The boy didn't see the bullet that would kill him.
One moment he was running — the chaos of the Third World War raging around him — gunfire, explosions, the distant shrieks of the dying and the next a brutal force slammed into his chest.
It was just another village raid. One of countless cruelties in the ongoing world war that had thrown nations back to the Stone Age, and civilians were left to figure it out on their own.
All because some arrogant politicians had a disagreement on who should be allowed to own what.
In this forsaken region, the raids came daily, almost by schedule. But after so many narrow escapes, the boy's luck had finally run out.
The skinny black haired boy called Zayn was still desperately clinging onto his life, trying to find some cover, anything.
But even that was too much to ask of fate, it seemed.
"Hah… look who we have here... Zayn, is that you!?"
"Finally caught this little rat! Ha—ahahahaha!"
The approaching soldier laughed like a lunatic, covering his face with one hand, a steaming rifle dangling from the other.
Zayn did not even have the energy to be mad anymore. Just what was his life? An ever-ongoing ordeal of tragedy?
"You bastard... Are you even capable of feeling remorse?"
Slumped against a shattered wall, blood soaked through Zayn's shirt and poured from his mouth. His limbs refused to move. He had never been a very emotional guy, and he wouldn't suddenly start now just because he was dying. After all, emotions were a burden in a place like this.
The soldier in question raised a single finger, exposing a glinting eye brimming with unfiltered hate. He grinned like a man who thought pain was a joke.
"Remorse?" he spat. "Ha… Do you even know what that bitch did to me? She wouldn't submit. She didn't value me!"
"Of course she deserved to die! And so do you!"
He stepped closer and pressed the muzzle to Zayn's temple.
"Heh. Blame your mother for this. It's all her fault…"
Anger flared up in him one last time. He did have emotions after all, no matter how much he hated them. This guy called Quint was seriously the worst scum the world had ever seen.
His mother was the most benevolent, nice, but also naive person he knew, and of course, that brought her into trouble. Trouble she did not deserve.
Zayn clenched his blood-stained teeth and started one last attempt. All hope was already lost; now only despair remained.
"…You bastard, you will meet your end by my hands"
A weak threat. He continued with a suffocating yell.
"I WILL RETURN FROM HELL IF THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES."
Bang.
Silence ensued.
The raid was over, and tomorrow they needed a new target.
"Ha… annoying till the end." The soldier scoffed and gave a lazy hand signal to someone behind him. Then he turned his back on the boy he'd just murdered.
...
Seconds passed.
Zayn waited for the comfort of death, which all the elderly in the camp kept going on about.
But then he frowned.
'Why… can I still think?'
He looked down.
At his corpse.
His body lay there, collapsing and cooling in the dust. And yet… he hovered above it, intact, watching.
'What the hell is this…?'
But he had no time to panic. An invisible force began dragging him upward, slow at first, then faster, accelerating until the wind tore at his formless consciousness.
The earth shrank beneath him. The world became distant, irrelevant. The weight of gravity disappeared. All that remained was momentum and dread.
Zayn fought against it, clenching his teeth though he had none, summoning all his hard-earned willpower to stay awake.
'I can't go yet. Not like this. Not before I—'
His speed doubled again. Clouds blurred past. The sky bent. Space warped. His mind slowed down.
Minutes passed — or maybe years. Zayn groaned under a pressure he couldn't describe. It affected his being as a whole.
Around him, he could see small illuminated dots traveling in the same direction as him.
After observing some more, Zayn came to a conclusion.
'They are probably the same as me...'
'Other dead people, I assume...'
This caravan of hundreds of small light balls kept floating further into the seemingly eternal darkness of the universe. It had a strange beauty to it.
Time passed, and Zayn's mind became heavier and heavier. He was having trouble staying conscious as a floating island appeared in the distance.
The closer the lights came to the island, the more Zayn could make out its features. Most of the island's space was filled by a dome-shaped cathedral with four towers at its borders. Similar to a castle, but what good would a castle have here, in the middle of nowhere?
Zayn kept pondering as he noticed multiple cones of light scanning the outskirts of the cathedral. Dread overcame him as he figured out what he was looking at. In the cabin of each tower, black, long-limbed creatures with lamp-like heads were searching for something. For what he did not know.
At this point, Zayn was closing nearer to his mental limits. He was proud of his willpower, but it, too, had limits.
'I guess I will be next to find out what happens in the cathedral...'
If his intuition was correct, this was some sort of threshold between the living and the afterlife. And he knew where he would end up. After all, he didn't live a very saintly life.
But just before he crossed the gates of the cathedral, a sudden force jerked him to the side. Suddenly fully awake, the strange force increased its strength, and he sped up.
Zayn had an ominous premonition.
'Oh no... NOT AGAIN!
He accelerated. Away from the assembly of lights and the horrifying cathedral.
Space itself bent to ease his journey. Even though he had no idea where it would lead.
After hours had passed — maybe days — he finally seemed to decelerate as another island came into view in the eternal darkness. This time it was different, though.
Not one but at least 7 huge, shattered islands came into view — all hued in an alien blue light coming from a towering spire at the center of the biggest island.
At that point, whatever was bringing him here decided it was time to stop. Gravity being gravity and Zayn being thousands of meters above ground, he plummeted down like a fiery meteor.
As the ground drew closer and closer, Zayn felt his mind becoming heavy once again and held on to one last confused thought.
'How does gravity even exist here?!"
When the impact happened, everything turned black.
...
Zayn had to blink many times until his eyes adjusted to the dark environment. The only source of light was the ever-present looming spire in the distance, emitting a bluish hue all over the island.
The black haired teen tried standing up. And succeeded. Slightly frowning, Zayn exclaimed out loud:
"H-huh. I have a body again."
A very naked body, but a body nonetheless.
Zayn felt extraordinarily healthy for some reason. A swirling energy in his core strengthened his muscles, and it seemed like a lock that restrained him since birth had finally been broken.
He shivered as a cold wind touched his skin, immediately causing him to become aware of his situation again. He was not on Earth.
"Where the hell am I?"
Based on the terrain around him, he might as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. Coral-like trees covered the desolate and rocky ground. They came in all sorts of colors and grew on everything they could find. That included bigger, hill-like structures, completely grey and consisting of a weird type of slate stone. Below Zayn's naked feet, blue sand and small stones became an assembly of alien materials.
His heart began to thump louder as it dawned upon him what had just happened. He was kidnapped on his way to the afterlife and brought to this seemingly dead island. Who knew if there was even food here! Who knew if more of those black limbed monsters were here!
"Calm down. It's just another unknown territory. Act like you normally would."
Zayn tried comforting himself, but he had never been kidnapped by an alien force before. Though he still knew what needed to be done.
'A shelter, that's what I need. And time to think about all of this.'
He continued out loud.
"As well as some clothes. It's seriously cold out here..."
He needed to hear something—anything, even if it was his own voice. The silence was slowly driving him crazy.
At this point, Zayn could never have fathomed what awaited him on these islands. What pain, what despair, and what responsibilities would be forced upon him. But since he did not know yet, Zayn started humming to himself and began carefully wandering around the area.