"Aaaaaaaa!"

  For what felt like the hundredth time, I was flung from the void and crash-landed in the corridor. Speed that should've turned me into paste. Dignity: nonexistent. Body: still functional, somehow.

  I pushed myself up. Dusted off. Again.

  "Damn geezer…" I muttered. "Kicked me down here to be the next divine pincushion. When I get back I swear I'll—"

  And there he was. Ashkart. Standing at the far end of the corridor exactly as he always was — motionless, golden hair somehow still glowing despite the absence of any real light source, blank eyes fixed on the ground. Same sword. The same sword that had separated my head from my body—

  How many times now? Ten? Fifteen? I'd genuinely lost count.

  "Quest updated," I muttered to myself, in the most sarcastic voice I had left. "Yeah. Defeat the legendary hero, free him from eternal suffering, blah blah blah."

  Blah blah blah, meanwhile he was the source of my eternal suffering.

  I scanned the corridor. Colossal. Stone pillars disappearing upward beyond sight. Air completely still, no miasma — just that other thing that filled the space instead, ancient and sharp and very much willing to cleave me in half at the first opportunity.

  Every time I turned back, the barrier was there. I'd smashed it, blasted it, sliced it, begged it. Nothing. It wanted me to face him, over and over, until something finally gave.

  It wasn't going to be me.

  I refused.

  "Alright, Ashkart." I raised a hand that was, let's be honest, probably about to become detached from my arm anyway. "One more time."

  I dashed. Top speed, every protection spell layered like the world's most anxious onion — [Conceal], [Silent Step], [Divine Shield], [Shadow's Embrace], all of it buzzing through me like a mana overdose. Faster than light. Definitely faster than light this time—

  Darkness. Cold, spinning.

  Eh…?

  Face. Ground. Detached. The now-familiar sight of my headless body sprawled nearby.

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  "AAAAAAA—"

  Checkpoint. Again. Body reformed, cold sweat, phantom pain that apparently carried over between cycles.

  "THIS IS INSANE!"

  I stomped around the checkpoint. I kicked a pebble. I cursed Amarok specifically by name.

  "This is personal now," I told Ashkart, across the corridor, from a safe distance. "You hear me? Personal."

  I tried everything.

  Brute force. Zigzagging like a lunatic. Sprinting low to the ground, jumping, rolling. Every spell combination in the Akashic Records. Secret techniques. Techniques that probably weren't even techniques, just me flailing with magic attached.

  Every single time — head, ground, checkpoint.

  I slumped against the barrier wall, panting, sweat dripping. My neck was developing a phantom ache from sheer psychological damage at this point.

  "Maybe it's a miasma illusion," I laughed bitterly. "Just something messing with my head to keep me from—"

  No. It wasn't. I could feel the echo of the blade every single time. Clean, precise, and completely indifferent to whatever I tried.

  Alright. One more. For real.

  I stacked every spell I hadn't tried yet. [Indomitable Will]. [Rheitteddor Alchemist's Mark]. [Philosopher's Fortitude]. Even the ones I didn't fully understand — I threw them at myself anyway on the principle that something had to stick. I was practically glowing. A walking stack of buffs that should have been invincible by any reasonable metric.

  I ran.

  The corridor blurred. Wind screaming past, floor disappearing beneath my feet, every spell carrying me faster than I'd ever moved—

  Swish.

  Ground. Checkpoint. My body reforming mid-scream.

  "AAAAAAAAAAA!"

  I yanked at my hair. Actually yanked at it. Just stood there at the checkpoint yelling into a corridor that absolutely did not care.

  I could be light-speed. I could be invisible. I could be divine-wall-tough with a full buff stack and a legendary artifact in my hand—

  I froze.

  Wait.

  A thought. Small and ridiculous and possibly the only thing I hadn't tried.

  What if this wasn't about getting past him?

  What if I had to do something different?

  I sat on the ground and thought about that for a moment. Talk to him? He'd been standing there for a thousand years staring at the floor — what were the odds he was in the mood for conversation? Appeal to his humanity? That had probably dissolved around year two hundred.

  But then—

  Behind my eyes, in the space where Josephine's memories lived, something surfaced. A book. Fairy tales, illustrated — the kind a lonely girl in a spare mansion read alone. Golden hair. A small, warm smile. A hero who wasn't a weapon or a title, but a person who'd chosen to stay.

  Maybe he wasn't waiting for a fight. Maybe he was waiting for a reason.

  I stood up.

  Let the spells fall away. All of them. No concealment, no protection stack, no speed buffs. Just me, walking down the corridor slowly, hands visible, approaching the man who'd taken my head off somewhere north of twenty times.

  "Ashkart," I said quietly, when I was close enough to almost reach the hilt of his sword. "You were a hero once. You fought for humanity. You kept this seal for a thousand years because you chose to stay."

  His blank eyes flickered.

  Barely. But it was something.

  "I'm here to help," I said. "Let me take this from you. You've held on long enough."

  The flicker grew — the faintest hint of something behind those eyes, like a light in a very deep room.

  I reached out and touched the hilt of his sword.

  It was ice cold.

  He cut my head off without hesitation.

  "AAAAAAAAAA!"