The fire dimmed around us, plunging the space into a cold I haven't felt before. It was quiet, not a sound from us except for the deep sighs, the crackle of wood succumbing to the fire, and the soft pitter of raindrops against the stones and blades of grass. I stuck to the corner despite the chill beginning to lace around my arms. One small movement, and eyes would be searching mine for answers I wouldn't be able to give.

I rested my chin on my knees, making myself appear smaller. Nazran and Yaora stared at the urn beside the fire, a spot I couldn't bring myself to look at. Because if I did, it would make what happened more...real.

Slowly, my eyes drooped as exhaustion wrapped me in its embrace. I was about to doze off while hugging my legs to my chest when Ahrian spoke. "How could you just close your eyes?"

Everyone bristled, save for Cavya who ran a polishing stone down the length of his rapier and Valren who puffed out sweet-smelling smoke from a pipe, standing by the mouth of the cave. Could it be they're already used to this scene and were just waiting for things to unfold with the younger members?

"What do you want me to say, Ahrian?" I found myself saying. "There's nothing I could say to undo what just happened."

I turned away from them and rested my cheek on my knees instead. "Mirani loved you," Ahrian's pained voice bounced along the walls of the cave, dissipating with a loud ring into the darkness beyond. It left a searing trail in my gut, my soul, in everything. "She believed in you when none of us did. She made us see how valuable you are as our comrade, how having you by our side was something we won't regret. Look where it got her."

"Take that back," I whirled towards Ahrian. "Mirani doesn't deserve to be criticized even in death."

Ahrian shot up and stalked towards me. In her tattered suit and ruffled feathers, she towered over me like a tower teetering to the edge. "You don't get to say what she deserves," she said. "You don't get to say anything about her, especially after what you did."

It was the same thing all over again. This was a conversation I have had for a thousand times, with just a different person at the opposite end. A different world, a different circumstance, but always the same content. My fault. Always.

"Why must it all fall on me?" I spat out, unable to hold it back any longer. Why must anything fall on me, when all I wanted was to survive, to do my job to the best of my ability, and hopefully have a good relationship with my co-workers, including my boss. What's so wrong with that? "You agreed to this mission like I did. Shouldn't you be blaming yourselves for shoving Mirani to her fate?"

"Only because you twisted us around with your ridiculous arguments, whispering rot into our minds until we bent to your will," Ahrian seethed. Her eyes, despite how bird-like they were, misted. "Was this your plan all along? To lead us to our doom?"

"No! That's the last thing I would want," I fired back. Cavya had stopped sharpening his sword and Valren had taken out the pipe from between his lips. "You wanted to rise to the top. So did I! This mission was just the best way to do it, so I put my confidence on it. And now it was solely my mistake?"

"It's not because you goaded us into taking this mission," Cavya stood up, matching Ahrian's height but never her intensity. His eyes bored into me, illuminated by the flickering fire and enhanced by the growing darkness around us. "It's not wrong to aim for the top, but you are wrong in gambling the lives of others in reaching it."

Cavya stalked towards me. "And I have been a fool to not see it."

Before I could retort, he whipped out his rapier so fast I didn't even see it until its tip was inches from between my eyes. "We will have our prices to pay once we get back to Dragnasand," Cavya said. "But you..."

I swallowed against the lump in my throat, staring up at the blazing presence in front of me. Would this be my last night in Solarlume? "You will not come back to us to Mystriae," he finished, not moving his blade from my face. "I hereby strip you of any association with Dragnasand, both the guild and its knights. If I find you anywhere near my adventurers and my guild, I will crush you myself."

"Wait, I—"

"Don't fight it, Kora," Valren said quietly, a pained expression twisting his snout and forming a veil over his eyes. I looked at Ahrian and Yaora, both refusing to meet my gaze. Their heads nodded, as if they're agreeing with my sentence. Nazran. He was going to be on my side, right? The pink-haired spiria gave me a sad glance but made no move to counter Cavya's dictation.

A sense of betrayal made my gut twinge. So, that was it? After all the time we spent together, all they're doing was to throw me under the bus? A chuckle escaped my lips. It wasn't anything close to amusement. Because it's all the same. There was no loyalty or camaraderie with people like me. Someone who made too many mistakes, someone who was too ambitious for what he had been designated to reach in his lifetime—-nobody wanted to be with that kind of person.

It's the same as before, and would continue on forever. Because I was only human and mistakes were my only companion.

The next day, or what felt like the next day, I stumbled into a tavern by myself, void of the crowd I've grown accustomed to having when going to establishments like this. I held up a finger at the person behind the counter. "Terribean ale," I said before freezing in place at the sudden memory it brought.

The face I would never see again and the smile that would never grace anyone once more—those were the moments I associate with the liquor now sliding towards me. I stared down at the sloshing liquid, seeing more than my strained expression. There, I saw memories. The woman who found me in that alley, bought me a drink, gave me a sword and a dagger. Ahrian's words bled from the back of my head. The memory of that night in my room finally made sense.

