As Kamigan's head sank toward the ground, his consciousness slipped away, descending into the abyss of sleep—a deep, dreamless void.
When he regained awareness, he found himself once again beneath the vast, unfeeling sky of the desert, a starry ocean of light stretching endlessly above him. The tree-like sun, once the heartbeat of this barren land, had vanished, taking with it the seven glowing orbs. In its place stood a colossal spherical clock, its countless gears turning in an endless, ceaseless motion. Each tick of the clock echoed throughout the desert, a reminder of time's indifferent march. Kamigan stood, his mind heavy with an inexplicable fog. His body was bare, but the absence of clothing seemed trivial. No eyes upon him, no judgment. The only thing that mattered was the desolation before him. He rose to his feet, the sound of whistling from above piercing the silence. Looking up, he muttered, "What is that sound?" Before he could comprehend, a massive boulder descended from the heavens, crushing his form, scattering his body across the land. And then, darkness.
He awoke again, buried beneath the desert sands. His body, still intact, but the weight of confusion pressing heavily upon him. He stood shakily, brushing the sand away, his mind struggling to piece together the fragments of his existence. "Did I just die again?" he whispered, as though trying to convince himself. His thoughts were quickly interrupted. Arrows—dozens of them—whizzed toward him with terrifying speed. One pierced his eye, another struck his chest, and the third lodged itself in his mouth, leaving itself hanging in his jaw. His blood spilled freely, but before he could even process the agony, a stone from a catapult struck him, severing his body in two and smashing the upper part into pieces. And yet, as the world around him faded into nothingness, he awoke again.
This time, the world was darker still. Two knights in gleaming armor stood before him. One brought a massive war hammer crashing down upon his leg, shattering it, rendering it useless. The other knight slashed his hand from his arm, and the pain surged through him, raw and unspeakable. Kamigan screamed—unable to hear his own voice lost amidst the overwhelming agony. And then, his head was sliced in two, the darkness swallowing him once more.
And yet, again, he awoke.
Lancaster's words echoed in his mind like a broken chant:
"Whoever dies by this technique is said to die ten thousand times."
Each death was an echo of the one before. Kamigan was burned alive, impaled upon cruel spikes, hanged, stoned, shot, drowned, frozen, poisoned—each agony more vivid than the last. And through it all, something changed within him, slowly. It was as if every death was a shedding of his former self, each pain carving out a space for something new to emerge. It was not a physical transformation, but something deeper, something hidden within the marrow of his being.
He could not articulate it, but in his suffering, he began to understand. The pain no longer felt like a curse. It had become a part of him, an inevitable companion. He no longer screamed as the end came. The sound of his own voice was nothing compared to the torrent of pain within. There were no longer hopes of salvation—no cries for rescue. He stood alone, stripped of all but his ability to wait, to endure, and to count.
Kamigan was chained to the stone walls of a room, surrounded by hundreds of poisonous snakes closing in on him, their fangs glistening. He stared blankly ahead, resigned. "Death number 3456… 6544 deaths to go." The snakes circled him, the venomous hisses almost melodic in their inevitability.
"Death number 7643… 2357 deaths to go." This time, he was lowered into a vast cauldron of boiling oil. The heat was unbearable, but his body melted away, his very essence disintegrating in an instant. And still, the count continued.
"Death number…" Kamigan's words faltered in his throat. "Death number… what again? Is it six thousand? No, eight thousand…" His voice broke, but there was no one to hear it. The numbers, once precise and certain, now eluded him. "I've lost count," he muttered. "This is becoming tiresome." The next death was at the hands of raging bulls, tearing him apart with primal force.
The cycle continued.
But through all of this, Kamigan found no escape, no release. Only death and rebirth, pain and forgetting, an endless spiral where even time itself felt meaningless. What, then, was the purpose of such suffering? Was it to break him? Or was it, perhaps, to build him anew—piece by piece, death by death?
In this endless loop, Kamigan had come to a terrifying conclusion: Perhaps the true curse was not death itself, but the time between, the moments of awareness. Perhaps what truly haunted him was not the agony of each death, but the cruel, unrelenting wait for the next.
kamigans expression remained blank with each death infact each coming death became like something natural to him although the night sky didn't change he could tell that he had been here for possibly two to three years doing nothing but awaiting his death
he no longer saw his death as a strange occurance but something more natural like as if it was a part of his being and with another death coming he was dangling above a cliff from a rope and thousands of metres below him lied a deep River filled with thousands of sea beasts atlas the rope snapped and as kamigan fell to his death the wind blew through His hair making it cover his face and he thought about his time with sir Aldric once more and then he cursed and sighed he said to himself
I knew it was coming even that old man called Balthazar warned me about it....the price of attachment,
The price of attachment...
It is the certainty of loss. To hold something dear is to invite the pain of its absence. It doesn't matter what it is—a person, an idea, or even a fleeting moment. Attachment chains the heart to something beyond itself, making it vulnerable to the unrelenting march of time.
And yet, attachment is also the thing that gives meaning to our lives. Without it, what is there? No love, no longing, no reason to fight for anything at all. It is both the source of our suffering and the essence of our joy. The deeper we love, the greater the grief when that love is lost. The stronger the bond, the more devastating its severance. That... that is the price we pay, and it is unavoidable.
Some people try to escape it. They try to detach themselves from the world, thinking that by avoiding attachment, they can escape pain. But tell me, is a life without pain truly a life? The ones who suffer the most aren't those who lose; it's those who never allow themselves to love in the first place.
The truth, as cruel as it is, is undeniable: attachment guarantees suffering. But it is also the proof that something mattered. And perhaps, in the very suffering that follows, we find the clearest evidence that we were alive. in that sense to live is to suffer but to survive is to find meaning in our suffering
and the moment he completed his thoughts he collided with the water the sheer impact smashed his bones and the moment he sank he started to drown and as he sank deeper the sea beasts rushed towards his broken body biting and munching through it until kamigan bled out and died.
as usual he woke up once again while lying down on the sand he laughed and said to himself " for someone who doesn't exist I sure do die a lot"
kamigan kept on lying down and soon he heard a voice a familiar one that came from all directions the voice that sounded like thunder itself and it said
" how does it feel to die more than a thousand times "
kamigan smirked and said " quite shitty I tell you "