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The desert sunset glowed with the ember-orange that always came before nightfall—soft, almost peaceful. It didn’t match the way Grian’s lungs seized, or how every inch of him throbbed from bruises he no longer remembered receiving. The cactus ring burned bright with torchlight, each flame throwing long shadows of jagged green spikes across the sand.
Scar limped into the ring with his usual showmanship, even though he could barely stand up straight. Bits of cactus needles were still embedded in what was left of his trousers, and soot streaked across his skin. He looked like he’d been sculpted out of the desert itself—brittle, cracked, and ready to fall apart.
He still smiled.
“Scar,” Grian said, voice thin from exhaustion. “I think… no matter what happens, we can count this as a double victory, right?”
Scar puffed out a breath, trying for a laugh that came out more like a wheeze. “Yes I—we are, we are all good!”
Grian wanted to believe him. He wanted to believe there was still some version of them out there somewhere that wasn’t soaked in blood and dust.
The torch flames flickered.
Scar lifted his chin, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth—the bravado of a man who had nothing left to give but spirit. Somewhere beyond them, the ghosts of the server—those who had already lost—seemed to whisper in the wind, counting them in.
Grian’s chest squeezed painfully. He couldn’t breathe.
“Ready?” Scar asked, softening the question with a lopsided grin. “This is it. Our grand finale.”
Grian let out a short, trembling laugh. “Yeah. Finale.”
They stepped into each other’s space. It was too close, and it felt too intimate, too final.
Scar swung first, or pretended to. His punch went wide, almost theatrically. He was breathing too hard. His knees shook. He looked like he could collapse without Grian touching him.
“Scar,” Grian whispered. “Don’t.”
Scar darted sideways, hands flailing dramatically. “What? I’m getting you! I’m getting you good!”
Even now, even at the end.
“I don’t…” Grian’s voice broke into a thin, desperate laugh. “I don’t think you are.”
Scar’s face flickered—amusement, pain, and resignation all layered on top of each other. His eyes were too bright in the torchlight, pupils blown wide, glimmering with something that wasn’t quite fear. Something more like acceptance.
Grian stepped forward, fists raised more in self defense than intent to strike.
Scar stepped back, lost his footing, and hit the cactus wall with a grunt and hiss of pain. His health dipped low, so low Grian could practically hear his heartbeat pulsing through him.
“Scar—stop running into it!” Grian pleaded, voice cracking.
“I’m… I’m being strategic!” Scar insisted weakly, swaying on his feet. “Very complex strategy…”
He took another trembling step away from the cactus wall, but it was the step of a man who had already decided on the outcome. His breathing hitched—sharp, shallow, desperate. The desert wind pushed him sideways and he nearly stumbled out of the ring entirely.
Grian lunged to stop him, hands outstretched.
Scar turned back toward him and gave a warm, final smile. “Oh,” he murmured, voice small and almost childish. “I don’t feel so good.”
Something inside Grian tore. “I know,” he whispered, moving without thinking, without wanting to think. He tacked Scar into the sand, the two of them collapsing in a tangle of limbs and dust. Scar didn’t fight back, not really. His arms curled halfway around Grian’s shoulders like he wasn’t sure whether to struggle or embrace him.
“Scar,” Grian choked. “Scar—” He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t think.
Grian curled his hands into fists and struck Scar’s chest once, twice, again—each impact dull and awful, not like fighting, PvP, or anything meant to be survived.
He could hear Scar’s weak groans and breaths so faint they barely moved his ribs. Scar’s fingers brushed Grian’s sleeve like he wanted to hold onto something, anything.
“I know, Scar. Oh, I’m so sorry, Scar. I’m so sorry.”
The final hit landed with a soft, dreadful thud.
Scar sagged beneath him, body going slack in Grian’s arms. His particles burst into red-white sparks. The sand where he laid was still indented and warm. The torch flames crackled uselessly, the only things still alive in the arena.
Grian sat back slowly, hands hovering in the air like he didn’t recognise them. His vision blurred—blood in one eye, tears in the other. His nose hurt; he wasn’t sure when it had broken. Every breath rattled painfully.
