Echoes That Never Die

Chapter 24: Echoes That Never Die

The first thing Shiro felt was the cold.

Not the absence of warmth, but a biting, unnatural cold that gnawed at his bones—from the inside. He opened his eyes to darkness, no longer searing hellfire, but an endless forest of bone-white trees swaying without wind.

He didn’t remember walking here.

He didn’t remember standing up.

But here he was—barefoot, shaking, and alive.

“…Hello?”

His voice was hoarse. Brittle. Like something unused for years.

No response.

Just the whisper of dead leaves crunching under unseen feet.

Every step he took left a smear of blood behind—his or someone else’s, he wasn’t sure. His body ached in ways that didn’t feel human anymore. Like his nerves had been torn out and rearranged by something that didn’t understand what a person was.

Something was wrong with him.

Terribly wrong.

His reflection in a stagnant pool confirmed it—his eyes weren’t the same. Not completely. The whites were faintly grayed, his irises ringed with obsidian. Like a stain that couldn’t be washed out.

And the voice…

It was still there.

Faint.

Hungry.

Waiting.

“You still resist.”

Shiro clutched his head, gasping. “Get out of me!”

“Oh, no… I live with you now.”

His scream echoed through the pale woods, but the trees didn’t respond. They just watched—if they had eyes—silhouettes twisting like spines under sickly moonlight. No wind. No insects. Just the slow groan of emptiness.

Shiro fell to his knees, vomiting blood and bile into the withered roots. His hands trembled, skin pale, cracked, and peeling. His breath came shallow, every exhale leaving behind something colder than before.

He wasn’t just injured. He was rotting.

“Each step forward is another you’ll pay for.”
“But you already knew that, didn’t you, little godless child?”

The voice no longer screamed. It whispered. Like it knew it didn’t have to shout anymore. It was getting closer. Closer to owning him.

“Shut up,” Shiro coughed, forcing himself to his feet. “You think I’ll just… break? Give in? Like, I’m yours?”

“You already are.”

The air rippled—and in that instant, the forest changed.

The trees bled.

Dark sap oozed from their trunks, thick and viscous like tar. It writhed as it hit the ground, slithering toward him in slow, intelligent trails.

Shiro backed away—but his foot sank into the mud and—

SNAP.

He screamed. His ankle bent sideways, flesh tearing. He fell back, catching himself just before the tar touched his hand.

He stared in horror as one of the black pools began to rise. Shape formed from the sludge. A warped figure—a child, crying, arms outstretched.

“D…Dad…?” the figure wept.

Shiro’s blood froze. He recognized that voice.

But it wasn’t real.

Couldn’t be.

“Do you know how many lives you’ve broken, Shiro?”
“Because I do. And I remember every face. Every scream. Every name you forgot to ask.”

The tar-child shrieked and lunged.

Shiro rolled, pain blinding. The forest twisted again—dozens of shadows pulling themselves from the earth, each one screaming, pleading, blaming.

He couldn’t run. He could barely crawl.

But something inside him refused to die here.

“I’m not going to fall for this,” he hissed. “I don’t care what you show me—I’m not your puppet.”

“You’re not?”

Suddenly—silence.

The forest stopped.

So did the shadows.

And then… the ground split open.

From beneath the tree roots rose a staircase made of jagged, broken bones, descending into an impossible darkness. The smell of rot intensified, clawing at his throat.

Shiro stared down into it.

“Then prove it,” the voice purred. “Go deeper. Keep crawling. If you truly think you’re stronger than your suffering…”

“Then face it.”

Shiro didn’t move.

He just stared.

The stairway of bones gaped before him like a wound in the earth, each step jagged, irregular, made from femurs and shattered skulls still stained with dried screams. They pulsed faintly—almost like breathing. Or perhaps remembering.

He didn’t know which terrified him more.

“Go deeper,” the voice had said.

As if it were easy.

As if all this pain was simply a path to tread.

Shiro tried to laugh. A bitter, cracked sound tore from his throat—but it died halfway, crumpling under the weight of something he hadn’t felt in a long time:

Guilt.

His body screamed for rest. His mind begged for silence. But something deeper—buried under all the bravado, the arrogance, the cruelty—had begun to stir.

And with it came the memories he had spent years burying like corpses.

His knuckles tightened until blood ran from the cracks in his skin.

You always thought you were justified, didn’t you?
That if you suffered enough, you had the right to inflict it.
But pain doesn’t work like that. Suffering doesn’t balance the scale. It warps it.
And now… look what you are.

The air grew colder—sharp and biting, like frost on exposed nerve endings.

He curled inward, wrapping his arms around his ribs as if to hold himself together.

But there was nothing left to hold.

His body was cracked. His soul was splintering.

