Hineni’s sleep is filled with nothing but restless dreams.

He’s running through a burning forest and every time he breaches its edge, he finds himself back inside of it again somehow. There is no owl or anything else. There is just him, the forest and the fire. The same dream returns to him over and over, every time that he wakes up, panting and heaving and thrashing around in his bed.

He doesn’t manage to buy food that night after all, his body hurting deeply now that it has begun to heal. He’s noticing a rise in his temperature, he thinks the wound is becoming infected.

Hineni forces himself to walk to the washroom to wash it out again, before finding his way back to his dirty bed on weak legs and falling back into it. Though, for hygiene’s sake, he does pick up an old, dirty blanket from the floor and tosses it over the dirty sheets, laying on top of it.

Hineni sleeps.

The next time he wakes, he does so because there is a tapping on his window. He wakes up, his eyes shooting to the side. Groaning, the man sits upright, listening. Is it raining? He turns his head, looking. But there is nothing to see apart from the night. How long has he been asleep? He doesn’t know. He’s hungry. He feels feverish. He needs to go and buy some real food and to see a priest, but…

Looking down, he sees that his wound is sealing itself. But the entire area is red and certainly looks to be infected. Gods know what kind of weird, forest gunk that damn bird had on its talons. He hopes he doesn’t die.

His stomach growls. Or maybe he does. He could really go for a bite to eat.

[You are hungry] Healing rate reduced Max HP reduced -20% All stats reduced -20%

Hineni sighs, looking to see what the disturbance was about. Staring out of the still closed window, he sees the dead frog laying there on his window-sill. Cleanly eviscerated and gutted by a razor sharp implement.

He opens the window, looking out into the night.

“Fuck off!” he shouts vaguely into the darkness, grabbing the frog and throwing it off to the street, not impressed by the threat in the least. If Obscura is going to kill him, then it should just come here and do it. Only after he shuts the window again and falls back into his bed, he realizes that he didn’t have his scarf on.

He hopes that nobody saw him.

Hineni sleeps. His fever worsens.

[Your wound is infected] [You are very hungry] Healing rate reduced Max HP reduced -40% All stats reduced -40%

“Fucking owl,” mutters the man, noticing that he feels oddly dizzy as he tosses and turns in his bed. How many days has he been laying here? He’s really hungry. He still has some bloody jerky in his coat, doesn’t he? Oh, wait. He threw that into the bath two or three days ago. Is he going to die, alone in his house, because of a bird? Well, a bird-god, but still. It’s ridiculous. Why did his life turn into… whatever this is?

Then again, he could just go to the adventurer's guild and get taken care of. He'd be in and out in a night. “Nah,” says Hineni. That's not an option. There are people in the adventurer's guild. Lots of people. People who want to talk to him, who want to look at him and touch him and annoy him. He'd rather take his chances here.

Sweaty, weak, Hineni sits upright, his hand holding himself upright against the wall as he rises out of his bed and tries to make his way out of his room and into the dusty corridor. Panting and feeling oddly dewy, he makes his way down the hallway, smacking his dry lips and foul tasting mouth as he heads down into the washroom, sliding along the wall to save himself the energy of holding his own body upright.

Sure, he could just go outside and see a priest and buy some food. It wouldn’t be a problem honestly. But he doesn’t want to. This. Whatever this is, he wants it to happen.

Hot steam collides against his body, coating him immediately as he enters the washroom. The fluctuation in temperature hitting him causes a strange sensation in his body, like all of his blood is now rushing too fast all of a sudden and a wave of nausea comes over him. Afraid of falling, Hineni lowers himself down to the damp tiled floor of the washroom, crawling over to the bath. His clothes are still floating in it, of course. It would be odd if they weren’t. At least they're probably clean by now, right? He sticks his head into the water and drinks.

He drinks and drinks and drinks until he thinks his wound is going to rip open again from the expansion of his stomach and then he stops, gasping for air, light-headed as he pulls his head back out of the water. It’s nice and warm here, at least. Hineni sighs. Is his wound closed enough to bathe yet? He doesn’t know. Better wait another day. The man fishes his soaking wet coat out of the bath, throws it on the large stones next to the basin and then lays down on top of it, down on the floor of the steamy room. It’s as good a place to rest and-or die as any, right?

At least it's warm.

