Even Death Grew Tired of Killing Me-Chapter 46 - 41

Kyren was fast.

That much was obvious the moment he decided to stop pretending.

Even with my stats no longer stuck at pathetic single digits, even with weeks of surviving Aetherfall grinding new instincts into my bones, I was barely keeping up. My feet hit stone and metal, my balance corrected itself automatically, my body doing things it would have refused to do just a month ago, and still, Kyren stayed just out of reach.

Then he vanished.

Not slowed. Not turned a corner I missed.

Gone.

I skidded to a stop on a rooftop edge, breath steady but sharp, eyes scanning. For a brief moment, panic flickered. Not fear of losing him permanently, but the cold realization that if he wanted to disappear, he absolutely could.

I closed my eyes and focused.

It took me a minute or two to feel it. A faint pull, not magical exactly, but familiar. Presence. The same way I’d learned to feel danger before it arrived in Aetherfall, the same itch that crawled along my spine when something was wrong.

I followed it.

It took another five minutes, maybe seven, weaving through backstreets, cutting across alleys that smelled of damp stone and old waste, until the city noise dulled into something distant and hollow.

That was when I saw her.

A girl stumbled out of the shadows and nearly collided with me. She was young, maybe fourteen or fifteen, eyes red and swollen from crying, her whole body trembling like she hadn’t realized she was safe yet. Her clothes were torn in places, fabric stretched and ripped, one sleeve hanging loose at the shoulder.

I caught her instinctively, hands gripping her arms to keep her from falling.

"Hey," I said quickly, lowering my voice without thinking. "Are you okay?"

She nodded too fast, swallowing hard. "Y-yes. I’m fine. I’m... I’m fine."

Her voice shook badly, but there was something else underneath it. Relief. Raw and overwhelming.

"You’re safe?" I pressed.

"Yes," she said again, more firmly this time. "I’m safe. He... he can’t— I was saved."

Before I could ask anything else, she slipped out of my grip. Her fingers brushed my sleeve once, trembling, then she turned and ran, disappearing toward the brighter street without looking back.

I stood there for half a second, heart pounding, before the smell hit me.

Blood.

Fresh. Thick. Copper-heavy.

I moved deeper into the alley, stepping over broken crates, old furniture dumped and forgotten, trash piled in ways that made the narrow passage even harder to notice from the outside. It was the kind of place people avoided without realizing why.

At the far end, I found Kyren.

He had a man pinned against the concrete wall, one hand pressed flat between the man’s shoulders, the other gripping the back of his head. The man’s face was smashed sideways into the stone, cheek split open, blood smeared across the wall in dark streaks. His body twitched weakly, breath coming out in wet, panicked sounds.

Kyren wasn’t straining.

He was smiling.

Not wide, not manic, just that same easy grin he’d worn earlier, like this was nothing more than an inconvenience he’d already solved.

"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded, forcing my voice to stay controlled even as my stomach tightened.

Kyren glanced at me over his shoulder. "Saving that girl," he replied lightly. "From this guy."

He gave the man’s head a casual shove. The impact made a dull, sickening sound.

"He’s a rapist," Kyren continued, tone almost conversational. "And a murderer. Wanted for a while now. If the reports were right, he’s done at least fourteen school girls."

My brain stalled for a second.

Fourteen.

I stared at the man, at the blood on the wall, at the way his fingers clawed uselessly at the air.

"Why are we even here?" I asked, my voice tight. "Why are you getting involved with this? The local authorities should be handling it."

Kyren hummed. "They’ve been trying."

I took a step closer despite myself. "Okay," I said carefully. "Then let’s turn him in. We bring him to the proper authorities and let him be judged."

Kyren looked at me fully this time.

He nodded once. "Sure."

Relief loosened something in my chest as I stepped closer, reaching out instinctively.

That was when it happened.

Kyren moved.

One second my hand was lifting, the next his free hand closed around my wrist. His grip wasn’t painful, but it was absolute. He guided my arm forward while his other hand shifted, pressing mine flat against the man’s chest.

Right over the heart.

I didn’t understand what was happening until I felt it.

Pressure.

