Chapter 8: The First Time You Died
The crimson sky trembled endlessly above them.
Fragments of broken space drifted through the air like shattered glass while black lightning spread across the heavens without stopping. Yet none of it mattered anymore.
Ren’s eyes remained locked on the System notification floating before him.
[Timeline 001 Death Record Available.]
The Queen grabbed his wrist immediately.
"Don’t."
For the first time her voice carried fear. Real fear. Not rage. Not obsession. Fear, raw and unguarded, sitting on the surface of her voice without any armor around it.
Ren stared at her silently.
"Why?"
The Queen slowly lowered her eyes.
"You’ll hate me."
That answer made his chest tighten in a way he wasn’t prepared for.
Kaiser looked toward Ren seriously.
"You deserve the truth."
The Queen’s crimson aura flared violently outward.
"No."
The winged woman spoke calmly from the distance, still bleeding, still standing.
"He needs to know."
The Queen looked at all of them with cold eyes. Then looked back at Ren. For several long seconds nobody moved and nobody spoke. Even the broken sky seemed to hold still.
Finally Ren pressed the notification.
[Opening Timeline 001 Record...]
Everything froze instantly. The world around him disappeared. Darkness consumed his vision completely.
Then light returned.
---
Rain fell quietly over a small city street.
Ren blinked slowly and looked down at himself. Transparent. Like a ghost observing someone else’s memory from the inside.
"What...?"
Then he saw her.
A younger version of the Queen stood on the wet pavement. Pink hair instead of crimson. Bright smiling eyes. No terrifying aura around her. No madness. No blood on her hands. She looked completely normal. Beautiful. Happy in the uncomplicated way that belongs only to people who haven’t yet lost something irreplaceable.
The younger Ren standing beside her laughed softly while holding an umbrella above her head.
"You’re smiling again."
The girl blushed slightly.
"That’s because you’re here."
The current Ren watched in silence. His chest already felt strangely heavy.
The younger Queen grabbed the boy’s arm cheerfully.
"Come on! If we’re late again the professor will kill us!"
The two ran through the rain laughing together, their voices carrying down the empty street without a care in the world.
The current Ren watched quietly as scenes rapidly changed around him.
Days passed. Then months. He saw them eat together, study together, fight monsters together as the world began changing around them. He saw them argue and make up, sit in comfortable silence, smile at each other across crowded rooms without needing words.
The younger Queen always looked at Ren like he was her entire world. Not possessively. Not desperately. Just simply and completely, the way people love before they understand what loss feels like.
And the younger Ren loved her too. That much was impossible to miss.
Then the scene changed again.
A battlefield. Fire everywhere. Dead awakened humans covered the ground in every direction. Monsters screamed somewhere in the distance. The younger Queen knelt on the ground holding Ren in her arms while blood covered his chest. Too much blood. The kind that doesn’t stop.
The current Ren’s breathing stopped entirely.
"No..."
The younger Queen trembled violently, her hands pressing desperately against the wound.
"Stay awake!"
The younger Ren smiled weakly despite coughing blood.
"You’re crying again."
"Don’t joke right now!" she screamed at him.
Her hands kept trying to stop the bleeding. But it was useless. Anyone could see that. The wound was fatal and the blood kept coming and her hands couldn’t do anything about either of those facts no matter how hard she pressed.
The younger Ren slowly raised his trembling hand and touched her face gently, his thumb brushing away the tears mixing with the rain.
"You survived."
She shook her head desperately.
"No no no no, we’ll fix this..."
"It’s okay."
"It’s NOT okay!"
The current Ren watched without being able to look away. His chest tightened with every passing second. Because now he finally understood something important.
This wasn’t obsession that had started from nothing. It didn’t start with madness or power or a desire to control the world.
It started with love. Real love. The ordinary kind that belongs to ordinary people living ordinary lives.
The younger Queen cried harder while holding him tightly, her face pressed against his chest.
"I can save you..."
"You always say that."
The younger Ren coughed blood again. Then whispered so softly it barely carried through the rain.
"Live happily after I’m gone."
