"Hold on!" Satou shouted, slashing frantically. But no matter how much he cut, more flesh grew back. Jessica's screams were becoming weaker, her struggles more feeble.

"Satou... why aren't you saving me? Why are you just watching me die?"

"I'm trying!" Satou's voice was desperate. "I'm trying but it's not working!"

Then Jessica's face began melting, skin sliding off bone like wax under heat. Her screams became gurgles, then silence. Within seconds, there was nothing left but a skeleton being pulled into the wall, then even that was consumed.

"No!" Satou stumbled backward, horrified. "No, that's not—she can't—"

A hand touched his shoulder, and he spun, Void Fang raised defensively.

Lyra stood there, but this Lyra had a face. Her golden eyes looked at him with disappointment and disgust. "You let her die. You could have saved her, but you weren't fast enough. You failed her."

"I tried," Satou said weakly. "I cut the walls but they kept growing back—"

"Excuses," Lyra interrupted coldly. "You're always making excuses. You're not actually strong enough to protect us. You just got lucky against The Reaper. Lucky that he decided you were amusing enough to spare. But luck runs out, Satou. And when it does, everyone around you dies."

"That's not true," Satou protested, but doubt was creeping into his voice. "I've protected people. I've saved people. I built this settlement specifically to—"

"To what? Play hero?" Lyra laughed, but it was a cruel sound completely unlike her normal laugh. "You're not a hero. You're a goblin who got lucky with some powerful abilities. And now Jessica's dead because you weren't good enough to save her."

The scene shifted abruptly. Satou was suddenly standing in the settlement's main square again, but now it was burning. Flames consumed every building, and people were running in panic. Goblins, orcs, humans—all the residents he'd worked so hard to protect—screaming as fire consumed them.

Urgak appeared, his massive form engulfed in flames. "Lord Satou! Why aren't you helping? Why are you just standing there?"

"I—" Satou tried to move but found his feet rooted to the ground. He couldn't move, couldn't help, could only watch as everyone burned.

Grimnir ran past, half his face melted from heat. "You failed us! You were supposed to protect us!"

Kelvin collapsed nearby, his body charred. "I trusted you! Jessica trusted you! We all trusted you!"

One by one, everyone Satou cared about appeared and died in front of him. Burned alive, torn apart, consumed by the melting ground, all while he stood frozen and helpless. Their screams echoed in his ears, their accusations tearing at his mind.

"You failed us." "You're not strong enough." "Everyone you love dies." "This is your fault." "You're weak." "You're useless." "You should have died instead."

The scene shifted again. Now Satou stood in a throne room he didn't recognize, massive and oppressive. Sitting on a throne of twisted metal and bone was The Reaper, but wrong—his eyes glowed with malevolent red light, and his casual demeanor had been replaced with pure killing intent.

"Did you really think you'd won?" The Reaper asked, his voice echoing unnaturally. "Did you think wounding me once meant you were my equal? I was toying with you, provisional demon lord. Playing with my food before the kill."

The Reaper moved, and Satou found himself unable to react. The hero's sword pierced his chest, and pain exploded through his body—pain more intense than anything he'd felt during the actual battle.

"You're going to die here," The Reaper said, twisting the blade. "And everyone you care about will die too. Because you're not strong enough. You never were."

Satou gasped, looking down at the sword protruding from his chest. Blood poured from the wound, far more than should be possible. He tried to use his regeneration, but nothing happened. The wound stayed open, bleeding, killing him slowly.\

The scene shifted again before he could process what was happening. Now he was back in his quarters, but everything was wrong again. Lyra and Jessica lay on the bed, both with blank faces, both reaching for him with clawed hands.

"Join us, Satou," they said in unison, their voices distorted and wrong. "Stop fighting. Give up. Let go. Die. DIE. DIE."

The room began shrinking, walls closing in. The blank-faced versions of Lyra and Jessica crawled toward him faster, their bodies contorting in impossible ways. The ceiling lowered, threatening to crush him. The floor opened beneath his feet, revealing an infinite void filled with screaming faces.

Satou's mind was fracturing under the assault. Nothing made sense. Reality kept shifting, kept changing, kept torturing him with horrific scenarios featuring people he loved. He tried to focus, tried to think tactically, but every time he started forming a coherent thought, the scene would shift and assault him with new horrors.

This went on and on. Hours? Days? Time had no meaning here. He watched Lyra die a thousand different ways. Watched Jessica suffer and scream. Watched his settlement burn, his people slaughtered, his friends betrayed. He fought The Reaper again and again, losing every time, dying in increasingly painful ways.

Each death felt real. Each loss cut deep. His mind was being ground down, his will eroded by constant psychological assault. The worst part was he couldn't understand why this was happening. Why was his mind torturing him like this? What had triggered this nightmare?

Satou found himself standing in ruins again—what was left of his settlement after some catastrophic battle. Bodies everywhere. Blood soaking the ground. And there, impaled on spikes, were Lyra and Jessica, their eyes vacant, their bodies broken.

"This is your fault," their corpses said in unison, their mouths moving despite being clearly dead. "You brought this on us. You attracted powerful enemies. You made us targets. We died because of you."

"No," Satou whispered, his legs giving out beneath him as he collapsed to his knees. The bodies of Lyra and Jessica hung above him like grotesque trophies, their vacant eyes staring at nothing. "No, this isn't real. This can't be real. You're both alive. You were both with me when I fell asleep. This is..."

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