July 22 — Wednesday
Deaths: 39
Day repetitions: 2
Noah grabbed his head with both hands, his fingers digging into his own hair as his breathing accelerated uncontrollably.
‘When did it happen? Why today of all days? Who was it? Did she know them? Was it someone who saw her alone at home? Was it someone who followed me? Was it because of me? Was it because of Belle? Was it a coincidence? Was it planned? How long did she suffer? Did they torture her? Was it something personal?'
His mind became a machine that could not stop, a gear endlessly turning with no purpose other than tearing him apart from the inside. He bit his nails until he hurt himself, not even realizing he was doing it, while his foot tapped against the floor in a frantic, uncontrollable rhythm.
“Hey,” Rick approached from behind. “Are you okay?”
Noah did not answer. He couldn’t. Every word he tried to form dissolved before reaching his mouth, drowned beneath the weight of the images that kept replaying again and again behind his eyelids.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.”
Rick placed a hand on his shoulder.
Something inside Noah snapped, a primitive and violent instinct so powerful that he did not even recognize it as his own until after he had already acted on it: he turned around abruptly, shoved Rick’s arm away, and, activating [Swift Step], slammed him into the nearest wall with enough force to make the concrete tremble.
Rick’s companions immediately went on guard, their weapons half-drawn, but Rick raised a hand, stopping them, while staring directly at Noah’s broken expression.
“Calm down,” he said, forcing himself to remain calm. “I’m not going to do anything to you. I was just worried.”
Noah glared at him, his grip tightening around Rick’s shirt collar, every fiber of his body screaming at him to squeeze harder, to demand answers, to unleash all that nameless rage that had nowhere to go.
‘Was it you? Was it one of you?’
But something, in a still-functioning corner of his mind, reminded him that they were six against one, all of them higher rank than him. He had no chance against them, not even with all the rage building inside his chest.
He released him suddenly.
“Don’t come near me,” he said, his voice unfamiliar even to himself.
Rick adjusted his shirt, taking a step back, and although his expression remained tense, he raised both hands in surrender.
“I wasn’t trying to provoke you. I’ll keep my distance.”
The group walked away, murmuring among themselves, scattered words that Noah barely managed to catch: “he’s crazy,” “what’s wrong with him?”, “we should just leave him alone.”
He didn’t care.
He remained standing at the entrance of the lobby, biting his nails until he tasted the metallic flavor of his own blood, waiting for the curse to end.
The hours passed with unbearable slowness. He paced back and forth, scratched his head, and hugged himself as if that could contain the anxiety tearing through his chest. He cursed every passing minute, every second that kept him trapped there while something, somewhere, was slowly approaching his sister.
Five hours later, when night had completely covered the sky, the siren sounded and the crimson vanished.
Noah ran out.
He thought of nothing except Lily. Her smile. Her voice calling him “brother” with the warmth that only she had. The last words she had said to him that same morning: “I love you, brother.”
He ran without stopping, tears escaping uncontrollably as he murmured between gasps, “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,” as if repeating it could somehow make time move faster.
He arrived fifty minutes later, drenched in sweat, his chest burning from the effort.
He kicked the door open, shouting her name as he rushed straight toward her room.
The same scene greeted him.
Lily, already lifeless, in the bathroom.
Noah screamed, a broken sound he never knew his throat could produce, and, not knowing what to do with all the rage and desperation that had built up inside him, he slammed both fists into the sink until the porcelain shattered, the water from the broken pipe violently flooding the entire room.
He searched every corner, desperately looking for any clue, any sign.
Nothing. Only disorder. Only the cold certainty that the blood was still fresh, that he had arrived close, too close, and yet still too late.
He grabbed his dagger and, using all his Level 15 strength, cut his throat in a single slash.
[You Died.]
◇◆◇
“…my group is missing one member. We accept even Rank F Hunters, if that serves as an incentive.”
Noah shoved Rick’s arm away with a violence that surprised everyone present.
