Rain lashed the scarred earth, turning ash into mud and blood into rivers. Private Nathan Cross knelt in the ruins of a city that had once a had a name—he couldn't remember it anymore. He'd died here before. Six times.
A hole in his chest. A mine underfoot. A sniper's kiss to the skull. Each time, he'd blink into death—and open his eyes once more on the eve of battle. New uniform. Same war. Different hell.
He didn't age. Didn't feel hunger or thirst. Only pain. Always pain.
They called him a hero. "The Undying Sentinel." They dropped him into every unwinnable mission like a reset button for fate. Medals clinked in his locker. He never wore them. What use was honor to a man who couldn't die?
Then came the village.
The rebels had taken it, they said. Cross led the charge. Inside, he found only children. Starving. Huddled. No weapons. Just faces twisted in terror when the drones hit.
Command called it collateral. Cross called it something else.
He walked away after that. Let the bullets hit him. Lay down in front of tanks. Blew himself sky-high. But always… he came back. The war didn't end. Neither did he.
So he searched.
Whispers spoke of a man beyond the edge of reality. A sorcerer—not of ancient towers, but of cracked code and cursed algorithms. He lived beneath the dead zones, where the sky glitched and time didn't flow right. Cross found him in the ruins of an underground city long lost to nuclear flame.
"You want to die?" the sorcerer croaked, half machine, half man, his face hidden behind a broken screen. "Few beg for what they already have."
"I want to stay dead."
The sorcerer smiled—if you could call that jagged, twisted line on his static face a smile. "Very well, soldier. Let's break your little loop."
Light flashed. The world folded. Cross screamed.
Then silence.
He opened his eyes not in a body bag, not in a new base—but on a scorched plain beneath a sky of fire. Shadows screamed across a battlefield where time was broken. Soldiers fought without faces. Machines bled. Monsters of steel and bone rose from trenches without end.
And across the horizon: endless war. No sleep. No rest. No peace.
The sorcerer's voice echoed in his skull: You wished to end your curse. So I granted it. No rebirth here. No escape. Only war, forever. A soldier's paradise… or his damnation.
Nathan Cross stood, rifle in hand, as the enemy charged again. He no longer feared death. Because here… death no longer mattered.
And he finally understood:
The curse was never the reincarnation.
It was believing that humanity was worth dying for.