I Became the Simp Character I Roasted Online-Chapter 54: The Artifact?

Revan’s mouth hung open.

His brain was running through seventeen different emotions simultaneously and failing to process any of them.

The boy stared up at him through the curtain of black hair. His lips were pressed together so tight they’d turned white.

Revan lowered the blade. Slowly.

"...Don’t tell me I’m dead again."

His free hand went to his head, fingers raking through the mud-caked mess of his hair, scratching aggressively enough to leave marks on his scalp.

"Seriously. Don’t. Because if this is another one of those white room situations where we sit on a bench and have a deep emotional conversation about the meaning of identity while I’m bleeding out somewhere in the real world, I am going to lose my mind. I have lost a LOT of things tonight. My coat. My hearing. The feeling in my left arm. Most of my blood. Several years of my life expectancy. But I have NOT lost my mind yet, and I would very much like to keep it, thank you."

Panic. The boy shook his head rapidly.

"Oh, great. Wonderful. Love that for us." Revan wiped his face with the back of his hand, smearing blood and mud into a new pattern.

"So if I’m not dead, then what the hell are you doing here?"

"I—"

Revan held up his hand before the boy could even attempt to finish his response.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Don’t answer that yet."

He pressed his palm against his own forehead, then pulled it away, then pressed it back again.

"Let me think. Let me just... think for a second."

He paced in tight, three-step loops, his good arm gesturing wildly while his dead left arm swung like a useless pendulum.

"Okay. So. A version of me that shouldn’t exist outside of my own head is standing in front of me. Which means either..."

He jabbed his index finger at the air.

"One: I’ve finally developed schizophrenia. Which, honestly, after tonight? Completely valid. Very understandable. No one would blame me."

He pivoted on his heel, held up two fingers toward the boy.

"Or two: this is some kind of new ability. Some latent power that activated because my body is so thoroughly destroyed that my soul decided to start projecting itself as a defense mechanism. Like a... a survival hallucination. With a physical form. That grabs ankles."

He stopped pacing. Rubbed his jaw. Squinted at the boy.

"No. No, no, no." He waved both theories away with a sharp flick of his wrist, nearly losing his balance in the process.

"That’s stupid. Both of those are stupid. If I had schizophrenia, you’d be telling me to do things, not standing there looking like a wet kitten someone abandoned in an alley. And if this was a new ability, it would have come with some kind of notification or sensation or SOMETHING, not a ten-year-old grabbing my foot out of the fog like a goddamn horror movie."

He pointed at the boy. The boy flinched.

"So what IS this? Huh? What are you?"

The boy’s shoulders hunched inward. His bangs fell further over his face. For a moment he looked so small and so miserable that Revan felt a familiar pang of guilt twisting somewhere behind his broken ribs.

’Ah, shit. I’m doing it again.’

Revan let out a long breath through his nose, making a conscious effort to lower his voice.

"Look. I’m sorry. It’s been a really, really bad day. I fought an invisible monster for twenty minutes, I can’t hear out of my left ear, and I’m pretty sure at least two of my ribs have relocated to places ribs aren’t supposed to be. So if my tone is a little aggressive, it’s not personal. Well, it’s a LITTLE personal. But mostly it’s the blood loss talking."

Through the curtain of his bangs, the boy peeked up—just enough to reveal a single, dark eye filled with caution.

"So. Are you going to explain why you’re here, or are we just going to stand in this creepy fog corridor staring at each other until one of us dies of awkwardness?"

The boy raised one hand. Pointed behind himself. Into the deeper fog.

Revan frowned.

"You want me to follow you somewhere?"

A small nod.

Revan just stared at the boy intently. Slowly, his eyes narrowed once more. Feeling the weight of that piercing gaze, the boy squirmed in discomfort.

Revan clicked his tongue.

"You know what, fine. At this point, my decision-making process has been reduced to ’will this kill me faster than standing still?’ and the answer is usually no, so let’s—"

The boy didn’t even wait for him to finish. He just spun on his bare heel and marched straight into the fog.

"—go."

Revan blinked.

"Hey."

The boy was already five meters ahead. The fog was closing behind him like water filling a wake.

"Hey! OY!"

Seven meters. The small figure was becoming a smudge in the white.

"OYYY! What the fuck?! Where the fuck are you going?! You can’t just point and walk away!"

Revan stared at the fog in sheer disbelief.

’Jesus Christtttt... is this kid seriously this infuriating?!’

He closed his eyes and took a deep, ragged breath.

’Huuu... ooo... calm down, Revan. Control yourself. Do NOT let high blood pressure be the thing that actually kills you.’

Ten meters. The fog was already swallowing that kid.

"Oh, for the love of—WAIT FOR ME, YOU LITTLE BRAT!"

Revan broke into a run. Or what passed for a run in his current state, which was closer to a hurried limp.

His sword scraped through the mud behind him because he couldn’t be bothered to lift it properly.

That kid didn’t even slow down. He just kept his infuriating, casual pace, fully expecting the wheezing, bleeding mess behind him to keep up.

"I swear to God... when this is over... I’m going to sit you down... and teach you... basic manners..." Revan panted between strides, each word punctuated by a stab of pain from his chest. "Rule one... when someone is injured... you walk... at THEIR speed... not yours..."

The corridor narrowed. The fog walls pressed closer on both sides. The air grew colder. Drier.

They walked for six straight minutes before the boy abruptly stopped.

Revan nearly crashed into him. He caught himself at the last second, stumbling to a halt with one hand on his knee and the other clutching the sword hilt for balance.

"Tch. Now wha—" Revan’s words died in his throat as he looked up.

The corridor had opened into a clearing. Circular. Maybe twenty meters across. The fog formed a perfect dome overhead, curving inward like the ceiling of a cathedral. No rain fell here. No wind. The silence was so complete that Revan could hear the blood dripping from his fingertips.

And in the center of the clearing, suspended in the air at chest height, was something that shouldn’t exist.

It floated. No strings. No pedestal. No visible mechanism holding it up. It simply hung in the still air, rotating slowly on an invisible axis, as if gravity had forgotten it was there.

A gauntlet.

A single gauntlet, sized for a left hand.

It was black. The kind of black that had nothing to do with color and everything to do with absence. The surface didn’t reflect the ambient light. It consumed it. The articulated fingers were slightly curled, as if the gauntlet was waiting for a hand to fill them. Along the back, from wrist to fingertip, thin grooves had been carved into the surface in a pattern that made Revan’s breath catch.

He knew that pattern. Every warrior knew that pattern. It was the map of aura channels running through a human forearm, rendered in metal with a precision that no blacksmith alive could replicate.

The gauntlet rotated. Slowly. Patiently.

Revan stared at it. Then at the boy, who was standing at the edge of the clearing with his hands clasped in front of him, watching Revan with an expression that was equal parts nervous and expectant.

"The hell?"