When his vision cleared, Hirrus found himself standing on a familiar hillside. He heard a deep and authoritative voice describing current events at a tiny outpost town Hirrus knew was over fifty miles to the southeast, on the border between Hari and Evrarion. The voice didn’t seem confused about why it was telling him this as he stood outside of Yenon. So, Hirrus disregarded it. The voice wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and it wasn’t relevant to his current goals.

Despite the narration describing the geopolitical climate as it pertained to a border trading post, he knew where he was. He was just over a minute’s walk out of Yenon.

And of course he was.

If he was here for a second chance at saving the people of Yenon, where else would he be?

Before he got moving, he noticed his stats were different. More than that, as he focused his attention on them, they didn’t enter his awareness as straight numbers.

Instead, a box appeared before him, displaying them with a fancy graphic.

Every stat had a little red triangle next to it, and when he focused on the symbol, it notified him of a “Point Distribution Mismatch,” whatever that meant.

Level 1

HP: 65500 ▲

BUR: 805 ▲

SUP: 605 ▲

TEN: 805 ▲

ATT: 355 ▲

RES: 355 ▲

GLE: 805 ▲

As he focused on the little red triangle indicating a mismatch, it revealed that each stat was supposed to be what he’d seen in the window before. He had 500 for hit points, and 5 for all the other stats. But he was assigned an extremely large number of what the fancy graphic called “bonus points.” Apparently he was supposed to have zero total. At present, though, he had a total of 5000. He wondered what that meant.

Even with this “distribution mismatch” he was notably weaker than he had been before.

Before.

Hirrus grumbled to himself. It meant that if he ran into the same monster again, the fight would be even more one-sided against him. He’d instead need to focus his attention on getting people out without engaging in battle.

There was one more thing that alarmed him. He couldn’t feel his abilities anymore. Both Sound The Alarm and Cleave were gone. Just gone. They were both critical elements of his job as a guard. Was he not a guard anymore? He was still wearing the armor. He still felt motivated to rush to the defense of Yenon.

Hirrus did, however, have a new ability to replace the missing ones. It was strange. He knew it was called 4d657263790d0a Transform, but he didn’t know what that meant.

Something in his awareness connected it to the plague debuff he’d had when he died, and he worried about the monstrous version of himself he’d just seen moments ago.

The ability was not usable at the moment. What could it mean? Would it become enabled under some certain conditions? Would he be able to stop it when it did, or would he instantly become a monster?

After a moment, he realized he wasn’t doing anything. Just standing on a hill and worrying about things he had no control over. In the back of his mind, his decision tree was quietly telling him to go find his dinner dishes to get them into the sink. But his body wasn’t reacting.

In fact, while Hirrus was aware of the direction, for the first time in his life, it wasn’t a command.

The decision could be ignored.

When he turned himself around to check his surroundings, it was on his own initiative.

When he started to walk towards the column of smoke he knew was in the direction of Yenon, it was his own choice.

It was oddly liberating to have control of his own decisions, especially after he had needed to fight so hard to push through his decision tree’s orders only a short time ago.

Hirrus crested the hill, bringing Yenon into view. The sight brought an end to the momentary euphoria given by his newfound free will.

The town was in ruins. Most of the fires seemed to have burned down to coals, but most of the buildings had been visibly damaged. The Duskgrove had been burned down to the foundations, and the Old District had been blackened to the point where buildings were crumbling in on themselves.

At the very least, there was no sign of the monsters, either.

Save for the rising smoke, the town was still. It was good to see that the violence had ended, but he didn’t see any survivors, either. Everyone in town was either dead or had fled. As he approached the front gate he had been guarding not too long ago, the still silence became more and more oppressive.

The crunch of his boots on the dirt became deafening.

How could he have come back to save people if there were no people left to save?

The town was nothing but aftermath now. He had to pick his way around streets where buildings had collapsed, or where the remains of whatever inferno had engulfed a building were still too uncomfortably hot to approach.

Of his friends and neighbors all that remained was bones and bloodstains. He tried not to decipher who was what.

Searching the town for survivors quickly proved a useless venture. Hirrus’ calls went unanswered. His digging went unrewarded. It became less of a search and more of a march.

He found himself no longer looking to help, but bearing witness.

Someone did this to Yenon.

Someone had unleashed monsters on his home, and the results had been death and fire.

When it was clear the search was hopeless, Hirrus felt his feet carrying him somewhere specific, and it wasn’t at the direction of his decision tree.

Julissa.

