Death is a strange thing to understand.
We all know it's coming one day or another.
But in this shattered world, where war spills through every crack and no one trusts anyone anymore…
It feels closer. Louder. Like it's always watching.
But when do we really die?
Is it when the body rots?
Or is it when the last person who remembers us finally forgets?
Maybe it's neither. Maybe it's something worse.
Then again—
What do I know about death?
Like always, Desan was cold.
He woke up on a boat, drifting through an ocean of endless black. The water barely moved, but it shimmered with a wrong kind of stillness. Massive purple crystals jutted out from the surface like wounds—tall, jagged, pulsing faintly like dying hearts.
He sat up slowly, spine aching. Around him, other boats drifted in the same direction. Each one carried a figure slumped like him, lost in their silence. But it wasn't the passengers that unsettled him—it was the ones rowing.
Every other boat was being paddled by something... small. Childlike. Too small for a person, too smooth, too symmetrical. Their heads looked like porcelain masks, blank-eyed and grinning, bodies flickering like old film. Like they were fading out of existence, but didn't care.
But no one paddled his boat.
Of course.
Even in death, he was left alone—like the middle child in a family of twelve, forgotten unless something caught fire.
Did it matter? Not really.
He kinda knew why.
"I will not come for you."
Those words still echoed in his skull, fresh and bitter, like they were whispered into his ear just seconds ago.
The first thing he ever spoke to was the god of death himself. And for some divine, incomprehensible reason, that god hated his guts. Hated him enough to curse him like an ex who walked in on you cheating.
Nothing to be done about that.
Desan turned in his seat, eyes scanning the other drifting souls. Boats passed by, gliding silently. One, just like his, carried a man hunched over. Hollow. Familiar in a way Desan didn't like.
He called out, "Where are we going?"
The man turned.
And Desan immediately regretted asking.
His eyes bulged unnaturally, stretched wide like someone had grabbed his skull and pulled it open. His mouth twitched into a smile that was all wrong—too wide, too forced. And his face... it wasn't decomposing or bleeding. It was still. Empty. As if it hadn't been carved from flesh at all, but wax beginning to melt.
Desan felt his stomach twist.
The man didn't answer.
Just kept looking.
And then the boat drifted on, swallowed again by the black.
They paddled with calm, silent rhythm, toward something Desan couldn't make out. The dark swallowed it whole, but he could hear it—a roar. Like a waterfall, but too deep. Too massive. It didn't sound like water hitting stone—it sounded like worlds breaking.
Then came the creak.
Deep. Splitting. Wrong.
The boat groaned beneath him—splinters curling up like it was tired of existing—and started to sink into the dark water.
Desan didn't even think. Just moved.
With a grimace that might've passed as a smirk in another life, he leapt toward the other boat. Hands stretched, feet off the deck, teeth grit.
For a second, he thought he had it. He really did.
Then—phft.
He clipped straight through them.
Like they weren't real.
Like he wasn't.
His body hit the water with a slap that punched the breath out of him, and then it pulled hard. Cold, thick, not even wet, more like drowning in molasses and regret. Down he went, no bottom in sight. No light above. Just black.
Figures.
But then he began to drown.
Not just sink—drown.Like the water was crawling into him, breaching his lungs, making a home out of his body. Heavy. Slow. Inevitable.
Then the visions hit.
Flashes. Shards of something bigger—too big. Too real.
Images burned across his eyes like dying stars. Threads of reality twisting, weaving together, unraveling again. He saw it—but forgot it instantly. Each one left him emptier.
A monster with too many arms and no face.
A child without a mouth, crying soundlessly.
A pink tree, leaves like hands.
A white light, blinding—like something holy had burned inside it.
Then:
Cards. Hundreds. Floating. Shuffling themselves.One cracked in half, shaped like a heart.Others bleeding ink. Each card a sin. Each card a truth.
Then the voice.
Soft. Familiar.
It bled into him like an old wound splitting open again.
He knew that voice.
It was—
"Would you remember my story?"
Darkness.
Then
Desan gasped awake. Cold sweat clung to his back like a second skin.
He was standing in front of the door. The same one he had forced open. The room behind it still waiting.
No sign of the creature. No sign of the fight. No acid. No melted flesh.
Just... silence.
Like none of it happened.
But the taste of it still lingered in his mouth.
He ran a hand down his face, fingers trailing the bruises, the crusted blood, the places that still ached where flesh hadn't grown back right.
"You still in there?"
Silence.
Then, like smoke curling in the back of his skull, Velcrith stirred.
"Tch. Where else would I be?"
Desan didn't respond right away. Just let the silence hang. His mind raced, threading moments together—bleeding shadows, the dream, the boat, the goddamn curse.
"...You don't remember anything, do you?"
Velcrith sneered. "You're gonna have to be more specific, meatbag. I don't keep a diary of your delusions."
"The boat. The dark ocean. The voice. The god that said—" Desan stopped himself, jaw clenching.
Nothing.
Then a slow, dismissive laugh.
"Oh. That. Sounds like something you'd hallucinate after getting your face melted. Want me to interpret your dreams next?"
Desan's eyes narrowed. "It wasn't a dream, I died."
"Sure it wasn't. And I'm the honored one."
But something felt off in Velcrith's tone. Forced. Strained.
He didn't remember.
And that—that—was the part that scared Desan most.