"So… the dead can still think, huh?"
The words echoed in the blackness like a cruel joke. I laughed, but there was no sound—only the hollow rhythm of my own voice inside my skull.
For a moment, I just floated. Thoughtless. Timeless.
Then my memories began to bleed through, flickering like film caught in fire.
Childhood.
Adolescence.
War.
Hunger.
Fear.
Everything I'd tried to forget came rushing back.
"Will I be reincarnated?" I muttered. "Heh… I wouldn't mind waking up in some fantasy world. The ones I used to read about in the orphanage…"
The memory shifted around me.
The void became a room—cold, gray, familiar.
I saw a boy lying on a cot with a torn book pressed to his chest, staring at a cracked ceiling while muffled sobs filled the air. The caretaker's shadow moved across the floor—her eyes sharp, her voice cruel.
That boy was me.
Okhel Chaim.
They broke us to make us obedient. Beatings for mistakes. Hunger for rebellion. Training before we could play. I remembered holding a gun at eight years old, the smell of gun oil stronger than the smell of food.
I was a lonely child, despised by the others who vented their misery on me. My only escape was a single fantasy novel—its cover long gone, its title faded.
Blood Warlock: …
The rest was missing. My mind couldn't fill the blank.
The world flickered again.
Now I was thirteen, standing among soldiers twice my size. They shoved a rifle into my hands and told me to aim. When I didn't, they beat me until I did.
Days bled into weeks. I stopped counting. I stopped feeling.
Until one day, something snapped.
I saw myself raise the same rifle—not in fear this time, but in rage. I fired until the clip clicked empty. I didn't stop when they screamed. I didn't stop when blood splattered the walls.
"That was the day I decided… enough," I whispered.
Earth had already begun to rot.
World War III had turned the sky into fire, and the oceans into graveyards.
Then the memory twisted.
The subway. The children.
The collapse.
The end.
Darkness.
---
Pain lanced through my skull, blinding.
"Ughhhh! What the hell is this!?"
The ground beneath me fractured like glass, each shard reflecting a version of me.
The orphan. The soldier. The thief. The killer.
They all looked at me with eyes burning white.
"You think you're a savior?" the soldier sneered. "You killed more than you saved."
"You're weak," said the orphan. "You couldn't even protect yourself."
"You saved no one," the thief whispered. "You just delayed their deaths."
Their words crawled into my skull like worms. I dropped to my knees, the weight of every failure crushing me.
But I clenched my fists. My teeth ground until blood filled my mouth.
"Shut the fuck up."
I screamed.
And the void screamed back.
The shadows burst apart into ash and silence.
I stood there, trembling—but standing nonetheless.
"I endured when I should have broken," I whispered.
---
Then the void shifted once more.
A burning city unfolded before me. Children trapped in flame, their cries piercing. I ran toward them, but the fire rose higher, devouring everything.
A voice—not heard, but felt—echoed in my mind.
> "Save them and burn forever… or turn away and be free."
My hands shook. My heart ached.
"I've always saved them," I murmured. "Even if it kills me."
I stepped forward.
The flames swallowed me whole. Pain seared through my soul—black fire, violet light, agony beyond death.
I screamed until my voice shattered.
Then silence.
The flames died. The world dissolved.
And there, drifting before me, was a single fragment of light.
A heart, pulsing with violet fire, wrapped in golden vines that seemed to hold it prisoner.
It throbbed once—then again—each pulse echoing in my chest.
Without words, it spoke:
> "Endure."
The fragment sank into me.
A surge of energy tore through my being, raw and primal.
Then—nothing.
The void swallowed me again.
But this time, it was not empty.
Something ancient was watching.
Recording.
Waiting.
---