Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 195: Ch193. To kill a Story (2)

Chapter 195: Ch193. To kill a Story (2)

The blade stopped inches from Sarissa’s face.

Her hands trembled around it, catching the flat of the impossible edge between her palms. It scorched like lightning. The pain was instant, blistering, cutting deep, but she held it back with a cry born of too many deaths to count.

The younger version of her, ragged, bloodstained, merciless, pressed down harder. Her eyes were wild, her teeth clenched.

No skill name, no system prompt, no calculated tactic, just raw intent.

Just the will to kill.

Sarissa screamed and twisted.

She turned the blade to the side, throwing her younger self off-balance. The girl stumbled, and Sarissa rolled to her feet, blood dripping from her scorched hands, her breath heaving.

The pain was real. More real than any wound she’d felt outside this inner sanctum. Because this one wasn’t carved into her flesh alone.

It was carved into her soul.

The younger Sarissa recovered with inhuman grace, snapping upright, the blade in her hands already reformed, its edge shimmering like a memory sharpened to a razor.

Her bare feet didn’t disturb the ground as she moved. She didn’t run, stalking Sarissa like a predator.

Sarissa reached for a weapon, for anything, but her inventory didn’t respond. No interface, no swirl of red sparks, no blade to draw. This wasn’t a fight of gear or loadouts.

This was a reckoning.

She darted left, grabbing a jagged shard of memory from the ground, a flash of herself slashing through a dungeon horde, drenched in adrenaline and desperation. She knew this memory, the [Mouth of the Abyss].

The shard flared in her grasp, humming with potential. Without any cohesive thought, she hurled it.

It shattered against the younger girl’s blade in a burst of sparks.

"You’re not fast enough." The girl said coldly, stepping forward again. "You’re not ruthless enough. Not anymore."

Sarissa threw another shard, then another. Each one shattered, each one bought a second.

The girl didn’t dodge, as if deeming the mere motion of evading the strikes unnecessary. Every attack was anticipated because she knew all of Sarissa’s movements. She remembered every pattern, every habit.

"You stopped being a survivor!" The girl hissed. "You started pretending to be something more."

"I started becoming something more!" Sarissa shot back through gritted teeth, catching the edge of another strike on her forearm.

Blood sprayed, and her nerves screamed.

"You think kindness is strength? Mercy? You think they won’t kill you for that?"

They?

Sarissa frowned for the briefest moment. There was something in the way the girl, her younger version, emphasized the word, but there was no time to dwell on such things.

"Maybe." Sarissa spat. "But I chose it. I chose to live with the pain. You... You just wanted to make it stop."

"You’re damn right I did." Her blade came again.

Sarissa ducked low, sweeping the girl’s legs. The impact sent the younger one sprawling. But even as she fell, she twisted in midair, catching Sarissa in the jaw with a vicious heel.

Sarissa staggered back, her ears ringing, her jaw already swelling.

The girl rose, bloodied but grinning.

"I died for you!" She whispered. "Again, and again. I gave up everything so you’d have a chance. And now you want to kill me for it?"

"You never gave me a choice. You just took it."

"Because you were too weak to take it yourself."

They collided again.

Fists, elbows, knees. The dreamspace shattered and reformed around them with every blow, making the road spin between memories.

One moment they were fighting in an alley from Sarissa’s childhood, the next inside the ruins of an ancient tomb, then beneath the starless sky of the Horizon.

Each place held echoes of a fight survived, a turn reset, a death undone.

Sarissa fought with desperation, not precision. She slammed her shoulder into her younger self, driving her back against the wall of an old vision. Her old Union rank badge glinting in the dust nearby.

The girl laughed and shoved her away.

"You don’t get to move on! Not until you pay what you owe!"

Sarissa coughed, her vision swimming. Her ribs were cracked, and her arm barely moved, her legs threatening to give.

But she didn’t fall.

"Then take it!" She spat, raising her fists. "If that’s what you want. Take it all, but I’m not running."

The girl screamed and surged forward, but Sarissa met her head-on.

The clash resounded like thunder, making memory shards explode around them. A thousand moments of sacrifice blew up in waves. Sarissa caught the younger version by the wrist, twisted, kicked the back of her knee, and the girl fell, but not without driving her blade straight into Sarissa’s thigh.

She collapsed, pain exploding through her like fire through her nerves.

The girl stood over her, breathing heavily. No longer smug, no longer smiling. Just furious, desperate.

Betrayed.

"If I die..." She whispered. "You forget, you lose."

"Maybe." Sarissa murmured, trembling. "But maybe that’s the point."

She drove her elbow into the girl’s face, and the younger version shrieked and fell back, blood streaming from her nose.

Sarissa forced herself upright, but every joint screamed. Every breath burned.

"You survived..." Sarissa said softly. "You kept us alive, I know. But I’m not that girl anymore. I can’t be."

"Then you’re nothing."

"No... I’m more. Because I remember you. I don’t need to erase you, I just... Can’t have you control me anymore."

The younger Sarissa roared and charged, but Sarissa didn’t dodge.

She took the hit, letting it carry them both through another wall of memories. Through her first time meeting Miles, through the moment she saw Mara smile at her. Through the first time when she laughed at one of Cheshire’s terrible puns.

Through moments she hadn’t even lived yet.

The blade tore into her side, and she still didn’t fall.

They crashed into the middle of the road again, and they were back in the stone room.

The battlefield in the rain.

Blood pooled beneath them.

The girl’s expression twisted, her blade flickered ever so slightly. Her body trembled.

"Why won’t you die?" She cried between sobs.

Sarissa, dragged herself upright through the pain of countless cuts and stabs. She bled from a dozen wounds, her vision blurry, her body broken.

"Because there’s something you don’t understand yet..." She whispered.

The girl raised the blade one last time.

Sarissa looked up at her past, and something shifted.

In the shards around them, the memories no longer bled red. They pulsed with silver. Not the light of pain, but of possibility.

The girl froze, and Sarissa exhaled.

The light reflected in her eyes, realization pouring down on her like comforting, inevitable rain.