The moment I stopped believing in reality, it stopped believing in me.
I remember dying — quietly, like the flicker of a candle that no one noticed had gone out. There was no pain, only a silence so vast it made me wonder if silence itself was alive.
They say life flashes before your eyes at the end.Mine didn't.
I saw only words. Fragments of questions I had asked too often:What is truth?What is meaning?Who dreams the dreamer?
When I opened my eyes, the sky was wrong.It bent at impossible angles, like it was being folded by invisible hands. Buildings rose and melted like wax. Streets ended where thoughts did. The air itself felt… uncertain, as if reality was waiting for someone to decide what it should be.
"Aurel Kael."
My name echoed through the void…not from a voice, but from the world itself.
And then came the whisper. Dozens. Hundreds. A sea of voices made from my own memories. They crawled into my ears and spoke in the same tone I once used to lecture about the absurdity of existence.
"You asked for truth," they said."Now drown in it."
The city twisted, buildings turning into the shapes of thoughts…regret became red towers, fear spilled as black water. I stumbled through streets paved with my unanswered questions, my hands trembling as shadows moved with a will of their own.
I saw one of them then, a creature shaped like a man, but made of dripping ink. It stared at me with eyes full of recognition.
"You're me," I whispered.
It smiled. "No," it said in my voice. "I'm what you think you are."
When it lunged, instinct screamed…but reason answered. I reached for it, understanding what it was.
An Echo. A thought, born from fear.
And as I understood it, it ceased to exist.
The world stilled. The whispers faded. For one heartbeat, everything was silent again.
Then the sky cracked open, and something vast beyond comprehension looked back at me through the fracture.
I realized the truth then.
This world doesn't exist because I live in it.It exists because I think it does.
And somewhere in that endless sky of thought, a voice I had never heard before whispered softly:
"Welcome home… Philosopher of the End."