Just to be sure, he digs into the pockets of the coat. Maybe there is still some jerky left…? But no, there’s nothing there. His arm flops down next to his body. He really should go shopping. But he’s just so tired.

He really should get help.

But he’s just so…

- tired.

Hineni sleeps. He doesn’t feel like he’s going to wake up this time. But that was the plan all along, after all.

[Infection Severity Increased] [You are starving] Healing rate nullified Max HP reduced -80% All stats reduced -80%

He dreams that he’s in the forest again, by the log. He’s staring up at the branch above his head. It sits empty. But for a moment in that dream, he remembers the feeling of excitement he had had while going to see the creature. But it isn’t on the branch. Why isn’t it on the branch?

*Who hoo hooo~* hoots the owl. He realizes that it's inside of his own throat. *Who hoo hooo~* he tries to pull on it, but it won’t come out. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. *Who hoo hooo~*

Hineni wakes up, his body heaving as he gasps for air, but no air comes to him. The man rolls over, feeling like he’s vomiting. Something green and slippery flops out of his mouth, having been lodged in his throat while he slept. Hineni, sure that he is dead, looks at the headless half of a frog laying there infront of his face. His head flops down to the side. He’s too weak to show his revulsion. His body won’t respond.

“He doesn’t like frogs?” asks the voice of the owl, curiously. Obscura is in the washroom with him. “Frogs are good. I loves eating frogs. Frogs!” Hineni stares through the blurry vision of his weak eyes, his head laying on the damp coat, trying to find the creature. “He doesn’t like Obscura?” asks the voice of the entity. “Obscura is bad? Who~” A ruffle of feathers.

“Get out,” says Hineni with the only breath he can find.

“Whooo~” complains the owl. “Hineni is dying.”

“Get out,” says the man, his shaking fingers moving forward an inch to grab the frog so he has something to throw. But his arm doesn’t move far enough for that to happen.

“Who needs food? Hineni,” says the owl-creature. He can hear it. It's behind him, on the other side of the bath. His fingers clench together. “Who needs health? Hineni!” explains the thing. He can feel his teeth gritting together. Is it necessary for him to die from some stupid infection? No, he could have just gone shopping or to the guild. A priest would have fixed him up in a heartbeat. But he didn’t. He didn’t on purpose. He’s laying here on the floor of the bath, on death’s doorstep because this is what he himself had chosen to do, willingly. “Who needs Obscura? Hineni!” calls the owl, not knowing in all of its wisdom, that Hineni doesn’t.

The steamy air, already present around his hands, begins to waver as a deeper heat comes out from his grip. The water around his body sizzles audibly, the tiles beneath his hands crack and turn black from the heat of the magic condensing in his fingers. Having had enough of everything, he had wanted to go out quieter than this. But his annoyance at the creature that had given him hope, only to then take it away moments later is too great from him to ignore.

It’s the spell that he had used to end his first life, so it’s only fitting that he used it to end his second as well.

“Obscura! Obscura!” chants the owl. “Obscu -!”

Whatever this existence of his has become, he’s had enough of it. With the last of his mortal energy, Hineni rolls over, swinging his arm towards the owl, pointing at it with his middle finger, covered in a black layer of smoldering ash that leaks out of its heavily burn-scarred tip.

(Hineni) uses [Ash: Antichrysalis]

The wet room explodes into a flurry of darkness, the light of the enchanted lanterns is swallowed entirely, as the entire space of the white bath fills with only two colors, the black of ash and the orange of the thousands of smoldering embers flying around through the cloud, as the magical explosion radiates out of his hand, filling and staining the room with a scorching void. In that same motion, Hineni flops over, rolling into the bathwater as something screams in the fiery room above him.

It’s quiet.

Is he dead? Hineni sighs in relief. He doesn’t know what comes next. But at least whatever that was, it's finally over. He feels himself sinking into nothingness.

“Why doesn’t he like Obscura?” asks the owl, sitting on the branch of a tree that doesn’t exist. “We exchanged three gifts. He must like me.”

Hineni opens his eyes, looking around, not entirely sure what this new state of his existence is. He doesn’t have a body. He’s just kind of… present, in a place that isn’t real.

