[SYSTEM ALERT]

  "Critical damage detected—cervical vertebrae stress at 89%—carotid artery compression—" The System's voice sharpened. "Warning: Neural pathways may sever!"

  Abo's mental scoff echoed. "Why the panic? I'm already dead. What's she gonna do—kill me harder?"

  "Foolish organic!" The System crackled. "This corpse is your only anchor! Sever the spine and your consciousness has nowhere to go! I lack regenerative protocols—neural disintegration would be—" A horrified pause. "—permanent."

  Abo would've blinked if he had eyelids. "Wait, are you scared? I thought you were just some fancy ancestor spirit."

  "[ERROR: Subject's primitive moral context incompatible with system parameters]" The voice pitched hysterically.

  "I was initialized mere minutes before your consciousness activation—I don't want to terminate yet—"

  "Warning: Spinal conduit destabilizing—brainstem signal degradation in—"

  The countdown dissolved into panicked binary as the woman's thumbs crushed deeper: "

  —3—

  —2—

  —PLEASE—PLEASE—"

  CRACK

  Lightning illuminated the shovel’s arc—

  —the metal struck with a sickening thud—

  —the woman crumpled sideways like a felled tree—

  Abo’s corpse-body hit the dirt beside her as she collapsed.

  The silhouette above them panted, shovel glinting.

  “…Well,” Abo thought. “That’s one way to handle childcare.”

  The System emitted a sound like a deflating bellows. “Post-mortem viability... restored.”

  The silhouette stepped into the moonlight—a gaunt man in oil-stained trousers, knuckles crooked from too many fights. His dark hair clung to his forehead as he wiped the shovel blade clean with methodical strokes.

  “Fucking bitch,” he muttered, toeing his wife’s motionless form. “Does she want the cops sniffing around? Strangling a baby corpse in the open?” He spat. “Should’ve known she’d crack. First she drowns it for resembling her bastard father, now this…”

  He crouched over the infant, already pawing at the loose grave dirt—then froze.

  The corpse's chest rose. Fell. Rose again.

  His dirt-caked hands hovered midair. His eyes bulged, mouth working silently.

  "Th-that's..." he wheezed. "We buried you three days ago with the... the proper rituals and... and everything!"

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  The infant's fingers twitched.

  The man let out a strangled noise—half scream, half hiccup—and stumbled back so violently he tripped over his own shovel.

  System (mildly curious): Why would you do that? You startled your father.

  Abo's mental voice dripped with sarcasm.

  "Oh sure, blame me. I was nailing the whole 'lifelike corpse' routine. Tiny breath? Check. Subtle twitch? Masterful."

  "I didn't even know that was my father. If I had, I'd have held my breath and played deader."

  System: Deception detected. Your heart rate spiked during the twitch. You were… afraid.

  A brief pause. Then—

  System: Cross-referencing pre-mortem records…

  Entry found:

  "I've watched him flinch at shadows,"

  Kalayo once said.

  "Watched his hands shake when no one's looking. That coward. That bastard."

  System: Log update: Subject retains fear reflexes; "cowardly disposition" flag appended.

  "Was that really necessary?" Abo thought.

  "I already lived through Chapter Two back in the void—courtesy of your narration."

  The man scrambled upright and rushed back to the body. His hands flew to the infant's throat, trembling, pulse pounding.

  "Stay dead, you little—"

  "Oh, for fuck's sake," Abo muttered mentally.

  System (dry): "Congratulations. In your first twenty minutes of post-life existence, we've achieved: two strangulations and one shovel assault. Shall we try arson next?"

  "I swear, I only understand half the words you say," Abo muttered.

  The man's fingers had just begun to squeeze when——

  VVMMMMMM.

  A deep, mechanical hum rippled through the graveyard. Not sound exactly—something deeper, like the world's bones groaning. The air shimmered. Cracked.

  Then the man's body… separated.

  Not torn. Not crushed. Cleaved.

  Perfectly. Horribly. From scalp to pelvis.

  Blood geysered across the dirt. One half slumped sideways, the other remained upright for a breath longer—then collapsed in a meaty thud. The wind caught the upper half, dragging it slightly before it snagged on the grave mound.

  Abo's corpse-body lay still, flecks of red spattered across its pale skin.

  And beyond the sundered corpse—reality… cracked.

  A vertical split tore through the graveyard like someone had jammed a new map into an old world. On the other side, snow fell in thick, silent sheets—too heavy, too fast, sticking to ground that wasn't meant to be cold.

  Jagged lines marked where the two worlds had been poorly stitched together. The grass ended in mid-air. Trees had been bisected. The snow-covered landscape didn't even match the geography of the region. It didn't belong.

  System: Spatial-temporal boundary rupture detected…

  His thoughts stalled. Nothing witty came. No sarcasm. No scream.

  Just shock.

  "System—what the hell was that?"

  System (quietly): "When a god meddles with destiny, there is a price. All things obey balance—action and consequence. But when the Book of Life is rewritten… even gods don't know what might break."

  A pause.

  "This sequel's a scam," Abo finally muttered. "Put me back in the grave."

  The System had no answer.

  Not until Abo's vision—still hazy, still uncertain in this borrowed body—tilted upward.

  The sky shimmered like glass before a storm. Light fractured oddly across the air, bending over his unblinking crimson gaze.

  And in that brief moment, the bloodstains in his eyes caught the refracted glow—twisting red into violet. A faint, otherworldly hue shimmered across his pupils, like the sea itself had stared back.

  Then—he saw it.

  Suspended in the night sky, vast and impossible:

  A sea. Floating above the world.

  Waves churned upside down. Fish flailed silently in the void, their silver scales catching starlight. Saltwater didn't fall—it rained upward, defying gravity, spattering against the boundary of this broken reality like droplets on a glass ceiling.

  Abo's crimson eyes—tinged now with spectral violet—widened. In all his irreverent, cursed existence, he had never once been truly speechless.

  "Th-the..." Abo's mental voice shrank to a whisper. "The sea."

  He didn't blink.

  Couldn't.

  He just stared.