There was darkness...
And nothing else...
Immeasurable... endless darkness stretched around him, as if the world had never existed. It looked at him with either pity or quiet curiosity. And he looked into it, into the abyss of his own sorrow, and did not know to whom he was addressing himself or this darkness...
"Why... every time..."
Before his eyes, the city reappeared...
The city of hopes and dreams...
The city... that no longer existed...
It was burning... very... brightly...
The flames of hatred consumed the streets, houses, and sky. Stone cracked, metal melted, and the air was filled with screams. People ran, stumbled, fell. Kindness and hope lived in their eyes... and that was the first thing to disappear...
"Why..."
His voice trembled.
"With such power... I couldn't do anything..."
He saw everything...
Too well.
He saw mothers shielding their children with their bodies.
He saw friends holding on to each other until the very end.
He saw those he had sworn to protect dying before his eyes.
He looked around, but there was only fire everywhere.
Screams...
The screams of people who believed they could be saved...
It was useless.
Bodies lay at his feet.
Those he loved and swore to protect...
Some were headless.
Some were armless.
And some just stared into the void with glassy eyes.
Before, it would have torn him apart.
But not now.
He had long since come to terms with it.
The tears had stopped.
There was nothing left to cry about...
He wanted nothing more.
"Why..."
He exhaled into the void.
Time had lost its meaning.
He stood there, motionless, until the flames died out on their own.
The city had disappeared.
All that remained of it was ashes and twisted ruins.
The silence was more oppressive than the screams.
He wanted to sit down.
Lie down...
Disappear...
But he didn't even have the strength for that.
His hope for life had died long ago.
The ashes slowly settled, as if the world itself was tired of collapsing. The wind no longer howled — it was silent, as if afraid to disturb the peace of the dead place...
He looked at his hands.
They were intact.
Too clean...
"I'm left behind again..." he whispered.
And then he felt it.
Not a sound.
Not a touch.
A gaze.
The darkness ceased to be just emptiness.
It became a presence.
"You're here again," said a voice.
It sounded like it was coming from everywhere.
And from within.
He wasn't surprised...
He didn't even raise his head...
"So... it will all happen again?" he asked calmly.
The darkness was silent.
As if weighing its response.
"As long as you exist," it finally said, "worlds will die."
The ashes beneath his feet trembled. The ruins began to crumble, as if being erased from reality itself.
"Then erase me too," he said. "I'm tired..."
"That's impossible," replied the darkness...
He smiled. Weakly. Almost imperceptibly.
"Then... send me to a place where I haven't destroyed anything yet."
The darkness drew closer. And for the first time, he felt not coldness,
but calm.
The world cracked.
Not the sky.
Not the earth.
Reality.
The city, the ashes, the ruins — everything crumbled into fragments of light. The darkness contracted into a point, then exploded in a blinding flash.
He screamed...
But he didn't even hear his own scream...
The last thing he saw
was another world.
A blue sky.
Unfamiliar stars.
And a feeling he hadn't experienced in a very long time.
...breathing.
He inhaled sharply and opened his eyes.