Chapter 1: A Fragile Return
The first thing Nathan felt was the headache.
It was a crushing pressure, relentless against his skull, forcing him to gasp as though he had been smothered. The pain was too real, too sharp. Every throb in his head felt like it was ripping his mind apart. His eyes fluttered open, but the world around him was a blur. The air felt thick, every breath shallow and ragged as if his body was struggling to breathe.
Something was wrong.
I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be alive.
His body was frozen, his chest tight as a wave of panic surged within him. His limbs trembled as he sat up, fighting the urge to collapse back into the bed. His hand went instinctively to his forehead, pushing against the pounding sensation as though he could force it to stop. He had been through too much to be here—alive.
I should be... gone.
The battlefield. The monsters. The moments before his end. He had been abandoned, left to the mercy of the creatures. He had known it was over, but now... now he was still breathing.
The disorienting rush of memories hit him like a punch. His last moments had been so vivid, his betrayal so clear. They had left me. But how? Why was he still here, in a place so strange and familiar all at once?
Nathan's chest tightened. His pulse raced, his throat closing in on itself. This can't be happening. This can't be real.
The room around him swirled into focus, slowly revealing the familiar, mundane objects that told him where he was. The cluttered desk. The worn-out chair. The cheap lamp beside the bed. He blinked, the haze lifting from his vision as the pieces of his surroundings snapped into place.
It was his old room. The boarding house. The place where he had lived as a freshman at university. The place where, years ago, he had lived a life full of wasted potential.
He could feel his heart sink.
This is where it all started. This is where I failed.
His hands trembled as they reached for the edge of the desk, trying to steady himself. He couldn't believe it. This place—his past. It was all here, frozen in time, as though nothing had ever changed. The same old textbooks, the same dust gathering in the corners. The same him—the person he had been when everything had felt so aimless, so empty.
He looked down at his hands, trying to steady his breath. I was weak then. He couldn't stop the thoughts from rushing in. Weak. Useless. Worthless. He had been nothing but a burden to everyone around him, never willing to face the responsibilities of life.
And now he was here, feeling the weight of that failure crushing him all over again.
I didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve to live, to get another chance.
His gaze shifted across the room, and his eyes landed on the calendar hanging by the door. The simple, crisp numbers caught his attention, and with a sickening realization, his eyes locked on the date.
January 16, 2025.
He froze. His blood ran cold.
No. It can't be.
His hand reached out without thinking, touching the calendar with the same dull, defeated motion he had when he had been younger—before.
It was his past. His younger self. The life he had lived. The coward he had been.
Nathan staggered back, his chest tightening as if he couldn't breathe. How? How is this possible?
This was the moment when it all started. When he had been nothing but a freeloader, a burden on everyone around him. A weak-willed, lazy person who had no direction, no goals. A college student drifting through life, always running from responsibility, always avoiding his true potential.
I hated myself then. The thought pierced his mind like a knife. He had hated the person he was—too afraid to face the future, too scared to make decisions, too lazy to take the chances he had been given. He had been nothing but a drain on his family, a reminder that he had never been enough.
And now, here he was, back in that same place, facing the person he had once been. The person who had failed before he had even tried. The person who had betrayed his own future.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his throat tight with the weight of self-loathing. Why did I have to come back? His body trembled as the guilt and shame consumed him. It was too much. All the mistakes, the choices he had made, the way he had always run away... it was all crashing down on him.
I was never good enough then. I was weak. I still am.
The words echoed in his mind, as real as the room around him. The person he had been had been nothing but a failure. He had been unable to face his fears, unable to stand up when it mattered. And now, here in this moment, he was forced to confront it all over again.
"...Why?" a soft plead, desperate, and agonising question come from him.
He couldn't escape it. He couldn't escape himself.
Nathan let out a shaky breath and sank down onto the bed, his body trembling, his mind racing. I'm trapped here. Trapped in this... this failure of a life.
He wanted to cry.
He wanted to die.
He was pleading, for the one whom he was so scared of, to take him now.
He closed his eyes, willing himself to forget everything, to return to the numbness that had once kept him going. But he couldn't. The weight of the past was too heavy, the burden too great.
Just let me go.
But he knew, there was no escape. Not this time.