001

Darkness...A cloud of black ink sprayed all over what one perceives as the last feeling of being - the last stop on one's life journey.

Yet while tranquility was the only thing that should have festered inside the soul floating to be reborn anew, there was only a grimace of anger seen on the entity's ethereal being.

An emotion that should have been long gone still resided and wrath burned in its eyes that threatened to suffocate everyone that dared to stare back into those cold silver globes.

- Hate...Hate...Hate... -

Those words throbbed through the fiber of the soul and already consumed everything it still held from its previous life.

The reason for its very wrathful expression could only tell stories about the end it experienced before ending up here.

Even though it had a story to tell on its own, it didn't matter much before the end came.

Right before its very eyes the black void suddenly rose and painted the bleak canvas of black in beautiful colors of life.

The wrath of the entity that had consumed it a second ago seemed to suddenly have dimmed when it blinked a few times.

When the person's torso started to move up and down rhythmically again and the cold breeze of the wind washed over each and every cell it had, the entity could only hold back everything it felt for that moment.

That very feeling of being alive again shook its very core until it finally realized what happened.

The person breathed out a tired sigh and then slowly rose from its position. When looking around there were a lot of grasslands surrounding it.

The entity's eyes wandered to its own hands and stared at them. They were small and weak.

"Again...Why...?" The person mumbled in a small hushed voice. The silver eyes with a pitch-black pupil then rose and stared at the other three bodies lying near it.

Normally when looking at corpses the only thing that would come as a reaction to them was either disgust or shock.

But neither of those two seemed to affect the person and it even seemed to soften its gaze a little.

"Parents and...a younger sibling...slaughtered by bandits." The person's eyes closed and his head moved away from the carcasses that were already ripped apart to nearly being unrecognizable.

Clearly, the corpses lay here for quite a while even some animals already started eating away at them.

"Status..." The person then called out once more with a rather tired expression.

And like some magical words, something resonated inside it. A quick flash of light traveled through its eyes until a transparent window appeared in front of it.

--

Name: Kane (Death)

Age: 4

Race: Human (Eternal)

--

Looking at those simple three lines made the person nock his head sideways in confusion.

After a small thought about why there was so little information this time around, he stood up from the ground and pat his dirty clothes a little.

They were barely holding up and more of some sort of rags than actual clothing. This body he was inhabiting was clearly not spared from the same outcome as his family.

Yet while they lay there rotting, this child's fate was another, crueler one. Not that it was its fate any longer to be truthful.

Without aim or a goal, the child started to walk small steps forward in a random direction.

Maybe he could find a settlement or something remotely that looked like civilization. From the tidbits of memory he could grasp from the boy's mind, the family had been traveling to another place.

And unlucky as they were, they met the humankind that was known to prey on the weak.

Since the location, he was currently at was not the path they took, it is to be guessed that their bodies were transported and then discarded somewhere so that they would not be found.

The classic move to get rid of the evidence.

So that lets the person, that is going to be called Kane from this moment onward, believe there is at least some kind of law enforcement that would be concerned about what happened to them.

Not that he gave much importance to this while also knowing the clothing that he wore was very plain and from his experience, he already guessed about what timeline he ended up this time around.

Thinking about time again let his face seem tired again. It was a stark contrast to the rather chubby young face the black-haired boy sported. Young, yet old.

But it was to be expected. Once the cycle starts anew, all old feelings get washed away like they were never there. The curse that was also embedded at the center of his chest was also still there when he lifted his shirt to look at his chest.

The mark of a dark reddish diamond was the only proof of his endless curse to travel the world and experience eternal suffering.

But every time he looked at this mark, it made him grimace the moment some memories reappear flooding his mind. And yet the very next moment, everything that had any connection to his previous life vanished like a small wisp passing by.

It was a curse and yet a blessing in disguise. No one should feel the negative emotions accumulating from one life to the next. It would drive one crazy at some point.

Something so simple as that was the reason why he was still not completely consumed by emptiness and madness.

Though it was strange to relearn everything once more. That knowledge and experience would be such a fickle thing washed away again and again.

Sure, he still remembered that he could perform a skill that he acquired before but then again, it felt like dreaming instead of knowing.

Just right now he can feel his balance being all over the place even though he knows how to walk and run fast. Yet this body did not and neither was it a certainty that he would ever be able to perform as well as he did previously.

For each body was a unique construct that had strengths and flaws.

Let's just hope he finds someplace before he ends up in a short cycle. The drive to live was still something that was strongly engraved into Kane. Maybe not always for himself in a selfish way, but was strong.