Klaus lost count of how many times he had died. Sometimes he cried. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he simply let her play with his corpse out of apathy. In moments of clarity, he meditated, quieting his thoughts to better endure the madness. But when he opened his eyes again—
Serka was chewing on his liver.
"Hey… granny. Why the fuck are you eating my liver? Huh!? MY LIVER?! THAT THING'S BEEN THROUGH ENOUGH WITH ALL THE BOOZE, YOU SADISTIC WHORE!"
He lashed out, his spear piercing her skull through the eye, pinning her twitching form to the floor. He sighed, exhausted, even as the wounds on his body began to mend.
The battle continued.
He parried a hammer, redirected her blow, and used her momentum to impale her. His spear—now short and single-bladed—extended mid-thrust into a double-pointed pike, punching through skull and groin with horrific finality.
He tore it free in a wet, splattering burst, blood and viscera cascading around her.
Another bell rang.
Somewhere above, the goddess drove a crystalline dagger into her own heart again, releasing another wave of transcendent agony.
They collapsed once more, twitching, screaming, minds unraveling by the second.
Serka chuckled even as her ruined body spasmed. She looked down at her tattered nightgown and giggled with childish amusement.
"This is the trial of the goddess! It won't end until your mind shatters! Embrace fear!"
Klaus raised a shaking middle finger.
"Fuck off. My only fear is a world without bourbon."
Serka stepped forward—then faltered. Her body trembled, joints unsteady. Klaus quirked a brow, grinning.
"What's wrong? Running out of steam, old lady?"
She didn't answer. Her smile never faded.
"I'm impressed. I didn't think you'd still be standing. You must be in unimaginable pain yet hiding it with sarcasm and jokes..."
Klaus's face twitched.
Lady, I'm in so much pain I'm hallucinating my childhood cat. What do you mean, impressed?! Have some mercy!
He didn't say it. Though, He wanted to. But instead, he shook his head and lunged. His spear cleaved downward, catching in her shoulder. He pulled—but it stuck fast between her bones.
Serka gripped the weapon—and with a perverse moan—drove it deeper into her own chest as another bell tolled.
This time, they didn't fall. They crashed into the floor, twitching, retching, minds teetering on the edge of cataclysm.
Both of them trembled, barely upright—two husks kept moving by sheer will and venom. Klaus leaned heavily on his spear, the haft slick with drying blood. The only thread holding his sanity together was the Cold-Blooded attribute, its frost-laced logic acting as a barrier against the storm of agony gnawing at his mind. Without it, he would have unraveled long ago. His photographic memory, once a gift, was now a curse; it etched every moment of torment into his psyche with cruel clarity. He would remember it all. Every nerve-ripping second.
He wanted to forget. Gods, he needed to forget.
It was too much.
Too much.
Too much!
Why can't I just rest...? Why can't I give up? Just for a moment... just this—
His fist lashed out and smashed into his own cheek with a brutal crack, snapping his head to the side. Blood trickled from his split lip, and his expression shifted—hardening into something predatory, unhinged, alive with hate.
"Stop this pathetic bullshit!" he snarled to himself, voice raw with barely restrained lunacy. "Give up? Like hell I will... I'm too fucking prideful for that shit."
Across the temple, Serka's tongue slithered across the bloodstained head of her hammer. She shivered in euphoric ecstasy, eyes rolling back as if tasting divinity. The temple had long since become a charnel house. Crimson ichor slicked the floors, walls, and ceiling. Limbs were strewn like shattered branches. Intestines hung like garlands. ruptured torsos, splintered bones—an ocean of mutilated flesh, all theirs. They had slaughtered each other so many times that the sacred hall resembled a battlefield where legions had perished.
"Ahhh~" Serka moaned, voice shuddering with sadistic bliss. "It feels like my mind is being violated... Isn't it addicting? Isn't it divine?"
Klaus chuckled, but it came out ragged and cracked, like a man laughing at his own funeral. His body quaked as he took a step forward—then collapsed, landing atop the mangled remains of one of his own corpses. He blinked, disoriented, his perception frayed from exhaustion. All around him: himself, Serka, their corpses... hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. Blood formed a viscous sea, and organs floated like flotsam in the gore.
He had lost all sense of time. The repetition had fractured his mind. The line between life and death no longer mattered—only the pain remained constant.
His body had regenerated, but his mind was unraveling. He was not going to last much longer. Maybe... maybe one or two more impalements from that statue... and then his psyche would shatter.
"Yeah, yeah..." he murmured. "I don't even care at this point..."
Serka, too, was deteriorating. Her body spasmed uncontrollably, blood dripping from her bare, tattered form. Their clothes had long been shredded to ribbons in their endless, mutual butchery. She smiled—a trembling, broken thing.
"You're really something..." she whispered. "So much faith in yourself. So much pride. You actually believe you can overcome everything..." She staggered upright, blood pooling at her feet. "One more to go... Are you ready~?"
Klaus could have responded with some biting insult or smug remark, but the energy for mockery had long since abandoned him. Only hatred remained.
"Shut your bitch-ass mouth... and do it."
Serka raised her arms in reverence to the blood-soaked statue of the goddess. A bell rang—low and solemn, as if heralding the end of the world. Klaus staggered, his vision fracturing into a kaleidoscope of colors. The sensation was uncanny, nauseating—the same gut-wrenching dislocation he had felt when using the Key of Light. Reality twisted. Dimensions bled into one another.
Then all fell silent.
They stood in an endless void of white. A colorless, sterile nowhere. There was no ground, no sky—only the void that stretched in all directions, infinite and suffocating.
Serka's grin widened—jagged, deranged.
"You are the first to ever push me this far... This is the final trial of the goddess."
And then—they froze.
Klaus stood still. Not by choice. He couldn't move. Couldn't blink. Couldn't breathe. Every atom in his body was paralyzed.
There's nothing we can do...
What…? Napoleon? Why am I—?
Then even thought was stripped away.
And then the pain came.
Unimaginable. Indescribable. Unforgivable.
There were no words for it—only the raw, incomprehensible sensation of his very being torn asunder and reformed.
His body was torn apart—cell by cell—shredded and stitched back together. Again. And again. And again. A million deaths in a moment, a billion screams that never left his throat.
His sanity shattered like porcelain.
His consciousness frayed and snapped.
But somehow—somehow—he remembered.
He clung to the one thing that defined him. Not spite. Not rage. Not even pain.
It was ambition.
I'm not here for your sick games, he thought. You enjoy pain. You get off on it. But I... I want more. I want everything. I want freedom. I want the throne of the heavens. I want to crush every chain around my neck. I want to laugh in the face of the divine and make the stars dance for me.
I am... Im... THE OLDEST DREAM.
REMEMBER. REMEMBER. I AM THE OLDEST DREAM.
Serka stood paralyzed. Her mouth was agape. Her twisted glee had fled her face, replaced with pure, soul-devouring terror.
"H-How... How did you survive that...?" she whispered.
Klaus looked at her with eyes no longer human—glowing amethyst orbs cracked like shattered crystal, brimming with an ancient, feral madness. His mouth hung wide open, his jaw unhinged like a beast's, teeth gleaming with primal, deranged joy.
"Serka... Death... is sweeter than honey."
Whether it was from sheer fear, instinct, finally exhausting her essence or her mind breaking—her ability snapped. The realm splintered.
And reality shattered around them like broken glass.