The pain had become everything. Not just sensation, but existence itself, a fundamental constant of reality like gravity or the speed of light. My consciousness had narrowed to a single point of awareness that registered nothing beyond the systematic destruction of my body and mind.
Blood loss had progressed beyond dangerous into the realm of actively fatal. The mana extraction needles had drained so much of my life force that my enhanced healing factor had simply... stopped. Neural trauma from hours of psychic violation had left my thoughts scattered like broken glass, each attempt at coherent thinking cutting deeper into what remained of my sanity.
This is it, I realized with the kind of crystal clarity that sometimes comes at the very end of things. This is how I die. Not from some cosmic trial or interdimensional monster, but strapped to a table while a psychopath conducts research.
The irony was almost funny. Almost.
My vision was darkening around the edges, not the gradual fade you see in movies but the abrupt tunnel vision of a system that was simply running out of power. My heartbeat had become irregular, stumbling like a drunk person trying to navigate stairs. Each breath required conscious effort that I was rapidly running out of energy to maintain.
Never saw this coming, I thought as my body began the final shutdown sequence. All those years playing games about heroes and adventures, and I never imagined it would end like this. Never finished that last stream. Never found out what happened to my viewers. Never even...
The thought that surfaced made me want to laugh, if I'd had the strength. Died a virgin. After everything, cosmic trials, divine forging, interdimensional travel, and I'm still going out exactly as pathetic as I came in.
Virelia was watching with scientific fascination, her crimson eyes tracking every stage of my physiological collapse like she was taking notes for a research paper titled "Observational Study on the Death Process of Anomalous Subjects."
"Fascinating," she murmured, checking some kind of monitoring device. "The enhanced cellular structure is breaking down in a pattern I've never seen before. It's almost like the magical augmentation is... withdrawing."
I wanted to tell her exactly what she could do with her observations, but my tongue felt like lead and my lips wouldn't respond to conscious commands. The pain was finally fading, not because anything was healing but because my nervous system was simply giving up the pretense of function.
At least it doesn't hurt anymore, I thought as darkness crept in from all sides. Silver lining to dying, I guess. Eventually the pain stops.
My heart stuttered once, twice, then went still.
The last thing I experienced before consciousness finally, mercifully abandoned me was Virelia's voice, distant and clinical: "Time of death, marking now. Beginning immediate post-mortem analysis of—"
Then nothing.
****
Except it wasn't nothing.
Something was happening to my body, something that made Virelia's scientific commentary shift from clinical to shocked in the span of a heartbeat.
"What in the seven hells ?!"
If I'd been conscious to see it, I would have watched my corpse begin to flicker like a badly rendered video game texture. Flesh that had been solid and real started to dissolve into cascading motes of pure mana, the dissolution beginning at my extremities and working inward like some kind of reverse creation process.
My fingers dispersed first, breaking apart into particles of light that floated upward like luminous snow. Then my hands, my arms, my torso, all of it coming apart in seconds as whatever force had been holding my enhanced body together simply... let go.
Virelia stumbled backward from the table, her usual composure shattered by witnessing something that violated every law of biology and magic she'd spent decades studying. The restraints that had held me down now clamped down on empty air, their suppression runes still glowing despite having nothing left to suppress.
Within three seconds, there was nothing left but dissipating energy and the lingering scent of ozone. No, body. No blood. No physical evidence that I'd ever existed except for the torture implements still warm from recent use.
"Impossible," Virelia whispered, her voice shaking for the first time since I'd met her. "Bodies don't just... dissolve. That's not how death works. That's not how anything works."
But I wasn't there to hear her confusion or watch her first genuine moment of scientific terror. I was already somewhere else entirely.
****
Consciousness returned like being hit by a freight train made of pure sensation. One moment I was floating in peaceful oblivion, the next I was slamming back into a body that felt too real, too solid, too absolutely and overwhelmingly alive.
I jerked upright with a gasp that turned into a scream, my lungs filling with air that tasted like ancient stone and metal decay. My hands flew to my face, expecting to find the ruined socket where my left eye had been, but my fingers met smooth, unbroken skin and a perfectly functional eyeball.
What the hell..
The questions died as my stomach violently rejected the concept of being alive again. I rolled onto my side and vomited with the kind of full-body convulsions that suggested my digestive system was as confused about recent events as the rest of me. When that was finished, my muscles decided to stage their own rebellion, locking up in spasms that left me curled in a fetal position on cold stone.
Through the chaos of my body trying to remember how to function, I caught glimpses of my surroundings. The crypt. I was back in the ancient chamber where we'd fought the Ruin Guard, the construct's remains still scattered across the obsidian floor like expensive scrap metal.
A system notification blazed across my vision in letters that seemed carved from concentrated urgency:
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
[RESURRECTION SEQUENCE: COMPLETE]
[HOST STATUS: RESTORED TO OPTIMAL CONDITION]
[LIVES REMAINING: 11/12]
[WARNING: CRUCIBLE STATUS INCOMPLETE - SOME FUNCTIONS LIMITED]
Lives remaining? The concept hit me like a second resurrection shock. I have multiple lives? Like some kind of cosmic video game character?
I tried to focus on the implications, but my brain kept circling back to crystal-clear memories of every moment in that research tent. The pain, the helplessness, the systematic destruction of my body and dignity. Virelia's face as she worked, clinical and focused and occasionally lit up with the kind of sadistic satisfaction that belonged in nightmares.
The memories were perfect. Too perfect. Every detail preserved in high definition, from the smell of the preservation chemicals to the exact sound my eye had made when she'd driven that probe through it.
I screamed again, not from physical pain but from the sheer psychological weight of remembering my own death with absolute clarity. The sound echoed off the crypt's vaulted ceiling and came back distorted, like even the ancient stone was trying to muffle the horror of what I'd experienced.
She tortured me to death, I thought, the words feeling strange and impossible even inside my own head. That despicable woman strapped me to a table and slowly killed me while taking notes.