---
Mike stood before the cold slab of marble, reading the engraved name as if seeing it for the first time. Ten years he had spent under the same roof as that old man, yet he only learned his real name through the official papers he received for the burial. A sense of shame gnawed at his chest; had it not been for the crumbling government bureaucracy, his grandfather would have remained nothing more than an "unidentified corpse."
The cemetery was empty except for the sound of the wind. Mike could barely afford the burial costs, while the decomposing body had already begun to surrender to decay in the morgue's cold storage, with no one bothering to ask about it. Remembering this, a bitter surge of anger burned his throat.
At that moment, a stranger approached. He was about Mike's age, yet seemed to come from another world—elegant clothes, a rigid posture like that of a high-profile bodyguard, and dark sunglasses hiding what lay behind them.
The stranger stopped a grave away, knelt before two fresh tombs, and placed two flower bouquets with quiet care. He removed his glasses, and there it was—the raw pain: bloodshot eyes and a gaze lost between regret and grief.
Mike broke the silence with a hoarse voice, not looking at him:
"Life isn't fair… is it?"
He didn't know why he'd shared his thoughts with a stranger, but the words had escaped him. The man didn't answer immediately, only nodding slowly, submerged in silence.
After two minutes of heavy quiet, Mike tried to stand. His legs had gone numb from sitting too long, and as he prepared to leave, the stranger's words fell like a stone into a deep well:
"Sometimes I wonder… if I hadn't run away like a coward, would they still be alive?"
Mike froze. He turned to see the man still kneeling, but his stiff face began to crack. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks; his expression was blank, yet his eyes screamed.
The stranger whispered, broken:
"If I hadn't been a disobedient son… if I'd been good enough, they wouldn't have suffered because of me. Why did I defy them? Why was I always that angry fool?"
He lifted his gaze to Mike, and his icy mask shattered completely:
"They endured humiliation to find me a job, and I met it with arguments. Even in the car… I didn't hold back my anger. I yelled… hit my father while he was driving… and he lost control."
A stifled gasp escaped him, then he continued with bitter sobs:
"In their final moments, they chose to shield me with their bodies instead of saving themselves. They chose a failed wretch like me to live… and I? I ran. I ran to avoid hospital bills, ran before hearing their last words… They died waiting for me to stay."
Mike watched this collapse. He didn't know how to comfort someone—he, who had never been comforted. Should he rage at the man's foolishness? Or pity him? But he found himself speaking the naked truth:
"You really are a coward."
The stranger's eyes widened in shock, staring at Mike as if struck. But Mike didn't stop. He looked at his grandfather's grave and added bitterly:
"You're a coward… and so am I. We all run when we realize the gravity of our mistakes, then come here to weep over dust because we're too cowardly to face the truth while there's still time."
Silence returned, but this time it wasn't heavy—it was a shared confession between two shattered souls.
---
Mike took slow steps toward the man, as if each step shattered a barrier of ice between strangers. Standing beside him, he spoke in a low but sharp voice:
"I also… left someone behind. I ran because I was trembling with fear of what lay ahead."
He glanced at his grandfather's grave, now seeming smaller and sadder, then back at the broken man. Mike extended his hand into the air, like a dry branch trying to hold
fast in a storm, and continued:
"But what now? Do you think weeping will change what's written? We'll face the consequences of our actions, sooner or later. We'll never forget what we did, and our deeds will remain as living testimonies—black stains on a past that can't be washed away."
The man said nothing, but looked at Mike's outstretched hand. Mike's hand was rough, marked by a life of hardship, while the stranger's trembled. The stranger grasped Mike's hand in a firm shake, as if drawing strength from it to stand again.
In that moment, they were no longer strangers—they were partners in regret. They stood in solemn silence, gazing at the final images etched in their memories… images of people whose love they only understood when it turned to cold, engraved names.
The wind passed between them, carrying the scent of flowers and the bitterness of truth:
cowards also have the right to stand, but they carry their burdens forever.
---
Arthur awoke from his coma under the pressure of crashing waves of memories that began to fade gradually, leaving behind a thick gray fog inside his skull. It took several minutes before reality coalesced in his mind, and he regained awareness of place and time.
"Finally awake."
The voice came softly, yet majestically. Arthur turned to see "Celestia" seated on an oval chair, but her posture was no ordinary one—it exuded a royal majesty that stole the breath. Threads of red twilight seeped through the window, reflecting in her crimson eyes, giving them a gleam that mingled beauty with danger.
In that moment, despite the pain, Arthur couldn't stop himself from thinking bitterly:
"Damn... she's exactly my type."
{Author: She is 27 years old.}
He was silently stunned, wondering to himself how a woman with such an overwhelming presence could be alone. As far as he could recall, he had seen no ring or sign of attachment—only astonishing solitude.
(Maybe you should try getting closer to her.)
A whisper from Arthur's ancestral spirit echoed in his mind, but he silenced it immediately:
"No... she'd reject me in the worst way possible, and I'm not in a position to afford such luxury."
Arthur hadn't realized he had stared too long until her cold voice cut through his distraction:
"If you're done gawking, there's something we need to discuss."
Arthur rose from the bed awkwardly, but froze when he realized he was bare-chested. Worse still, four strange, grotesque, dark scars surrounded the area of his heart and chest. The moment he touched them, a shiver ran through his body—a chill that felt like a silent scream; the curses had returned to bind him once more.
