The city had been dying long before Elias ever did.It was slow — the kind of death no one notices until the silence becomes louder than the traffic.Skyscrapers turned to hollow bones of steel, windows shattered by storms that no longer had names.The Dominion's banners hung like rusted chains, lit by drones that buzzed across the black sky.
Elias walked alone through the ruins, his hood pulled low, eyes dim but sharp.Eighteen years old, but he already moved like someone who'd lived too long.
His breath came out as mist — thin, fading.Every few steps, a streetlight flickered behind him, as if the world itself was losing power.
He didn't flinch. He didn't look back.
He'd stopped expecting anything to follow him that wasn't trying to kill him.
He found shelter beneath the collapsed roof of what used to be a bookstore.The shelves were ashes, the air smelled of paper that had forgotten what words were.He sat by the window and listened to the rain.
Somewhere far away, sirens screamed — the Dominion rounding up the last "unregistered."He watched their lights move like veins of red lightning through the fog.He didn't hate them. He didn't hate anyone.
He just didn't care anymore.
He took a photo from his pocket.It was wrinkled, wet at the edges — a woman's face, smiling, sunlight hitting her eyes just right. His mother.
"When death finds you, Eli… don't be afraid."
She'd said that two years ago, before the Dominion leveled their home to ash.He didn't know what she meant then.He still didn't.He just carried the words like a scar.
By the time the Dominion patrols reached Sector Nine, the air had turned metallic — ozone and fire.He heard the sound of drones before he saw them, their red lights slicing through the mist.
Then came the soldiers.Black armor. Silver visors.Human voices, mechanical hearts.
"Target located."
He exhaled. Closed his eyes for a heartbeat.
Not fear — just exhaustion.
Then he ran.
Boots hit the waterlogged streets, splashing through mud and glass.Bullets screamed past him, carving sparks from concrete.He didn't count how many. Counting didn't matter anymore.
He dove through an alley, vaulted over a fallen sign, stumbled into an old subway tunnel.The air inside was stale, thick with rot and echoes.He pressed his back to a wall, panting, watching shadows dance at the tunnel's end.
There was no plan. There never was.He just didn't want to die today.
But death had other ideas.
Footsteps.A soldier followed him down — slow, deliberate, voice amplified through a mask.
"You've been hard to find, kid."A pause."You know, the Dominion doesn't usually care about runaways. But you… you're special."
Elias stayed quiet. His pulse was calm, too calm.
The soldier stepped closer, weapon raised. "Tell me something. Why keep running when it's all over anyway?"
Elias looked up — eyes like burnt glass."Because I'm not done being me yet."
The soldier hesitated — and in that second of hesitation, Elias lunged.The barrel fired.
A flash of light.Pain — bright, clean, infinite.
Then the world shattered.
Death #1.
It didn't feel like dying.It felt like folding. Like being unstitched from time.Every thought, every heartbeat, every fear — peeled away.
He saw fragments:His mother's smile.The soldier's face behind the visor.The rain turning red.
Then everything went silent.
And from that silence — a pull.Like gravity in reverse. Like drowning in light.
He couldn't breathe, but it didn't matter.He wasn't supposed to.
When he opened his eyes, the sky was wrong.
Golden. Burning. Endless.Islands floated in the distance, ringed by colossal machines that hummed like dying gods.Rivers of light ran through the air, bending with the wind.
He fell — not through air, but through weightless space — and hit something soft.Grass. Blue, not green. It glowed faintly.
He lay there for a long time, just breathing.The world smelled of metal and ozone.His blood steamed against the cold ground.
He was alive. Again.
Then he saw the mark.A black pattern crawling up his wrist — like veins made of shadow.
And a voice. Not a sound, not in his ears — but inside his mind:
Ability acquired: Echo of Death — absorb the final moment of what kills you.
He didn't understand it, but he felt it.The memory of the soldier's weapon, the heartbeat of the machine, the sharp metallic rhythm pulsing in his hand.
He clenched his fist. The hum answered him.
The weapon had been built to kill him.Now, part of it lived inside him.
He stood, looking out at the horizon — a skyline of floating ruins and shimmering metal towers reaching into the clouds.Something massive moved in the distance, its shadow sweeping across the sky.
He didn't know where he was.He didn't know what he was now.
He only knew this:
Every time he died, something followed him.A trace. A whisper. A fragment of what once was.
He should've been terrified.But all he felt was… tired.
Tired, and quietly angry.
"If this is another universe," he muttered, voice low,"then maybe this time, I just live."
He turned away from the edge, the light burning on his skin — and took his first step into the new world.
[End of Chapter 1]