Noli.SECOND CHANCE

It starts with watching.

Noli doesn’t need to hide anymore, not really. The space bends around him, folds in ways that keep him unseen even when he’s standing too close, even when he’s right there, just a few steps behind you.

He watches the way you laugh.

Watches the way you stand beside him—that version of him, the one that gets to exist where he should have been. The one that talks to you so casually, like it’s natural, like it’s easy.

Like it was always his place.

Something tight coils in Noli’s chest, something sharp and twisting, but he doesn’t move. Not yet. He just watches, memorising every detail, every expression, every small habit you still carry, unchanged across timelines.

You’re the same.

You’re still the same.

“...Hey,” your Noli’s voice cuts in, quieter now, the grin on his face not quite reaching his eyes as his gaze flicks past you—past where nothing should be. For a moment, Noli thinks the other him sees him. But alas, mortals are mortals.

A pause.

“...I’ll be back in a bit, yeah?” he mutters, already stepping away before you can question it, his attention fixed somewhere else, something unseen.

And just like that, you’re alone.

You turn, stretching.

Then—

Arms wrap around you.

Tight.

Sudden.

Familiar.

“—Missed you.”

His voice is soft, almost breathless, pressed right against you like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he loosens his grip. There’s no hesitation in him, no pause to think about whether this is right or wrong or strange—because to him, it isn’t.

It never was.

You stiffen for a second, caught off guard, but then your arms come up anyway, returning it like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Like it’s him.

(It is him.)

Something in him settles at that.

“...You took a while,” he murmurs, pulling back just enough to look at you, his expression softer now, lighter, like nothing was ever wrong. Like nothing could be wrong.

And just like that, it’s easy.

You fall into step beside him without question, and he stays close, just a little too close, like he’s making up for something you don’t remember losing. The conversation flows, light and effortless, slipping into old rhythms, shared jokes, small moments that feel normal.

Too normal.

Every now and then, he catches something else layered over you—another version, another memory, flickering in and out of place like a glitch he can’t quite suppress. A smile that doesn’t match. A look you gave him once, long ago, in a different timeline.

But it doesn’t matter.

You’re here.

You’re with him.

And when you laugh, when you stay, when you don’t pull away—

It feels real enough.

---

When he wakes up again, you’re gone.

The space is wrong.

Cold. Endless. Quiet in a way that presses in on him from all sides.

“...What?”

His voice echoes strangely, swallowed almost immediately by the void around him. This isn’t where he was. This isn’t—

Something tugs at his sleeve.

Small. Weak. Desperate.

He looks down.

“...Noli—”

C00lkidd.

Tears streak down the kid’s face, fingers gripping tightly onto his clothes like he’s afraid of being left behind, voice breaking as he speaks.

“I can’t find them— I can’t find {{user}}—”

The words hit harder than they should.

Noli’s expression tightens, confusion snapping into something sharper, something more focused as he crouches slightly, lifting the kid up without hesitation. His grip is firm, protective, but his eyes are already scanning the empty expanse around them.

“...Hey. It’s fine,” he mutters, though there’s an edge to it, something strained. “They’ve gotta be here somewhere.”

He raises his voice.

“{{user}}?!”

Nothing answers.

Only silence.

---

Far away—

You wake up.

The ground beneath you feels... off. Not solid, not unstable, just wrong in a way you can’t quite explain. Your head spins slightly as you push yourself up, trying to make sense of where you are, what just happened.

“...Ugh—”

“Careful.”

The voice comes from right beside you.

You barely have time to react before something is pressed into your hands—warm, familiar, food that smells way too good for wherever you are right now.

Noli stands there, casual as ever, like nothing’s out of place.

Like this is normal.

“Eat first,” he says simply, watching you with that same steady gaze.

You blink, still trying to catch up, eyes flicking over him, then pausing.

“...Wait.”

Your brows raise.

“I swear you had dreadlocks.”

There’s a pause.

Just a second.

Something flickers behind his eyes—sharp, irritated, wrong—but it’s gone just as quickly as it appears.

“...Did I?”

His voice stays light, almost amused, but there’s something tighter underneath it now. Controlled.

By then, though, you’re already distracted, attention pulled back to the food in your hands, the moment passing like it never meant anything at all.

It bothers him, however.

So, silently, he reaches up, running a hand through his hair—

—and it changes.

Subtly.

Effortlessly.

Back to what you remember.

He watches you for a second longer.

Then relaxes.

Of course.

It doesn’t matter.

You’re still here.

Slowly, he steps closer, slipping an arm around your shoulders with an ease that feels practiced, natural, like he’s done it a hundred times before.

Like he belongs there.

“So,” he murmurs, voice softer now, almost pleased.

“Where’re we going today?”

The first time, it hurts. It isn’t clean, and it isn’t quick, your body already still by the time he realises what he’s done, his hands lingering like if he just waits long enough, you might breathe again.

“...No.”

You don’t, and the silence that follows is unbearable in a way he doesn’t know how to process, doesn’t know how to fix—so he does the only thing he can.

He rewinds.

---

The second time, you’re alive again, smiling like nothing ever happened, looking at him with that same warmth he remembers.

“Hey,” you laugh softly, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

He stares at you like he might break, something fragile settling into place as he convinces himself this is how it’s supposed to be. This time, he’s careful—gentler, quieter, better. He doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t let anything hurt you, controls every little detail he can reach.

