Absolute

Speed was irrelevant to the spear of light. It was a concept that existed in one place and then, instantly, the next. Its target: my heart.

Roman stood frozen under the disguise of a Varnhame servant. He saw the spear, and he saw his friend who worked in his father's tavern about to be attacked.

His mind was conflicted. That undead boy was a target, an enemy of the families.

Do nothing. That was the voice of the knight.

But another was still in the back of his mind: what did he want to do? Just be a good man.

His father's voice echoed in his mind. His hand moved to his chest, his fingers closing around the golden locket hidden beneath the tunic. It was warm.

What was he doing? Was he betraying the wisdom of the family he served? It was treason. It was suicide. He was a knight.

Fear merged with his soul. He heard his heart; he was terrified. But the more he tightened his fingers on the locket. The warmth spread.

"No," Roman whispered to himself.

He stepped forward, planting his feet on the ground. Placing himself directly in the path of the golden spear. He slammed the locket against his own chest, feeling its warmth closely. He wasn't a great knight nor a great fighter.

"Knight's vow..." He whispered. Grunting, he put all of his energy into a single purpose.

A shield of warm light erupted from Roman. It was the light of a bonfire in the middle of a cold winter night.

At that exact same moment, Eden moved. She saw the spear, then the undead boy. She didn't wait; her mind ran through everything that she experienced with him.

Then she saw Roman, the foolish, loud-mouthed human knight, choosing to die.

She ripped her hand across her own palm with her sharp nails, a line of blood appearing on her pale skin. Vampires don't bleed, but if they do, it's magic, a simple fuel for their goal.

She didn't flinch and put her bleeding hand forward, and her life force started to be drained. Blood surged from her. It twisted and coiled around, making a shield.

The two shields formed into existence just as Gilbert's spear arrived.

The impact was apparent. Roman's shield of light shattered into a million pieces. The force of the impact threw him backward, the locket burning in his chest. He felt a rib crack, the air leaving his lungs with a single gasp.

Eden's shield evaporated in a form of black steam. The backlash sent her stumbling, vision blurring, her shattered hand refusing to regenerate.

It was an utterly insufficient stand.

Their combined power didn't stop the spear; they couldn't. But even for a fraction of a second, they did slow it down.

For one precious second. I stood there.

I extended my hand to the spear, taking the attack, which ripped my hand into mush. A scream ran out of my mouth.

However, I cut the lines in the spear, making it dissolve into nothing.

I stood there.

I was no longer looking at the fight or what was happening. I was examining the aftermath of the life-draining curse.

Its caster is broken. The curse was lost, collapsing inward. The formless black goo was shrinking, condensing into a single point of absolute nothingness. It was about to detonate.

I could have run. I could have used that single priceless second to escape. Conall had betrayed me, used me, and left me to die. I owed him nothing.

But my gaze fell on the screaming figure on the ground. Why? How did it come to this?

A boy in a cage. That's what I saw.

With the last ounce of strength in my being, I lunged forward. Ignoring the disintegrating shields and the reeling from my friends.

I placed my hand onto the black goo.

I saw the tangled, chaotic lines of the curse that Conall was about to unleash.

And with the final surge of power I had, I simply cut all of them.

There was no sound. The black point of the curse didn't explode, and it went silent before fading into nothing.

I had saved them all; I had saved the lords. My friends. Gilbert.

And the one who betrayed me.

The island was silent.

Conall lay broken on the ground. He stopped screaming; the physical pain was gone. However, through all the mixed emotions he felt, a single one bloomed. Clarity.

For the first time since he was a child. Since he had first felt the validating voice from the back of his mind. His thoughts had nobody else but him.

He saw the world simply as it was. A gray sky, dark rocks, and an endless frozen sea.

He saw the terrified faces of the lords he had tried to lead to a war. He saw Eden, his sister, on the ground in pain.

He saw Gilbert, the sage. His expression was not even focused on him anymore. Gathering his power for another attack.

He knew with a certainty that had nothing to do with ambition or anyone else, that his story was over. He was a dead man.

He was just a person. An unloved son. A resource to be consumed for his father's selfish quest. Every grand ambition, every justification for bloodshed, had been nothing more than a child's desperate attempt to build a self where one had never been allowed to grow.

It was the logic of a child screaming for attention in a cold, empty place.

He had become everything his father had made him out to be.

He felt like the loneliest man in the world. lonelier than his own father.

Conall's gaze shifted to me. He saw the exhaustion in my eyes and my trembling body.

Conall's eyes had no malice. But one single look of gratitude.

