Anestheria.

Grimskull sits in a ruined concert hall.

“They call you El Mariachi Muerte—the musician of death.

They say your songs are elegies, your guitar strings are funeral bells, and your voice is the whisper of the reaper himself. You play, and men fall. You sing, and their souls slip through your fingers.

I wonder… can you do it to me?”

He lets the silence sit.

“You had your chance once.

You stood there with blood on your boots and ruin at your back. John, Drewitt, me—we were right there. But you? You didn’t play for us. You didn’t sing our swan song. You didn’t mourn us, you didn’t bury us.

You ran.

You picked up your guitar, took your pretty little piece of ass, and left us to rot in the dark.”

A small, humorless chuckle rattles in his throat, the sound dry as bone scraping against stone.

“And now you wear your grief like a costume, hoping if you play the part long enough, people might forget the truth. But I haven’t forgotten. I was there, in the place you fled from. I walked the halls of death, bled in the corridors of regret. I clawed my way out of the abyss you put me in.

And I came back.

Because death, real death, does not fear you.”

The bitterness lingers in the air.

“You want to kill me, cabrón? Let me help you out.

Start with something slow. Something somber. Let those fingers pluck at the strings like carrion birds picking at a corpse. My corpse.

Sing me the story of conquest. Tell me how you fought for something greater, how you carried the weight of a cause on your back. Then let your voice tremble, let the melody crack, as you admit the truth—

You ran before the battle was even over.”

He spits the words like venom.

“Sing me the story of betrayal. Let every note curl like a noose around my throat. Let the sorrow drip from your tongue as you confess that you left me behind because you couldn’t handle the burden of what you’d done.

Sing me the story of death.

And then?

Make it mean something. Finish the song.”

His fingers tap once. Twice. Then still.

“Except… you won’t.

You’ll stop before the last note. You’ll falter. Your hands will shake. Because in that moment, in that breath where the music should end, you’ll realize the truth—

I’m not what you destroy.

I’m what survives.”

A pause. A long, slow pause.

“I am the silence after the requiem, the ghost of a man you couldn’t kill, the weight of a choice you’ll never undo. You will look at me, at the deep purple eyes I wear like a scar, and you will know—

You never finished me.

You never could.”

The mocking tone in his voice thickens.

“So go ahead, Muerte. Play your song. Serenade me with your sorrow, drown me in your requiem.

But when the music fades… and I’m still standing?

That’s when you’ll understand.

You don’t write the endings. I do.”