Chapter 121: The Monster She Was Waiting For
In this world... how many times had I known this?
Flesh tearing. Blood spurting in burning jets. Then reforming, painfully, slowly, as if ashamed to have to begin again. And once more... the tearing. Again. And again. An endless cycle. An intimate theatre of pain and regeneration. An eternal restart etched into my fibers, into my bones, into what remains of me.
I no longer knew if it was a curse... or a function.
Pain had become mechanical. Resilience, an automatic reflex. Fear, an outdated abstraction. And in this succession of deaths never completed, something in me was crumbling — a shape, a name, maybe a memory. I survived like one recites a faded prayer, no longer believing in it, but unable to stop.
Then a voice reached me.
Soft. Feminine. Sadly familiar. Like an echo from another time. Like a memory that still dares to speak to me when I no longer have the means to answer it.
— This is the third time.
I didn’t turn around. I recognized that voice — or rather, my body did. Something inside me shivered, deep beneath the surface. But I refused to face her. I was too tired for that. Too worn. Too unstrung.
— Ah... yes. That’s true, I whispered, half-conscious, half-absent, eyes fixed on nothing.
My voice had no weight anymore. It slid out of me like everything else. It fell, without anchor, without will.
I stayed there, knees sunk into a scentless, colorless, directionless ground. The soil was lukewarm, like a dead belly, and I think I no longer had a real form. My body no longer reacted to anything — not to cold, not to blood, not to breath. It had forgotten me. Maybe that was for the best.