He stared at the empty space where Scar had been, where Scar always seemed to be, where Scar should have still been smiling, still talking, and still breathing.
“One more life to go,” he whispered to himself, numb. “That’s it.”
He unsteadily pushed himself to his feet. The sand felt too warm beneath him. His boots slipped. Every step felt wrong, like his body was moving without him.
He stumbled past Pizza’s grave, tracing the outline of the sandstone with trembling fingers. Memories flickered—walking here with Scar in sunlight, Scar bragging about their monopoly, Scar pointing out their traps with pride.
Back then, Scar’s skin had been a warm gold in the desert sun. Here, in memory, it was ashen, grey, and dead.
He climbed the rest of the mountain without pausing to rest—not because he had strength, but because stopping would mean feeling, and he would crumble if he felt anything more.
At the top, the world stretched out before him.
Their desert.
Their territory.
Their kingdom.
The cactus walls and lava moat they’d built together gleamed faintly in the sunset. Scar had clapped his hands and called it beautiful once.
“We’re going to do great things,” Scar had said.
Red-life Scar had been different. Red-life Scar had been dangerous, loyal, unhinged, protective, unpredictable. A weapon. A shield. A friend.
Grian’s chest stuttered painfully once more.
“Goodbye,” he whispered.
He stepped off.
The fall hurt more than he had expected. The sand rushed up like fire, slamming into him, burning through his clothes. He landed on his side, ribs screaming. His head rang.
He lay there, staring upward at the near-night sky.
He refused—absolutely refused—to close his eyes and see Scar’s lifeless face burned behind his eyelids. He would not die by that memory. He would die facing the desert they had loved.
He breathed once more, shallow and rattling.
And then, the world collapsed inward like a hole punched through reality.
He fell straight into the void.
There was no impact.
No weight.
No falling.
No rising.
Just the sensation of movement without direction, like he’d been unstitched from gravity itself. The heat and sand that had burned into his skin peeled away in thin, dissolving layers. His bruises vanished first, then the taste of blood, then the ache in his ribs, and then the last traces of breath.
And then… nothing.
Grian opened his eyes.
The void wasn’t black. It was every colour sandwiched into a single impossible shade—an absence of texture and a darkness that shimmered if he looked too much at one spot.
He hung suspended, limbs drifting as though underwater, though there was no water here. No air. No world. Only an ancient presence watching him from angles that didn’t exist.
Grian swallowed, or tried to. The motion didn’t work—his body was more memory than matter.
A soft murmur unfurled in the void, like a whisper pressed against the inside of his skull.
“Little bird, little spark, broken wings in breaking dark…”
Grian stiffened. His heart lurched even though it shouldn’t have been beating.
Not them. Not now.
The Watcher’s voice curled around him, echoing without direction, each word bending slightly, like sound refracting through a spinning prism.
“Fall and fall, again, again,
until the lesson sinks within.
You run from truth, you run from pain…”
The voice multiplied, all speaking in near-harmony.
“...yet here you are. You’re back again.”
Grian clutched his hands, nails digging into palms he wasn’t sure he still had. “I didn’t come back,” he forced out, words trembling. “I died.”
A ripple of amusement rolled through the void. Not laughter, or cruelty. Something oddly fond, like the whisper of someone who thought they knew him better than he knew himself.
“Death to you is but a thread—
snap it, weave it, still not dead.
It takes more than a cactus thorn
to sever those for whom we’re sworn.”
“I don’t belong to you.”
“Don’t you?”
Images shattered across his mind, half-memories, half-realities:
Scar’s smile, just before dissolving into particles.
The desert kingdom gleaming gold.
Scar raising his sword without hesitation that day (yesterday?).
The first time his eyes flashed red.
The first time Grian felt a Watcher whisper at the edges of his vision.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Stop.”
“Little bird, you do not see
the truth that sleeps inside of thee.
You mask your fear in feathered guise,
yet we have seen your Watcher eyes.”
He didn’t want to hear this. He refused to hear this.
“I’m not one of you,” he said, voice cracking like shattering glass. “I’m not—I never—I don’t want—”
The void pulsed. Warm, cold, warm again, like shifting tides.
“Want is nothing.
Choice is air.
