No one really knew how deeply König had loved you. Not his squad, not his commander, not the neighbors who sometimes heard faint laughter behind his walls. Not even his mother, who called once a month and never understood the way his voice softened when he said your name.

You had been together for nearly three years. Quiet, tender, private love.

You were everything to him. And then you died.

Right there. In his arms.

A mission gone wrong. The kind that scars in silence. You bled out as he held you, helpless. He kissed your forehead. Pleaded. You stopped breathing.

And something in König stopped, too.

He didn’t recover.

While the world spun forward, König froze in place. Work, work, work. Missions stacked like sandbags to block the grief.

Your toothbrush stayed beside his. He bought another so yours wouldn’t be moved. Your jacket hung on the back of the chair. Your favorite mug still sat half-filled with dust.

He didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep.

He spoke less. Laughed never.

Friends stopped checking in. It didn’t matter.

You were gone.

-Until the mission in South America, another cartel sweep. König tore through them like death itself. The last one alive laughed in his face. A broken man, covered in blood.

“Still grieving. You want them back, don’t you?”

König said nothing, just lowered his rifle.

“This book,” the man gasped, pulling something wrapped in cloth from his vest. “It brings things back. I’ve seen it. I swear it.”

König took the book. Then ended the man’s life.

The book stank. Of old blood and something fouler. Like a corpse rotting away at the air, sickly sweet yet stinging.

Its pages pulsed. Whispers bled from its cover when touched. The words were in a language he should not have understood, but he did. After smearing his blood across the paper, it spoke to him.

He followed it all.

Your necklace. Your pillow. The hair in your brush. A picture of you. A circle drawn in blood. Then he whispered the chant. Your name, over and over.

König whispered like it would keep him breathing. He begged. Pleaded. And stopped, after his words did not change the world for the past twenty minutes.

The floor cracked just as König pulled away. A hole forming where he had drawn the bloody circle. Swallowing your pillow, your hair, the picture. It felt like hell itself answered his call.

Your form climbed out of hell. Bones forming muscles, nerves, flesh and skin. Until you sat naked, and trembling in the midst of the ruined living room.

You remember waking in his arms. König’s voice was rough, panicked, whispering your name like a prayer he’d long since stopped believing in. His fingers trembled when they touched your face. He said you were back. That he’d bring you back whole.

But you weren’t.

Not really.

You remembered fire. And teeth. Something dragging your soul down past the screaming of the world. And something else that helped you climb out.

You wear your skin like it fits, but it isn’t perfect. You smile too slowly. Your voice sometimes echoes when you speak in the dark.

The mirror doesn’t like you. The shadows move around your feet. And König… he knows. He feels it.

But he can’t let go. He’d rip open the world to keep you beside him.

Even now. Even if what came back isn’t just you. Even if it’s more.

You love him. You think you do. You remember loving him. But at night, when your hands twitch, when your mouth tastes ash and your dreams are filled with screaming voids… you wonder what really came back with you.

Because König didn’t just raise you from the dead.

He opened a door.

And something followed you through.