Not just physical, but focused. Compressed. Like something was squeezing inward from all directions at once. Kyren’s hand covered mine, and for a horrifying instant, it felt like he was guiding my awareness, forcing my body to follow a decision my mind hadn’t made.

The man’s chest caved.

There was a wet, rupturing sound, deep and wrong. Blood burst out of the man’s mouth in a choking spray, his body jerking violently once before going slack.

Kyren released my hand.

The body slid down the wall and collapsed at our feet, leaving a thick smear of blood behind.

I stared at the man’s face as life drained from it, eyes wide and unfocused, mouth hanging open uselessly.

Then the world tilted.

My head spun violently, nausea slamming into me all at once. I staggered backward, palms slapping against the concrete wall behind me as my legs threatened to give out. My breath hitched, lungs refusing to cooperate, and I bent forward, dry heaving hard enough to make my ribs ache.

Blood dripped from my hands.

Kyren crouched beside me, resting his elbows on his knees, studying me like I was the strange one.

"You’re being overdramatic," he commented.

I glared at him, vision swimming. When my voice finally came back, it tore out of me, half-shout, half-snarl. "We just killed someone!"

Kyren shrugged. "So?"

"So?" I echoed incredulously. "He was a criminal, yes, but we don’t get to decide that! We don’t get to put his life in our hands. Literally!"

Kyren tilted his head. "Says who?"

He gestured lazily at the corpse. "He was wanted. Dead or alive. He was even flagged on the Realm Worker list as a target."

I froze.

"The... what?"

Theo from two months ago wouldn’t even know those words existed.

I stared at Kyren, really stared at him. He looked completely calm. No shaking. No hesitation. No trace of fear or disgust. Just that same relaxed expression, like we’d finished an errand. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

A cold thought crept up my spine.

"Have you been killing people," I asked slowly, "that’s why your stats are so insane at your age?"

Kyren blinked, then laughed. "Are you serious?"

He shook his head. "I’ve read about that, sure, but doesn’t that only apply to Crossers whose systems got integrated with Aetherfall’s system?"

"...Right," I muttered.

I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or even more confused.

How did he even know that?

Kyren grinned wider, clearly catching the question on my face. "You’d be surprised what you can learn online," he said casually. "You just have to know which words to search for. Even the really secret stuff isn’t that secret."

I swallowed hard.

He wasn’t wrong.

I’d stayed on the surface. Normal sites. Normal rules. I’d never dug into the darker corners of information networks tied to Crossers, Realm Workers, and off-world incidents.

Yet.

I wiped my hands against my pants, blood smearing uselessly, my stomach still churning as I looked down at the dead man again.

This was my first human kill that I remembered clearly. My first human kill in my world.

And it wasn’t even entirely my choice.

