A/N: Minor Info Drop, I'll provide more information as the story progress, for now please consider the names and terms as hints.
*********
Nathan sat motionless on the edge of his bed, his hands clasped together as if holding himself together. The weight of the past pressed heavier than the silence around him.
'What am I supposed to do?'
The thought wasn't loud. It wasn't even desperate. It was a quiet, dull whisper, like a question asked so many times it had lost its meaning. The kind you already knew the answer to but kept asking out of habit—because admitting the truth was too unbearable.
He had always been like this.
'Passive. Drifting. Existing without purpose.'
His gaze drifted to the worn wooden floor.
'I was never meant for anything.'
Nathan had long since accepted that fact. It wasn't about finding purpose or struggling to define himself.
It was simpler than that—he had chosen to be irrelevant.
Detached.
A bystander to his own life.
There were those people who stood at the center of their stories—the driven, the bold, the people who made things happen. Then there were people like him.
The ones who faded into the background.
He had convinced himself that it was easier this way. Easier to just watch life unfold from the sidelines rather than be a part of it.
'Safer.'
And why not?
He was never meant to be in anyone's story. He was the passerby in someone else's life—almost non-existent in the background, watching but never involved.
And it was his own fault.
Because whenever the chance to step forward appeared, he would shrink back. Whenever the moment demanded him to make a choice, he hesitated until the decision was made for him.
A coward.
The truth gnawed at him, but Nathan couldn't even summon the energy to be angry about it.
'Why?'
Because it was always easier to make excuses.
I don't have a purpose because I was never given one.
'I'm not special, so what's the point of trying?'
'I'll never be successful like them, so why even try?'
'I'm not good enough in anything, so why even try?'
But those were lies, weren't they?
Lies he crafted so he didn't have to face the truth.
He knew exactly why he was like this.
The broken pieces of his life hadn't scattered by chance.
They were shattered, one piece at a time.
---
It started when he was young.
The memory was almost forgotten. In shambles, like a debris. Yet the mere reminder of it's importance was undeniable, it wasn't something he could bury beneath the wonderful memories to hide, it was an imperfection, a sore spot in his psyche.
His father—no, he was not his father. The man was a stranger now, a hollow echo of what a father was supposed to be.
Prideful. Arrogant. Wasteful.
A man who wore his dignity like a mask but left nothing but scars beneath it, a man who would spoke a dastardised version of what happened to gain empathy. Nathan could still recall the arguments of his parents, and that man—the loud, sharp cracks of a voice filled with self-righteousness coming from him, the way his words always twisted to make himself the victim.
It was sickening.
The moment he voiced out his own opinion to him, all that he had received was hurtful words, a back hand, and order to leave his house.
That made him hate the thought of even making a family, he wasn't the father material a child could ask for and he will never let his child if he would have one in the future, to even come near his parents.
But it wasn't just his father.
His mother… She was worse, or so he thought.
He always hated the woman, blaming her for what he had become, all because he couldn't accept everything, his mistakes, the lies, the truth.
He hated her, he called her a whore.
Not because of what she had done, but because of what she wasn't.
She had been the first to break their family, caught in her endless web of affairs. New faces, new lovers—each one more fleeting than the last. Nathan remembered those nights, silent and cold, when she thought he was asleep. When she'd come home reeking of perfume that wasn't hers, whispering apologies he couldn't understand.
But, when faced with his father's hand, she stood there, as if she was right at her decision.
He hated her for that.
At least his father's flaws were obvious. His pride was loud. His mistakes were easy to hate.
But his mother's sins were quieter, more insidious. And that somehow made it worse.
And yet…
Nathan didn't speak about them with anger.
No, when he thought of them, it was as if they were characters in someone else's tragedy. Like he was watching the pain unfold from behind a glass wall—there, but never truly there. He could sympathise, find similarities, but never understand, he will never understand.
Just like now.
Just like always.
—
The moment his family had set apart, he changed.
He can't smile anymore without telling himself to smile, he can't feel joy anymore because he can be happy. It was as if someone took all his emotions away from him, and all he could do was to simulate those emotions outside, even when he felt nothing at all.
His life became dull. Suffocating.
And after that, everything changed.
He wasn't the smartest anymore, he's not happy, he can't even dream.
He learned that unlike those characters in children's stories, he wasn't a special child with grand future ahead of him because some kind hearted entity decided to bless him.
No, it was more like he was cursed to never be happy anymore.
Everything was falling apart, just like his confidence.
A blur of mistakes and missed opportunities, every bad thing he does makes him tremble in pain, it was a 7 years of agony.
He had floated through his teenage years, one day bleeding into the next, waiting for something—anything—to change. But nothing ever did.
Reading was his favourite pasttime before, but as he grew up, it became his numbing medicine, a beacon of solitude and peace, the warm assurance that he was still there, still 'fine'.
He reads when he feels lonely, he reads when he's hurt, he reads when he wants to tune everything out, to find peace.
