Tristessa woke up when the sun began to set, many hours later. The guest room was bathed in the light of the sunset, filtering through the wide-open window to let in a cool breeze worthy of late spring. The sheets on her bed were rumpled and cold, conspicuous by the absence of the girl who had moved the wooden chair closer to the window and was watching the sunset set over the Sea of Trees, which, seen from that perspective, truly lived up to its name: it covered absolutely the entire horizon, all the way to the great distance where the first peaks of the snow-covered mountain ranges could be seen.
A more than beautiful landscape, capable of pacifying and inspiring the human mind in a thousand wonderful ways, although at that moment, Tristessa's was equal in size but not at all in calmness: her grey eyes, lost in the last rays of light, waiting for the darkness that will come for all; two mirrors that reflected absolute disorder and incomprehension.
It was her second return to life, and yet she felt it completely different from the first time: there was no Soul Operating Room, nor Infinite Corridor, nor return to the world of the living through a forced birth of a purely malevolent nature.
There were only three elements in common between both resurrections: Discord, a metaphysical concept that seemed to be more than known in that world, as well as feared; that miasma which resided within the Darkness, functioning in a similar way to the heart within the body of a living being. Then there was Endrel, the Angel of Rebirth, unaccompanied by her fiancée the demoness Margules, and being one of the agents of Chaos in the vast macrocosm. And finally, the immeasurable pain of experiencing Death, which was intrinsically engraved in the soul and in constant conflict with her living, breathing body.
"When I died, I went back in time, keeping everything I learned from the future. I see no other explanation," she thought, going over inside her head for the umpteenth time what happened on the ground floor of the house. Or at least as far as she could remember, as she panicked and was ready to beg for mercy for her life. Then, nothing but blankness. "Now I know the tales written in Lucahn's book. And I know that Tiara suffered horrible losses in the past, and she will not hesitate to hurt me at the slightest suspicion that I am a danger to her family… I know all that now. But why did that happen? What are Endrel, or her master Vel'Moran, playing at, bringing me back to life, but returning me to the past?"
She had no way of deducing the reasons, no matter how many hours she spent thinking, if she didn't even know how she had been able to return from Death the first time.
It was pointless to burn her neurons away by thinking so hard if she didn't even know why she had come to Nekrom.
But what she was sure of was what made the difference between her pre and post-Death: with the shirt partially unbuttoned, the neckline left her Baptism in Ruins on display; that mark spreading spider veins across her chest with more depth and intensity than before. When she placed my right hand on it, she felt the mark abnormally cold; a cold that didn't penetrate the skin or affect the normal functioning of her heart. Supernatural, and intimately linked to the concepts of Death and Rebirth or Resurrection, which in essence of Tristessa's were practically the same.
"Miss Tristessa?" The girl in question quickly removed her hand from her chest and used it to button her shirt and hide the mark. "May I come in?"
It was Jin's unmistakable voice, along with several soft knocks against the surface of the door, but Tristessa did nothing. She didn't answer, she didn't get up, and she didn't even deign to turn around. The sound of the hunter knocking on the door had been enough to revive the trauma left by the previous timeline: that same wooden door where her son, victim of malevolent madness, had fractured his hands trying to get out.
Wanting to get out to kill her.
Tristessa didn't even want to look, because if she looked in the direction of the door, her eyes would inevitably show her the exact spot where Lucahn's corpse had been sitting, with his accusing eyes torn out. The fear was too great, fueled by the overlapping of both realities—the current one and the one lost with her second death—and that the girl didn't even understand regarding its mechanisms.
"Miss? I'm going in, excuse me."
It was incredible how fast Tristessa's heart began to beat, reaching a peak of desperation as soon as she saw the hunter enter. The same trench coat, the same pants, the same shoes… And a smile that could barely be seen between his beard, but that Tristessa's mind couldn't see: she could only see that same man with a lost and empty expression on his face, before it exploded into hundreds of bloody pieces when he committed suicide by placing the same gun he had holstered at his waist in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
"Miss, once again, I'm sorry… I don't know what happened while I was gone, but let me reaffirm that you don't have to fear anyone in this house. No one will hurt you," he began, without shortening the distance, just as when he was trying to gain the trust of a timid, defenseless little animal. He instantly noticed that Tristessa was looking nervously at the side of his waist. "Oh, my one-shot pistol? I'll leave it on the ground, yes?"
As Jin slowly unholstered his gun and bent down to leave it at his feet, the girl had unconsciously placed one hand over the window frame. Jumping from the second floor and breaking her legs sounded like a better idea to her than the possibility of seeing Jin fall into madness again. Anything was better than that terrible outcome.
"My wife told me what happened. I know it's all I've been doing all day, but I would like to apologize, on my behalf, for us being such terrible hosts," the hunter told her, now standing upright and with a hand on his chest in a sign of regret. "If Tiara offended you, or said inappropriate things, I assure you that if you let her, she will come and apologize too."