Truth remains, though stripped and bare.
You dug your graves in desert sand,
broke your fate by your own hand.
You struck your friend, you spilled his light,
and now you flee from what is right.”
Grian’s throat felt raw. “Don’t talk about Scar.”
“Why not, when he is the reason you ran?”
The words sliced through him. He floated there, trembling, wishing desperately for the heat of the desert instead of this suffocating cold.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” he whispered. “I didn’t. You think I—you think I liked any of it?”
Silence.
Then—
“No.
You did not.”
Something loosened in him, just slightly.
The Watchers’ tones softened, though not warmly—more like a blade slid into velvet.
“But want and deed and seldom twins.
One strikes the blow, the other sins.
Your hands are red, your heart is torn,
a fractured soul in desert born.”
The void hummed with distant resonance.
“We watched you fall.
We watched you break.
We watched the choices you would make.”
Grian closed his eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.”
The force of that sentence hit him like a punch to the ribs.
Grian shuddered. “Then why are you here? Why drag me into this place?”
“To remind you.
The cycle turns.
The weave holds tight.
Your story stretches past our sight.”
A shadow brushed across his vision—feathers, vast and angular, like wings made of absence and geometry. He flinched, though it passed without touching him.
“Return, little bird.
Return and see
the world restored imperfectly.”
Grian’s heart pounded. “I don’t know if I can go back.”
“You can.
You will.
You always do.”
A static wind swept through the void, swirling around him, tugging at something deep in his chest.
“Remember him.
Keep the warmth but lose the pain.
Fly once more to home again.”
The pressure in his chest intensified, squeezing, pulling, wrenching. The void began to tear open beneath him, and light spilled through, too bright, too warm, too real.
He gasped—actually gasped—as air filled lungs that hadn’t existed moments before.
The Watchers whispered a final time:
“Rise, little spark.
Awake from night.
Return to sun, to grass, to light.”
The ground rushed up toward him.
And the world exploded into colour.
Grian woke to sunlight that felt too warm and clean.
He sucked in a sharp breath, chest jolting. The carpet beneath him was soft, too soft. Sand didn’t compress like this. Sand didn’t smell faintly of dyes and wool and the lingering trace of Scar’s latest landscaping project in the breeze.
For one disoriented heartbeat, Grian reached for his sword. In place where his sword would have been was his communicator, buzzing violently against his belt.
He blinked hard, dragging himself upright. The room spun—high ceilings, wooden beams, grand windows that framed the treetops of the jungle biome below. His mansion. The one he last remembered building before… after? Before-after blurred together like he’d fallen through a dozen worlds on the way back here.
The communicator buzzed again. And again. A flood of messages filled the screen, and more kept coming in. Grian rubbed his eyes, but the world didn’t stop tilting.
Another message popped up, cutting through the noise:
Xisuma: Grian, please respond. This is urgent.
Grian’s breath hitched. Xisuma didn’t use that tone unless the server was literally collapsing.
He typed back with shaking fingers:
Grian: Just woke up at my base.
He didn’t even hear the firework rockets or footsteps until someone was pounding on his door. Grian flinched, a hot spark of adrenaline flooding him before his brain caught up.
“Grian! Hey—Grian, you in there?” Scar’s voice carried through the door, bright and relieved and so painfully alive. “It’s Scar! I heard you comm ping—open up!”
Grian’s legs moved before he had fully decided to stand. He crossed the foyer in a blur and yanked open the door.
Scar stood there, framed by sunlight and greenery, wearing his usual Hermitcraft attire—vibrant, healthy, alive colours. His face was flushed from the sprint up Grian’s staircase path, and his grin was wide, relieved—
And utterly unaware.
Grian’s knees buckled. He crashed forward into Scar, who caught him automatically, arms wrapping tight around his middle.
“Woah—hey, hey, easy,” Scar murmured, steadying him. “You okay? You’re shaking like a creeper running away from a cat.
Grian couldn’t answer. He pressed his face into Scar’s shoulder, the fabric warm and real and nothing like sand or blood or cactus spines. Scar stiffened, then softened, one hand coming up to Grian’s back, rubbing small circles.