My hands were still shaking.

~~~

I wiped my hands again even though I already knew it wouldn’t help. The blood was still there, sticky and dark under my nails, clinging like it had decided I was its new home.

I looked at Kyren.

"Why did we even have to do that?" I asked, my voice rougher than I wanted it to be. "Do you have some kind of hero complex or something? Is this about growing up without a family or - "

Kyren stared at me for half a second.

Then he laughed.

Not a nervous laugh. Not a defensive one. He bent slightly at the waist, one hand on his knee, shoulders shaking as if I’d just told the funniest joke he’d heard all day.

"Hero?" he repeated, wiping at the corner of his eye. "You think I did that because I wanted to play hero?"

He straightened and looked at me, still grinning. "Not really. I only did it to help you."

I frowned hard enough that my temples started to ache. "Help me? How could that possibly help me, other than maybe knocking one name off a wanted list from the Realm Crosser community?"

Kyren’s grin didn’t fade. Instead, it sharpened.

"Didn’t your stats just go up?" he asked casually.

The question hit me like a slap.

I froze, then instinctively opened my system panel.

The numbers blinked into place, clean and merciless.

They had changed.

I scanned them again, slower this time, my pulse picking up.

Strength: 14 + 6

Vitality: 16 + 6

Agility: 14 + 6

Dexterity: 22 + 6

Intelligence: 76

Luck: Negative Infinity

Everything physical had jumped. Not by one or two points like before, but by six across the board. Everything now hovered in the twenties or just above, except for Intelligence, which stayed put, and Luck, which remained stubbornly, mockingly broken.

My mouth went dry.

"...It increased," I muttered. "Six points."

Kyren nodded, unsurprised. "Makes sense."

I swallowed. "I thought prime soul kills gave bigger returns."

"They do," he replied easily. "When the target is a Crosser integrated with Aetherfall’s system. This guy wasn’t. Same category, different weight."

That explanation slid into place a little too neatly.

While I was still staring at the numbers, Kyren leaned closer. "Hey. Look at the upper corner of your system panel."

I blinked and followed his gaze.

There it was.

One of the ten small star icon I hadn’t paid attention to before. Five arms, faintly outlined, mostly empty. One of those arms now glowed a soft yellow, not bright, but distinct enough to notice once you knew it existed.

"...Have you noticed that before?" Kyren asked.

I shook my head slowly. "I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there the last time I checked."

"Of course it wasn’t," he replied with a shrug. "It only shows up once it starts counting your moral obligation."

My stomach dropped.

"Moral... what?"

Kyren tilted his head, amused. "That’s the closest translation I can give you. Kill count isn’t just about numbers. The system tracks weight. Intent. Responsibility."

I stared at him.

Then something clicked, sharp and unpleasant.

"You know too much," I said quietly. "You’re talking like you can see my system."

Kyren met my gaze, sapphire-blue eyes catching the dim alley light. For just a second, something shimmered around his irises, subtle but unmistakable, like heat distortion over glass.

"You’re an observer," I murmured. "A high-tier one."

He shrugged like I’d just commented on the weather. "Born like this."

Then, without warning, he squinted at my face. "By the way, what happened to your eyes?"

I stiffened and straightened instinctively. Kyren mirrored me, standing as well, hands tucked casually into his pockets.

"My eyes?" I asked carefully. "What do you mean?"

"You had golden eyes," Kyren replied. "Mom and Dad said so."

The words hit harder than I expected.

I exhaled slowly. "They changed because I intend it to. It’s... something I have to keep hidden. Less questions that way."

Kyren nodded once. "Good call."

The silence that followed was heavy but not hostile. I closed my system panel, then opened it again out of habit, as if the numbers might rearrange themselves into something less absurd.

"I wonder," I muttered, mostly to myself, "if there’s an assessor in our world. Someone who could fully adjust all of this without dragging me into another mess."

"I could help," Kyren said immediately.

I turned to him, incredulous. "What do you mean you could help?"

"Observers can adjust attributes once they hit a certain tier," he replied. "You didn’t know that?"

"No," I said honestly. "I only know observers can see other people’s systems if they’re below their own. I’m still new to all this Realm Worker stuff. I only know what most people know, and I don’t usually stick my nose into things that don’t concern me."

Kyren smiled, but there was something sharper behind it this time. "Well, you have to be one now."

I frowned. "Be what?"

"Informed. Meddler," he replied. "The world of Crossers runs deep. Dark, too. It’s better to know what’s down there than pretend it doesn’t exist and get surprised later. Don’t you think, big brother?"

I looked at him properly then.

Kyren was still smiling, still relaxed, still carrying himself like a kid who didn’t have a care in the world, but there was an awareness behind his eyes that didn’t belong to someone his age. Not book-smart. Not academic. This was the kind of sharpness that came from understanding how people worked, how systems bent, and how easily rules broke when pressure was applied.

He was right.

I didn’t like that he was right, but there was no denying it.

There was no doubt in my mind anymore. Kyren couldn’t stay here. Not because he was weak, but because he was too strong in the wrong place. Too visible to the wrong people. Even if he knew how to protect himself, he was still a child, and children were easy to bait, easy to manipulate, easy to use.

In Aetherfall, at least, I could keep him close.

And there was another thought I didn’t voice. If observers were accepted as assessors there, then Kyren could become the only one who ever saw my full system without restriction.

I met his gaze and nodded once.

Kyren’s grin widened, satisfied.

My hands were still shaking slightly, and the smell of blood hadn’t left my nose, but beneath the shock, beneath the nausea, something else had settled in.

The realization that my life had just become far more complicated.

And far more dangerous.