Echidna looked over the boy in her garden of dreams, the mortal child in the womb of her world.
He was a subject of endless curiosity.
The first clue to the nature of his strange existence had been his sheer presence alone within her undying garden. Of course, it was not his presence alone that had aroused her suspicions. Plenty of men, hungry for power through knowledge had invaded her dream world, coming to her with questions and queries and all sorts of wants of wisdom that had sated her own endless thirst for knowledge for nay but a few seconds.
Those men had all been eager to slice open her mind and feast on the chunks like bloody meat. This boy wasn't. This boy hadn't even wanted to be in this world in the first place.
Strange.
But then, when the white-haired half-elf whore failed to complete the first trial, predictably of course, the boy decided to take the trial for himself and-
And his memories...
Oh, his memories!
Suddenly she was in another world! A world beyond the Great Waterfall! A world without Mabeasts and Witches, without Oni and Elves and Demi-Beasts! A world with great kingdoms that spanned over countries, of cities built of metal and stone that reached up to the heavens! A world with new wonders, new possibilities, and all new dangers!
And best of all, a world of endless curiosity.
And this boy was its resident. This boy was not of this world, he was of another.
At first, she wanted to pry open the boy's mind and sift through all his thoughts and dreams and recollections. She wanted to shatter the make-believe world that he had made around himself through the miasmic magics of her Sanctuary and bombard him with questions upon questions upon questions about who he was and why he was here and what his old world was like-
But then she looked deeper. At his time in Lugunica. At his darkest thoughts and recollections.
And the wonders that she found...
She smiled as she looked at him. She mimed the words on her lips when he blinked, quivered at their taste on her tongue.
Return by Death.
She felt the witch bitch claw at her Castle of Dreams with a thousand arms, sharpened talons digging at the walls of her home and swallowing whole everything around her with a mist of shadows, a hundred thousand souls trapped within her soul, screaming crying baying begging demanding retribution.
Let her cry. Let her roar. Let her beg. It wasn't even close to what she deserved.
She focused back on the boy. Endless curiosities peddled themselves around her mind. She sifted through his mind, turning over the pages of his memory to read over the thoughts-turned-to-words. She scanned over the ends of his life, greedily eating them up like sweet treats. One like ends, he starts again, a different path to a different death, repeat the cycle until victory. A thousand possible alternatives to each situation, a different outcome for each problem.
First death, gutted in a hideout.
Second death, shanked in an alleyway.
Third death, poisoned by a spell.
Fourth death, killed by a blue maid.
Fifth death, killed by a red maid.
Sixth death, gravity's embrace.
Seven death, a frosted embrace.
Eight death, the mourning ice.
Ninth death, a shattered dream.
Tenth death, swallowed by madness.
Eleventh death, a shattered blade.
Twelfth death, a gutful encounter.
Thirteenth death, a home invasion.
Fourteenth death, consumed by the swarm.
Fifteenth death, a child's promise.
Sixteenth death, a fatal kiss.
There were many things that Echidna didn't know. She wasn't so prideful as to deny that. She was the Witch of Greed, after all. Not pride.
But the boy... Subaru, the shattered, needy child, baying like an infant for someone to care for him even if he refused to admit it... his ability, Return by Death, offered her something no mortal man had ever laid claim to.
The chance to start again. The chance to rewrite mistakes. The chance to go through every scenario and every possibility and every single pathway that could ever be taken. A chance to comprehend the incomprehensible.
The chance to sate her endless curiosity.
Yet, this would be her heaven, her paradise. This would be the end to her confinement, the hell of her own mind. She would finally relieve herself of the pain of unknowing, the nightmare of unfamiliarity. They say that ignorance is bliss? To her, ignorance was agony.
But not anymore. Never again. Now she would know what was beyond the thoughts of man and woman alike. She would smell the scents of awareness, taste the fruits of enlightenment. It would be sweeter than any fruit, a greater pleasure than sex, the shattering of everything that she once knew and replaced with a heightened state of being that no mortal creature could ever dare to dream.
She pursed her lips.
Oh, what was it she was feeling right now?
Was it love?
It had to be. It was the only possible explanation.
She smiled as she held out her hand. She kept that same smile up as he looked at her. She kept that same smile up as he let his lips turn upward. She kept that same smile up as he looked to her and held out his hand and-
And the world exploded around her, and everything shattered.