Chương 172: Embracing Fate

His jaw came back wrong the first time. June recognized it before he felt it — flesh knitting too fast, too eager, snapping into a shape that wasn't quite right, wasn't quite his... it felt like a charley horse in his face, then he gagged on the taste of it, something between rot and renewal, and it sloughed away on its own, dissolving into a wet, gray slurry that dripped down his throat and chest. Then his body tried again. He didn't stop walking. He couldn't run anymore. Couldn't remember deciding not to.

The second attempt came in crooked, teeth doubled in places, gums stretched thin and translucent over bone that hadn't decided what it wanted to be yet. It itched — everything itched, had been itching for what felt like hours, and he clawed absently at his collarbone without really registering that his nails were leaving furrows. It fell away too. Rotted, replaced, rotted again. He remembered, distantly, a time when this had been the norm when regenerating. June had gotten used to one try being enough.

He couldn't remember when that had started being the case.

'Lilia.' The thought arrived clean… unbothered by the fog choking every other thought — the way a single window stays lit in a building otherwise gone dark. He held onto it the way a drowning man holds a rope.

'Lilia.' Her name echoed in his mind, beckoning him like a lighthouse to a ship lost at sea. June had far reached his limit… he would find it funny if not for the ever-present fog muddying his thoughts; how did he always end up in situations where he would be run ragged? He would laugh out loud to himself if he could, not because he found the thought especially funny, but because he wanted to just feel something other than just… fog. June's eyes flickered, his knee buckled down, and he fell to his knees.

The surrounding area had been oddly quiet since he fought off those wolfmen; it felt… like an embrace. A stray thought floated through his mind: 'I wouldn't mind dying here…' Something deep within told him otherwise; it felt like an intrusive noise disturbing his well-deserved rest. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. It would be so easy to give in. To give up. He wasn't some fairy tale hero. He wasn't even a flawed hero.

Maybe like all the other dead partygoers… it was his time to die. June groaned; he tried to push himself up, only to fall further down, face first. He lay there, still… unmoving… why even bother? He already did the impossible; he killed hundreds of bad, evil people… even then, he was a killer now, no… he'd had to kill before. What right did a killer have to live? Even if he wasn't a killer, what right did he have to live? His life before becoming a Dreamer — wasn't any better.

He had a few close friends, but even so, they never heard the full story of his life, just a curated tale, simplified, bastardized. The sudden urge to vomit overtook him as the stench of his rotting jaw flowed into his nostrils — he couldn't stand up; his face was planted in the rubble, and like an insignificant fly throwing up digestive acids, a flow of fluids slipped out of his mouth and onto the floor. He didn't have the strength to move from the forming puddle of vomit and his rotting jaw's fluids.

Should he even bother? Everything good in his life was taken away at some point; at some point he accepted that as the natural order of things, but… he never understood why. His mother was sickly; his dog was sickly too. The idea that when he got home to the mundane world, he would be greeted by two graves had struck him more than a few times since he awoke from his coma. If they died, what would be next for June? His only worth was to be someone else's caretaker.

June waited for death, but someone gripped his heart and woke him up whenever he began fading. He shut his eyes… and tried to figure out what the force keeping him alive was — he reached within and pried. Lilia. She used to fall asleep with her head on his lap, still talking, sentences trailing off mid-thought until her breathing evened out beneath his hand. She hummed off-key when she thought no one was listening.

She'd once cried over a bruised knee not because it hurt, but because he'd looked so guilty about causing it that she couldn't stand it. She was the only person who had ever hugged him, and didn't force herself to do it… Not even his family did that; no one had hugged him before, not out of love, at least. He winced; he didn't know if she was still breathing right now. The thought alone tore him apart more than his vile powers.

Imagining it made him feel sick; a lump formed in his throat and his bloodshot eyes shot open. June slammed his fist into the ground and pushed himself up, fighting the heavy gravity holding him down. His body no longer felt entirely like his own, as an invigorated rage overtook him. His jaw came back a third time. This one held. He ran his tongue along the inside of it, testing, and found teeth in the right places, a hinge that clicked shut without complaint. Not perfect. Not the version he'd worn an hour ago.

But his. Close enough. Ahead, past the last collapsed row of hedges, the whistles had gone quiet a long while ago, replaced by something worse — a dreadful stillness, like a stifled breath. The center was close now. June wiped his mouth with the back of a bloodied hand and kept walking.