Len lay motionless on the forest floor, his blood soaking into the soil as if the earth had been thirsting for it. At first, it had been warm—vital, urgent—but now it was cold, the chill spreading like a shadow through his limbs. Each heartbeat grew more labored, sluggish, a slow countdown to the end. Above him, the sky wasn't blanketed by clouds but by thick, choking ash. It hung in the air like a curtain of death, casting the world in a haze of smog and flame. Firelight danced against broken concrete and leafless trees, their skeletons reaching like fingers toward a sky that no longer cared. His throat was slashed. His abdomen, pierced and mangled. His body wasn't failing—it had already failed. Death wasn't coming. It had already arrived, patient and quiet.
He didn't scream. Not because he was brave, but because something inside him had snapped. The part that wanted to be heard, to be saved, to be remembered—gone. He had no one left to call out for, and even if he had, no one would be coming.
They had called it salvation. A second chance. A mysterious voice had echoed in his mind: "You will be transported. Adapt, or perish." Then came the light, the dizziness, and the drop. When he woke, he was in a fractured mirror of Earth—a survival world. A twisted domain designed to break them. Millions were scattered across it, torn from their homes and their pasts. Monsters stalked the ruins of cities. Nature had become hostile, no it was always hostile. Civilization was a memory. Strength was currency.
Len had none.
He remembered that first day like a scar. No equipment. No instructions. Only panic and the screams of strangers. The strong emerged quickly. Some took charge, others took by force. They formed units, crafted weapons, hunted for food. The rest—the unskilled, the frightened, the indecisive—huddled together in fear.
He had been one of them.
He drifted toward those like himself. People with hollow eyes and trembling hands. They spoke often about doing what was right, about sticking together, about compassion. They used words like justice and duty, and claimed that the strong had an ethical obligation to protect the rest. "If they leave us, we'll die," they said. And they were right.
But that wasn't morality. That was dependency disguised as principle.
Len had echoed it too. Repeated the rhetoric, made it sound noble. He learned to guilt the strong into staying. "You can't just walk away. We need you. It would be wrong." But it was manipulation. Desperate, pathetic manipulation.
At their core, they were leeches.
He was a leech.
Clinging to those who had earned power. Demanding their protection. Asserting that their strength came with responsibility. Wrapping his own fear in appeals to conscience. Waiting for someone else to step forward, to take the hits, to be the hero. All while doing nothing.
They pretended the strong owed them something. As if surviving alongside power entitled them to safety.
But the strong didn't owe them anything. Not even a single dime.
Eventually, Len began to see the cracks. The strong had no real need for the weak. They tolerated them, perhaps out of sentimentality or because they thought it made them more human. But when push came to shove—when real choices had to be made—they shed that burden. And why wouldn't they?
What had he offered? He couldn't contribute to strategy. Couldn't defend anyone. Couldn't hold a weapon without shaking. When it mattered, he folded. Every time.
There was a moment he couldn't forget. A raid on their makeshift shelter. Screams in the dark. Firelight and teeth. He had stumbled, twisted his ankle, fell hard. The monsters were closing in. He had grabbed the wrist of one of their elite fighters—a man who had saved dozens before. Len pleaded, called it immoral to leave him. Said it would be murder.
The man stared at him. Not in cruelty, but with cold, impassive reason. Then he turned and left.
Len lived only because someone else distracted the creatures.
That man never looked back. Never even spoke to him again.
And Len understood.
The strong weren't saviors. They were survivors.
They didn't have to be kind. They chose to be—until it cost them something. Then kindness vanished. The only ones who would really stay are the ones who are kind in their nature and that is only because of their pity.
Now, as his blood drained into the earth and the night swallowed the forest, Len felt bitterness bloom in his chest like a second death.
He had wasted his life. Not because he had failed to become strong, but because he never even tried. He had wrapped his helplessness in platitudes and called it integrity. He had turned fear into a moral system. He had taught others to do the same. And others had taught others too
He had spent his life waiting—for mercy, for rescue, for heroes.
He was not punished for being weak. He was punished for sanctifying that weakness.
"The weak are just stepping stones on the path of the strong," he whispered. His voice cracked, more breath than sound. A quote he'd once resented—from Fang Yuan. That cruel pragmatist, that villain the others always cursed.
But now, Len saw it not as cruelty.
He saw it as clarity.
"They beg for mercy, not realizing mercy is just another form of power. The strong offer it when it's cheap. When it costs them, they stop."
His vision blurred, not from emotion, but from the weight of death pressing down on his lungs. The trees above him shifted, their branches blurred like the edges of a fading memory.
Could he wish for a second chance?
Maybe. But did he deserve one?
No. He didn't.
Because even now, dying, he wasn't angry at the strong for leaving him.
He was angry at himself—for expecting anything else.
The world was never fair. It never promised it would be. That was a lie he told himself to stay sane.
He hadn't been betrayed by others.
He had betrayed himself.
His final breath was shallow, quiet, unceremonious.
And yet, in that stillness, for the first time—he understood.
It didn't feel like tragedy.
It felt like truth.
And the truth, in its final, brutal honesty, was peace.