His home was one of the ones that had been spared the worst of the fires. The upstairs - where their bedroom was - had been caved in from the right side. Dahlia’s house had similar damage to it, and from here he could see one of the rafters had fallen through the floor of the upstairs to stab through into her dining room.

He hoped Dahlia had escaped before the fires reached. Hirrus had a mad thought to check, but he didn’t know what he would do if he walked in there and saw his own corpse. Or if the place came down on his head, killing him again.

Hirrus picked his way over the collapsed front door to his own home, making his way inside.

Julissa’s body was still where he’d left it, on the floor near where their dining table had once been.

When he’d seen the house was still intact, barely damaged by the fires, he’d been glad. No longer. It was the most painful experience of his life to see what Julissa had become. The mere existence of her corpse seemed an indignity to her memory. Only his iron will kept him from turning away.

It appeared to have been hours since her death. Her blood had visibly pooled around her and then seeped into the floorboards beneath.

With no blood left in her body, her skin was disgustingly pale. The pink flush that usually colored her cheeks and ran over the bridge of her nose was gone. Her once red lips were now a faint purplish. The only color remaining on her face was the smear his hand had left before he’d rushed off to his death.

Hirrus found himself paralyzed. He didn’t remember crossing the room, but before he knew it he was on his knees beside her, cradling her head in his arms. He couldn’t stop staring into her glassy sunken eyes, even as his vision wavered and blurred as the tears came.

He tried to speak.

To apologize.

To profess his love.

To eulogize.

But every word turned to a lump in his throat that refused to move. As he knelt there, time faded away. He could have been there holding her body for only moments, or hours, and he wouldn’t have known the difference. Julissa had been his whole world, and now she was gone. She’d been taken from him. It just wasn’t fair.

Focusing his attention inward, he found his decision tree. The liberating feeling of free will had turned to ice in his heart now. His thoughts were adrift in his own heart, and he physically could not force himself to move.

But his decision tree gave him direction. It took the reins out of his hands so that he didn’t have to think about what he had to do. It told him to put her to rest with a proper burial. The cemetery wasn’t far, and her body wasn’t too heavy for him to carry, even with her arms hanging limply instead of clinging to him like he was familiar with.

That is what he would do. Give her body rest so that her afterlife could begin.

He started to scoop her up when he heard a sound.

It was the grinding of wood against wood. The protest that was the precursor to a collapse. From next door. Dahlia’s home. It wasn’t going to stay standing for long.

The groaning sound was followed by a pounding.

Hirrus paused and listened carefully. That wasn’t the natural sound of worn-down wooden supports. That was a person.

Dahlia.

Hirrus took a moment to delicately settle Julissa’s body back down to the floor before making his way to Dahlia’s front door. He stood there for a moment, silently listening. After a moment, the pounding came again. It was coming from under the stairs, where he’d seen her hide while he’d distracted the monster.

“Dahlia?” Hirrus called.

“Hello?” The voice was muffled. “Help! Someone help!”

Hirrus didn’t hesitate. He rushed into the room, even as the ceiling groaned, threatening to crush him. A beam had plunged through the upper floor and was leaning against the stairs, barring the door.

The pounding sound came again, definitely from that blocked doorway.

“I’m here,” he said, moving to the door. “I’ve got you.”

He wrapped his hands around the beam and planted his foot on the wall beside it. The beam was thick and heavy, and as he strained against it, he feared it wouldn’t move. As he struggled, though, he pictured seeing Dahlia’s face as pale and empty as Julissa’s. That fear gave him the strength to move the beam, first by an inch, and then a foot. And then it passed the tipping point and fell aside. The whole building groaned as it slammed against the floor, and Hirrus heard the whole place getting ready to come down.

He flung open the door and Dahlia blinked at the sudden light, pressed against the far wall. He reached in for her, prepared to drag her out if she started to panic, but she was a survivor. She grabbed his hand and let him pull her to him. Dahlia was so heavily pregnant that she needed to lean on him for support in order to move at a pace faster than a stroll, but Hirrus had more than enough strength to offer her that support and get her out the front door before the building collapsed.

Hirrus kept pulling Dahlia well clear of the cloud of ash and dust that blew up from the building’s fall, not stopping until the rumbling sound of the falling building faded into echoes, and they were surrounded by silence once more.

“Are you alright?” Hirrus asked.

“I’m fine,” Dahlia said. He knew the question was unnecessary. Dahlia was probably the hardest woman he’d ever met. Something so petty as the total destruction of her home probably barely registered as an inconvenience to her.

She surprised him though, with a searching look and a question of her own: “Are you?”