The machine next to the hospital bed beeped steadily, each slow pulse of the heart rate echoing like a drumbeat.
Tristan lay still, barely breathing. His body felt heavy, weighed down by the cancer that ravaged him from the inside out.
His mind, however, was alive, alert, and for the first time in years, it wasn't focused on the agonizing pain in his body.
No, something else was happening, something that didn't sit right with him at all.
His vision was split down the middle.
On one side, he could see the bland, sterile ceiling of the hospital room. On the other, there was a silver-haired young man standing over him, a sword gripped tightly in his hands, eyes burning with rage.
The young man was dressed in old-fashioned light armor, the kind of thing Tristan used to imagine his own characters wearing in the fantasy webnovels he'd written a decade ago.
A ghost of recognition stirred deep inside him.
He was sure he was hallucinating, but... that face - there was something about it. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it felt like he should know him.
He blinked, his vision hazy and unfocused, but there was no denying it now. He knew that face.
'That's the hero of my book,' he thought, a spark of disbelief and confusion flooding his mind. The character he'd created - Elijah, the Hero of Light had come to life in the strangest, most inexplicable way.
The young man raised his sword high, his eyes flashing with fury. Tristan couldn't move, couldn't cry out.
The pain from his cancer felt like it was pulling him into the depths of darkness, but this… this was different.
He was seeing the creation of his own mind as if it had become real, and it was furious.
"Bastard!" Elijah spat, his voice full of contempt. "Murderer!"
Tristan's chest constricted as a stab of pain shot through him, only it wasn't from the cancer.
No, it was far worse than that. The sword came down, and he felt it sink deep into his stomach, twisting painfully as Elijah's fury seemed to surge through the steel blade.
Tristan's body jerked unwillingly, a scream caught somewhere in his throat.
The nurse at his side seemed unaware of the pain he was experiencing, but Tristan felt it, felt the blade twist deeper, felt the intense heat of Elijah's words cutting through him just as much as the sword did.
'Why?' Tristan thought. 'Why is he here? Why is he doing this to me?'
The words echoed in his mind. He could hear Elijah's voice clearly now, sharp and full of hatred, like a whip of cruel reality.
"I told you to spare her," Elijah hissed, his breath hot with rage. "I told you to let her live, but you ignored me, didn't you? You killed her."
Tristan's heart stumbled in his chest, not from the physical agony but from the weight of the accusation.
He didn't understand it. He didn't remember killing anyone… he had been on his death bed for crying out loud.
He had created this world, this character, this scene felt very familiar to him but he couldn't remember. He wanted to scream, to beg for answers, but the words wouldn't come. Flames burst to life around him, burning him alive.
His body was trapped in two realities at once - one where he was dying in a hospital bed, and another where the very hero he had created was condemning him with his sword.
The nurse tried to soothe him, holding his hand gently as her voice broke through the noise in his head. "Sir, please stay calm. Your health is rapidly deteriorating."
But Tristan couldn't focus. The pain in his stomach was unbearable, the sword still embedded there, twisting with every passing second.
Elijah's fiery eyes never left him.
"Rest in hell, Luther Von Astral," Elijah muttered, his voice dark with finality.
The name… Luther Von Astral… struck Tristan like a bolt of lightning.
He could barely comprehend it. It made no sense. That name belonged to a character he had written years ago, a villain he had created as the very antagonist to Elijah.
But now, it was his name.
The words twisted in his mind, and the flames of Elijah's fury burned hotter against his skin.
The hospital room around him began to fade, the sound of the beeping heart monitor slowly muffling until everything went black.
He had died.
#####
A drop of water splashed against his forehead, waking him.
Tristan blinked rapidly as the world came into focus. He wasn't in the hospital anymore. Instead, he stood in a clearing, the air thick with the scent of rain and damp earth.
Above, the sky was dark and swollen clouds rumbled with the threat of a storm.
Lightning split the air in jagged, violent streaks, casting an eerie light over the landscape.
He stood in the middle of it all, his breath shallow, his body aching - not from the cancer, but from something else.
Something was wrong.
'I just died,' Tristan realized, the truth of it settling like a weight in his stomach.
The pain from the flames that had burned him alive had faded, replaced by the cold, biting wind that whipped against his skin.
It felt almost peaceful, like the calm after a storm.
For a fleeting moment, he could almost pretend that everything was fine - that the cancer, the pain, the whole nightmare was behind him. But no. Something was off.
Tristan moved forward, darting to a stream nearby. With each step he took, his bones creaked which only served to add more fear to the terror that he was already shaking in. He knelt before the stream and looked at his face in the water… a figure that he recognized very well stared back at him.
"No… no, this can't be happening," Tristan whispered to himself. "This can't be real."
But it was. He could feel it… the wrongness of it.
He reached up and ran his hand through his black hair, his eyes darting nervously as he tried to make sense of it all.
It wasn't a dream. He wasn't hallucinating.
Tristan Deremiah - no, Luther Von Astral -was staring back at him in the reflection of a nearby stream.
The lightning flashed again, illuminating the clear water, and there it was: his face.
It was his yet it wasn't. The lines of his features, the shape of his jaw, the cold fire in his eyes - all of it felt unfamiliar and terrifying.
Luther Von Astral - the final villain of his webnovel. The one whom Elijah, his hero, had sworn to destroy.
"I'm… I'm him?" Tristan's voice shook as he spoke the words, it felt unreal… too unbelievable.