Alex gave one last look at his withered foot. It had turned a deep, mottled black, and with clenched teeth and a tight jaw he began crawling toward a large rock in the distance, desperate to hide as fast as possible. He prayed the goblins hellbent on killing him would not find him there.
Each step he took was agonizing, not merely from dragging himself across the scorching floor on his bare palms, but because his right foot was screaming in a pain that radiated from deep within the bone. It was as though a red-hot iron had been pressed into it and left there to smolder. The ocean nearby breathed a furnace heat, and when he had lifted his right foot over its surface, the sole of his shoe had burned away before it even touched the liquid and that small mercy had spared him from the sight of his own flesh and bone dissolving from his leg because if he had not worn his shoes, he was afraid he would have lost his foot or he would have taken a dip into the ocean with his foot.
Huffing and drenched in sweat, his eyes stinging from the shimmering heat, he reached the rock after what felt like an eternity. Every crawling step had been a battle of its own, the heat rising in waves from the floor and thick warm air rushing off from the nearby crimson ocean felt like a living thing pressing down on him.
When he finally reached the huge, dark black rock, streaked with dried mud and dirt blemishes, he rounded its base and pressed himself into the shadow at its far side, putting the stone between himself and the direction the goblins were coming from. The rock was hard and, mercifully, large enough to conceal him completely, but it too radiated warmth, soaked through with the heat of the world around it.
Despite this, he pressed his back against it, drew his knees to his chest, and shut his eyes. Tears had already welled and freely spilled down his face. He drew blood from his lower lip, chewing and biting at it in a desperate effort to muffle the pain radiating from his ruined foot. The pain was not subsiding. If anything, it was worsening with every breath, the foot deepening in color, the previous angry crimson now giving way to dark, mottled patches of pale dark blue spreading beneath the skin like something rotting from the inside.
"God, what have I done to deserve this much suffering?" His sob broke louder. He was completely broken from inside, exhausted by the pain he was suffering. He smothered his cries immediately by pressing his mouth against the wet fabric of his shoulder, burying the sound in the academy coat soaked through with sweat and mud that had gotten attached to it due to him rolling on the ground.
His tongue tasted mud but he did not feel it for long as the heat pressing into his back from the rock became unbearable pressing away the taste off from his tongue. He shifted forward, pulling away from it. And it did not solve all the heat because his lower body that faced the ground still felt heat, extreme sheathing heat. And, there was no escape to it.
He would have torn himself up and started screaming had the goblins not been so terribly close.
The ground was trembling beneath him with small but steady tremors, and nearby loose rocks rattled and shifted. He could hear their approach, heavy and rhythmic, each footfall seeming to press into the earth with the weight of something that should not exist. From behind the rock, from a good distance came a chorus of shrieks and guttural growls, thundering off the grounds and air alike, and behind it followed the sound of wild, manic laughter that chilled him despite the heat.
Alex did not lift his head to look. He did not dare. He simply remained curled in the shadow, hiding his face in his knees, biting hard on his coat sleeve to keep his sobs from escaping.
I should never have entered the gate, he lamented inwardly. Why did I even believe that throwing myself into a life-and-death situation would magically fix the status error?
And, the worst part was that the whole experience inside the gate had not been a life-and-death situation in any sense. A true life-and-death situation, the kind the old man spoke of, was supposed to be a situation where people fought valiantly, fighting with everything they had and navigating the thin line between survival and death. The kind in which one could die if they made a single mistake. And, that kind of experience had reportedly unlocked hidden classes in some, evolved existing ones in others, and in rarer cases had granted special classes to those who endured. That was what the legends said. That was what he was supposed to experience.
But, he was not experiencing anything of that sort. This was not a battle in which he could fight and experience that same pressure. Rather, this was a slaughter in waiting. A one-sided onslaught that bore no resemblance to the stories he had heard as a child before he even discussed it with Old Wan, though the old man helped Alex in remembering it back which had been placed in the back of his mind.
Right now the situation he was in did not even remotely resemble it, and he did not have the means to fight and protect himself. Before he could land a single strike, the goblins would tear him apart. And that particular goblin warrior, the one that stood as tall as a mountain with shoulders wide as walls, carrying a club longer than Alex himself, would kill him before he even came within range of the rest. There was nothing life-and-death about it. There was only death, waiting patiently but with full certainty.