He fell back, his body hitting the ground. And looked at the sky, the snow falling. The endless grey sky.

And he began to laugh.

It was a joyful laugh; it was the laugh of a prisoner who had been freed.

He turned his head to his sister, whose eyes widened in shock at her brother's laugh.

Their eyes met. "Eden." He whispered. His voice was barely heard in the wind, but Eden heard it as clearly as if he had screamed it. "All I ever wanted was for us to be happy. For our people not to live in fear. But I was wrong; this whole world is just another cage."

Her eyes reflected him, the boy she never talked to because of how scared she was. To be attached to someone who will die, the person who made her hate herself the most.

"If you find a moment," Conall's voice became weaker. "A single moment where you are happy... Laugh. Laugh until you can't anymore. Laugh for us and for everyone you care about."

In slow motion, he reached down with a trembling hand and picked up a sharp, jagged piece of the frozen snow that Gilbert's power had created. His hand trembled from the cold feeling.

It was his first real choice. An act of freedom.

He pulled the shard of ice across his own throat.

A clean, deep cut. Vampires shouldn't bleed. But this was black blood, his own life force, spilling onto the grey rocks.

A line of black blood flowed onto the grey rocks around him.

His body went limp, a final sigh escaping his lips. His hand fell back, and his eyes were still open, reflecting the grey sky. His face was still laughing at the world.

As his life faded, I noticed the lines around him. Which were connected to me.

The Reverse Death curse, the law bound to the title of Lord Winfield, changed.

It was a vengeful line screaming, seeking the one responsible for the death of the new lord.

It moved through the air seeking a target, but it found none.

Its killer was Conall Winfield himself.

The curse, unable to attach itself to a new host. swirled in confusion for a long moment, then it thinned and dissolved into nothing.

The Cathedral Island was silent. The war was over before it began.

Gilbert didn't care. The politics, the curses, Conall's death. It was all meaningless. His focus is still one.

His second attack wasn't going to be merciful. It wasn't a spear.

He didn't raise a hand or speak a word. He simply unleashed a wave of pure force. An invisible, unstoppable energy of mana that wrapped everything around it.

It was a raw physical will.

It slammed into me.

I had no time to raise a shield or cut any lines. I didn't even have the energy to move or blink.

I took the full, unmitigated force of the blast.

My body disintegrated. It was painful, the feeling of being erased, atom by atom; my flesh was gone, then my bones turned to dust. My blood vaporized. My consciousness, the very essence of "Taro," scattered like sand in the wind.

It was more painful than anything.

And then, in the midst of all that pain, I found a profound sense of déjà vu.

I was back at the hospital. The annoying chat people had. The coughing of the patients.

The ground was shaking, and a terrified girl was in a wheelchair. I guess I should've been better.

I was back at the fire, the flames consuming every part of me. the sound of burning wood and the suffocating heat getting into my lungs. Dane's screaming face. I want to live.

This was the third time. The pattern felt complete. He was dying again.

Energy from Gilbert's attack was gone. The lords, Roman, and Eden all stared in horror at the empty space where Taro had been.

But then, something impossible happened.

A single mote of dust stopped swirling. Then another. They began to gather, pulled together by something not magical or comprehensible. They began reforming.

The dust became bone, and the mist became flesh. and the vapor became blood.

In the space where he was gone. He was whole again.

I stood before a stunned Gilbert, before the horrified lords, before my friends. I was completely unharmed. Not a scratch, not a burn, not a speck of dust on my simple clothes.

I looked down at my hands, which still had the scar from the fire. The black ring on my finger, the tool that Conall had given me. The tool to cut down those lines. It couldn't handle the logic of what had happened.

It was connected to 'Taro,' but 'he' was gone, but also still there. With a faint, breaking sound. The ring cracked, and then it crumbled, dissolving into black powder. Which was swept away by the wind.

I laughed. I felt nothing but the true realization of my true nature. In that moment, I finally understood.

I was not a night creature. The undead were creatures that had once been alive; their cycle of life and death had logic.

I wasn't that.

I wasn't a day creature. None of those were me.

I am someone who's from Earth. A doctor. I am not a creature that has died and returned. I was a creature that could not die, because death, as this world understood it, did not apply to my nature. My existence was simply absolute.

The world that the ring made me see, the lines, the threads that I cut. They were the reality; I was from that world. And the person who 'I' am was just a vessel for me.

When this vessel was destroyed, 'I' simply rebuilt it. I was an anomaly; I finally understood Gilbert's fear. I, too, am scared of what 'I' am.

I looked at the shocked expression of the sage, Gilbert Bradforde Froste. And I was calm.