Becoming

The bells rang again.

Soft at first. Just a whisper in the wind, like wind chimes in an empty hallway. But Ash had heard that sound too many times now. It was always the same. It was never comforting.

When his eyes opened, the world was quiet again. Still, that same damn tree stretched over him like a monster made of bark. The air didn't move. The sky was that weird, muted grey, like it had been painted over with dead clouds.

He sat up slowly. No blood. No fire. No screaming. Just dirt under his palms and silence pressing into his ears.

Reaper was gone.

Ken was gone.

They were always gone.

It didn't matter how many times Ash tried to remember what happened between the ending and now. His memory always ended at the bells and restarted here. Under this tree. Alone. At first, he thought it was some kind of dream. Like maybe the fight had knocked him out. Or he'd died, and this was just some strange afterlife. But that hope had died weeks ago. Or months ago. Time didn't work properly here.

Ash had run every path in the forest. He had climbed every hill, swum across every lake, walked until his feet bled and then kept walking. But no matter what he did, no matter where he went, it all circled back. He could walk straight for days and still end up staring at that damn tree again.

Every fruit he picked grew back. Every stream was clean. His injuries always healed eventually. There was no hunger. No thirst. Just time. Endless time.

And always... that feeling.

Like someone was watching him. Not from the trees, not from the sky, but from everywhere at once. That creature. The one that never came close but was always there. Just behind the veil. Not breathing. Not blinking. Just... present.

A shadow just past the trees. A silhouette in the clouds. A figure standing still on the far side of the river, too far to reach but too close to ignore. It never moved. It never made a sound. It just watched him.

And that was the worst part. It never tried to hurt him. It never chased him. It didn't want him dead.

It wanted him trapped.

The first few times he'd seen it, Ash had screamed at it. He'd picked up rocks and thrown them with all his strength. He'd cried, cursed, and begged. He tried running toward it. It always vanished right before he got close. Like it knew how far he could go. Like it was in control of every inch of this place.

And still... every time, the loop started again. He'd live through the fight again. Watch Richie tear apart the battlefield. Watch the sky fall. Dev screaming about traitors, Valhalla breaking the laws of the world. Then Richie breaking. Then dying. Then the silence.

And then... the bells.

Back under the tree.

He carved names into the tree: Richie, Ken, his own. He scratched dates into the bark, even though he didn't know what day it was anymore. But every time he woke up again... the tree was clean.

It felt like time wasn't passing. Like he was stuck in a snow globe. An endless pocket of fake reality where nothing decayed, nothing aged, and the only thing truly alive was his own fear.

Ash eventually stopped trying to break out. Instead, he started watching it back. Whenever it appeared, he didn't run anymore. He just sat there, knees pulled to his chest, breathing quietly, staring back at the shape in the distance.

Sometimes, Ash wondered if the creature was lonely too. Or maybe it was just bored. Maybe it was waiting for him to break completely before it moved. Maybe that was the whole point.

A few more months or even years passed as he felt he was slowly loosing his own sanity. But lately, something new had started.

It began with his sight. Things got blurrier at first, then faded into total black. Not like a normal blindness. It was like his eyes weren't eyes anymore. Just... empty sockets trying to pretend they remembered how light worked. His hands felt wrong when he touched his face. Thicker. Heavier. His skin didn't feel like skin anymore. It felt stretched, like wet paper over metal.

And the pain. God, the pain in his back.

It started as a pressure. A twisting kind of ache, like something buried deep inside his spine wanted to claw its way out. At first, he ignored it. Then he started waking up in the middle of the loop screaming, sweat pouring down, his body shaking like he'd been stabbed.

Something inside him was changing. He tried not to think about it. He tried to pretend that maybe it was the loop making him sick. Maybe it was the forest, or the air, or just his mind cracking from being stuck here too long.

But one morning, he fell to his knees. He couldn't breathe. It felt like fire had been poured down his spine. His body convulsed as his mouth opened wide in a scream, but no sound came out. His vision was already gone, but somehow he could still feel what was happening. The bones in his back were splitting open. His skin tore like paper, and he could feel something push through.

Six arms. Not his. Long, jagged, horrible arms. Bone and muscle and something else. They twitched and moved behind him like they had minds of their own. And it was as if he got his eyesight back....

He collapsed face-first in the dirt, twitching in silence, trying not to lose his mind. He was becoming it. The creature. The thing that had watched him all this time.

His hands clenched the soil beneath him as he dug his fingers in like claws. A part of him wanted to accept it, just give in and become what the place wanted him to be.

But another part of him said no. Not like this. He hated what he was becoming. Hated the feel of those arms behind him. He began to resent his own flesh. Curse his own breath. He stopped eating. Stopped moving. He curled up beneath the tree for days and whispered to himself just to remember what his voice sounded like.

Then... one day, the sword appeared. It was just lying there next to him when he woke up, an old, familiar thing. A blade that didn't belong in this place.

An anomaly in the dream.

He didn't ask how it got there. Maybe it was mercy. Maybe it was the creature's mistake. Maybe the sword had always been with him but he had never noticed it. Whatever the reason, Ash picked it up.

It felt right in his hand. He looked at it and ran his thumb over the edge. It was sharp and Beautiful. And suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

He turned the sword slowly, angled it toward his throat, and rested the tip against the soft skin of his neck.

And that's when he heard the footsteps. The creature was running toward him. With his six eyes, he felt it, its panic, its fear, its raw confusion.

Ash smiled. He knew it would happen, a parasite would not let its host die. As the creature got really near, he moved the sword aiming the perice the creature's skull but somehow his sword passes straight through the skull, as if the creature wasn't even here.

The smirk washed of his face as it turned into a frown, but then suddenly, it moved. The blade tilted, shifted, and stabbed upwards into the air above his head. Ash had no idea why.

And then... blood. Thick, black, tar-like blood began to pour down from the air, as if it had been hiding there all along. A weight lifted from his skull. The creature had been sitting on him. Somehow, Ash had never felt it. Never seen it. But the blade knew.

Its body hit the ground with a sickening, quiet sound. Ash stood there, breathless, shaking. He waited. And waited. But nothing changed. He was still in the loop. The sky was still grey. The tree was still there. He was still disfigured. Still trapped.

Killing the creature... wasn't the way out. That's when the real thought came.

It was never about the creature. It was about him. He had become what the place wanted. So now, he had to do the one thing left that he couldn't stop him from doing.

He raised the sword again. This time, he aimed it at himself. Not to threaten. Not to bait. Not to distract. But to end. He let the sword glide across his neck with no hesitation. As the warmth left his body, he collapsed to the ground in silence.