The girl froze against his chest.
"What?"
"You’ll meet someone better someday."
The younger Queen lifted her head and looked at him like he had just said the most horrifying thing she had ever heard from another person.
Then she shook her head immediately.
"No."
"Please..."
"No."
"You can’t stop living because of me."
Her hands trembled against his chest.
The current Ren noticed it then. The air around her slowly turning crimson at the edges. A subtle wrongness spreading outward from her body like heat from cooling embers. The beginning of everything that came after.
The younger Queen buried her face against him again desperately.
"I don’t want another person."
Her voice broke completely on the last word.
"I only want you."
The younger Ren smiled sadly. The kind of smile that already knows it’s the last one.
Then his hand fell lifelessly to the ground.
Silence.
The rain continued falling softly on both of them as if nothing had changed.
The younger Queen went completely still against his chest.
Her eyes slowly widened.
"...Ren?"
No response.
"Ren?"
Nothing.
The current Ren felt his throat tighten painfully, watching from somewhere outside the memory.
The girl slowly shook his body harder.
"Ren."
Still nothing.
Then something inside her broke. The current Ren could see the exact moment it happened, the exact second something fundamental shattered and didn’t come back together properly.
The sky darkened instantly. Crimson energy exploded across the entire battlefield. Monsters nearby disintegrated without being touched. The younger Queen lifted her head slowly.
And her once warm eyes had become the same terrifying crimson eyes Ren had known since the moment they met.
[Timeline 001 Collapse Beginning.]
The younger Queen gently pulled Ren’s dead body closer to her chest. Then whispered so softly it sounded almost like a prayer.
"If the world exists without you..."
Her voice became completely empty.
"I don’t want it anymore."
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
The entire battlefield exploded into crimson light. Cities burned. Oceans split apart. The sky shattered above everything. Humanity screamed across every continent at once. And throughout all of it, through every destruction she was causing without stopping, the Queen sat alone beside his body.
Crying.
The scene changed again.
A dark void. The Queen stood alone before a gigantic glowing door. Countless mysterious beings surrounded her from every direction. One of them spoke coldly.
"You cannot reverse death."
The Queen’s expression remained completely emotionless.
"Then I’ll reverse time."
"That is forbidden."
"I don’t care."
"You will destroy reality."
Silence stretched between them.
Then the Queen answered with tears still falling quietly from her eyes.
"Then let it break."
The current Ren felt chills move through his entire body from the inside out.
Because he finally understood now. She didn’t become a monster because she enjoyed destruction. She didn’t choose madness because power corrupted her. She became what she was because grief destroyed her mind completely and nothing that came after was able to put it back together correctly.
The memory faded slowly. Darkness returned. Then the Queen’s voice echoed softly through the void, broken in a way that three hundred timelines had never managed to repair.
"I tried everything."
"I tried saving you."
"I tried changing fate."
"I tried becoming stronger."
Her voice trembled more with each sentence.
"But every timeline..."
Pain filled every single word now, heavy and old and exhausted.
"You still die."
The darkness shattered instantly.
Ren returned to reality. The crimson sky. The broken city. The rubble and smoke and fractured heavens above. And the Queen standing before him in silence.
But now he looked at her differently.
Not only as a terrifying woman who destroyed worlds without hesitating. But as someone who had carried loss alone for hundreds of timelines without a single person to share the weight with. Someone who had watched him die more times than most people live entire lives, and had broken a little more with each one.
The Queen avoided his gaze slightly. As if bracing for something she had learned to expect by now.
Then quietly she asked.
"Do you understand now?"
Silence settled between them.
Ren slowly walked toward her.
The winged woman tensed visibly. Kaiser stayed completely silent. Even the System said nothing.
Then Ren gently took the Queen’s trembling hand in his.
Her crimson eyes widened instantly.
And softly he said the thing she had never heard across three hundred and seventeen timelines.
"You should’ve told me earlier."
The Queen froze completely.
Because after everything, after all those deaths and destroyed worlds and centuries of grief, this was the first time he had responded differently.....
