87 | next; a forgotten beginning

The man with the veil of snow over his gaze failed.

The first time, he approached his brother in an attempt to build a good relationship, but it had in turn made the other weak and reliant. His brother, who they both often miscommunicated, fell into a spiral of protecting each other.

They died miserably, too scared to request help, too foolish to do anything but block blows for each other until they died.

The white-eyed man had been too desperate after opening his eyes and seeing a second chance. He lost restraint out of fear of losing his precious older brother again and wasted the opportunity.

Elias had to admit, watching from the sides on high-floored buildings, or from the chaotic crowds, that it was a valiant attempt.

In fact, both younger and older brother progressed to extreme levels at a rapid pace. They could be considered miraculous, born heroes with blessed abilities.

And yet they still failed.

The heel of Elias' shoes crunched against remnants of bone and flesh, the red of the story covering every gap. He walked silently, a cloak of black weighted over his shoulders, and gazed down at the two bodies on the ground.

He sighed, not feeling particularly remorseful or sad towards the death of the man he'd placed his last hopes on.

Instead, Elias tilted his chin to the sky, peering at the soft clouds and the sun.

Faraway, he felt a sharpened gaze. Cautious and alert enough to dart in another direction if he looked back. It was that woman, he soon realized. The one who wondered about her Title—a predestined fate.

To always be stuck in the present. She would repeat the apocalypse again, due to his actions.

The man tilted his head to the floating Title before him.

[Jailer of Infinite Futures]

With no description, nothing at all. A Title with nothing to go along with it except the weight of his failure.

Elias sighed again. He wasn't keen on the idea of dying himself, not without going out with some pride and battle. And he wasn't sure death would keep—if the End's Delusion would allow for such a simple escape.

He supposed he'd continue along, repeating his role as a Catalyst, watching humanity perish at the sidelines, no closer to success than he ever was.

All so pointless, meaningless.

He took a last look at the mangled corpses of the two siblings and turned around.

However, as his foot sunk into the tenderness of scattered flesh, and blood squelched with movement, he saw a thin tendril of thread. Alarmed, he swung his hands up and watched as strings continued to spin out of him.

Since when had he become a thread making machine? But the strings refused to obey his command, spiraling out of him and around the mess of bodies, the broken walls.

This time, Elias didn't hold back his scream.

In the field of fallen bodies, the man let out a roar of agony, as if being deconstructed cell by cell, one layer of skin peeling off him at a time.

'Don't tell me...'

He fell forward and debated hazard risks of coating himself in other's bloods nonchalantly, feeling a split of calm and flaring pain in his mind. His eyes tiredly moved to a nearby body, a slender man with open eyes staring right at him.

Open, snow-white eyes.

'...have I somehow tied my life and death to you?'

The world fell away from him before he had a time to think his thoughts over further, disappearing into his mind.

He opened his eyes again on the Forsaken Throne.

He rubbed his sore temples, and heavy body that felt like it hadn't moved in years. Impossible—Elias was always one to keep in shape, and was confident in it too. A greater tragedy that the apocalypse would be his lack of strength.

There was always something odd at the ease of his ability to reset the apocalypse, but he knew too little, and the apocalypse was too much.

Was this a side effect, a punishment for his attempts at being something greater than he was?

The man leaned back into the chair lazily, coldly peering around at the empty scene that he remembered.

He opened his hands and decided against summoning the strings as he recalled the terrible pain that wracked his body upon the last reset.

And then his mind froze.

The teenager. Elias realized he couldn't remember the boy's face anymore. There were disconnected pieces that he couldn't summon with clarity, either. Was that one of the consequences? That he couldn't remember an entire reset?

And if things continued like this, failure after failure before his ability forced him to turn back time again—how long would it be until he forgot the faces of his companions?

And if even the memories of humanity left him, what would be left but a miserable puppet of the apocalypse? And he wondered if such a form could even be called himself anymore.

