As fun as chatting with a twice-dead guy was, I had other business to attend to.

The pocket dimension inside me was a world of sprawling grass fields, fresh winds, and a barren tree on a hill that stood over an oceanside cliff. It was a peaceful place to wander, but I soon realized that this world looped seamlessly in on itself; at some point, I would come across the tree and rock and the exact same cliffside view if I walked in a straight line away from it.

If I concentrated hard enough, this reality grew thin and unsubstantial, the slow waking from a deep dream, but there was a message in a bottle here. I wasn’t going to leave until I found what my mysterious benefactor left behind.

The idea of somebody else running around in my body didn’t sit well with me, especially when they could’ve been the one that erased my past.

There had to have been a reason for the erasure. I could access my wind-based powers here as well, which led me to believe that this place was the source of all my power.

If that was the case, then who was I?

By my estimate, I was a college graduate with a lot of awfully general knowledge, but also had a decent chunk of martial arts knowledge.

Maybe I was a scientist that got wrapped up in some shady business and ended up trapped in a horrible, rock-bound fate. But that didn’t explain the memories of villages and festivals in this world. Could those two factors really coexist?

Those guardians were practically supernatural. Had I not been able to perceive their Ether usage and destroy them in advance, they would’ve been capable of divine techniques that would’ve destroyed me in an instant.

During the fifth loop of my walk, I noticed a black scroll case in Samson’s left hand. I popped the lid and unfurled the scroll, revealing a great list of techniques and knowledge that he neglected to tell me when I borrowed his ability.

His knowledge of psionics and close-quarters combat, condensed into an easy-to-digest package. Awfully nice of him to leave a gift for me.

Half the scroll contained the basics of close-quarters combat, which I already had a basic grasp on. Grapples, throws, strikes, all the practical stuff to get you out of trouble. How to fight with close-range weapons and guns. Problem was, I couldn’t use any of it because a rock cannot engage in the basics of close-quarters combat.

The other half covered the basics of an Art called Cognesis, the ability to actively interfere with an opponent's mind. By resonating with another person, you can actively mess with their head for better or for worse — but the text itself only focused on how to forge that initial connection, nothing about what to do once you were there. There was a disclaimer yelling about how dangerous it was and how easily one could go insane by peering into another person’s inner world, and ended on a long section about how this was technically a war crime.

I turned it over, expecting some further explanation on what the technique actually did. Nothing.

The lack of information made sense, at least. If it was anything like that disaster with the four guardians, I didn’t want to use it in the first place.

This didn’t feel like the message Samson meant to relay, but I took it anyway for later reference. During my long bout of wandering, I took breaks to practice the basics of CQC with that knife he gave me, just in case somebody would pop up later and test me on it.

A healthy body stores a healthy mind, so it should also work the other way around, right?

I came across a wooden path, some time later. It was a gnarled path that could’ve been made with the roots of ancient trees for all I knew, but it was weird enough to follow. I wandered for some time, happy to finally get some normal exercise in.

The road ended at the steps of a tiny stone temple built into the highlands, a building with a slanted rooftop reminiscent of eastern architecture. Freshly burnt incense wafted from decorative bronze pots, smelling faintly of pine and savoury spices.

There wasn’t much inside, besides a small mirror and sword embedded within a pedestal where a holy idol would normally go.

No harm in respectfully inspecting offerings, right?

I picked up a mirror, and a complete dork looked back at me.

Who was this jackass?

I felt a need to punch them in the face, then quickly realized that would mean punching myself in the face. I pressed at my cheeks, confirming that the person looking at me was indeed me.

My default expression had an unbearably smug smirk, the look of somebody who really needed to be taken down a few notches. I slapped myself a few times, but it wouldn’t go away.

Biting my lips, I noted my blue eyes and messy hair that fell in waves down to my shoulders. My bangs conveniently fell between my eyes, even when I tried to forcibly block my vision with them.

Trying to avoid the strange urge to deck myself with all my might, I turned my attention to the silver sword. My reflection caught on its surface, broken only by pulsating cobalt veins that ran up and down the metal.