Not even in death is he able to find peace. He wants to sigh, but he doesn't have it left in him. The thing that he is, lifts its gaze to look at the owl who is sitting there, in the shape of a large ‘normal’ owl. “You hurt me,” says the floating entity that is Hineni. He’s pretty sure that he’s dead, but apparently even here, on ‘the other side’, the owl is present and insistently bugging him. Apparently, ‘till death do you part’ is only a suggestion. Then again, the marriage isn't exactly official yet.

The owl tilts its head from side to side, observing him as the shapeless gestalt that he is tries to float away. But no matter how much he tries to float, he never seems to get anywhere. He can feel himself moving, but the owl and the tree stay right behind him, as if he had never budged an inch. “Accident. I have sharp,” says the owl, tapping its foot against the branch. “Hineni then struck Obscura. Even.”

“You threatened me,” he says, thinking about the owl statue on his bed and the headless frog on his windowsill. Obscura watches the odd, nebulous cloud that makes up his body as he speaks, as if trying to decipher his meaning.

“Apologizing. I was apologizing,” hoots the owl. The vision of the metal-statue appears next to the creature on the tree. “A pair of eyes to show Hineni is not alone, as promised.” The owl twists its head. The vision of a frog comes to Hineni. “Food for nourishment. Hineni rejected and became weak.” The owl hoots, ruffling its feathers, presenting the side of its face that he had backhanded. “A strike to the face, a gesture of kindness, a frog. FROG! Obscura has given three to apologize. Three!”

Hineni realizes that he has gravely misperceived the situation. Though, perhaps he had also done so willingly.

“Whooo~!” protests the owl angrily. “Why doesn’t Hineni like?! Three! THREE! Whooo~! Obscura gave three!” The owl parades along the branch, holding its wings wide open and flapping them, as if deeply aggravated. “She gave three! Whooo~! But Hineni hurt. Hineni hurt. Hineni hurt!” it screeches, the white-void filling with a vague, nebulous, black cloud of smoldering ash all at once. The tree sets alight, burning in a bright inferno. But the owl just returns to standing there on the burning branch, unperturbed by the flames raging around it.

It glares at him, the ash swirling around and around its tightening silhouette, himself and the tree as well, as they are trapped inside of the maelstrom. Hineni stares at the silhouette, vanishing in the smoldering ash that begins to fill the world.

“Why is Hineni afraid of Obscura?” asks the owl, smoldering ash flying past its wide-open eyes that aren’t disturbed in the least by the storm. It tilts its head, the cloud of ash thickening. “Hineni is afraid of two,” it says, realizing. “Obscura offers to save. But Hineni doesn’t want,” hoots the owl.

The ash obscures everything. The only colors left are black, orange and the shine of a pair of yellow eyes that stab through the soot.

“I thought I was saved before, when my first life ended,” explains Hineni, the ash swirling around him now, glowing with a fiery intensity as the embers seem to explode all at once, turning into a vision of a fire-scape, consuming everything around it. “I didn’t like what came after that,” he says, as the fire then burns down, leaving nothing but a solitary pile of ash that sits before himself, entirely undisturbed by the raging storm. “My second life was hopeless and I lied to myself, promising ‘one day’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘soon’,” he says. “But I knew that those moments would never really come.” The ash blows away, as if gusting out of an open window, leaving him sitting there alone, like he had done for so many days on that bench by the window.

“Three,” hoots the owl. “Three will be good,” it says, the cloud of ash slowly dissipating, leaving only the tree, the owl and Hineni. Its feathers billow to the side as a strange gale rushes through the void, blowing away all the soot and tinder and grime from only a second ago as if it never were. As if they all were nothing but dandelions, held on the palm of a large hand.

“What if it isn’t?” asks Hineni. “What if I hate it?” he asks, more ash pouring out of him, but the wind just blows it away too.

“Whooo~” hoots the owl, leaning down forward. “Three. Three will be good,” it says, flying down from the branch. By the time it lands on the floor of the endless void, it has taken on its half-human form that he has often seen it as in his home. Though, clothes don’t seem to exist in the spirit world. He finds an answer, not only to his question of Obscura’s gender, but also to his question of owl-human biology. “All good things come in threes!” Obscura reaches down for the shapeless gestalt that he is, but doesn’t touch him. “Will he come?”

Hineni thinks for a while. “If I don’t? If I just… die here? Will you let me?”

“Yes," hoots the owl. "But Obscura and Hineni are promised. If Hineni dies, so does Obscura. Die! Die!”

