When I opened my eyes, or at least tried to, there was nothing. Just darkness. I couldn't see. I couldn't move properly. And yet, in the depths of that nothingness, I felt every cruel thing they had done, every moment of torment, echoing through me.
One by one, the crowd tortured me. Limbs were taken, my body destroyed piece by piece. And when there was nothing left to amuse them, they burned what remained of me.
I don't know what's going on. I'm… dead, right? Then how am I thinking? How do I even have consciousness? I don't understand any of this. But one thing is clear… beings called humans don't have the right to exist.But… who am I to decide that? A human? I've killed hundreds of people. I don't belong to the human race, right?According to human law, humans are supposed to live happily, never kill, never think terrible things about anyone… but does this law really exist? Or is it just an illusion in their eyes?
Whatever… I can't feel my body anymore. I can't hear anything either. Am I really dead?
Then what now? What's going to happen to me? Will my consciousness stay trapped here forever… or will I be reborn?
I don't know. I don't want to think about anything anymore.
Voren's consciousness was trapped in the void, where nothing existed except thought. He regretted nothing not the lives he had taken, not even dying before his revenge was complete. The only thing echoing in his mind was his mother's voice. 'Just die already.' Was she still alive? Had he failed as a son… or was there something far more twisted behind those words?
Here he is, darling - see? He looks just like you—wh-what are you doing?! S-stop! Please, spare my child! Honey, stop… stop!
Huh… so I died again. If I'm not wrong, this makes it my third rebirth. Is this happening because of the Hollow God's curse? Humans… such good actors.
Voren kept dying again and again, before he even had the chance to be properly born.
I don't think I've ever existed this long in a human body. If I'm correct, it has been seven hundred years by the time of the human world. Is consciousness immortal? I think it is.
At some point, I noticed something strange.
The soul… and consciousness weren't the same.
I didn't understand how I knew that. I just did.
If rebirth truly existed, then only the soul returned to a body not the consciousness that once lived inside it. Memories, thoughts, will… those weren't guaranteed to follow.
And the soul that would be reborn…it wouldn't even be mine.
The idea made my thoughts falter.
It felt like a replacement. Like something new was created just to fit the shape I had left behind. A soul molded for a body, while I - this awareness—was kept separate.
For what purpose, I didn't know.
Maybe gods did it.Maybe something else entirely.
Or maybe I wasn't meant to understand at all.
But one thing felt disturbingly clear
If I ever returned to life,it wouldn't truly be me who lived it.
The thought wouldn't let go.
If a soul could be replaced so easily, then what was I now?
Not alive. Not dead.
Just awareness kept aside, preserved like a mistake someone hadn't decided how to erase yet. Maybe that was the real punishment. Not death, not suffering… but being forced to watch existence continue without me.
A life bearing my name. A body wearing my face.
And none of it mine.
For the first time since the flames took me, I felt something close to fear not of pain, but of being unnecessary.
If the world could move on with a different soul in my place…then maybe I had already been erased.
Human… gods…
The words kept crawling back no matter how hard I tried to push them away.
Human. Human. Gods.
Humans killed me… because of a curse.Gods let it happen.
That's it, isn't it?
One judged me.The other… didn't even bother.
I tried to think straight, but my thoughts slipped. They twisted, tangled into uglier things the more I held onto them.
Aren't gods supposed to judge everyone the same?
And humans… aren't they meant to live by laws? Peaceful laws, rules that matter… or at least, that's what they say.
Or maybe those rules never existed at all.
And then I don't even know how to describe it the emptiness shifted.
At first, barely noticeable. Like a faint quiver, like something just before it collapses. Then it got stronger. Slow. Heavy. Spreading through nothingness.
I wanted to stop thinking.Not because I was afraid…But because it felt like I had crossed a line I was never meant to see.
And it didn't stop.
I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything. But I knew. Somehow, I just knew that whatever I had disturbed… it wasn't limited to this void.
Something out there, beyond this emptiness, had felt it.
The shaking stopped, not all at once, just slowly, fading like a dying heartbeat. The void was still, but it didn't feel empty anymore something had changed, though I couldn't explain how I knew, I just did. It was like standing alone in a room and realizing maybe I had never been alone at all.