How difficult it was to trust. A part of her knew that the madness outbreak was not going to happen this time, but she was so afraid of the possibility that it could actually happen… She did not forget that she had been the cause of that whole disaster.
She wanted to believe in his words, in his diplomatic and honest smile. Jin was a good man, but it was truly difficult to trust, when she was seeing that man taking his life over and over again, inside her mind.
"Can I…?" Jin pointed to the bed, and before Tristessa's immutably frightened gaze, he went and sat on its edge. "I'm not going to pressure you into talking about what happened downstairs, but… I'd like to know if it's true that you've been stripped of your memories. I'll believe you if you tell me, I just want to hear it coming from you."
Tristessa wasn't ready to talk just yet, so she just nodded.
"Fair enough. I had a suspicion, but well, it's the best to have your confirmation. It's very rare to find a drifter in the Sea of Trees who isn't a complete lunatic member of the Coven, I trust you'll understand that my wife had reasons to... No, wait. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"
She shook her head, causing the hunter to let out a tired sigh.
"I hope Severus comes to visit us soon, so we can see the severity of your condition... Anyway, I just want you to know that my wife had reasons to distrust you. I know she can be a little... intense." Jin picked up the abandoned photograph, and as he saw, scenes from his memories flashed through his melancholic eyes. "But she does it because she suffered a lot years ago. And those wounds don't heal so easily, even with the flow of the rivers of time..."
The girl's grip on the window frame eased. She remembered very well everything that the Tiara who no longer existed had revealed to her about her past in an outburst as a result of seeing her son die at that very moment. It was privileged information that Tristessa, in this new timeline, didn't have to know.
Talking out of line was going to cost her her life, again.
"You know, this morning you seemed a little more cheerful," he told her, distracting her and leaving the photo in its place, face down and hidden. "But now you seem to be someone who lives every second of her life scared. If there's something we can do to help you…"
Scared? The word made Tristessa nauseous. Jin hadn't the slightest idea of what she had experienced in so few hours. He had no idea of the horror… He had no idea what amnesia felt like, or being sent to a totally unknown world, or being eaten alive. He had no idea of the madness that led them all to their deaths.
He had no idea because for her, the past she did remember had never happened and he was alive, sane, along with Tiara and Lucahn.
"I…I don't know who I am…" the girl managed to articulate, gaining the full attention of her host. Outside, night had already fallen, and the artificial lights of the chandelier dimmed. "Before…before the forest, I don't know what kind of person I was."
"Miss…"
"I wonder if that Tristessa was as useless and stupid as I am…" she sobbed.
"Miss Tristessa, please don't say that. You must not blame yourself for your own condition. You will see, I am sure Severus will be able to…"
"Your son died because of me. Your wife died because of me. You died because of me. And you will never know, because for you it never happened."
She thought about every word she wanted to shout, to tell all of that to that man who looked at her with all the predisposition to encourage her, to make her feel good in a warm and friendly environment. But Tristessa was not well, and she was not going to be. There was no one who could listen to her, without risking going on too far and violating that rule decreed in secret.
Her secret of Death and Rebirth, which was taboo, with deadly consequences if broken.
"Jin… Please, I want to be alone," she said with the little strength she had left in her voice. She looked out the window again, towards where the Twin Moons had taken over the celestial spotlight. "I don't want you to see me cry."
Without waiting for Jin, dejected and disappointed with himself for not having achieved his goal, to leave the room in silence, she had already partially covered her face with one hand to begin to expel the tears and cries that she so needed to release, so that they would be lost in the solitude of the night of the End-World Domain.
For Jin, Tiara and Lucahn, that had been another day. An atypical day due to the arrival of an unwanted guest to their home, but ultimately, another day in their difficult lives. A day in which they never experienced the horror of an attack of arbitrary madness and a horrible death.
But for Tristessa, that other day did not exist anymore. It would never exist, with only her soul and her memories retaining everything she saw, everything she felt and everything she suffered.
"I don't want to... Save me, Mom... Save me!" She begged, her face hidden in her hands, not even able to remember anything about her mother other than her name and her voice. "I don't want to die again!"
She couldn't talk about her Death and Rebirth… Death and Resurrection…
No, about her Dark Resurrection.
That gift, that Divinity… That curse, didn't deserve another name.
Along with the Baptism in Ruins, whose effects were still unknown to her, together they worked like a cage. A prison. They were chains compressing her soul, keeping her in perpetual limbo.
What would happen if she died again? Would she go back to that moment in the morning, in front of the trophy case? How many times? Forever?
She was trapped, with no way out, no escape.
"What am I going to do?" she asked quietly, subjected to the fear generated by uncertainty. "How long will it take for me to wake up from this nightmare?"
Tristessa must have already deduced, at the start of the new night, that this cruel reality, this living nightmare had only just begun.