And the silence—that haunting, suffocating silence—spoke louder than the voice ever could.

You were a tyrant in your own skin.
You silenced the people who begged you to change.
And now they are gone.
And you are still here.
Why?

His mind flashed—his mother, hands trembling, her voice hoarse from pleading:

“Shiro… Please stop. Please. You're scaring me…”

He’d slammed the door in her face.

He'd screamed that she didn't understand.

That no one did.

And when she was gone… he never asked where. Never looked.

Never cared.

He thought the pain was the price of survival. That cruelty was his armor.

But now, stripped bare before whatever god or devil lurked in this twisted world, he was just Shiro.

And that wasn’t enough.

It never had been.

“You’re not a tragic hero,” the voice whispered, gentle now—almost kind.
“You’re a consequence.”

Tears burned the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t wipe them.

He let them fall.

Each drop a confession.

Each one the weight of a past he could never undo.

He tried to stand, but his legs refused. His body trembled violently—starved, shattered, torn from the inside out.

Not from wounds. But from everything he’d never allowed himself to feel.

Shiro dug his fingers into the dirt, nails splitting, blood soaking into the rotted ground.

“I… I didn’t mean to…”

His voice broke.

“I thought I had to. I didn’t know…”

“You did.”

The voice wasn’t angry.

It didn’t have to be.

It knew.

And now… so did he.

The worst part wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t the memories. It wasn’t even the guilt.

It was that some part of him still wanted to be saved.

Still thought he deserved it.

Still clung to the hope that he wasn’t beyond redemption.

And in this place—this forest that bled and breathed and remembered—that hope felt like a sin.

His knees buckled, finally giving out beneath the weight of invisible chains—regret, guilt, memory. He collapsed onto the ground with a soundless thud. The pulsing earth was no longer just a terrain. It was a mirror. It was memorable. It was judged.

And it wasn’t done with him.

Shiro lay there, cheek pressed against the marrow-soaked dirt. His fingers twitched, curled in reflex—but there was no strength left to clench. Only a cold realization seeping into his bones:

This pain wasn’t punishment. It was payment.

Not for what he had suffered.

But for what he had done.

His breath shuddered. He remembered the look in Daiki’s eyes the day he betrayed him—shattered trust wrapped in silence. The sound of footsteps walking away. Not running. Just… done.

The cruel laughter echoing in his head wasn’t the god’s this time.

It was his own.

They hated you because you made them hate you.
They left because you were easier to abandon than to fix.

“Stop,” he whispered.

The air didn’t listen.

And then he heard her voice. That other one.

Sweet. Gentle. From a memory before everything broke.

“You were such a kind boy once, Shiro…
Why did you stop being kind?”

He wanted to answer. He wanted to scream.

But nothing came.

Only a guttural, shaking sob—raw and stripped of any pride.

He curled into himself, the way children do when they’re afraid. When they’ve done something they can’t take back. When they know the apology will never be enough.

The silence answered for him.

Too late.

A cold wind crept through the ribs of the corpses around him, whistling like laughter made of bones.

The voice—that god—had gone silent.

But Shiro still felt it watching.

Feeding.

Every broken thought.

Every sliver of guilt.

Every echo of a life he couldn't rewind.

The god of death didn’t need to torment him.

He was doing it to himself.

And that… was the cruelest part.

Time ceased to matter.

He didn't know how long he lay there—minutes, hours, maybe longer. The world around him breathed with him, or perhaps in spite of him. Even the flames, once roaring with fury, now crackled in cruel indifference.

He turned his head just enough to see the twisted, charred remains of a child’s doll nearby—half-buried in the viscera. Its single eye stared back at him. Hollow. Empty. Accusing.

Shiro shut his eyes.

But the darkness behind his eyelids offered no peace—only the afterimages of every scream he'd ignored, every smile he destroyed, every act of violence he justified in the name of strength.

He had wanted to become someone untouchable.

Unbreakable.

And now?

He was nothing but pieces.

The air thinned, or maybe his lungs just gave up. He couldn’t tell. His body trembled as though it still fought to survive, but his soul—his very sense of self—was coming undone.

“You chose this path,” whispered a voice again—not the god’s this time, but his own, echoing from some distant memory.

“And now you’re too far down to climb back up.”

A low rumble echoed from the ground beneath him, like the world itself was laughing. Or mourning. Maybe both.

But no one came for him.

No hand reached out.

No mercy.

No salvation.

Only silence.

Only fire.

Only the stench of everything he'd ever burned—inside and out.

And as the chapter of his past closed in ash and bone, Shiro finally understood.

This world didn’t hate him.

It was just showing him the truth.

That karma always returns.

Even if you have to suffer through every breath to see it.