Back in the physical world, the thumping sounds in the room dimmed. The boy’s blood was turning still as his heart was slowly coming to a halt.

The black spreading from his left eye had spread throughout his body, staining his veins. Coupled with the bulge of his veins, as if being subjected to a massive force, his veins took the appearance of black vines holding his body in place.

Crack… crack… crack… crack — following a series of cracking sounds, his skin between the black veins cracked, like a barren land withstanding the harsh punishment of the sun.

Meanwhile, in the world with two gates, the boy’s vision kept distorting as his head felt light. He found out that himself growing transparent was not his imagination. As of now, he could make out his destination, the gate in white, through his own palm.

He had a vague feeling that death stared him straight in the eye. His knees trembled as he felt the fatigue building up. Barely keeping his legs from buckling, he stared forward with his teeth grit tight.

With his conscious withering away at a rapid pace, his time in the world of the living rapidly approached its closure. A pool of fading memories. A soul with a broken vessel, unable to prevent it from dispersing. His very being returning to nothingness. And all he could do was watch.

This filled him up with rage and desperation. Driven to a corner, the light in his pupils dimmed as he lost himself to his emotions, leaving his instincts to be the judge of his life. He toppled forward on the invisible surface he stood before trying his best to claw his way forward, like a dog at the end of its tether.

However, his fingers bounced right off. Following a sharp pain through his finger-nails, a puddle of his own blood began dripping out of his fingers. His body trembled in response as the light in his pupils returned.

At almost the same time, the force pulling him back grew stronger by a few folds, hammering the final nail in his coffin.

He desperately clawed at the surface, all to no avail. However, a wry smile shone on his face, evidence that inwardly, he had accepted his fate—death. His soul was hollow as he struggled with no substance behind his actions.

As his body was about to grow completely transparent, a voice of a woman, somewhat familiar yet painfully distant, echoed through his head. His vision misted over while his breath got caught in his throat.

‘Live on…’

His body shook in response to his beating heart as the sensation of blood rushing through his veins overtook him. His teeth were grit like a vice as his body trembled.

The world around him, as dark as it was, felt brighter than the sunniest day to him when he compared it to what lay deep within his heart.

His fingers — covered in his own blood — trembled as his knees buckled. His knees met the ground as he toppled forward, his face feeling the surface he lay on.

Pushing against the surface he lay on, his body felt heavy, whereas his arms had no force. His eyes grew bloodshot as a rivulet of blood trickled down his left eye.

Pain, anger, despair, inability, worthlessness, guilt, loss — every one of these emotions rampaged through him as the boy repeated in his mutter, “Live… on…”

Finishing his muttering, black overtook his vision as he fainted.

In the world of darkness, his voice echoed throughout the space as his body kept twitching.

Following the echo, a primal desire to survive manifested in the remnants of the soul being battered by the rapid storm from within. Beads of scarlet trickling down his left eye turned into unreadable symbols which floated above him.

A desire stronger than the force pulling him back to oblivion filled every part of his being—the desire to… live on.

However, in the material world, his heart stopped. His body had no heat, whereas sweat that dripped down his skin had evaporated. The darkness creeping through his veins reached his heart, dying it in the familiar color of a room devoid of all light. His vessel broke down, unable to house his soul.

But it was not over. Right before he was about to return to oblivion, all sounds in the area vanished. All smells ceased to exist. The blowing breeze stilled. And the hands of the clock, which kept ticking in the corner, came to an abrupt halt.

The space around the boy undulated, an occasional fissure or two forming within the room he lay in.

Following distortions, indecipherable blood colored runes appeared all over his body, crawling from his left eye to every part of him.

Over the bandages of his left face, a small piece of half-a-finger thick stone, in the shape of a shattered piece of a mask, materialized out of nowhere, giving a dim red glow.

The surface of the piece of stone mask was rough to the touch, made up of both fine and coarse grains with cracks running throughout its entirety. It was barely big enough to cover the region around his left eye, yet the space which surrounded it was on the verge of collapse.

A faint glow sharing the same color as the runes spreading on the boy’s body seeped out of the various cracks in the mask, reflecting off to the walls after striking the boy’s body covered in a fresh layer of perspiration.

*Thump…*

With a pounding sound like a hammer striking the ground, the boy’s body shivered all over. His fingers twitched as he coughed twice in succession.

*Thump… thump… thump…*

Traces of color returned to the boy’s previously pale skin as the words from earlier still echoed through his head. His right eye was closed while a clear stream unceasingly flowed down his face. At the left of his face, his bandages had a distinct crimson spot, growing ever so slightly.