"Consequences..." The word rolling off my tongue like a flame that's burned over thousands of years. Far from death, the truth of the matter is that there truly were far greater consequences than death.
What if you never died... Your life is the same constant thing,though you made a few different choices, it still ended the same. As if time did not matter in the end, it's as if just a tree getting its next layer in life. Just for someone to cut it down and count the years of life, the tree lived. Doesn't mean it's dead, but no further growth comes.

Losing meant two options. Looking right where nothing is left but the cold, empty feeling that sits at the bottom of your gut. Or perhaps looking left where nothing is right, and you feel the blood coarsing through your veins and tighting beginning in your chest as you read yourself down a dark hole.

Maybe it is the job of an overthinker that comes to the decision that maybe death is safer; shame of defeat hiding in the corner of your mind. Gambling with one's soul. Defeat is unchanging. It is so permanent, and the thought of it seems endless as if reaching into one's mind and finding that same unending dark hole. Something you will not be able to change or turn away from. Your own shame.

So you battle to the death.