And just like those stories he had read, he once wished to get something straight out from fantasy, a golden finger or a boon, a system that would make him stronger and wiser like those characters in the stories he had read.
A group of girls affectionate to him and only him were only the third, having a great story and life to live and tell the second, and the first, was to become someone like those characters in their stories.
Once, he had wished to become one like them.
Yet there was no great revelation. No turning point.
Only quiet resentment, twisting deeper.
'And I called it fate.' he thought as he felt like a joke, he now knew that there were a turning point, just not… the same as he thought of.
But, could knowing that fact even help?
The excuses piled up, each one a layer over the truth. He blamed the world for not giving him a place, a chance. Blamed his family for breaking apart. Blamed everyone else for moving forward while he stood still.
But deep down, Nathan had always known the truth.
He was running, he was always running.
Running from effort. From responsibility. From himself.
Like a coward.
It was easier to let the world pass by than to confront the fact that he was a coward. That all his pain, all his struggles—he could have fought them.
He should've fought them, struggle, live.
But he hadn't.
He hid behind words. Behind silence. Behind a mask of apathy, all while cursing the world for leaving him behind.
And now, back in this familiar room, that same old weakness crept up in his skin, claiming it's once declared throne in his identity.
He was still that person.
The same scared, useless, bitter him.
Nothing had changed.
---
Nathan sat quietly on the edge of his bed, the pale morning light seeping through the thin curtains. Shadows danced on the cracked walls of the old boarding house, familiar yet distant.
Hours passed when he woke up, broke down, and just sit back in his bed until now.
It felt… surreal.
Not the overwhelming kind of shock one might expect, but a quiet, gnawing weight pressing against his chest. He hadn't screamed, hadn't panicked—there was just this dull ache. A silent understanding.
I'm back.
There was no other explanation.
His reflection in the window—young, weak, barely out of his teens—confirmed it. The lines on his face were gone, the wear of battle, blood, and betrayal erased. The hands he stared at now lacked the calluses he had once earned the hard way.
Yet the ache in his heart hadn't faded with them.
'This was me.'
The same spineless coward, timid, and useless self he had long buried under years of regret and failure.
Nathan's fingers clenched into his bedsheets. For so long, he had thought his death was the conclusion he deserved. A fitting punishment for what he had done.
But here he was again.
Alive.
Returned.
And despite every part of him screaming that this shouldn't be possible, Nathan couldn't deny the truth.
'Just like in those webtoons… Is this how Junghyuk felt in his first regression?' he remembered the protagonist of a story he had read, it was a story he had marked as favourite in his offline library and downloads on his reading apps.
'But, I'm not like him.'
He wasn't someone who wanted to save everyone dear to him, he wasn't someone who would offer their lives for the sake of Earth's peace and safety.
He only care for himself.
He had always been a bystander. A shadow. Someone who watched life pass by while refusing to be part of it.
And now? Now, he was forced to confront it all again.
'Pathetic.'
He exhaled shakily, resting his elbows on his knees, head hanging low. The silence felt heavier than it should have.
---
'Why am I here? Why am I back?'
He already knew the answer.
The memories were too vivid. The disaster, the Spires, the monsters, the ruin of the world as he knew it.
The thought made his stomach twist.
In the past, his cowardly self had run away from his responsibilities, his pettiness his undoing, and ignorance his sin. But, after experiencing his regression, he realised the haunting fact, it wasn't just his life on the line this time.
Everyone, they are also in danger.
He had seen the world burn once before—the endless screams, the chaos, the countless innocent people devoured, crushed, torn apart. All because they weren't prepared.
And here he was, wasting time.
'Contemplating.'
The bitter laugh nearly escaped him, his loath to himself that he swallowed back felt like a bitter poison, he want to puke yet never could.
'Nothing had changed, had it?'
It would be so easy to just sink back into this body, to let time drift by, ignoring the truth until the end came crashing down on him all over again.
But no.
Samantha.
Her gaze before broke him, his arrogance broken down, his cowardice turned to spite to himself.
Before, he fear death more so than others, he cling so dearly to his safety, to his life, so that he could be present when there are times for leisure, yet absent in any scenario of danger.
But, the guilt and hatred he had for himself, the exhaustion from blaming everyone, the exhaustion from being a cowardly drifter, it snapped something in him.
He didn't want to be a coward all the same, even if he couldn't help others, why should he stay like this and wait until the calamity came?
No, he couldn't let that happen.
'Not again.'
He forced himself to stand, knees weak, the ache in his chest tightening as he looked around the room. The stale scent of old wood and dust lingered, familiar yet foreign. He could still remember this space—his college dorm when he was a first-year computer engineering student. Back when the biggest problems in his life were deadlines and pretending he wasn't falling apart inside.
But now, none of that mattered.
Because he remembered.
The Spires. The monsters. The end of the world.
And it was coming.
---
Nathan moved with quiet determination, hands hovering at the nightstand's surface, where his old phone lay quietly.
