Restart Again: Volume 2 by Adam Scott (hardest books to read txt) 📕

the Dominion, you’re going to get taken away again!” Her hands clasped one of mine with panicked strength. “You want to stay here, right? Don’t you want to stay with me?”

There was a sudden, droning buzz in my head that made it hard to think. I knew that she was right, but my subconscious had once again repressed that fact from me once I had confirmed the Dominion was in Attetsia. “Of course that’s what I want, Lia. That’s the only thing I want.”

“Then let’s go!” She sprang to her feet and pulled up on my hand to follow her. “Val wouldn’t have time to go after us if we left now! We could make it all the way to Lybesa before the King even knows we’re gone, and then they’d never find us.” Her desperate attempts to haul me up from the bed intensified as I sat in place, unmoving. “You’ve already told Val about the Dominion; she can just bring down the army to take care of it!”

“Lia, I can’t leave,” I said softly, shaking my head. “I have to see this through.”

The pitch and volume of her voice had risen consistently over the course of the conversation, and it neared its breaking point as she continued to plead with me. “Why? You’ve already done more than anybody to save the world, and it’s not even your world!” She dove to her knees and stared up at me, the tears in her eyes now freely flowing down her face. “What about your farm? What about the peaceful life you wanted to live? That all goes away if you go out tonight!”

I frowned. “Even so, I have to do it.” Her rising emotions had a strangely calming effect on me; while there was a hard knot growing in my stomach at the thought of being thrown back into the darkness between worlds, I had to remain in control if I were to have any chance at calming her down.

She shook her head back and forth violently, sending shining globes of tears down to splash on the floor. “It’s not fair!” Her demeanor shifted all at once as she punched the floorboards repeatedly, leaving a fist-shaped crater filled with splinters and droplets of blood in her wake. “IT’S NOT FAIR!” she screamed to nobody. The air whistled in her throat as she strained to breathe and began to sob.

Carefully, I slid down to the floor and took her injured hand in mine, letting out a burst of healing energy to close her cuts. “I know it’s not fair. I’m so sorry that I got you caught up in all of this.” I stared off through the wall as I reflected on the entirety of the situation. “I’m not sure if I’m cursed, or if I angered some sort of god, or if fate always had my life planned this way. That fate ruined my life once, and punished me in the next one when I tried to fight against it. I think it’s better for everyone if I just go along with it for once.”

“I-It’s not better...for me,” she managed to say between violent sniffles. Slowly, she leaned her head down into my chest and pressed forward, until my back was up against the bedframe and she had partially collapsed into my lap.

I ran my fingers through the loose strands of hair along the side of her face. “Even for you. If I don’t go, everybody you’ve ever known could die. Your parents, Val, everyone. What’s my life against the whole world?” The statement was true, but I couldn’t find the strength to accept the fact myself.

Lia shook her head against my shoulder. “But it’s your life!” Her arms snaked around my torso and squeezed tightly. “I don’t want to be here...without you.”

Although my heart ached from the suffering I felt in her aura, a smile came to my lips as she echoed my thoughts. “I don’t want to leave you,” I replied. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I stay here with you. I just...don’t want to make you a promise I can’t keep.”

I scratched the top of her head in soothing circles as she curled further into a ball in my lap, drawing her knees up under her chin as she continued to cry. The room slowly grew brighter as the afternoon sun began to sink over the city, sending brilliant golden rays across the room to shine against the opposite wall. At one point, a set of heavy footsteps approached the door, but they retreated a moment later without knocking.

Lia’s breathing gradually transitioned from labored cries to a more steady, measured pattern, and she eventually fell asleep still nestled up in my arms. I did my best to shift into a slightly more comfortable position without waking her, then closed my eyes and tried to join her. My head was a muddled mess of emotions, which filtered to the forefront now that Lia was no longer in an immediate panic. I mirrored her sadness and rage at the position I was in, and the fear of the upcoming darkness grew with every passing second.

A new feeling had grown up out of the chaos during our conversation, and it was the only thing that enabled me to finally fall asleep: resolve. As terrifying as the night to come was, I knew what had to be done, and I knew why it had to be done. Even if it means I die again...I have to do it for her. For Lia. For Alda. For Amaya. For all of them.

---

I blinked my eyes to fight off the haze obscuring my vision. My surroundings seemed to shift with every blink: in one moment, I was sitting on the floor of Marin’s guest room, with Lia wrapped tightly in my arms, but the next moment had me sitting alone on the edge of my bed in the room I once shared with Amaya. As I turned my head