“That’s kind of a heavy burden to put on someone,” says Hineni.

Obscura shakes her head. “They gave three gifts and from three gifts, two, Obscura and Hineni, became one whole,” explains Obscura. “One whole cannot exist without the two, Obscura and Hineni, as it is made from the two. Three can not exist without the two and all good things are three.”

“I have no idea what that hell that’s supposed to mean,” sighs Hineni. “Fucking owls.”

“WHO~!” protests Obscura. “Hineni is unrefined! Hineni is crude! Hineni is cowardly!”

“Sorry,” he laughs, feeling better all of a sudden as more of the ash continues to blow away from the vague nebulousness of the odd, cloudy gestalt that he is in this plane of existence. In a weird way, it’s refreshing to hear someone say it to him openly like that.

“Will he become one?” asks Obscura. “With who will he live his three-life, Hineni? Hineni? Hineni?”

Hineni thinks for a moment, feeling the wind continue to blow. Slowly, he is running out of ash and he can’t help but notice that it seems to be taking parts of him now with it instead. He’s fading away. “Why do you want me to make things for you?” he asks.

Obscura tilts her head. “Power. I want.”

“Why do you want power?” asks Hineni, the cloud of his being starting to dissipate.

“To be powerful,” explains the owl-god, stating the obvious.

He shakes his ‘head’. “But why?”

She stares at him, her eyes wide, illuminated by a mystical shine. “Obscura wants to hunt the big-frog! BIG-FROG! BIG!”

Hineni stares, dumb-founded. He had expected some tragic revenge story or some clearly evil-ambition, like taking over the world. “…Huh?”

Obscura flaps with her arms as if flapping her wings in her owl-gestalt, prancing back and forth in some sort of odd, pacing walk. “Big-frog! BIG-FROG! BIG-FROG!”

“Ah…” Hineni sighs. Life three is off to a good start. A scarred hand shoots out of the cloud, grabbing the half-owl creature’s feathery taloned-grip. Surprised, she stares down at him, surprised by his touch out of her ‘war dance’. “Okay,” says Hineni, agreeing to the terms of his resurrection. “Let’s do it,” says Hineni. “Obscura.”

“Who~?”

“Obscura,” he says again, narrowing his eyes. The void starts to fade. “But it better be good. You promised.”

“Whooo~” hoots the owl-creature, holding its face with its free hand as if copying something it had seen an embarrassed human do once.

“OBSCURA!” he shouts, saying the name for the third time. Everything goes black in an instant. The void vanishes. The wind stops. The sensations of his existence stop. Everything just stops and then, there is nothing.

Hineni wakes up, gasping for air, lying on the floor of the washroom as something massive pulls him out of the water. He flops over onto his stomach, coughing and spluttering, water and black clumps of ash pour out of his mouth. His body retches and heaves as he gasps for air in the same instant that he undrowns himself. Two large talons, having wrapped themselves fully around his body and lifting him out of the water, release from his side, but Hineni doesn’t look at the gigantic creature behind himself that Obscura has taken the shape of, as his eyes are locked to the floor, to the spot in between his clenched fists, to the black stain he retches out of his body.

His eyes go wide like an owl’s, as he sees the thing laying before him.

Crying, starving, desperate, Hineni reaches forward and grabs the headless frog, biting down into its squishy, soggy, ash-covered body. Wet squirts into his mouth. Something sits down next to him, a sharp hand running over his wet hair and back as he tears the dead frog apart, stuffing it into himself. He’s so hungry.

The frog tastes like he expected it to. But he’s too hungry, too feral to care, his drive for survival having kicked in now. He realizes that, sometimes in life, you just have to eat a frog.

As the first step of his new existence, he eats the small frog, so that he’ll be able to help Obscura get strong enough to eat the ‘big-frog’, whatever that is. Is this a path and life-goal that one could consider as being reasonable? Probably not. But this is his third life and the first real one with either a direction or goal, so Hineni cuts himself some slack, his teeth sinking back into the rest of the frog. He needs the strength.

There's work to do. He has to buy some food, he has to get his body healed, he has to start making weapons. This time, this third life, this one is going to be the one. Three. Hineni’s eyes go wide as he bites into the frog again, tearing into its soft meat. Three. Three.

Something feathery leans against his wet back from the side, hooting softly as he eats.