His hands hovered over it for a moment.
This was ridiculous, wasn't it? If he really was back in 2025, there wouldn't be anything—no announcements, no disasters. It was too early.
Still, he couldn't shake the tension gnawing at his chest.
Picking up his phone and unlocking it, he stared at the time, '8:37', the typical time of him waking up.
The screen lit up as he unlocked it, and the familiar home screen greeted him—outdated apps, text messages from classmates he barely remembered, missed calls from family he had long since stopped talking to.
He ignored it all and went straight to the news.
Nothing.
A few headlines flashed by. Some political squabbles, a minor celebrity scandal—just the ordinary noise of a world still untouched by chaos.
Nathan exhaled. Right. Of course.
But as he scrolled further, something caught his eye.
A series of scattered reports buried beneath the trending topics.
"Wild Animal Attacks Surge in Urban Areas Across Multiple Cities."
"Officials Puzzled by Sudden Increase in Wildlife Aggression."
"Mass Bird Flock Sightings Over Urban Centers Spark Public Curiosity."
Nathan's heart clenched.
This wasn't normal.
He knew exactly what this was.
The first signs.
In his past timeline, it had started the same way—random reports, animal behavior that didn't make sense, unexplained aggression. People had brushed it off back then. Minor, isolated incidents.
The movements gain momentum, however with the government appeasing the population, no one was curious enough to wonder why those phenomenons were happening.
Until the year 2029.
Until the Spires emerged.
Until the real monsters followed.
Nathan placed the phone down slowly, the quiet hum of its screen fading as his reflection stared back at him in the darkened glass.
Dark hair that was ruffled and uncombed, his listless dark-brown eyes and the dark, obvious eye bags underneath, repercussions of staying late at night. His pale skin was the aftermath of unhealthy diet, skinny and frail, it was almost possible for a strong blow of wind to bring him up in the sky, only to fall down and die miserably.
Like a paper, a blank one. Yet, atleast a paper have a purpose.
'I can't stay like this.'
The more time he wasted clinging to his self-pity, the closer the world crept toward destruction.
And he wasn't ready.
Not yet.
He would die in even less than a second with this body.
But he had a chance—one that countless others had never been given.
He had time.
And if he let it slip through his fingers again...
He wouldn't forgive himself.
Not this time.
Nathan closed his eyes and forced his mind to think practically. If he was truly back, if this wasn't some cruel hallucination, then there were steps he needed to take. Steps to survive.
His gaze drifted toward the wooden desk across the room. Old memories stirred—he had used that desk for study once. Half-hearted attempts to get through college coursework he barely cared about.
Now, it would serve a far more important purpose.
Dragging himself to his feet, Nathan crossed the room and pulled open the top drawer, searching. His hand closed around a worn, leather-bound journal tucked beneath a tangle of pens and loose sheets.
He placed it on the desk and opened to a blank page.
The pen felt heavier than it should as he held it above the paper. For a moment, he hesitated—an inexplicable fear gnawing at him.
What if I get this wrong? What if it's not enough?
But he had to start somewhere.
---
"The Spires: What I Know"
Origin Unknown. Appeared without warning. No impact. No traceable source.
Public Reaction: Early appearances were hidden by the authorities. Mass panic was avoided... for a while.
The Factions:
The Aspirants: Those who embraced the Spires. Believed they were a gift, a key to humanity's evolution.
The Repressionists: Those who opposed them. Viewed the Spires as dangerous, a threat humanity couldn't control.
Nathan paused, jaw clenching. The factions... they didn't matter. None of them were ready for what came next.
He kept writing.
---
The Effects:
Gradual spread of energy from each Spire.
Mutation of local wildlife.
Manifestation of unnatural phenomena.
---
His handwriting grew shakier as he pressed the pen harder against the page, his recollection of every information steady, yet his unease palpable in each second passing.
The Three Energies:
Arcane
Ki
Spirit
His hand moved, pen in hold and underlined these three words, circled in red as if trying to burn the information into his memory.
The foundations of power. The keys to humanity's survival... and its destruction.
Nathan leaned back, staring at the words he had written.
It was a start. But it wasn't enough.
His hand curled into a fist. I need more... I need to be ready.
---
Suddenly, his phone vibrated on the desk.
The abrupt noise shattered the fragile silence like glass.
Nathan flinched, his pulse spiking before he reached for the device. The screen blinked to life, displaying a name he hadn't seen in decades.
Incoming Call: Mother
For a moment, he could only stare.
The calm he had fought so hard to build cracked.
It was her. The woman he had buried under years of bitterness and regret. The one who had shaped his brokenness as much as he had shaped his own.
He could feel the weight of old wounds pressing against his chest.
The past was calling.
And he wasn't sure if he had the strength to answer.
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A/N: I planned to introduce my mc as someone who struggles to face their past, all the psychological issues and trauma, and I hope I've done well enough to give you a heads up on what is coming next.