CHAPTER 205: EXISTENCE

And with that, it was gone.

I let out a long, shuddering breath, the kind that feels like it drags your soul out with it.

Sweat slicked my skin, running down the side of my face and dripping onto the grass below.

The once hostile air finally felt breathable again, and my legs gave out beneath me.

I turned over, collapsing fully onto my back, the fresh blades of grass bending under my weight, damp and soft against my skin as I stared up at the open sky.

The seal on my back still burned faintly, a dull, rhythmic sting that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.

It wasn’t unbearable anymore, just a constant reminder of what had happened, of what now lingered inside me. I wanted to reach back and feel it, to confirm it was real, but it was lodged too high between my shoulders for me to touch.

Even if I could... I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

So instead, I just breathed.

The wind brushed against my face, carrying with it the scent of soil, of life newly restored, and for the first time since the battle began, the mountain was silent.

My voice came out low, a whisper meant for no one but me:

"What the hell is this world?"

The question hung there, unanswered.

That encounter—the divine being, the ink, Jael’s transformation—it had all shattered whatever sense of understanding I thought I’d built since awakening in this place.

Everything I’d seen before this felt small now. Insignificant.

That thing... whatever it was, it hadn’t just existed here—it commanded

existence. It spoke, and reality listened.

A shiver ran down my spine despite the warmth of the sun.

I couldn’t help but wonder just how deep this world went... and what kind of power could create something like that.

If such a being could appear without warning, manipulate life and death like they were pawns on a board...

Then what else was out there?

The thought lingered as I stared at the sky, my mind turning over itself in slow, uneasy circles. For a moment, I wondered if any of this was even real.

Real? Of course it was.

The sting on my back, the soreness in my arms, the taste of ash still clinging to the air—pain had a way of confirming reality better than anything else. And yet, it all felt too grand, too orchestrated to belong to something as simple as life.

I’d been wrong about why I was here. Completely wrong.

I wasn’t just here to survive.

I wasn’t meant to live quietly, to build something for myself, or even to lead.

There was a purpose buried beneath all this chaos—a design that I hadn’t been told about. Something every "Chosen" seemed to understand.

Something I was apparently missing.

The Overseer’s reaction when I’d asked about Lord Drugar made that much clearer.

The confusion I showed wasn’t normal. It wasn’t supposed to exist.

Even Flogga, century hag Flogga, had known something. Her memories might’ve been fragmented, burned away by whatever force had tampered with her, but she still understood pieces of this world’s larger pattern.

But me?

Nothing.

No clue why I was even here.

I exhaled slowly, closing my eyes against the bright sky.

So what am I then?

A piece that doesn’t belong on the board at all?

Clearly, I was some sort of anomaly.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was all something else entirely. A wilder thought crept in, one I’d been too afraid to entertain until now.

What if this was all a dream?

Maybe I wasn’t truly dead.

Maybe I’d slipped into some kind of endless hallucination, my mind stitching together this absurd world to make sense of the silence after death.

The Overseer, the ink, the gods, it could all just be some twisted creation of a dying brain refusing to shut down.

I let out a weak laugh.

"Yeah. Waking up as a goblin. That tracks."

But the words tasted wrong even as I said them.

I stopped myself, the thought unraveling before it could root any deeper.

As comforting as it might’ve been to dismiss everything as fiction, it didn’t feel like a dream. Dreams didn’t hurt like this.

I reached down and dug my fingers into the ground, clutching at the grass beneath me.

The soil was damp and cool against my skin, the scent of earth rich and heavy in the air.

I pressed harder, grounding myself in it, until the tendons in my hands stood taut and the blades of grass bent beneath my grip.

Then I took a deep breath, the air filling my lungs, real. Sharp. Alive.

The faint ache in my back where the seal had burned me, the distant sound of the wind brushing through the regrown trees, the soreness in my arms from every swing, every fight.

No...

This wasn’t a dream.

It couldn’t be.

Every cut, every scar, every scream I’d endured since waking up in this strange, violent world was all real.

The rage, the joy, the pain, the fleeting sparks of pleasure—they were all real. Every bruise, every heartbeat, every breath that burned my lungs was proof enough.

I was alive.

That realization grounded me in a way nothing else could.

I let out a long exhale, feeling the tension bleed from my body as I stared up at the drifting clouds. I’d spent enough time lost in my own head, trying to make sense of something that probably wasn’t meant to be understood.

It was time to stop brooding.

To return to the moment.

To act, regardless of what any of this meant.

Because that’s what living was, wasn’t it?

Moving forward, even when you didn’t understand the road ahead.

Acting despite doubt.

Whether this world was real, fabricated, or some twisted purgatory I’d stumbled into didn’t matter anymore.

To live was to do.

And I had a hell of a lot left to do.

Ding!

The sudden chime shattered the quiet, sharp and familiar. My eyes widened, the sound instantly snapping me out of my thoughts.

A notification.

I sat up quickly, my instincts kicking in, heart thudding in my chest as the translucent blue window flickered into view before me.