At that moment, a cold metallic sound rang inside his mind:
[Ding!]
[System functions being restored at 13% — (Current status: Partial hibernation)]
[Available functions now]:
* Detached space storage.
* Personal statistics window.
* Electronic linking (access to networks, cameras, bank accounts).
[Warning]: Curse penalties applied to the host. Includes restriction of magical elements and a sharp reduction in basic statistics.
[Major restrictions...]
Arthur's face paled. His expression shifted from bewilderment to furious anger that seemed ready to explode from his eyes. He screamed inwardly:
"Why?! After finally tasting power, I'm back to square one? Why does this life insist on dragging me down every time I try to stand?!"
He drowned in a whirlpool of rage to the point that he didn't hear Celestia's repeated calls. He only snapped back to reality when he felt an iron grip crushing his shoulder with excessive force. Arthur let out a sharp moan, a muffled cry resembling the roar of a wounded beast, and glared at her with eyes burning with hatred.
Celestia released her grip with calm provocation:
"You left me no choice. You were completely detached from reality."
Then, as her eyes scanned the scars on his chest with cautious curiosity, she continued:
"What really happened to you? When you fell, four chains emerged from those wounds… they writhed like snakes before sinking deep into your body, as if reoccupying you."
Heavy silence followed. Arthur wrestled with his choices: should he weave a refined lie? Or tell the truth to a woman who had taught him much but whom he didn't fully trust? Seeing the hesitation in his eyes, Celestia sighed deeply and rose with regal dignity:
"Fine… keep your secrets. Clearly, you're not the kind who opens doors easily to others."
Arthur lowered his head, a strange sense of guilt creeping in: "I… I'm sorry."
"It's alright, rest now," she replied as she headed toward the door. "You've only been out for four hours—enough to regain some strength—but your body needs monitoring."
Arthur had nothing to say. He simply watched her back as she left, until the door closed behind her with a cold, mechanical hiss, leaving him alone with his new restraints and broken system. He looked at his trembling hands, then at the scars glowing like black marks on his skin. "Cowards carry their burdens to the end."
He remembered a phrase he had spoken long ago. A bitter smile crossed his lips as he whispered:
"Maybe... but I no longer know what it means to be a coward."
Then he looked at the ghostly sunset and said:
"I wonder how you're doing now… old friend."
---
On the other side of the world, deep within the harsh continent of "Balamura," the scent of blood and death hung heavy in the air of a training Dungeon. Here, mercy did not exist; the monsters varied from "corrupted werewolves" to raging "Minotaurs," and the goal was singular: either emerge as a soldier worthy of facing the Abyss, or be buried in the dirt as a weakling unworthy of life.
Amidst the congealed blood, a boy trembled, kneeling beside the lifeless body of a girl whose breath had ceased forever. His voice broke in stifled sobs:
"I'm sorry... If I hadn't run... If I hadn't been a coward, maybe you'd still be here..."
Fate granted him no time to mourn; from the shadows, two werewolves lunged, their eyes blazing with hunger. He barely dodged the first by instinct, but the second buried its claws into his shoulder, tearing a scream of pain that shattered the silence. The boy collapsed to the ground, waiting for the end, as the monsters let out mocking howls, as if savoring the taste of his despair.
"What a disgusting scent... fear mixed with too many tears."
The voice came from behind them—calm, cold, carrying an eerie tone of dominance. Before the werewolf could turn, a black blade had already sliced through the air; in a motion too swift for the eye to follow, the first beast's head flew into the air before its body even registered death.
The other monster recoiled in terror but found no escape. In an instant, the stranger stood before it, gripping its head with a hand shrouded in mysterious violet flames.
He slammed it to the ground with a force that shattered both rock and skull, then drove his black spear into its chest, reducing it to ash before it could let out a final cry.
Brushing dust from his cloak with a mocking gesture, the stranger muttered, "Boring..."
He walked toward the collapsed boy with icy composure, and instead of offering help, he stood over him like a mountain of ice. Glancing at the girl's corpse, then at the trembling boy, he spoke with a sharp, biting tone:
"You let her face their fangs alone so you could save your own skin, didn't you?"
The boy raised his head, eyes swollen with blood and tears: "Who are you to judge me? If you were in my place, you'd have done the same! Everyone runs when they see death!"
The stranger suddenly froze. A heavy silence fell, and his gaze shifted from mockery to something resembling "painful stillness." It was as if he no longer saw the boy before him, but a scene from another time—a pair standing before graves at a sorrowful sunset.
Muttering to himself more than to the boy, the stranger whispered:
"Running away is the easy part... The hard part begins when you return home, when you realize you didn't just survive—you survived carrying a weight no years can lift."
The boy stared at him, confused, as the stranger continued in a low, bitter voice:
"A long-lost friend once told me words I didn't understand until much later. He said, 'Cowards carry their burdens forever.' And we, little one, will carry this weight until we join those we left behind."
A faint glimmer of an obscure memory flashed in the stranger's eyes before he turned and left without another word, leaving the boy to wonder about the identity of this man who seemed to bear a scar on his soul deeper than any battle wound.
As he walked away, one thought echoed in his mind:
"Huh... you scoundrel, how are you now..."
---
If you enjoyed this chapter, don't forget to drop a Power Stone. It really helps the story grow.