I want to Live

Death had always been a distant companion, lurking just beyond reach, like a shadow that promised relief.

It wasn't a thing to be feared; it was the final answer, the end of everything. At least, that's what I had convinced myself of for so long.

I stood on the edge of the building, staring down at the destruction below.

The world had become a wasteland—a silent monument to everything I had lost. The war had taken it all: my family, my purpose, my future.

What was the point in going on?

What was left to fight for? I used to think I could find meaning, that I could make sense of it all, but now I was certain of only one thing: I was done. There was nothing left for me in this world.

I thought of the gods, of the stories they had told me as a child. I had dismissed them all—too naive, too simple.

I had thought I could stand alone, that I didn't need to believe in anything to find my way.

But now, standing on this precipice, I wondered if I had been wrong.

Maybe there was something out there, something watching, something that had long since forgotten about me. But none of it mattered.

I had made my decision.

I wanted to die.

It wasn't a sudden choice. It had been building for years—the weight of everything slowly crushing me, one piece at a time.

The war had stolen my soul.

The pain had never gone away.

Each day felt like a battle I couldn't win. I was tired. Tired of the constant noise in my head. Tired of the emptiness in my chest. I had fought so hard, but now I had nothing left.

It wasn't depression, not in the way people often describe it.

It wasn't sadness, not really. It was simply the absence of everything that once mattered.

I had no fight left in me.

I didn't want to keep going.

Not when every step felt like dragging myself through a pit of mud, not when I could feel the weight of my own failures pressing down on me.

So, I stepped forward.

I let the wind tear at me as I fell.

The world blurred, time slowed. For a brief moment, there was nothing—no pain, no fear, just the sensation of free-falling into nothingness.

Maybe this would be it. The final release. The peace I had been searching for.

But then, I hit the ground.

The pain was immediate, sharp, overwhelming. It wasn't the quiet end I had imagined. It was real.

The agony burned through me, each breath more painful than the last.

I had expected the end to be soft, to simply slip away, but there was nothing soft about this.

The world remained stubbornly, cruelly alive, and I was still tethered to it.

For a long moment, I didn't know if I was dead or alive.

The world spun around me, dark and disorienting, but my body still felt the pain.

My chest still rose and fell with shallow breaths. My hands still trembled, holding onto whatever reality I could grasp. I wasn't dead.

The fog in my mind cleared slowly. I opened my eyes, unsure of where I was, unsure of what had happened.

And then I heard her.

"Caelum… Caelum Ashbane, are you in there?"

Her voice was soft, familiar in a way that made my pulse quicken, but it wasn't mine. It was someone else's, someone who knew me but whose name and face I couldn't place.

The world came into focus, and I realized I was sitting at a desk—an old wooden desk, the kind that looked as though it had been abandoned long ago.

My hands were trembling, one clutching a revolver, the other holding a card—black and white, with an intricate eye on it.

Blood trickled from my head, and the pain was a constant, nagging reminder of how far I had fallen.

But there was something else. Something that was different.

I was still here.

The woman's voice came again, sharper now. "Hey, I need help getting the food. Are you feeling kind today, or should I leave?"

I didn't respond right away.

My body felt heavy, disjointed, like it didn't belong to me anymore.

My thoughts were sluggish, too slow to catch up. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

"My head hurts," I muttered. The words felt strange in my mouth.

And then, as if waking from a dream, it hit me: I wasn't the man who had stood on that rooftop. I wasn't the man who had jumped.

That man was gone. In his place, there was only confusion—shattered fragments of a life I didn't recognize, but a life that was still mine.

I wasn't sure how, or why, but somehow, I was still alive. I shouldn't have been. I shouldn't have made it.

But I was.

And in that moment, I realized something I hadn't before—something so simple, yet so profound.

I didn't want to die.

It wasn't that I suddenly saw the world as something beautiful. It wasn't that I had discovered some deep, philosophical meaning.

It wasn't some grand epiphany or revelation. It was simpler than that.

I didn't want to waste my second chance.

I had been given something that I hadn't earned, something I didn't deserve. A second chance.

A chance I had thrown away once before. It was as if the universe—or whatever higher power had been watching me—had reached down and said, "Not yet."

I couldn't let that go. I couldn't waste this. Not when so many others had lost everything, not when I had already been on the brink of ending it all.

I looked around the room, trying to make sense of it. It felt like I was trapped between two realities—one where I had already died, and one where I was trying to rebuild from the ruins.

And that was when I saw it. The rose.

The same one I had seen before—broken, nearly decayed, its petals shriveled and drained of color, lying on the floor at my feet.

The symbol of everything I had lost, everything I had been. A reminder of the person I had once been—the person I thought was gone.

But now, as I looked at it, it didn't feel like the end anymore. It felt like the beginning.

Maybe that rose wasn't just a symbol of death. Maybe it was a symbol of rebirth. A reminder that even things broken beyond repair could still find their way back.

I looked back at Aubrey, who stood at the door, waiting for me to respond. She didn't know it, but she had saved me.

Not just by being here, not just by being present, but by being the one person who had never stopped believing I could be more than I was.

Even when I had given up on myself.

"I… I'll help in a minute," I whispered, my voice trembling. It felt like a lie, but it wasn't. I would help. I would try. "Please, leave for a moment."

She gave me a curious look but nodded, stepping back toward the door. As she passed through the threshold, she paused.

Her eyes softened, and she leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to my cheek.

I didn't react. I couldn't.

But as she closed the door behind her, something inside me shifted—something deep and long dormant.

And with that thought, the weight of it all crashed down on me—I had a second chance, and I wasn't going to waste it.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I felt the stirrings of something within me that I thought I had lost. Something that I had buried under layers of bitterness and despair.

"I want to live."