Thinking that to be a distasteful way for his humanity to cease, he sought another person to try to redeem the world, to bring a different ending. If he'd forced the world to a repeated reset, then there was one more chance.

For reasons he couldn't understand, he sought the light that had failed the previous time.

The white-eyed man.

Through life and death, destruction and peace, Elias experienced the reset a dozen more times. His own life intertwined with the man whose name he didn't know, didn't dare learn after watching the man die in tragic, terrible ways.

The man became Elias' last tie to his humanity. In watching the persistence of that person, so painfully humane and empathetic despite his cold exterior, Elias felt as if he could still hold on to the last threads of hope for life.

In the world he'd long disconnected from, only one string bound him to earth.

No matter rain or sunshine, spring or fall—no matter whether the stars had yet to burn away from the night skies, or if they had long vanished completely, Elias never stopped watching the man.

He even watched with a vague amusement as the man made a deal with that Teller, the one stuck in the eternal repeating of time, always confused. She seemed to suspect his own involvement, though she didn't dare question.

The one time she did, Elias had swiftly killed her without hesitation.

When had it become easy to kill, when had he stopped feeling guilt at the blood on his hands? His work had always forced him one foot into violence, but never like this.

And it scared him.

Whenever he thought of those stirrings of darkness, the escaping humanity chased out of his body, he would watch the white-eyed man obsessively. He would watch the man quietly bury his comrades, no matter how short his time had been with them.

He would watch the man lower his head, raven hair brushing the sides of his face in deep sorrow.

The man who never begged for forgiveness, but silently accepted it all.

The man whose estranged relationship with his brother always remained his biggest regret, and the man whose older brother was always, without exception, his main priority.

The man who sketched pictures like embedding memory onto paper, who fought with a wildness of a person that didn't care, while he cared the most.

He watched until the man came to a conclusion. The man raised his head, staring at nothing calmly with blood over his body, and ragged clothes. He didn't smile, nor did he cry. He spoke quietly, a hoarse and languid voice.

"I currently can't accomplish anything the way that I am."

Elias wondered if the man spoke because he knew somebody was listening, hidden along the cracks of broken windows, or in the piles of broken buildings where many corpses rested.

"One more time. The next time will be the last time."

Elias chuckled, resting against the crook of a doorway inside an abandoned building where he couldn't be seen, but could watch silently. What a demanding order, when really, Elias had long stopped being able to control the resetting passages of time.

In fact, he figured his body wouldn't last. The pain had become too unbearable, lingering in his daily life, a consequence of the power he'd used.

He hardly felt alive, and wondered if he really was.

"I know you're listening, I know that you're watching. I don't give a damn if you want to keep hiding, but listen closely. I've made a guess—the reset happens every time I die."

Elias' eyes widened as the man's lips quirked vaguely, and he spun a jagged dagger in his palm, spinning it to point directly at his heart.

The man was the type who spoke more when he was about to die.

He continued speaking.

"This will be the last time. Nothing I do, no matter how powerful I get or how close to the Throne I am, nothing works. This whole farce is fucking stupid. Every time I meet my brother, all I can think about the dozens of ways he might die. I've become a waste."

He pressed the dagger a little deeper, drawing a trickle of red. He smiled. "I've made preparations. I'll start all over at the beginning again. Without the burden of knowing the dozens of possibilities of failure. Reset the world one more time, Catalyst."

Elias closed his eyes, smiling as his hand slumped on the ground. As demanding as always. Some things didn't change, no matter how many restarts the world went through.

Where was his thanks or please?

The man didn't care for the Catalyst's thoughts. He gazed at a floating Title in front of him, eyes flickering lightly.

[Prisoner of Impending Past]

No matter how many chances he got, it always ended the same way. His brother's death, and then his own. The man regretted many things that he never had the chance to do in the past and lamented more that he might never get the chance.

But since life had forced him into a never ending game repeating, he would use it.

One last time.

"This time, neither you or I will remember anything."

