Karmic Rebirth

Chapter 23: Karmic Rebirth

Shiro’s breath came in ragged gasps, his hands instinctively flying to cover his mouth—as if muffling his own existence could protect him from what surrounded him. His world had transformed into something grotesque.

The ground beneath him pulsed like raw muscle, crimson-stained and riddled with bones, the brittle remains snapping beneath his trembling feet. The air reeked of sulfur and charred flesh, thick enough to choke. Flames licked the edges of twisted corpses, their blackened fingers reaching toward the sky as if frozen in their final cries.

Distant shrieks echoed through the abyss. Some were human—others were not.

Heat pressed against Shiro's skin, unbearably suffocating, as though the very atmosphere sought to melt him into the landscape. His body felt fragile—too weak, too mortal—against the weight of the suffering embedded in this world.

“What the hell is this place?” He rasped, staggering forward.

No answer. Just the slow, cruel murmurs of fire consuming the dead.

He clenched his jaw, forcing himself to steady his breath—but the moment his mind began to settle, something cracked open inside him.

His past.

Memories he had buried, distorted, and rewritten to serve his own survival— now resurfaced with brutal clarity. Every cruel action, every betrayal, everybody he had left broken in his wake.

His mother’s teary-eyed peas, begging him to change.

The nameless victims were crushed beneath his arrogance.

The ones who had suffered in silence, just like he had suffered once—before he had become the monster he had sworn he would never be.

And then, a voice…low, guttural, ancient, wrapped around his mind like fingers curling around his throat.

“You intrigue me, Shiro Hoshigaki.”

The words carried an unfathomable pressure, crushing him against the broken ground. The weight was beyond anything human—beyond life, beyond death.

He screamed. His bones groaned under the force, his ribs grinding against the earth as the voice continued, its tone neither mocking nor kind, just all-knowing.

“You reek of arrogance. Of cruelty. Of unearned strength. You have spent your life wielding pain—and now, you will drown in it.”

Shiro’s teeth clenched, his hands grasping at his skull, his mind fracturing under the weight of his own past.

“Yes,” the voice mused, dark amusement curling through the words. “You are the embodiment of suffering. You have spread it and received it. You have wielded it and cowered beneath it. And now—"

"You will become it.”

Shiro’s body convulsed, his muscles locking in place. His own name felt foreign on the voice’s tongue—like a brand being scorched into his soul. The agony was unlike any he had ever known, even in death.

“Tell me, Shiro Hoshigaki,” the voice whispered, tasting the syllables like a predator testing its prey, “Do you think yourself worthy of salvation?”

Shiro barely managed to lift his head—his eyes burning, his breath shallow, his body trembling under the unseen force that threatened to crush him into nothingness.

And against the voice—against the terror clawing at his flesh—he tried to respond.

While bearing this immense, bone-shattering, agonizing pain, the pain in his

lungs, the heat from the hellish plane. It burned his lungs, like someone—

It felt as though invisible blades stabbed him again and again, methodically, remorselessly—until even breathing became an act of rebellion.

The immense pain being inflicted on him was unbearable… But even with

These factors are against him—Shiro begins to speak.

… Even with
these factors against him—Shiro began to speak.

“I…” he gasped, his throat raw and torn, “don’t… need your power.”

The words weren’t brave. They were defiant. Stupid, even. Like a dying animal baring its teeth at a god. But they were real—his.

The moment they left his lips, the very world seemed to pause. The air held still. The flames dimmed.

Then—laughter. Not booming or chaotic.

Quiet. Ancient.

Mocking.

“Fascinating,” the voice said.

Shiro’s body twitches violently as invisible pressure returns, cracking something in his chest. Blood poured from his mouth in thick gurgles, but his glare never wavered.

“You reject the gift of numbness. The reprieve of forgetting. So be it.”

The voice slithered into his skull like smoke.

“Then remember. Remember everything. Let your pain ferment. Let it rot inside you like spoiled meat. You will carry it… until it consumes your mind and shatters your soul.”

His arms collapsed beneath him. His skin blistered where it touched the boiling ground. But still—he held on.

“You will come crawling,” the voice whispered. “Not today. Not tomorrow. But one day… you will beg to be emptied.”

And as the world faded into black, and Shiro's body gave in to unconsciousness, a final sentence licked his ears like flame:

“I will be waiting, little devourer of karma.”

Darkness fell.

But it was not the comforting dark of sleep or escape.

It was heavy. Alive. Breathing.

A void that pulsed like a second heartbeat inside his skull.

And within that blackness—Shiro saw.

Not with his eyes, but with something deeper, something primal.

He saw himself.

Fragments of who he had been—laughing, screaming, bleeding—shattered and drifted in a formless sea. Memories that once felt distant now roared with clarity: moments of cruelty, indifference, and vengeance. Every time, he stepped over someone weaker. Every time he justified the pain he caused. Every time he swore he had no choice.

The voice had not lied.

He was being emptied—but not of pain.

Of control.

Of certainty.

Then, through the sea of fragmented selves, a figure emerged.

A silhouette cloaked in smoke and bone-white threads. No face. No limbs. Just presence. It reached out—not physically, but with thought. With hunger.

And in that moment, Shiro felt it.

The deal is waiting to be struck.

The offer is not yet accepted.

But always watching.

“I will take your pain,” the god of death whispered one last time, now gentler… almost sweet. “And in return, you will lose yourself.”

Then—

A sudden jolt.

Shiro’s body convulsed violently as his lungs dragged in rancid air. His back arched off the burning ground, skin scraping against bone shards, eyes snapping open.

He was alive.

Barely.

The hellscape around him still breathed.

But something within him had shifted.

He couldn’t name it. Couldn’t define it.

But for the first time in a long time…
He was afraid.

And somewhere in the depths of that twisted world, the god of death smiled.