And now, finally, after the five hundredth death, Rahu knew with absolute certainty that…the real trial had not even begun!

​This time, he was transported to some battlefield, where there was just a single opponent. He should've stayed quiet and let the opponent kill him, but dying in a fight without even raising weapons? Now that was a whole other matter, so Rahu fought.

His opponent was a tall, warrior man. Rahu tried to time his movements precisely, reading his opponent's stance and already planning to counter that would kill him.

But, instead, the opponent's blade slipped past his guard and sank deep inside him.

Instantly, pain flared; it was sharp and familiar. He instantly felt all his strength collapse. He fell.

His vision darkened as dust and blood filled his lungs.

…

He awoke again.

It was the five hundred and first death.

Not in the chamber, but the same battlefield. The same opponent, the opponent was already in the air, his blade descending on his head. There wasn't even time to react before the strike landed exactly where it had landed before, killing him instantly.

He felt the familiar darkness swallow him; he woke again. But this time it was in the same chamber.

Rahu just stood still, his expression detached. But his eyes were sharp.

"This…wasn't the same replay," he spoke quietly, his voice turning hoarse.

The next death came almost in an instant; it wasn't the chamber that had attacked him. No, his body simply failed. His heart stopped beating; it was as if someone had just plucked his soul out. He collapsed before the word confusion could even register in his mind.

…

When he awoke, he was once again on the same battlefield, millions of corpses. But Rahu glanced down, his icy gaze penetrating the dead body of the earlier warrior.

Then he felt it…another impact.

Something struck him from behind with monstrous force, folding his spine in an unnatural angle. This time, he never even saw the attacker; he never heard them move or the sound of his weapon.

…

He returned to the battlefield again; this time, the enemy was alive and kicking. But, before the enemy could even make a move, his heart failed…and he died.

Death between five hundred and one through five hundred and ten, all of them unfolded in the same way.

"These are no longer events…but overlapping states."

A death did not always end before another began. Sometimes he awakened already injured, and sometimes he died without realizing when the wound had been dealt.

His mind reacted in an instant, attempting to impose order. Cause preceding the effect, death was the following action and awakening, resetting the position.

Each and every assumption failed…he was being cornered.

Then, he began to notice contradictions. A wound that existed before it was inflicted, a corpse that remembered killing him, and a grunt he heard before…he even opened his mouth.

Once he died choking on blood, only to awaken watching his own body collapse across the field, blood spilling on the wound he had not yet received.

"This is not the element of time…that's some interference," Rahu murmured absentmindedly. At this point, even he didn't know what he was saying.

By death five hundred and thirty, he just stopped assuming he was awakening after dying.

Sometimes he was inside a death, sometimes he was dying because he had already awakened. Distinction ceased to matter entirely.

His intelligence, once his greatest weapon, suddenly became a liability. His mind was automatically attempting to map the sequence that created more contradiction.

Deaths refused to stay in order; effects began to appear before the cause. Conclusions arrived without beginning.

He felt as if he was in a state of constant death and simultaneous living.

At death five hundred and sixty-two, he experiences three endings at once. Rahu was stabbed, suffocated, and standing in a chamber, only to experience his heart failing.

All three equally felt real when he finally awakened…if that word still applied. Rahu stood motionless for several seconds longer than usual.

The bloody trial was no longer testing how his mind or he handled death; it was testing whether his mind could survive the collapse of coherence and madness.

But he was Rahu! He didn't allow the instability to linger; the moment awareness returned, he forced his thoughts into alignment, not by restoring order to the deaths themselves but by disclaiming and abandoning the need for order entirely.

After all, if coherence was being used as a weapon against him, then coherence was, at the end of the day…expendable.

And the next series of deaths confirmed his judgments. He awoke bound in thick iron chains, hovering above a pit that blew heat and rot. There was no struggle to be had; the chains tightened, slowly dragging his body downward while his muscles slowly, painfully tore and his joints dislocated under their own weight.

He closed his eyes and counted each second of agony, not out of desperation. But discipline and will. His will forced his mind to remain active as his body fell piece by piece.

The familiar darkness claimed him again.

…

He awoke kneeling in an open area, his lungs burned as invisible pressure crushed the air from inside his chest.

Rahu bit his lips, his finger clenched hard as his vision narrowed into a dim, void, stunned.

There wasn't any attacker, no cause, nor release. Only suffocation for long and unbearable moments.

Darkness…again.

This time it was a fire, not the fire that consumed quickly, but the heat that stayed. It cooked his muscles and nerves slowly while his body remained horrifyingly intact. He even smelled himself burning, he felt the bit of fat he had melt and drip down in the form of liquid.

But…he remained conscious; he was long past the point where the mind should have surrendered.

But…he refused, no. Not because refusal changed the outcome, but because surrender was a decision, and the decision still belonged to his will!

The trial escalated beyond the territories of what the mortal mind was supposed to experience.

He was crushed beneath an immense weight, bones collapsing while his organs ruptured in sequence.

He was flayed alive without a blade, skin peeling away as if reality and life itself were rejecting his presence. Even as he was dissolved, his awareness persisted. Even as his physical form was reduced to nothing more than a drifting sensation.

​Between deaths, Rahu stopped speaking. After all, there was no need for it. Instead, he began focusing inward, not toward preserving his identity. Pain became a tool, and confusion was an irritant that was to be burned away. The trial sought to overwhelm him with excessive experience, but he compressed it and refined and sublimated each death down to its essential truth.

Death was not an event.

It was a process.

And the process could be understood!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.