This was the message. I knew it the moment I laid upon it — there was something waiting for me within the blade.

The person who left the message saved my life, I reasoned, so just this once, the mysterious pulsating object might be safe.

I reached out and grabbed the handle, intent on hearing whatever they left behind.

There was a memory within.

One of my memories.

An autumn’s evening, the night before the moon-viewing festival.

A quiet village well out of the way of anything at all. A place with its own traditions and history, a tiny farming hamlet that had survived the fall of kingdoms and dynasties.

While the dancers practiced to appease the Spirits of the village, I rehearsed my song on a bamboo flute in a calm forest.

This was the duty of the priests, to unite all without language or words. Music that was played with enough conviction could even rewind the flow of the seasons, hence why I had to practice far away from everybody else.

Despite my vows, one girl insisted on not leaving me alone.

Clumsy and awkward, that girl drifted through life without anything to call her own.

When she was around, birds would fall out of the sky. Clothes would fall apart. People couldn’t sleep. Income would falter, and illness would come to everybody she dared share a roof under.

She was a living incarnation of bad luck.

It was only natural that somebody should offset her misfortune; who better than the one who could control fortune?

But that night, underneath a grey glass moon, the girl of misfortune came to say goodbye.

She was a proud girl that never asked for help; she’d rather die than reach out to another.

I couldn’t stand that part of her.

My family was revered by the inhabitants of the village, but no one dared get close to us.

Ever since I was young, I jealously stared out at the other children playing with one another, wishing that somebody would look at me as a person and not a priest.

Just as I saved her, she saved me.

If I couldn’t help my only friend, then what good was I?

After an hour of back and forth, I beat the reason out of her.

The demons that stole away her family were coming back to claim her tonight. They taunted her for many years, whispering of her doom at night.

Nobody believed her, and nobody cared to listen.

I wasn’t going to accept that. I brushed it off and moved for the immediate exorcism of her old family residence, where she thought the demons lay.

However, the fates had other plans in mind.

It wasn’t a demon that came to reap her soul, nor was it a man possessed. Had it been an entity we could fight, we would’ve eventually triumphed.

The girl of misfortune came from a wealthy family that looked down upon the village and built a manor far away in the mountains. There was a bridge that connected the path and the burnt corpse of the manor and we, ignorant of the circumstances, were eager to banish the evils back whence they came.

It was a sturdy bridge built with longevity in mind. Even without maintenance, it would surely last for another decade before it would require any semblance of repair.

But that night, a westward wind blew through the valley, a sudden gust that no one could’ve ever predicted. It was enough to tilt the bridge, to strain the ropes at angles they were never meant to be strained at.

There was a snap. The grey glass moon flipped and revealed the heavens underneath our feet.

Because the girl’s parents had scorned the village, the area was abandoned.

Because of the girl’s reputation, no one would respond to her cries for help, even if they heard her.

Because the village knew I shouldn’t be bothered when I was practicing my song, everybody was in their homes, eagerly awaiting the festival.

We survived the fall, but I refused to acknowledge our wounds. Priests were trained in the dominion of mind over body; no matter how bad it hurt, I had to drag us back to safety.

The girl of misfortune couldn’t walk with her left leg shattered. No matter how much she begged to be left behind, I picked her up and carried her on my back, vowing to undo all this.

I told her about how we could still run that food stand tomorrow.

I told her how we could still beat back the demons chasing after her.

I told her how we could break free from the chains of karma and live for ourselves.

But this was a place where the night was long and the forest unforgiving, a world where the innocent drowned in silence.

There was only one way this could end.

In the present, a pair of arms hugged me from behind. The cobalt sword burned in my palms.

“—I’m sorry.”

Near my ear, that damned woman whispered two words dripping with remorse.

She was the reason I was falling apart.

“Your enemy is the you of yesterday and the world of today. I’ll see you again, some day.”

I couldn’t move. If I dared move my body, my mind wouldn’t be able to keep up — I’d fall apart.

