth settled into my hands as we stepped outside.
The sky was clear. The kind of morning people called lucky.
Luck minus infinity disagreed.
As we walked to the car, a System window rose quietly in my vision.
[Event Detected: Annual Registry Update]
[Risk Rating: Elevated]
[Suggestion: Proceed with caution]
I stared at it until the words blurred.
Proceed with caution.
As if caution were enough. I snorted.
As the car door opened, another window appeared, smaller, sharper.
[New Condition Registered]
[Checkpoint Stability: Weakening]
[Cause: Repetition Threshold Exceeded]
My breath caught because that was new.
The System had never admitted change before.
The engine started and our seatbelt clicked.
I kept my eyes on the floating text.
Weakening.
Threshold.
Exceeded.
If the checkpoint broke, I did not know where I would go. Or if I would come back at all.
The car merged into traffic, flowing toward the registry district.
I tightened my grip on the thermos, not because it helped, but because my hands needed something solid.
Beyond the skyline, the gates to the other realms pulsed behind reinforced walls, promising wealth and power to those strong enough to survive them.
I was not strong, fast or durable.
I was smart.
And cursed with luck that dragged death toward me like gravity.
Yet for the first time, the System hesitated.
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
If the checkpoint was weakening, then something was about to change.
Either I finally escaped.
Or the ending learned a new way to find me.
~~~
The registry district was already crowded when we arrived.
Cars crawled along the road, horns blaring without purpose. People spilled onto the sidewalks, clutching documents and refreshing stat windows with restless fingers. Graduation season always did this. Too many futures trying to move forward at the same time. My father parked two blocks away.
"Your mother's meeting us inside," he said as we stepped out. "She finished your graduation paperwork early."
I hmnd in response. That sounded like her.
Walking through the crowd drained me faster than it should have. My legs felt heavy, each step slightly delayed, as if my body struggled to keep pace with my intentions. I was not weak enough to stand out, but slow enough to be noticed.
Someone brushed past my shoulder.
"Watch it," a voice muttered, irritated.
I lowered my head and adjusted my cap.
The registry building loomed ahead, all reinforced glass and clean white concrete. The lower floors had no windows. They never did. Systems did not like distractions.
Inside, the noise doubled. Voices overlapped, numbers scrolled across wide screens, wristbands vibrated constantly as queues updated.
My own band pulsed.
[Queue Assigned: B-217]
"That's not bad," my father said. "We've had worse."
We found seats near a wide column. My mother was already there, waving lightly, a new small cake box tucked under one arm like she was afraid to set it down.
"You made it," she said, relief softening her voice.
"Barely," my father replied in a huff.
I sat down. Fatigue settled into my muscles almost immediately. Not pain. Just the quiet reminder that my body had limits it refused to move past.
A group of students passed by, graduation pins still clipped to their collars. One of them glanced at me, then nudged his friend.
"Isn't that him?"
"The unlucky one?"
"Yeah. I heard he collapsed during training."
"Figures."
They snickered softly and moved on.
My mother stiffened. My father shifted his weight. Neither said anything. Drawing attention only made things worse.
A chime echoed through the hall.
[Queue B-217, please proceed to Counter 6.]
We stood and proceeded to the counter. The clerk that greeted us looked young, her expression already worn thin by repetition. She scanned my wristband, then paused.
"Hm."
My stomach tightened.
"Is something wrong?" my mother asked.
"No," the clerk said, but her eyes lingered on her screen. "Just… processing... a little bit too slow if I may add."
Her fingers moved slower than they should have.
A faint pressure settled behind my eyes. Then a System window slid into view.
[Checkpoint Stability: Fluctuating]
[Status: Verification Delay]
Delay. Not failure.
The clerk looked up. "You're graduating this year?"
"Yes," I answered in a clipped tone.
"And no realm registration planned?"
"Uhm… No."
She nodded. "Good decision. Probably safer."
My wristband warmed.
[Stat Update Initiated]
Lines of data flowed. Calculations layered over one another. Then everything stopped.
The clerk frowned.
"That's odd," she murmured to herself.
Around us, nothing changed. No alarms. No warnings. The hall continued as if the world had not just hesitated.
My vision filled with muted red text.
[Termination Record: Pending]
[Rebirth Allocation: Unused]
Pending. Unused.
Those words did not belong together.
The clerk blinked and cleared her screen, her movements quick now, practiced.
"Sometimes records take longer to close," she said, smiling too fast. "It happens with high-risk stat profiles."
High-risk. That was the label they always used.
The system then resumed.
[Stat Update Complete]
She slid the confirmation card toward me.
"Your Intelligence increased again," she said. "Congratulations."
My father exhaled. My mother smiled, tension easing from her shoulders.
"See?" my father said. "All that studying paid off."
I nodded.
To them, everything made sense.
To the System, something had been left unfinished.
As we turned away, one last message flickered faintly, almost hidden beneath standard logs.
[Note Logged]
[Subject Theo Finley exhibits incomplete termination cycles.]
Not excessive nor abnormal.
But Incomplete.
We blended back into the crowd. Voices swallowed us. Screens flashed new numbers.
Behind us, the registry continued its work, unaware it had just brushed against something that refused to end.
And for the first time, I felt it clearly.
The quiet, unsettling sense that something had tried to close a door and found it still open.