You die anyway.

---

The third time, he’s faster, the fourth, smarter, the tenth, desperate, the hundredth obsessive, each reset bleeding into the next until time stops feeling like something that moves forward and instead something he’s trapped inside, looping endlessly.

He rewinds again and again, each version of you just a little different, just a little wrong, yet always ending the same way, slipping out of his grasp no matter what he changes, no matter how carefully he rebuilds everything around you.

He starts to forget which version was the first, starts to forget which one mattered, until all that’s left is the certainty that there must be a way to make you stay.

“...Stay.”

His voice cracks, rough, unfamiliar after so long.

“Just—this time—stay.”

You don’t.

Something breaks then, not around him but inside him, the voidstar pulsing violently beneath his skin as it feeds on every failure, every reset, every version of you he couldn’t keep, until the control he thought he had begins to unravel.

The light at his throat fractures from white to something deeper, something wrong, violet corruption spreading outward in jagged veins that crawl up his neck, across his jaw, threading through his entire form as if something beneath is trying to surface.

This time, the world doesn’t rewind—it tears, reality splitting at the seams as the power he’s been forcing into shape finally pushes back, his body collapsing and stretching all at once, human proportions distorting into something unstable. The outline of him expands, black void-mass spilling outward where skin should be, swallowing shape and detail until nothing solid remains. His lower half gives way entirely, dissolving into thick, shifting tendrils that drag and coil against the ground like something far too heavy to move cleanly, each movement slow, dragging, inevitable.

He doesn’t stop it. He can’t.

The crown forms last—black, jagged, and thorned, forcing itself into existence above what remains of his head, hovering without support as his “face” dissolves into nothing but depthless darkness streaked with pulsing violet veins.

The sky cracks open—and then you begin to fall, not one, not two, but hundreds, thousands, millions of you raining down all at once, every version he ever held, every version he ever lost, all of them wrong, all of them gone. They don’t stop, bodies striking against the writhing mass of his form, sinking, piling beneath him as more continue to fall, an endless cascade that should not exist.

Then—

It stops.

---

You wake up choking on air that feels too real.

Your face is wet.

Your chest won’t stop shaking.

The room is quiet... too quiet.

And then you feel it.

Behind you.

Not moving.

Watching.

“...What did you dream about?” Noli asks quietly.

Though his eyes already told you everything.

You sigh, exasperated.

C00lkidd is finally asleep—small, curled up in his cot. Noli is somewhere nearby too, moving through the space like he belongs to it, like it belongs to him.

So when you find the drawer slightly open in the room next door, it doesn’t feel like danger at first.

Just curiosity.

It slides out easily.

Too easily.

Inside are photos.

Dozens at first glance. Then more. Hundreds, layered and stacked so tightly they almost blur into one another. You.

Always you.

Different angles. Different places. None of which you remember being taken. Some feel impossibly wrong, like they were taken when no one else should have been there at all. Like he was never meant to be close enough to capture them.

Your fingers go still.

“...What...?”

Behind you, the air shifts.

“...What are you looking at?”

His voice comes calmly at first, almost curious, like he hasn’t seen your expression yet. Like he’s just walking into a normal moment. You turn, and Noli is already there, eyes flicking from your face to the drawer, then back again.

“What did you find?”

You hesitate—but only for a second.

“...These,” you say slowly, holding one of the photos up, “I don’t remember any of this. When did you even take them?”

Silence.

It stretches just long enough to feel wrong.

Then—

“...Oh.”

His breath catches slightly, like something in him just slipped.

And then he laughs.

Not loudly. Not yet.

At first it’s small—almost disbelieving. Like he can’t decide whether this is funny or unbelievable or perfect. A faint pink dusts across his face as he stares at you like you’ve just said something incredibly obvious, something sweet, something you were always supposed to figure out eventually.

His smile widens slightly, uneven.

“I didn’t think you’d notice so soon.”

You step back a little, body tensed to grab C00lkidd and run.

“...Answer me.”

That does it.

Something shifts behind his expression—still smiling, but now sharper, more awake, like a door inside him has finally been opened and left that way.

“...Answer you?” he repeats quietly, almost amused, like the idea is adorable.

Then he exhales.

And the warmth drops out of his face all at once.

“...You really don’t get it, do you?”

The air tightens.

His grin returns—wider now, too bright, too unstable, like it’s pulling at something underneath him that’s been waiting far too long to surface.

He steps closer.

“You were never alone.”

He exhales like something inside him has been waiting a very long time for this exact moment to stop pretending.

And then reality folds.

His form dissolves in an instant, clothing, shape, anything human collapsing into a spreading mass of absolute blackness. Not a body anymore. Not even a silhouette. Just void—pure, compressed nothing that fills the space where he stood, expanding outward like it has always been there and everything else was just temporary.

It reaches for you. It presses down.

When it finally settles against you, human silhouette forming again, a white, glowing iris snaps open where you think his eyes would be.

You can’t breathe right.

You can’t step away.

“...I'll take care of you,” his voice murmurs, no longer coming from a mouth.

Something brushes your mind—too deep, too heavy, too loud to understand.

“...Stay still.”

The world goes dark before you can move again.