This was a trap.

I looked down and watched as my skin and flesh fractured into pure cobalt strands. Like a virus, that memory of a dark forest and a bygone friend was tearing me apart from the inside out.

Knowledge of a scientific era free of magic. The powers of a fractured world. They were already incompatible with one another, but that last disjointed memory was enough to push me over the edge and completely unravel my world.

Was this the woman’s plan? No, this would’ve happened at some point in the future, whether I wanted it to or not. If she wanted to erase me, there were easier ways.

From the very beginning, I was incomplete, a bouncing rubber ball of conflicted emotions and barely restrained madness. My resistance against the four guardians had completely shattered my mind; a strong mental stimulation from any source could destroy my consciousness.

As much as I despised her, the lingering shadow of that woman was keeping me together. With her help, I had enough time to answer that age-old question I had despised from the start:

Who are you?

Once upon a time, that question broke me. This time, I remembered enough from the textbook of my life to reach for an answer.

A twice-dead man gave me a message that was a few centuries too late to make a meaningful difference, but it was my duty to see where it led.

A simple rock couldn’t store a soul, nor should it have been able to utilize a mystic wind from a strange place. I desired to learn how both miracles had happened.

Those memories and that damned woman were linked. I still couldn’t accept those memories as my own, but if I learned the truth behind all this, maybe I could reach her and give her the proper punch in the face she deserved. Then, if she gave me a proper explanation, I’d see about making her make up for all these years of hell.

I knew who I was, alright. Not only was I somebody who would discover the truth of this strange incarnation, I would make the most of this life.

Screaming my lungs out, I pulled myself away from the sword. Tendrils of connective string tried to keep me attached, to drag me back in, calling me back to a sweet, mindless oblivion, but a little push from the winds severed the connection.

I collapsed in the grass outside, catching my breath underneath a cloudy sky.

As I lay in a meadow of grass, I gave my situation some thought.

I was absolutely certain that this world hated me. These trials were a bit too much, weren’t they? This really was too unfair to a poor soul like me — why couldn’t I have had an easier time?

Seriously, this was all absurd. If I had it my way, I would’ve made myself an overpowered hero with unlimited wealth and influence so I could’ve slacked off and slept all day.

Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice? To be loved and wanted, and not forced to fight for your very survival. If that damned woman cared for me from the start, rather than mysteriously showing up once in a while, things could’ve turned out much differently.

These thoughts, of course, definitely weren’t a coping mechanism to distract myself from the tears that were flowing down my cheeks.

Many things had happened between now and when I first woke up, but I had a chance to rest and recuperate in a place that wasn’t the dark recesses of some godforsaken pit. I sat in a grassy field under a rolling sky, allowing my mind to wander wherever it would.

I made a fool out of myself, didn’t I? I made some grand vows and did some stupid things in the name of survival, but little remained after all was said and done. I was still alone, and now that I had regained some of my humanity, I couldn’t look away from the crimes that I had committed in the name of survival.

I did so much to get here, but I was still alone. There was nothing to tell me that I was making any progress, no divine voice to tell me I was getting stronger.

There was a long road ahead, wasn’t there? That was scary. Why wasn’t there anybody by my side that could help me face that undefined future?

A soaring melody rang in my mind, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The most I could do was force myself to stare at the clouds that passed overhead.

I was a little overwhelmed, and a little lost as well. There were plenty of things to do, but I didn’t have enough energy to do them.

Hey, was it alright for me to feel this terrible? I begged for this mental body to stop embarrassing me, but the tears didn’t stop.

If I felt hurt, was I allowed to cry?

If I was tired, could I rest?

If I was lost, could I ask for guidance?

No matter how many questions I asked, nobody could answer them.

But I had a mouth now, right? Even if it was just in my mind, I was human. This was the last solace left to me in this lonely existence.

Deciding it was time for a long break to think all this over, I curled up into a ball.

When I was absolutely sure that nobody was looking, I hugged my knees and cried.