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Cellbit has Pac pressed against the wall. He’s digging nails into familiar skin. It smells of prison.

“Cellbit,” Pac pleads, not unlike before, but with a more desperate edge to it, like he doesn’t enjoy it, “please—”

He doesn't get a choice to step away. Fit digs a pickaxe into his skull and Cellbit stumbles on his feet before falling down. He can see Fit and Pac embracing, just before he dies.

He wakes up at their shitty hideout, unsatisfied. He huffs as he sneaks a hand under his shirt and digs a palm into his stomach. His hunger might be reset, but that doesn’t mean that he wants a familiar smell any less—

“Do you, though?” someone asks. Cellbit almost jumps as he springs to his feet and turns around.

There’s a shadow near the far wall of the cave, where the darkness meets light. It’s definitely a humanoid (but definitely not human—the head is... weird, maybe a dog?), and broad-shouldered and tall at that. The physique reminds him of Fit, but this is definitely not him: he can see the glowing transparency of a cloak and a fur collar.

This wasn’t far from the first time he experienced hallucinations. This was the first one to actually talk to him, though.

“What do you know?” Cellbit grumbles as he turns away and drags himself to the nearby chest to get himself back on his feet.

“More than you,” annoyingly, the shadow’s voice follows him as if it was standing right behind him, impossible to ignore. “...If you continue dying so much, you’ll lose too many points.”

Cellbit thins his lips. As if he doesn’t know that.

“Here’s a deal for you. I’ll help your team win, and in return, you’ll listen to a proposition of mine.”

At that, Cellbit drops the carrots he’s been picking, and turns around. “What?”

“Do you have a name?”

“You can call me The Blade.”

With the Blade’s mind in his, his weapon moves with no remorse or pause—thought transformed into action, the purest of expressions. It’s what he’s dreamed of doing at night.

And yet—

The kills are clean, quick. There’s no more blood than strictly necessary, no trying to dig in deep enough to find the bone. The Blade is strangely detached from what it’s doing, and Cellbit doesn’t quite understand it.

He doesn’t ask, though. When the two of them (he) drag themself (himself) back into the base, he has a dreamless sleep.

On the third day of their alliance, Cellbit runs into Bagi. She takes off the moment their eyes meet, and Cellbit runs after her, not stopping to consider what he’s doing despite the Blade gawking in his ear. The two of them dash across the sands and towards a [mountain enclave thingy idk], with Bagi jumping over a blade of light and landing a few feet apart from him. Cellbit is about to jump after her when the sun hits his skin.

It burns. Cellbit yelps and stumbles back into the shadow. When he fishes out his communicator, he sees that the sun now burns. He swears under his breath, and then looks up at Bagi, who is breathing heavily, one jump away from him. Behind Cellbit there are only exposed sands, so he relaxes against the cool wall, and the two of them sit there. Silent—until Bagi says: “I’m not giving up on you, you know.”

Cellbit barks out a laugh. “Do you tell that to all the serial killers you meet?”

“You become what you want to be,” Bagi says.

“No one wants to be a murderer,” he barks back at her. “You just become one.”

Bagi hums thoughtfully. “Well, that’s true, but we humans have agency. If you don’t want to do something, just don’t do it.” Her face softens. “I know I’m oversimplifying this, but I know you... maybe not you-you, but the you that’s piloting your body, your mind and sense of self—I know it like I know myself, which is pretty well; both of us are clever, and we don’t exactly lack self-awareness. The question is how we use this self-awareness, and whether we use it at all.”

Cellbit wants to punch her so hard her teeth fall out. He wants to tear her pretty hair out. He wants to dig a knife into her skull, pull it out it and see—

On the fourth day of their alliance, Cellbit is curled up in the corner of the base, flexing fingers with dry blood under the nails. The Blade sits opposite of the fire, solemn and quiet. It then says, “It was your sister.”

Cellbit shakes his head. “But I don’t remember her, and she only remembers someone that doesn’t exist anymore.” He shuts his eyes. He imagines Richarlyson in front of him. Then he imagines himself wringing his fingers into the messy hair, twisting them, and–

He opens his eyes with a gasp. The Blade is still there, unyielding, even though he knows that it saw what he saw. Cellbit curls his fingers. He feels like a child lying in the barracks again, a soldier with no memory. “The glass is shattered,” he whispers. “There’s nothing left.”

The Blade hums. “Well, have you considered using some glue?”

“It’s not gonna be the same.”

“And who says it has to be?” The Blade leans a little bit closer. “Your son loves you. Not the long-lost brother or a ruthless murderer—you, the mystery solver, the good husband and father. You just need to glue the shards together so that you don’t accidentally get him cut.”

Cellbit closes his eyes. He imagines the cracks on his skin mended with gold, like a vase repaired by a kintsugi craftsman.

“Staying like this is the easier thing to do,” the Blade offers.

On the fifth day of their alliance, he grabs Bagi’s hand before she can fall into the ravine.

On the second day back home, he sneaks away from his friends, but the familiar motion has unfamiliar subtext to it—for once, he’s surrounded by blue skies and the most beautiful flowers he’s ever seen, not by shabby alleys or by the cold stars.

He takes his time to walk to the altar rather than warp to it. The potato crops [] in the wind, and Cellbit lets out a shaky breath as he allows himself to stretch his shoulders and let the [] be blown away.

At the altar, he sits down and places the basket next to him. He takes out some cheese breads, chicken pastéis, apples, bananas, some grapes and a bottle of wine. He sets it all down on the ofrenda and fiddles with the placement a bit until he decides that there’s only so much deliberation he could do.

He lights a few and then folds his hands, feeling awkward. He didn’t know if he was raised religious, but even if he was, he lost his faith a long time ago. Still, he calms his mind and tries to focus his inner gratitude towards his goal, like Philza advised him to.

I hope you're well, wherever you are.