“I don’t want to join your shitty group!!” he shouted, his broken voice leaving the entire group frozen in surprise.
He walked away quickly without looking back, pulling out his phone with trembling hands as he headed toward the lobby entrance.
He dialed emergency services.
“City Police Department, what is your emergency?”
“I need you to send a patrol to my house,” Noah said, his voice tight with contained panic. “I received death threats. I know someone is going to attack my younger sister today. She’s alone, she can’t walk, I need someone to watch over her.”
He gave them the address, the apartment number, and every detail he could remember through hurried, trembling words.
“Please,” he begged, desperation seeping into every word. “Please stay there all day. I’m begging you.”
“We’ll do everything we can, sir,” the operator replied with professional calm, a calm that felt insufficient to Noah. “We’ll send a unit immediately.”
He hung up.
He waited.
When the curse finally ended, he ran again, arriving drenched in sweat to a scene completely different from the previous ones.
Sirens. Ambulances. Bodies—children, women—lying in the middle of the street, barely covered by white sheets stained red. Officers running from one place to another, shouting orders and sealing off the area with yellow tape.
“Sir, you can’t go through!”
Noah ignored them, forcing his way through the tape with enough strength to knock two officers aside, entering his building while surrounded by police officers shouting at him to stop.
“It’s my sister!” he screamed, his voice breaking apart. “I need to see her!”
He pushed them aside as well, his Hunter body moving with a strength no ordinary civilian could resist.
And there she was.
Not in the bathroom this time. Instead, she was on her own bed, her torso covered in multiple stab wounds, inflicted without any care, with the obvious haste of someone who had no time to waste.
“Why couldn’t you do anything?!” Noah screamed, collapsing to his knees beside the bed.
“There was a shooting in the area,” an officer explained, his voice tense. “Several suspects. We’re still searching for them. They were wearing masks, and we don’t have any clear identification.”
After some time trying to calm him down, they finally managed to take him outside and cover him with a blanket.
Sitting in the back of an ambulance, Noah held his head between his hands, unable to process anything he had just witnessed.
‘If I didn’t always find her already dead,’ he thought, bitter clarity cutting through the chaos in his mind, ‘I could think more calmly. But I always arrive too late. Always. No matter what I do. If it weren’t for the Hunter’s Mark curse, I could get there sooner! I need to find a way to protect her while I’m away.’
With desperate determination, he gripped his dagger with trembling hands.
“Sir, no!” an officer shouted, running toward him. “Wait, don’t do it!”
‘I’m not staying in this damn reality!’
“Stop!”
He cut off his own head in a single movement.
[You Died.]
◇◆◇
He reappeared inside the castle.
He ran directly toward the exit.
‘To hell with the curse. I’m going to try anyway.’
[The Hunter’s Mark is absolute. If you leave, you die.]
He didn’t care. The moment his foot touched the threshold of the exit, his head separated from his body, rolling several meters across the ground outside the castle.
And while he was still conscious, a second message appeared:
[The curse is absolute. You will never be able to go against it.]
[You Died.]
◇◆◇
He reappeared beside Rick.
“…my group is missing one member. We accept even Rank F Hunters, if that serves as an incentive.”
Noah collapsed to his knees, his forehead pressed against the cold floor of the lobby, tears flowing uncontrollably and soaking the concrete beneath his face.
“Lily… Lily…” he gasped, his sobs ripping painfully through his chest.
Rick stood frozen, watching the scene with genuine confusion.
“No matter what I do,” Noah murmured, his voice broken. “I can’t save her. She’s going to die. She’s always going to die.”
“Hey,” Rick approached, this time carefully, placing a hand on his back. “Are you okay?”
Noah only cried, unable to answer, every part of his being collapsing under the weight of a truth he didn’t know how to face.
Rick scratched his head, visibly uncomfortable, unsure of what to do in front of a man who, only a few minutes ago, had been about to strangle him.
“Calm down,” he said, with genuine awkwardness. “Tell me what’s going on.”
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