Mirani loved me. She chose to love me even though I made it clear I wasn't meant to be given anyone's heart. I would wreck her, and now, it seemed like I succeeded. In the worst way possible. Cavya was right. I messed people's lives up by chasing for something that wouldn't ever be mine and being too impatient, discontented with what I could scrounge from the bottom.

I forced myself to grip the cup even though just the saccharine smell of the drink made me want to throw up. Why would Mirani even choose to love someone she didn't know, someone who had too many secrets to hide? And all I did was brush her to the side, too caught up with my own issues and my own grief. My own past.

Did I deserve this punishment then? Was this the penalty I have to pay for being unable to accept how fast people come and go? It's unfair, how one spent a lifetime weaving together the threads connecting them to another, only to be snapped by a single strike of a blade. Some connections take a short while to weave, but the years of friction, tension, and the pull coming from the other side wanting to be free, snaps it nonetheless.

That's the truth to these threads. To risk weaving them around someone else was to risk having them frayed and unraveling at the edges. And it's what I was. Long before I was sitting by myself, drinking stale liquor in an unknown tavern in a different world, I was in that state. Unraveling. Slowly being pulled at by the forces of life until there was nothing left but my individual strands.

Tell me, how was I supposed to weave anything more with husks of what used to make me whole?

Maybe the Dragnasang Knights were right. It's my fault for not getting back my frayed fibers swiftly enough. It's my fault for thinking I have everything it took to take on the world when all I had was something poised to break under the weight of the world, of the judging eyes of people, and of the expectations I had of the life I thought I wanted to live.

Hye-jin. Did a similar thing happen to make her unhappy with me? Had I thrown her to the side under the guise of making it like I was doing it for her sake? Had I pushed her to the back of everything else until she had to scream to be heard?

Another sliver of memory replaced the immediate images of loss in front of my brain. That night, when I thought I had lost everything, when my world ended for the second time, what had Hye-jin said to me then?

You're not here. You stopped being here a long time ago.

And back then, I said to her the same thing I told Cavya and the others. You can't pin that on me. Why? Because I had to do it for your sake.

I brushed my hair off my forehead, leaning my elbow against the counter. Maybe I had looked towards myself for the longest time that I had forgotten how it felt looking outside, at the actions of the people around me. I had forgotten how it was, seeing the world through eyes not of your own.

"You know that team from Dragnasand?" a sliver of chatter reached my ears. I turned to the nearby table full of men and women wearing the familiar pins and coats of merchants who could move around between the cardinal territories. The speaker, a middle-aged man with a matted beard and a few missing front teeth, sipped from his cup. "They must be so foolish to go after the horde of nethers up north. Chasing them as far as Jalinica, those nutters wouldn't survive, especially when they're dealing with that bunch."

How many days had it been since they left me in that cave and I trekked to town on my own? Where was I? What town was this?

I passed my hand over my face to summon the menu. Checking the location, it said Crytone. Jalinica was to where...?

"How many do you reckon would make it back at the end of the mission?" the woman in front of the bearded merchant said. Her tight and low-cut vest showing off most of her assets. I was glad I had the menu to block most of my view.

"Ha! Want to bet on it?" the other man beside the woman said. "Just two, for me."

The merchant stroked his beard. "That's too generous, don't you think?" he said. "That bunch was sent from the depths of the netherside. I'd say just the leader. The one with a cat for a head. I hear he's capable."

Cavya. Dragnasand must be the one they're talking about. "If you keep alluding to that, then I'd say," she threw a coin into the table with a graceful flair. "None."

With that, my stool creaked and teetered on its legs when I hopped from it in a flash. Nobody gets to gamble with my friends' lives like that. They were out there, working to keep the beasts from ravaging civilization as they knew it just so these shitheads could sit around and talk about their deaths over a cup of ale.

It's disgusting.

I stalked out of the tavern after flicking an ethran at the counter. They might not want to see me again, even if it was to their aid. I might not even be wanted there, or not even be of much help, but I needed to find them again. Before I was consumed by regret. Before I could lose the chance to make it right with them.

All of this was my fault, and I refused to see that until now. I didn't want to be stuck in this cycle of losing people, and to get out, I needed to meet a lot of people halfway. There were so many things I needed to apologize and atone for. So many things I've left hanging in the air, and so many I've yet to unpack.

And what better way to start than the people who made my life in this pseudo-game world bearable and—dare I say it—fun? I had to survive this one, because if I didn't, then I wouldn't ever make it back to the one who needed and wanted what I resolved to give the most, the person who mattered the most.

So, I pushed forward, bearing the only person who had chosen to stay despite everything in mind. I was going to make it back to her. I had to.

My feet took me across winding roads and bustling crowds, leading me to the uncertain horizon I had yet to conquer.

I walked.

Towards the retribution I chose for myself.