Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 194: Ch192. To kill a Story

Chapter 194: Ch192. To kill a Story

Sarissa walked alone beneath a sky with no stars, her bare feet sank into ash with every step, and the air tasted like the moment after lightning strikes too close.

But she wasn’t afraid, yet.

What stretched before her was a long road paved with fragments, and though she did not look behind her, she felt with certainty that to do so would mean death. And so, she moved forward.

The fragments littering the ground – pieces of memory and moments trapped in frozen panes – caught the dim light that hung over everything. One blinked softly as she passed, a vision of herself, her hands red with her own blood, dying a gruesome death before returning to her starting point in the next turn.

Another one was her younger self huddled in a dark alley, knife drawn, staring down a snarling beast twice her size, knowing she couldn’t win. But knowing she wouldn’t have to if she could just survive long enough to rewind.

She knelt by a larger shard, brushing it off with her fingertips.

This one showed her standing over Riven’s unconscious body after a battle lost, her fingers trembling as she activated the skill once more, willingly, this time. Without having to die.

It hadn’t been noble, but it was necessary.

And each time, she had paid.

"None of it’s fake." She said aloud, her voice low but steady. "But it’s not the whole truth, either."

The road narrowed, and a thick mist began to swirl at the edges, obscuring the boundary between the path and the void beyond.

The farther she walked, the more the memories changed. Sharper, more personal.

Less like battle, more like choice.

From the mist ahead, a figure stepped into view.

It was herself, but as a child. Ten, maybe eleven, her eyes wide, ragged clothes stained with soot. The girl looked up at her with a gaze too knowing for her years.

"You started using it then." The younger Sarissa said, voice flat. "When the world first showed you how cruel it could be."

Sarissa knelt slowly, keeping her eyes level with the child’s.

"You were alone." Sarissa’s voice was gentle. "You did what you had to."

"I didn’t have to. I chose to, because I was scared."

The mist swirled again, curling around them like a living thing.

"You didn’t have a guide." Sarissa replied. "You didn’t have Miles. Or Cheshire, or the Professor. You just had yourself, pain, and the will to survive. There’s no shame in that."

The child’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of suspicion in them.

"Then why are you here to kill it?"

"Because it’s not mine anymore. Maybe it never was." Sarissa stood slowly.

The girl disappeared like smoke, and Sarissa walked again.

She came to a crossroads next. One path veered right, lined with mirror shards of moments she had not relived. The other dipped into a ravine, and though no light came from it, something deeper than shadow pulsed there.

She took that turn.

With each step downward, she began to hear voices, not echoing from the sky or the void, but from within, and they weren’t all hers.

Some were Miles, some Mara, some even Cheshire’s and Dee’s. But they blended with her own until she could no longer distinguish which were her regrets and which were the regrets of others she’d borrowed.

"Sarissa, don’t-!"

"You have to understand-"

"Why did you do that?"

"I can fix it. I can. Just let me try again."

A thousand half-remembered attempts. A thousand times she had thrown herself back into the current, always swimming upstream, refusing the passage of time.

And now, she was walking to where it all began.

The bottom of the ravine was empty save for a single black door, marked only by a crack that ran from top to bottom, leaking thin threads of silver light.

Sarissa stepped forward, and when she touched it, it opened on its own.

Inside was a room made of stone and rain, and silence. It smelled like the edge of a battlefield and the inside of a memory.

And at its center, a girl was dying. Sarissa knew this place.

She had stood here once, years ago. The first time she had activated [Regression] willingly.

The girl on the floor was crumpled, stabbed through the gut, blood soaking her shirt. Her eyes were wide with the knowledge of her end.

Sarissa stepped toward her, feeling the echo of that panic in her chest. But the memory did not resist her presence, and faded within the currents of her blank thoughts.

"You should not be here." The dying girl whispered. "You’re too late."

"I’m not here to save you." Sarissa said, her voice tight in her throat, a feeling of uneasiness settling in her stomach for the first time.

"You always were." The girl croaked, and the ghost of the skill flickered behind her eyes, the telltale shimmer of [Regression] coiling like smoke in the air.

Sarissa took a slow breath.

The dying version of herself twitched, then spasmed, and stood.

Bones cracked. Blood reversed its course in jagged lines. The wound stitched together with unnatural speed, leaving no scar, only a sickly echo of pain in Sarissa’s own body.

"I remember now." The girl said, her voice no longer small or broken, but steady and cold. "You left me here to rot."

Sarissa stepped back instinctively, but the door behind her was gone.

"I didn’t leave you." She said, trying to keep her voice calm. "You became me, and I carried you. Every scream, every choice..."

"No!" The younger version interrupted, taking a step forward. Her eyes gleamed silver with the weight of countless lifetimes and timelines. "You killed me. Piece by piece, each time you decided it was worth it, each time you rewound and made me die again."

Sarissa’s hands clenched at her sides. She had no weapons, no gear, not even her skills responded in this place.

But still, she stood.

And the girl lunged.

Sarissa barely dodged, stumbling as fingers like knives slashed the air where her throat had been. The younger self moved with the precision of a fighter who had died a hundred times, learning from every cut and every failure.

"I’m not your enemy!" Sarissa gasped.

"Then why am I the one who hurts?"

The blows came faster. Sarissa ducked and pivoted, surviving on instinct and muscle memory, not strength. There was no [Regression] here. No retries, just one chance.

"You’re just a shadow!" Sarissa said, breathless. "You don’t decide who I am."

"I am who you are!" The girl snarled, striking again. "And I remember everything you want to forget."

The two collided in a tangle of limbs and fury, crashing into the stone like the storm of every sacrifice made manifest.

Sarissa hit the ground hard, the breath knocked from her lungs as her younger self landed a spinning kick right at her ribs.

Above her, the girl raised a shimmering, impossible blade. One forged from every turn Sarissa had bled for.

"I won’t vanish again."

The blade came down, and Sarissa raised her arms to catch it.