Alex let out a soft, trembling chuckle at how naive he must have been to believe he could solve his status error if he entered the gate. He had launched himself into the gate without checking the level requirement, without even pausing to consider what dangers a yellow gate might carry. He had simply thrust his hand out, driven by some reckless impulse or some desperate, wishful fantasy, and stepped through it, fooling himself it might cure the abnormal status effect that had plagued him for as long as he could remember.
But had it truly been about the status effect? Or had he simply chosen to run away?
Running from the weight of his life. From the quiet, grinding reality that he would never amount to anything. From the knowledge that every day he continued to exist, he brought shame to his family and became a larger burden to carry. Had he stepped into the gate to escape Eldric and his minions?
The answer returned to him from somewhere deep inside, bitter and familiar as the taste of blood on his lip.
And, in fact the answer was very simple because it was YES.
He had told himself it was about the miracle, about triggering some genuine life-or-death ordeal that might awaken something dormant within him. But beneath that justification, the real reason had always been simpler and far more cowardly. He had wanted to disappear. He had wanted, if only briefly, for the problems to stop being within reach of him. He hated the scornful looks from other students. He hated the anxiety that seized his chest whenever Eldric turned those narrow, contemptuous eyes toward him. He hated the way his palms would begin to sweat before a word had even been spoken out of Eldric's mouth. He hated his own cowardice, the way he allowed himself to be toyed with again and again without uttering a single complaint to the president. He was too afraid, too certain that speaking up would only drag him deeper into trouble.
And more than anything, he hated what his existence had cost his family. He hated knowing that his parents had carried guilt and grief all their lives, quietly blaming themselves for not finding a solution, for not being enough. He had seen his father sad, heard the apologies that should never have had to be spoken. Those memories opened something in him now, and the tears that fell were no longer a quiet trickle. They came hard and fast, more than he had ever thought himself capable of shedding. Like a storm, his tears burst out.
I am sorry, Mother. I am sorry, father, for troubling you both and for making you miserable all these years. I am a terrible son. A faulty son. A defective son. I am sorry, my dear sister, for all the troubles I put in your way when you never deserved any of it. You always cared for me so deeply. I am sorry. I am sorry, Eva, for being so weak and I hope you will forgive me for not being able to walk with you in this life. I am sorry. Extremely sorry. I will miss you guys even in my death.
With that last thought settled quietly inside him like a stone sinking to the bottom of a still lake, he lifted his head. His tear-streaked face tilted toward the open sky above, which hung vast and beautiful. It was beautifully carved with the light of two moons. His vision was blurred, but he could make them out: one burning and dark, a deep red mass smoldering against the world like an ember that refused to cool, and one pale and white, its cold luminescent glow spreading softly over the landscape without warming it.
He resonated with the pale one. It shed its light faithfully over a world. Its cold blue radiance could not cool the red crimson ocean below, could not still the bubbling heat of the earth, could not change a single thing about the world it watched over. It simply shone on, present and luminous, refusing to dim.
It was like him. Showing up in a place that would not acknowledge them despite their effort. They did what they could thinking they were doing everything they could but all of their efforts, all of their painstakingly painful experiences and hardships amounted to nothing and despite all of that they did not give up.
"Even if our efforts amount to nothing," he whispered to himself, voice rough and low against the distant sounds of approaching footsteps, "even if our resolve is tested again and again, our light should not dim until we breathe our last."
He reached into his storage system and drew out two bones that he had previously picked from the ground. He held one in each hand, and gripped them tight. Then, with his jaw set and his ruined foot screaming as he pressed it flat against the floor, he hauled himself upright. Pain tore through him in a distorting wave and he swayed, but he did not fall.
He turned on his heel and stepped out from the shadow of the rock.
The goblins were only a few meters away now. Their hands reached forward as they surged toward him, wild and clawing, like arms stretched out from death itself, coming to collect what was owed.
He would resist until there was nothing left to give. He cast one final glance upward at the pale white moon, steady and silent in the burning sky.
Maybe we were simply too stubborn to admit we were broken and continued to run toward some whimsical hopes. And, yet our light would not die until our last breath.
Then he launched himself forward, bones gripped steady in both hands, and charged at the goblins with everything he had left. He would not die cowering behind a rock. He would die with honor.
***
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