I stared at him with a weary gaze—too fatigued to glare. One foot already hovered over the edge of a grave neither of us had finished digging. The earth below us was tired, splintered, as if exhausted from cradling too many broken promises. I met his eyes with a quiet restraint. Enough to be seen. Enough to be human. Enough to let him know that despite everything, I had not forgotten how to feel. Not entirely.
"May I have the honor of knowing your name?" I asked, voice soft but deliberate, each word laid down like an offering on ancient stone—fragile, ceremonial, already crumbling.
His lips curled into a faint scoff. "It's Kuro. And you must be Kamanuzzaman."
My heart skipped—but only after a breath. Not from surprise, but recognition. A rusted bell tolling deep inside. The name rang not as revelation, but as something long buried clawing its way back to the surface, dragging cobwebs and the scent of forgotten wars with it.
The wind carried a dying scent—rust, salt, and something more ancient. Like burnt scripture, embalmed data, and memories too proud to decay quietly. The acid rain had passed, but the land still wore its scars—wounds that refused to heal, as if the world itself resented recovery. Trees looked like statues mid-collapse. Shards of once-polished metal jutted out of the earth like broken commandments. Even the silence here had teeth.
I crouched beside him. Close enough to hear the way his breathing stitched and unstitched itself. Kuro Dan. Or what remained of a man who once threatened to reshape logic itself. A theorist of destruction, now reduced to a coughing ghost over fractured soil.
My memories sparked—flashes behind the eyes. The first time I met him was aboard a ghostship cloaked in fog and fate. Back then, Kuro Dan was a whisper through circuits and mist. A mind so sharp it sliced silence before speech. A pulse in the network. A cipher pretending to be a man. He was the kind of genius that made gods seem inefficient.
"You're Kamanuzzaman, right?"
"You must be Kuro."
"Unfortunately."
He had smiled then—ironic, alive. Like a man who had seen too much and decided to laugh at the abyss instead of kneeling before it. He was electricity dressed as charm. A firework too smart to explode. A blueprint for chaos that refused to be copied. And maybe, even then, a premonition of his own end.
Now, he looked smaller. Not just frailer—but diminished. As if death had been digesting him slowly and was nearly done, leaving only fragments of what once challenged fate. His ribs cracked, blood threading from his mouth like unraveling silk. Eyes half-lidded, daring death to try harder. His hands trembled—not with fear, but memory.
There was too much in the air—smoke, silence, the weight of being right too late. Grief didn't cry here; it listened. It eavesdropped on the confessions of men like us. So I asked the only question that made sense:
"...Why?"
His breath trembled. For a moment, I thought he hadn't heard me.
Then:
"Why?" he echoed, barely a whisper. "Strange. You're not asking for my last words. You're asking for my first mistake."
Blood crept down his jaw like confession. It painted a line down his neck—a bookmark between chapters of regret.
"I chose this path," he said, "because the right one never existed for people like us."
A bitter smile surfaced—like static over a dying radio. His voice had the gravity of an obituary.
"I thought logic could outmaneuver pain. That enough calculation, enough foresight… would make sorrow predictable. Maybe even optional."
A pause. Then, dry laughter:
"But pain isn't a glitch. It's the feature."
His voice cracked—not from weakness, but from a truth too sharp for the tongue. The kind of truth that bleeds when spoken aloud.
"Do you remember the boat?"
I did. Too well.
The ocean, black and infinite. Imra's snarl. Kuro's half-lit cigarette, wind-blown and defiant. His grin when I said chaos had its own syntax. A moment folded in time, now forever fossilized.
"Ever try explaining a time loop to a hammer?"
Back then, I thought he was just a genius dancing on the edge of madness. But now I saw—he wasn't dancing. He was falling. Elegantly. Deliberately. And he'd memorized every stone on the way down.
"It was easier then," he murmured. "Before I realized the loop wasn't time. It was suffering. Recursive. Ritual. And worse—it was inherited."
I swallowed grief like poison.
"You killed Maria… and Dr. Khanna."
He nodded. No denial. No excuse. Just the grim admission of a dying equation.
"They were caught between us. Collateral damage. I was trying to kill you."
No metaphor. Just the broken machinery of truth laid bare.
"Intel said you weren't awakened. A clever pawn. I planned to eliminate you before you became dangerous. I summoned a ragebeast. But I couldn't control it. It went for her. Maria."
His voice was ragged. Shame draped over every syllable.
"Judging by what I've seen… you're a Gray-Hat Jester. But which Class—0 or 1?"
I allowed myself a grim smile. "Class 2."
His eyes widened, almost gleeful through the blood.
"Class 2? You hid it well. Only met two others at that level. No wonder you dismantled my ground-hogs. I saw through the Whisperfang blood ruse, but came anyway, with confidence boiling in my chest."
He paused. Something tightened behind his eyes.
"I saw what was left of her. Maria. Still thought I could bury it. That no one would trace it."
His hand twitched toward a buried stone.
"But then I found that. The fake message. The trap. The bait. You turned her corpse into a compass."
I nodded. "I wrote it myself. To lure the real traitor. I failed to save her, but I could still catch you."
He gave a weak, morbid chuckle. "Brilliant. Cruel. Honest."
He coughed again. Ink-black blood.
"Dr. Khanna… she wasn't supposed to die either. I planted the bomb for you. But you dodged it. If I'd known your Class… I would've brought hell."
His words stung more than any wound. Not because they were cruel—but because they were true.
Then came silence. Deep. Like the world had leaned in to listen.
"I wasn't always like this," Kuro whispered.
His eyes shimmered—not with tears. With memory.
"I wanted to build. Minds that learned. Systems that sang. I believed genius could heal. But genius is a mirror. It reflects what exists. And this world… made me a scalpel. Then cursed me for cutting."
His breathing faltered. Rattled. Each breath a lost argument with fate.
"You ever feel like the universe is laughing at you? Like it gave you the tools to save, but only after there was nothing left worth saving?"
I didn't answer. I didn't need to. My silence was fluent in this language.
"Tell me, Kamanuzzaman... when did you realize we weren't heroes?"
"When I stopped dreaming of heaven... and started mapping hell."
His lips twitched. Not quite a smile. More like peace tasting sorrow.
"I should've been better," he murmured. "But maybe we all break. Some just do it quietly."
He locked eyes with me. No fear. Just resignation sharpened by wisdom.
"Remember this: monsters aren't born when they kill the innocent. They're born when they stop feeling it."
His chest rose once. Then stilled.
"Don't forgive me," he said. "Understand me."
And with that, Kuro Dan unraveled.
No scream. No gasp. Just… a silence so complete it felt scripted.
I sat beside his body. Not to mourn. Not yet. But to witness the death of what might've been a god—if the world had given him different tools.
The wind moved, indifferent. The clouds drifted like ash. The moment stretched out, unjudged and unredeemed.
And I let it carry my silence with his.