My thoughts felt heavy and sluggish, like moving through water, and when I tried to remember the crowd, the faces, the screams, everything collapsed. Faces dissolved before forming, voices cut off mid-scream, even my mother's face wouldn't come back clearly, and that bothered me not because I loved her, not really, but because it meant something was taking pieces of me away.
"Is this punishment?" I whispered to myself, but there was nothing, only silence stretching so long I began to doubt the trembling had even happened. Maybe it was my dying mind playing tricks, maybe none of this was real. And then I felt it, not a voice, not a presence, just weight. It didn't push or crush, it was simply there, vast, cold, impossible to measure, like standing at the edge of something infinite and realizing it had been watching all along.
I wanted to ask something, anything, but fear came first not sharp, not panicked, just quiet and heavy, telling me to stay silent because the answer could be worse than ignorance. So I didn't speak, I waited, and the void responded not with words, but with awareness, peeling through layers I didn't know I had, searching for whatever remained beneath.
You should not be here.
The thought didn't echo, didn't resonate, it simply existed. I didn't know if it was speaking to me or just stating a fact. "I didn't choose this," I muttered, my words weak and uneven. "I died."
A pause. Long enough to wonder if anything could answer.
Death is not why you are here.
The words sent a chill through whatever remained of me. If not death, then what? Before I could think further, the weight shifted, and the void twisted not violently, just enough to distort everything I knew. For a moment, I felt something unfamiliar, distance pulling me, not forward, not back, just away. And before my thoughts scattered completely, a single idea brushed my consciousness, not a command, not a threat, just a warning: What comes next will not return what you lost.
The void closed in, and everything went dark.
What comes next, I wonder if there's even a next for someone like me.
He wondered, though the thought barely formed in the emptiness around him what comes next? Was there even a next for someone like him, or had the world already moved on without him? The void stretched around him, silent and vast, and he felt smaller than ever, like a shadow left behind while life went on elsewhere.
The void ended or maybe it cracked, splintered, or tore but when he opened his eyes, nothing looked familiar. The sky bled red over jagged mountains that seemed to float like shattered glass, and the wind smelled of ash and iron. He stumbled forward, or tried to, and the ground shifted beneath his feet, uneven, like it wasn't ready to hold him.
A shadow moved nearby, sharp and wrong, darting behind a fractured stone. He crouched instinctively, testing the air, reaching out. It was solid, warm, and smelled faintly of blood but the movement was too fast to touch, too alive to ignore.
He blinked. He should panic. He didn't. Curiosity flared first. This world was strange. Dangerous. And it was testing him, just like the void had.
He took a careful step, then another, listening to the snap of broken branches or was it bones? and realized the ground itself seemed aware, shifting under his weight, measuring, calculating.
Somewhere far off, a howl or a laugh carried on the wind, a sound he couldn't place. His instincts screamed to run, to hide, to strike. But he didn't move yet. He observed. Calculated. And in the corners of his vision, shapes creatures? spirits? echoes of life slipped between trees and rocks, always just out of reach, always watching.
So… this is what happens after death? Gods… or whatever it is… they test your consciousness, see if it even deserves to live, or if it should just be erased.
The reflection in the rippling floor grinned at him not him, not yet and whispered, You cannot leave…
he turned around… and his heart skipped… a woman was there… her clothes and hands soaked in blood… she didn't move… she just… stared
Wh-what happened , how are you here… why covered in blood…
He looked at her face… and froze. It was her. His mother. The one he thought was dead.
The world… it broke. Or maybe it always had been broken and he just saw it now. The ground warped, twisted under his feet, the air itself bending like it was liquid. Screams erupted all around him, not real but not unreal either people he had killed, their faces twisted in rage and pain, each scream cutting through his mind like a blade.
He saw flashes different timelines, different ways he had died. Some of them sudden, some slow, some screaming, some silent. Each one reached out to him, accusing, punishing, mocking.
He stumbled back, heart hammering, trying to breathe, trying to make sense of what was happening. But the chaos didn't stop. The sky fractured, the shadows writhed, the screams multiplied, layering over each other like a chorus of the dead.
And through it all… she stood there, calm, smiling, blood dripping from her hands, unshaken by the torment erupting around them.
He wanted to speak. To scream. To beg. But no words came out.