Run...
It's what one person has been doing for as long as he can remember, and all that he remembers. Just how many worlds has he travelled? How many thousands, if not tens of thousands, of monsters has he evaded? Just how many times has he seen the end of the universe appear before his eyes?
He can't recall. All the memories of those endless days and nights running, struggling, and scraping through caves, corridors, catacombs, trenches, burrows, mazes, and battlefields in a bid to stay alive are merely a blur of death and escape to the point where he doesn't remember anything at all before running and hiding and trying to survive.
Always alone, always running. Through snow and sand, through forest and fire, through cities and swamps, through worlds and ages, across universes both living and dead. Through countless realms where gods and devils warred, where cosmic horrors beyond comprehension feasted upon reality itself.
He becomes lost, a stranger who tries to reach out, a wanderer who has found his anchor. A flash fills his mind.
The image of the warmest of smiles.
And a name.
His name, perhaps, and the person who goes along with it. Whether it is truly his own or just another trace of an untold memory seems difficult to decipher.
However, that was the past, and he doesn't want to even think of that again.
There are millions of stars, all unique and distant. And there are a million different worlds, all unique and distant, too. This is a fact. He stares into the infinite, dark cosmos.
He ponders this as he observes the vast emptiness before him, the coldness of the vacuum and the loneliness of the stars. Has he been there before? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps another world. It's been a very long time, in fact, a very long time wandering across the galaxy.
He smiled as the memory came back, a distant dream that seemed so close yet so far away. He could still feel it. The warmth, the comfort, the safety, the love... all of it.
He was not a god. He was not a hero. He was not a saviour. He was not a monster. He was not a villain.
He was... someone. Someone who had been granted a power, a gift and a curse. He couldn't control where he went or what world he would land upon. He only knew that he would have to keep moving, keep surviving, keep helping, and keep running away.
Life had been one long nightmare for him, and he couldn't seem to wake up. He had tried. Many times. But he couldn't. So instead, he decided to enjoy the ride. To embrace the chaos, the uncertainty, the madness, the beauty, the horror, and everything in between.
He always thought back to his time at home. Or something like it. The memories were hazy, like a dream that was fading. He could barely remember the faces of his family, the name of the school he attended, or the house he lived in. He knew it was a distant, bygone existence that was long gone. But the warm smile remained. That one memory...
"So many worlds, so many lives, so many possibilities..." He whispered, his words faded in the empty void. He looked up, staring into the darkness that surrounded him, wondering if anyone could hear him, if anyone even cared.
But then again, how could they? How could anyone? Whoever would? No one could understand what it meant to be trapped in such a place as this. No one could ever understand what it meant to be alone, to be lost, to be forgotten.
The Stranger...
That's what everyone called him. It wasn't his real name, of course, but it was the only one he had now. That's all that mattered anymore. His real name...well, it was a long time ago, too long. Hazy, like everything else, but he remembered the way the syllables felt on his former tongue. He didn't mind being called the Stranger anymore. It fit him. He was a stranger to this world, to every world he'd ever visited, to himself.
The name is a burden, just like everything else.
He had grown tired of running. Tired of fighting. Tired of being a hero, a villain, a saviour, a monster. Tired of being the one who always had to make the hard choices. He wanted to just...be. To exist without a purpose. To just wander, to explore, to see what there was to see. To live a life that was his own, not a life that was dictated by fate or destiny or some cosmic force beyond his control.
A falling star streaked across the night sky, a fleeting, brilliant splash of white against the infinite black. A wish, some might say. A sign, others would claim. To him, it was just another beautiful, meaningless spectacle in the vast, uncaring cosmos. He closed his eyes and made a wish anyway. Not for himself, but for someone. Anyone. Just one person to find a moment of peace, a sliver of happiness, a reason to keep going.
"Please," he whispered, a prayer to no one in particular. "Just let someone be happy."
As if in answer, the universe decided to play one of its cruellest jokes. The 'star' began to grow, waking him up slightly, its path twisting, no longer a graceful arc but a wild, plummeting spiral. It wasn't a star. It was him. Or rather, the thing that was carrying him. The invisible, inexorable current of the multiverse, the cosmic tide that swept him from one reality to the next, had finally decided its next destination. And it was not a gentle landing.
The wind screamed as he tore through the atmosphere, a human-shaped meteorite blazing with friction. He didn't fight it. He never fought it. He just braced himself, coiling his body, and waited for the impact. It always hurt. Always. But he had learned to endure. He had learned a lot of things.
The ground rushed up to meet him, a patch of darkness in a sea of moonlit fields. The earth erupted in a fountain of soil and rock, a crater blooming in the quiet countryside. The shock wave flattened the grass for a hundred meters in every direction.
"Ow..."
He sat up, a lone figure in a brand-new wound on this world. Not a single scratch on him. Not a single thread out of place on his worn coat. He dusted himself off, a gesture more out of habit than necessity. He looked around, taking in the details of this new reality. The air was clean, fragrant with the scent of damp earth and wildflowers.
Two moons hung in the sky, one silver, one a pale, ghostly blue. The constellations were unfamiliar, yet beautiful in their own alien way. This was a new place. A new beginning. Or just another chapter in a book with no end.