Why? || The Max-Level Player 100th Regression x F!Reader

This Curse We Call Survival

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to kill everything that had ever hurt her.

Instead, I held her tighter as her body began to go still. A soft sigh left her lips like the last note of a lullaby.

And then—

Nothing.

Just the cold.

Just me.

I didn't even notice the wicked, heartless, supposed to be victorious smiles.

More thuds echoed. As if rain started to fall. The sky weeping along with me. 

Yet those thuds were not the raindrops, but the heads of the wicked.

Black Scythe, Ryu Min, he knelt in front of me as I held my beloved friend. 

I had no strength for revenge, but he already made the move for me.

His arms embraced me warmly, while I embraced the corpse, slowly turning cold in my own arms.

Zuri.

The warmth of your hand is gone now.

Ripped from mine like a cruel joke.

I remember grabbing it. The callouses on your palm. The way you'd squeeze twice when I was scared.

Now I sit in the aftermath, my fingers soaked in the blood you spent to shield me.

Through everything—the pain, the fear—you were the one constant.

My friend. My light. My north star.

I want to be angry at you for leaving.

But how can I, when I know that even in death, you chose me over everything else?

Zuri...

I'll make this world pay for taking you.

And when I see you again—whenever, wherever—I'll tell you everything.

How your death broke me.

How your love saved me.

·········⋆༺𓆩❀𓆪༻⋆·········

At last, the final round arrived.

And there was....

Light.

There was so much of it—ethereal, blinding.

How could something so beautiful feel so deadly?

The knights stood before us like statues—towering in white and gold.

Guarding the path to our salvation.

With my lover next to me, I wasn't scared.

While Min summoned his scythe, I summoned my own spear like staff.

They won't let us pass so easily, but neither will we give up.

We fought this much, we survived this far, may they suffer the weight of every breath we clawed back from death.

Min unleashed his skill—Night of Death—swallowing the room in shadow. Darkness bloomed like ink in water. His strikes came swift and cruel, dancing between gaps in their armor.

I moved with him, freezing their feet to the ground, pinning guards to stone.

We had done this countless times—against monsters, against our own kind.