He died choking on ash.
Not heroically. Not quietly. Just a broken body on cracked stone, lungs filling with smoke, blood warming the back of his throat like syrup. His fingers twitched toward something—someone—he couldn't see anymore. The air stank of burning metal. The sky had gone black long before his eyes did.
He didn't scream. He couldn't.
And when it was over——he didn't go dark.He woke up.
Not in the place he'd died, and not in a new one. In nothing.
A space with no walls, no floor, no color. Just pressure—heavy, thick silence pressing against him from every direction. Like the world forgot to finish loading. He floated, or stood, or maybe collapsed inward. It didn't matter. There was no "he" here. No body. Just the ache of memory, and a single thought pounding in rhythm with his soul.
Why am I still here?
Then: a flicker.Then: code.
Glitches skated across the air—symbols in a language that didn't belong in any dimension, bending and reshaping like corrupted sigils. Lightless red glows. Whispering static. A ring of characters burned themselves into place in the void ahead of him, spinning.
[REBOOT ERROR // REBIRTH PROTOCOL INITIALIZING]
A voice—not a sound, but a presence—pressed into the back of his skull.
"Do you consent?"
Consent?
To what?
He tried to speak. His throat didn't exist. His thoughts fractured like glass in boiling water.
"Consent required. State your will."
He didn't know what was happening. He didn't even know his name.
But he remembered pain.
He remembered that mask.
And a woman screaming.
And fire.
Something inside him—the one thing left untouched by death—pulled itself upright.
Yes.
He didn't say it. He willed it. And the moment he did, the void responded with hunger.
[REBIRTH PROTOCOL ACCEPTED][COST: MEMORY PARTITION INITIATED][TERMS OF CONTRACT BOUND]
A new interface unfolded around him in rings of fire and wire. Glowing lines of law burned their way into his perception. He couldn't blink. Couldn't breathe. Could only listen.
"One Life, One Loop."You will not return to where you died. Each loop rewrites the world.
"One Sin, One Fragment."The Nexus is ruled by Seven Witches. Each holds a S.I.N. Fragment.
"One Reset, One Loss."With each death, something will be taken. Memory. Power. Self.
Then the world convulsed.
A force dragged him downward—or upward, or sideways, or across something beyond geometry. Pain surged. Not pain from injury. Pain from becoming. As if someone was building a body around him from scratch. Muscles, bones, nerves—each forged in white fire. A sigil burned itself onto the back of his neck, wrapping down his spine like molten circuitry.
He screamed.
Or tried.
And then—
He hit the ground.
Cold.
Hard.
Real.
He choked in a lungful of frost-bitten air, coughing violently as his chest seized. His arms trembled. His eyes opened.
He was lying in a narrow stone alley—cracked walls rising crooked around him, vines creeping across ruin. The sky above twisted with deep violet clouds, laced with red lightning that forked like veins across a dying heart.
He was alive.
But he didn't feel human.
Slowly, shakily, he pulled himself upright. His fingers trembled. His skin steamed faintly, like iron cooling in the forge. His clothes—dark, frayed, some kind of cloak—hung loose around him, charred at the edges. There was weight in his pockets. Something faintly humming on his hip.
He looked down.
No blood. No wounds.
No name.
And yet, somehow, he knew.
Something had changed.
A sound like a bell—metallic, sharp, digital—rang out in the air before him. Then: text. Glowing white characters floated, projected in the space before his eyes.
[REBOOT SUCCESSFUL][WELCOME TO DOMAIN: ORIGIN][S.I.N. FRAGMENT: UNCLAIMED][REBIRTH PROTOCOL V0.1][GLITCH DETECTED]
He stared, heart pounding.
Then a final line appeared.
"Begin. Or die again."
Kairo Vale—though he didn't remember the name yet—took a single breath.
And smiled.
Not because he was ready.
But because something inside him whispered:
This time, it's different.