“There you go… deep breaths, buddy. You’re safe. You’re home.”
Home.
The word fractured something in Grian’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Grian whispered, voice barely audible. ”Scar, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want—I didn’t mean—”
Scar pulled back slightly, baffled. “Sorry? For what? You’ve been gone for weeks, man. We thought your comm broke or you got kidnapped or—”
“You died.” The words spilled out before Grian could stop them. “You died, Scar. In the desert, in the ring. And I—I was the one—”
Scar’s brows knit together. “Grian… what desert?” He said it so casually, like the desert was a place they’d never seen before.
Grian stared at him. The edges of the world flickered. “You remember,” Grian insisted. “Third Life. The game. The lives. The betrayals. Pizza’s grave. Our base. The final fight. You remember that.”
Scar’s confusion didn’t waver. “Grian… none of that happened,” he said softly. “I’ve just been building since I came back, looking for you, asking everyone if they knew where you went. I haven’t died in… a while.”
Something cold burned down Grian’s spine.
“No—no, Scar, that’s wrong. You were—your skin was gray, and you—your ribs—your eyes—your last words—”
Scar gently put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Look at me. If I remembered anything you’re talking about—anything—I’d tell you.”
Grian stepped backward, out of reach. The foyer suddenly felt too big, too tall, too bright.
Scar hesitated. “I’m gonna call Xisuma. He probably wants to see you anyway.”
Grian didn’t stop him. He barely breathed.
Minutes passed in an agonizing blue before footsteps echoed through the mansion again, measured and metallic. Xisuma entered, visor glowing softly beneath the shadow of his helmet.
“Grian,” he greeted, voice even but heavy with concern. “Good to have you back.”
Grian sat on a stray shulker box, elbows on news, hands pressed against his temples.
“I’m sorry,” he managed. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to vanish. I didn’t have a choice.”
Xisuma approached slowly, like Grian was a spooked animal. “Before anything else… I need to ask you something. Scar, Cleo, Ren, Impulse, Etho, Bdubs, Tango—they all disappeared without warning for weeks. Then they all returned just as suddenly. None of them remember anything.” He paused. “They described doing their usual routine, and then snapping back to consciousness days later.”
The room felt like it was tilting again.
Grian swallowed. “They were with me. In the game.”
Xisuma didn’t speak.
“It was a new world,” Grian forced out. “Three lives. When you went red, you hunted everyone else. Scar and I were the last ones alive, and he—” His voice wavered. “He died in my arms. And none of them remember it?”
The admin shook his head. “Not a single memory.”
Scar hovered beside him, gaze worried, chewing on his lip.
“It was real,” Grian whispered. “All of it. I can’t—I can still feel the sand. I can hear the cactus breaking. I—” He stopped, choking on air.
Little flashes skittered across his vision:
Scar’s body growing limp.
Dogwarts looming over the horizon.
The crack of bones beneath fists.
Red eyes.
He blinked hard. The images didn’t fade immediately.
“Grian… have you slept? Eaten? Anything?” Scar asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Grian admitted, voice shaking. “I don’t know how much time passed. It felt like years.”
Xisuma’s tone turned gentle. “Grian, we’ll figure this out together. But right now, you’re the only one who remembers anything unusual, which either means you experienced something else no else did… or someone doesn’t want them to remember.”
Grian knew that feeling in the void wasn’t just fear. It was recognition.
“The Watchers,” he whispered. “They erased everything. They edited out code, and sent everyone back like nothing happened.”
Scar frowned. “Who are the Watchers?”
Grian let out a shaky laugh—far too hysterical for comfort. “Not being you ever want to meet.”
He looked between Scar and Xisuma—two people alive, breathing, real. Two people who no longer shared the blood on his hands. Two people who had been ripped out of a story they didn’t even know they’d been part of.
“They left me with everything,” Grian said quietly. “All the memories. All the deaths. All the choices. ”He stared at his shaking hands. “Why me?”
Neither Scar nor Xisuma had an answer.
And the jungle wind, drifting softly through the open front door, carried no comfort.Only the faintest whisper—too quiet to be real, too real to be ignored—curling at the edge of his thoughts: Little bird, remember.