The world had not moved on. Not yet.
Jaka stood in the aftermath, the wind brushing ash across a battlefield that now whispered like a graveyard. Around him—bodies. Still. Silent. Frozen mid-motion, mouths agape, eyes glazed over in that final, glassy stare. They would never blink again.
And one of them was dead by his hand.
He couldn't breathe right. Each inhale snagged on something knotted in his chest, ribs aching with every shallow gasp. The blood on his hands—his hands—hadn't dried.
No one else seemed shaken.
Not Arya. Not Nala. Not even Dyah Netarja.
They stood nearby, speaking in low tones. Their glances flicked his way now and then, quiet and assuming. They thought he was just… processing. Struggling with the first kill. That inevitable baptism in blood every warrior faced.
But they didn't understand.
They were born of this world. Molded by it. Raised on stories of war and survival, steel and fire. Here, killing wasn't just expected—it was routine. Necessary, almost second nature.
But Jaka—
He came from a place where peace wasn't a prize fought for, but a given. Where violence was the exception, not the rhythm of life. Where death was distant, tragic, never wielded.
They thought he was grieving the act.
But this wasn't grief. This wasn't trauma.
This was wrongness.
Something inside him had cracked. And the pieces no longer fit the shape they used to.
What now? What the hell am I supposed to do? Go back? Back to what?
His so-called "home"? The quiet village where his NPC parents lived, where he was supposed to play the part of a dutiful son and keep his head down? He wasn't even their real child.
He's nothing but a ghost wearing someone else's life. A reincarnated soul from another world, dropped here like a cruel joke and told to survive.
This wasn't his world.
And yet… it was.
Do you think it's easy? Changing your moral compass just to stay alive? Pretending this is normal?
He didn't ask for this. Didn't ask to be thrown into blood and steel and monsters wearing human faces. But here he was, blade in hand, someone dead at his feet, and no way back.
He didn't know who he was anymore. Didn't know what to do. Didn't know if he could keep going.
The sword lay near his feet, still stained. It mocked him with its silence.
"Jaka."
Dyah Netarja's voice. Soft, careful. He didn't look.
She stepped closer. A streak of blood ran down her cheek—not hers. "You… saved me."
He heard her. But the words felt far away. Like echoes in a place he no longer lived.
She sat beside him, quiet. "If you hadn't stepped in…" her voice trembled, "I would've been the one lying there."
Still, he said nothing.
What could he say? That he didn't want to save her if it meant this? That the blood on his hands wasn't just from a body—it was from the death of something inside him?
She didn't touch him. Didn't offer platitudes. Just sat there, her presence a steady weight beside him.
Her breathing was shallow too, the echo of what had just transpired hanging in the air between them. Dyah Netarja was no stranger to danger, but the violence of today… it had rattled her, too.
He could feel it in the way her voice wavered, how her usual composed demeanor trembled under the weight of what happened.
And yet, she didn't run. Didn't retreat into her hardened shell like the others. She stayed.
And it was her presence that broke something loose in him—something raw and unfurling in the depths of his chest.
He was so tired. Tired of running, tired of the anger, tired of fighting. But he couldn't stop. Not yet. Not when he had no idea where to go next, or what even mattered anymore.
After a long silence, Dyah Netarja spoke again. Her voice low, but steady. "If… if you ever have to take another life…" She hesitated, taking a deep breath, as if her words carried a burden heavier than her own. "Even if you forget the face of the one you kill—don't forget why you did it."
Jaka finally turned his head toward her, just a little, but enough to see the sincerity in her eyes.
She met his gaze without flinching. "Don't forget what it saved."
Him. Her. All of them.
Her words hit him harder than he expected, a tight knot forming in his throat. He opened his mouth, but the words wouldn't come. What was left to say when all of it—his life, his choices—had become a blur of blood and guilt?
"I don't know what to do anymore," he whispered, his voice thin and broken.
Dyah Netarja's eyes softened. She didn't look away, her steady gaze somehow grounding him in the mess of confusion swirling inside his mind. And then, in a quiet breath, she spoke again.
"Neither do I."
It wasn't comfort. It wasn't a solution.
But it was honest.
And somehow, in this blood-soaked silence, that mattered more than anything.
She moved closer, just enough so that the warmth of her body was tangible, though they didn't touch.
The space between them seemed to close, the air thick with an understanding that neither could name.
It wasn't about the blood they had spilled or the people they had killed. It wasn't about the weight of their pasts or the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
It was about being here. Together.
For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Jaka closed his eyes, exhaling a shaky, defeated sigh. His hands—still trembling—gripped the sword's hilt as though it might break him further. He didn't know how to carry it. He didn't know how to move forward.
Dyah Netarja didn't ask him to. She just sat beside him, her presence a quiet strength in the midst of the chaos.