It was a last attempt. If he could experience the End's Delusion, knowing nothing about the horrors or destruction that would come, without knowing all the ways he could fail within an arm's reach of his goal, what would change?

What would he do differently? He didn't know, when all he saw after closing his eyes was death and terror, his brother's shredded white coat and fallen body.

No matter how strong he got, nothing could change that.

Unless he forgot everything, if he disassociated the past that occurred from the present. If everything appeared as fiction, a maybe that wasn't already experienced.

He'd already made a trade.

The life saving Scales of Justice could do anything, if both items weighed at equal value. The man had tested it in various ways—and it knew no limits. It could revive the dead, if the sacrifice was equal.

He chose the following: the knowledge accumulated over dozens of resets, to preserve the memory of the first world at whatever cost. The boy, dressed in flowing white fabric and a childish smile, had been amused at such a suggestion.

"Is that equal? You're giving up the strength you've learned and built, for the guaranteed memories of an immature version of yourself."

The man hadn't moved. "This will be the last time. I know all the ways things could go wrong, that I don't know what I could do that's new. I'll try one last time without hesitation of failure. This is the best way."

"Hm~ I see. Very well. Of course, you know that your memories will have to take another form? If you randomly remember the first world, you may end up remembering the following ones too. It's all such complex business."

"A novel."

"Pardon?"

"My memories... make them come back to me like a story that I've imagined. I won't be able to associate it with anything else that way."

"Demanding, aren't you? Well, I suppose that works. As you wish." The boy grinned, but his eyes were dead and indifferent. "I wish you all the best in your final chance."

After the deal was successful, the only thing left to do was kill himself.

He planned to die alone, quietly in a long abandoned place, but recalled a pair of eyes that always followed him. He distantly remembered a familiar warmth that always, without exception, fell at his side whenever he died.

That resulted in the current situation.

"My name is Lucas Silvius, un-dear Catalyst of Everlasting End, Protector of the Forsaken Throne. It's not a pleasure to know you at all."

Elias coughed, directly laughing out loud. He staggered to his feet, roaming the building like a ghost until he reached the half-collapsed entrance, leaning against the opening. The man standing among the rubble gave him a cool look, raising his chin slightly.

"You look pathetic."

"And you're as handsome as ever, darling."

Lucas scrunched his nose in disgust, evidently debating whether to quickly stab the miserable looking Catalyst ahead of him before killing himself. Elias laughed again, delighted at the vivid expression.

But Lucas' shoulders suddenly relaxed, and the sharp corners of his eyes softened.

"Do you want to do it again?"

The Catalyst was taken aback before relaxing, smiling as he repeated a familiar line.

"I loathe this stupid, broken ending where I survived alone."

Lucas didn't reveal any surprise, as if he'd known all along. If he'd suspected something, stolen understanding from the mere moments they shared at death. Or maybe that man's face was just frozen in indifference—though the expression of disgust really was wonderful.

If he had another chance, Elias decided he wanted nothing more than to see that expression again.

But Lucas' current expression held no reproach or hatred, but a simmering acceptance, a gentle sort of understanding that squeezed Elias' heart.

"I'm sure you have a method to forget everything."

Elias didn't mention that even if Lucas hadn't asked, his memories were already incredibly unstable. Not that he wanted to admit it, anyway.

"One more time, Catalyst. This time, don't be a damned stalker."

"...now, I can't say I've had much choice—"

"—Come find me, properly. And this stupid, broken ending..." The ghost of a smile flickered over Lucas' lips, softening his gaze. "We'll remake it."

The dagger plunged straight through his chest, and a glaze settled over Lucas' eyes before his body crumpled to the ground. Like a chain reaction, Elias fell to the ground as his strings exploded out of his body, a vortex of thread in the air.

He raised his head shakily, and over the sheen of cerulean eyes that had dulled in the years, a spark of life glowed.

He gritted his teeth and smiled through the pain.

"See you in the next life, darling."