Unauthorized Reincarnation – Season 2
Chapter 1: Unauthorized Reincarnation – Act III: Birth
For a long moment, there was only stillness.
The light that had once swallowed Daniel began to thin, curling away like smoke at dawn.
When his vision cleared, he found himself standing within a colorless expanse—no horizon, no sound, only a faint shimmer beneath his feet, like the ghost of reflection on unseen water.
Opposite him stood the man in white.
The clown mask hid his face, its sorrowful grin unchanged. Yet now, up close, Daniel could feel the pulse of presence behind it—steady, patient, ancient.
The silence between them stretched until Daniel finally spoke, his voice raw but steady.
“…You pulled me out of the void?.”
The figure tilted his head. “I suppose I did. Though I merely opened the curtain—you walked through it.”
His tone was calm, almost amused.
Daniel said, hoarse but steady, “My name is Daniel Martinez, thank you for bringing myself back, may I ask your name.”
The figure tilted his head. “Name?” he repeated, as if tasting a forgotten word. “Ah. Once, perhaps. But I lost it—along with the title that chained me to meaning. I’ve searched for it ever since.”
He touched the mask’s hollow cheek. “Now, there is no word that explains my existence.”
Daniel frowned. “Then what are you?”
The man in white gave a small laugh—gentle, almost kind. “A reminder that even the nameless still breathe.”
Daniel’s gaze drifted over the stillness. “Can we leave this place?” he asked. “Is there a way out of the void?”
The figure raised a gloved finger. “Before I answer,” he said, “let us test something.”
He lifted his right hand. The air trembled. From the center of his palm, thorned steel bloomed like a flower of agony. The blade grew upward, twisting, its surface veined with black roots that pulsed like veins.
He caught the hilt in both hands, holding it with reverence.
“Unlike me,” he said softly, “this sword has many names. Its first name was taken from its form—Thorn.”
The jagged barbs shimmered wetly in the half-light.
“Its second name,” he continued, “is the Eternal Weeper.”
Daniel tilted his head. “Why that one? Did it make many cry?”
“Listen,” the figure said, and pressed the blade’s edge to Daniel’s ear.
Within the steel, a man’s voice wept—a low, endless sob, echoing from some distant corridor of the soul. Daniel stepped back, shuddering.
“And its third name,” the figure whispered, “is the God Impaler. Because once, it pierced a god.”
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He offered the weapon, hilt first.
Daniel hesitated, then took it.
Instantly the thorns bit into his flesh. Spikes slid from hilt to wrist, coiling through his arms, threading into his chest and spine. Pain screamed through every nerve, but beneath it was something stranger—connection.
Even when he let go, the blade hung in the air as if still part of him, an extra limb made of grief and Steel.
The figure held his chin, studying Daniel with a gaze that pierced through mask and silence.
“I wonder why it chose you as its wielder,” he mused.
Daniel felt a flicker of hope—perhaps, after everything, he would be praised. Chosen. Redeemed.
But the figure’s voice darkened.
“Perhaps… you and the sword are alike.
Both failures.
You both failed the roles given to you—brother, son, friend.
Failed to protect the one you loved.
Failed in life.
And finally… failed to die too.”
Daniel flinched, the thorns pulsing in his veins as if echoing the words. The blade didn’t reject him—it recognized him.
“This isn’t the real thing,” the figure said. “Only its essence. But it will guide you to its body when the time comes.”
“You asked about escape,” the figure went on. “There is no door from the void. But there is a system—one that measures souls. It weighs good against evil, deed against deed. When the scale tips toward light, you earn a ticket—to begin again, or to move on. If darkness outweighs it…”
He spread his hands. “You are erased.”
Daniel gave a bitter smile. “Then I’m finished. I’ve done too much to ever balance it. But you wouldn’t tell me all that unless you had a solution.”
“You’re perceptive,” the figure said. “The scales can be… adjusted.”
He gestured toward himself. “I am despised by many. Countless wish for my death. If you were to strike me down, their wish would be granted. Their relief would flood the scale. Do that—and your ticket is yours.”
Daniel stared at him, then at the sword that pulsed in his grasp.
“So I kill you,” he said slowly, “to be forgiven?”
“You’d be helping everyone,” the figure replied lightly. “Even me.”
Daniel shook his head. “And after that? What’s my purpose in a second life bought with someone else’s death?”
The figure’s voice softened. “Purpose finds the living, Daniel. It will find you.”
“No.” Daniel’s tone sharpened. “I’m done being a tool for other people’s meanings.”
The mask tilted. “Then prove it.”
A new blade shimmered into the figure’s hand—smooth, mirror-bright, its edge humming like a held breath.
They circled each other, two phantoms in a room made of nothing.
The figure moved first, sweeping his sword in a gleaming arc. Daniel met it, sparks of void-light scattering like stars.
Each strike tore echoes through the silence—clang, breath, motion, stillness.
Daniel felt the thorns writhe up his arm, guiding his swings, feeding on his resolve. Every time the figure struck, the Weeper answered with its own voice—a faint sob under Daniel’s breath.
“You hesitate,” the figure taunted. “Mercy will chain you again!”
Daniel roared and drove forward. Blades collided, twisting. The thorns flared crimson. For an instant, time folded—the two became mirrored blurs of will and defiance.
Then Daniel turned the blade, driving it clean through the figure’s chest.
The figure gasped, yet there was no blood—only light spilling from the wound, soft and gold.
He looked down at the sword impaling him, then up at Daniel.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
Daniel stepped back, breathing hard. “So… what now?”
The figure’s body began to dissolve into motes of light, each drifting toward the void above.
“Now,” he said, voice fading, “I hope my death is enough.”
His form dissolved into drifting motes of golden light—falling upward like reversed rain.
The motes gathered ahead, condensing into shape—
a door, tall and radiant, carved from pure light. Its surface shimmered like liquid dawn, runes shifting beneath its glow.
Daniel stared at it, the sword slowly vanishing into his body.
He took a step forward—then stopped. “Is this… the way out?” he murmured.
The door answered not with words but brilliance. The light flared suddenly, blinding, engulfing everything.
Daniel shielded his eyes, but the pull came all the same—a force that wrapped around him, dragging him toward the shining gate.
“Wait—!”
The light swallowed his voice, his shape, his shadow.
And the void was empty once more.
