I Die to Rise: Resurrection System-Chapter 60: I want to see you die!
Zaza’s purple eyes glowed brighter, and the air around her seemed to darken, shadows pooling at her feet like animated ink.
"Will you die for me?" she repeated, tilting her head in an unsettling manner.
Kurt’s hand instinctively moved to his throat, still sore from Rook’s grip. "Yeah, that’s a hard pass."
Emma on the other hand, didn’t wait for negotiations. She raised her spear and fired a bolt at the obvious enemy.
The lightning bolt tore through the air, aimed directly at Zaza’s chest, but she simply sank into her shadow. The attack struck empty ground, scorching the concrete, and she reappeared ten feet to the left, completely unharmed.
"Rude," Zaza said softly.
Then her shadow expanded outward. Now large enough for three shapes to emerge from the darkness.
They were massive, wraith-like creatures that towered over them, their bodies made of writhing black smoke and crackling energy. Each one had a featureless face except for a single white mask, that seemed to float where their heads should be.
The first creature crackled with electricity, arcs of lightning dancing across its form. The second dripped with water, its body flowing and shifting like a wave. The third howled with wind, its edges blurring as gusts tore through the air around it.
"Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me," Emma muttered.
The lightning wraith lunged at Cassandra, its arm extending into a spear of pure electricity. Cassandra raised her blade, ice spreading across the steel, and parried the strike. The collision sent sparks flying, and she was forced backward, her boots skidding across the ground.
The water wraith surged toward Emma, its body shifting into tendrils that whipped out. Emma dodged the first strike, rolled under the second, and came up swinging Storm King. The spear passed through the wraith’s body harmlessly, and it reformed in an instant.
"Can’t hurt it!" Emma shouted.
The wind wraith descended on Rook, gusts of razor-sharp air slicing toward him. Rook crossed his arms, his skin hardening into stone, and took the hits. The wind carved shallow gouges into his arms, but he held his ground, glaring at the creature.
Lizzie scrambled backward, eyes wide. "What ARE those things?!"
Zaza didn’t answer. She was already moving toward Kurt with slow steps, and from her shadow emerged more figures—skeletal knights clad in rusted armor, carrying swords and shields. They moved stiffly, jerkily, like marionettes on invisible strings.
<Soul Harvest: Undead Knights>
Kurt counted six of them. Then eight. Then twelve.
"Bloody hell," Kurt muttered, summoning flames around his fists. "You’ve got an army in there?"
"Hm." Zaza tapped on her lips with her finger like she was considering the rhetorical question and if she should answer. "They’re just corpses. Soulless. Weak. But useful."
The undead knights charged, and Kurt met them head-on. He teleported behind the first one, drove a flaming fist through its spine, and it crumbled to ash. Another swung its sword, and Kurt ducked, grabbed its wrist, and snapped the blade in half before kicking it into two more knights.
But they kept coming.
Zaza walked through the chaos, her expression unchanged, and pulled a small knife from her sleeve. "You’re interesting," she said quietly. "People are boring. They panic when they see death. But you..."
Kurt grinned, breathing hard as he incinerated another knight. "What can I say? Me and death have an understanding."
She lunged at him and he teleported, reappearing behind her, but she was already spinning, the knife flashing toward his throat.
He caught her wrist, twisted, and she reversed the grip, slashing toward his ribs. He blocked with his forearm, Osteokinesis hardening the bone beneath his skin, and the blade skidded off harmlessly.
"Wow," Zaza said, almost admiringly.
"Yeah," Kurt replied, shoving her back.
They circled each other, and Zaza’s blank expression didn’t change, but there was something in her eyes now that Kurt interpreted as curiosity, maybe even fascination.
"You know," Kurt said casually, "something bad might happen if I die here. So I can’t let that happen."
Across the battlefield, Rook who was dodging the wind wraith’s attacks, his movements slower than usual, exhaustion weighing on him, heard what Kurt said and asked while still evading near invisible wind blades, "what do you mean, ’something bad’?!"
Kurt ducked under Zaza’s knife, grabbed her wrist, and twisted her arm behind her back. She didn’t resist, just looked over her shoulder at him with that same blank stare.
"You see," Kurt said, breathing hard, "there’s this countdown. Not really a countdown, more like a timer... wait, that’s the same thing. The point is, it drops every time I die. And I’m down to one day now. If I die again, it hits zero, and I really don’t want to find out what happens then."
Emma, still dodging the water wraith’s tendrils, shouted back. "And you’re just telling us this NOW?!"
"Didn’t seem relevant before!" Kurt called back.
Zaza moved suddenly, twisting out of his grip with inhuman flexibility, and her hand shot forward, pressing against his face. Her palm was cold, impossibly cold, and Kurt felt something pulling at him from the inside.
His vision blurred, and for a moment, he felt weightless, like something was being torn out of his chest.
Then the System intervened.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[Soul Extraction Detected]
[Protection Protocols Activated]
[External Soul Manipulation: NEGATED]
The pull stopped immediately, and Zaza’s eyes widened. For the first time, her blank expression cracked, replaced by genuine shock.
"What...?" she whispered, staring at her hand.
Kurt shoved her back, gasping. "Yeah, I’ve got insurance."
Zaza stepped backward, her breathing slightly faster now, and the shadows around her began to writhe violently. Her modest dress started to shift, unraveling and reforming into something entirely different.
The fabric turned purple and black, clinging tightly to her body and revealing curves that had been completely hidden before. Runes formed around her neck like a choker, her sclera turned pitch black, and her purple pupils burned brighter.
She reached into her shadow and pulled out a long, wicked looking scythe, with a curved blade that gleamed. A cable trailed from the weapon’s base, coiling like a serpent.
"Oh," Lizzie whimpered while she ran from hordes of undead knights swinging their blades at her. "I’m seeing a pattern here."
Zaza spun the scythe once, testing its weight, and her voice was still soft, but there was an edge to it now. "Let’s try again."
<Soul Harvest: Death Scythe>
She moved faster than before, the scythe flashing in a wide arc, and Kurt barely teleported out of the way. The blade carved through the space where he’d been standing, and Zaza yanked the cable, whipping the scythe back toward him.
Kurt ducked, rolled, and came up throwing a fireball. Zaza sidestepped it effortlessly, closed the distance, and drove the scythe’s blade downward.
Kurt crossed his arms, Osteokinesis and Strength Aura reinforcing them, and the blade bit into his forearms. Pain flooded his senses, blood spraying, and Zaza twisted the weapon, driving it deeper.
"KURT!" Emma screamed.
Zaza yanked the scythe free and spun, the blade cutting across Kurt’s chest in a shallow arc. He staggered backward, blood soaking his shirt, and dropped to one knee.
<Soul Harvest: Critical Damage>
The System chimed.
[WARNING]
[Lethal Damage Sustained]
[Reaper Detection Protocol Activated]
[Countdown Initiated: 20:00]
Kurt’s eyes widened as he read the notification, and his stomach dropped. "Fuck..."
Zaza pulled the scythe back, watching him with that same blank curiosity. Only this time, her cheeks turned tomato red as she cupped one side of her face with her free hand. "This is it..."
Kurt’s vision blurred, and the last thing he saw before his eyes closed was the countdown ticking down.
[19:59]
[19:58]
[19:57]
His body hit the ground, lifeless, and the team froze, staring at Kurt’s corpse, while the three wraiths pulled back, hovering protectively around Zaza.
***
A/N: Writing is hard work. You can show your support with a gift or two if you’re enjoying this.
Thank you and peace!
