Finn rose to his feet, feeling a strange lightness in his limbs. His voice returned to him, but the words stuck in his throat. "Where am I? Who is this...?" thoughts raced as he examined the trembling outlines of the figure.
"I am Fate," the creature pronounced, and its voice sounded simultaneously solemn and bored, like a teacher repeating a memorized phrase for the hundredth time. "You are between life and death. This is a state when the soul wants to leave the body but cannot... Usually because of desire."
Black fingers leafed through the pages of the book.
"Sometimes the desire for life is so strong that even I..." Fate suddenly fell silent. The smooth mask of the face leaned toward the text. "But stop. You... have no fate? How is that possible?"
The figure jumped up abruptly; the armchair toppled with a dull thud. In three steps, it covered the distance to Finn and grabbed him by the wrist.
The touch burned like dry ice. The darkness around them contracted—first the table disappeared, then the walls of the non-existent room, until the entire world turned into a black sphere the size of their clasped hands.
And then—a flash.
They stood in a spacious room with sky-blue wallpaper. Against the right wall stood a wardrobe-bed—a massive construction of light oak with a pull-out sleeping place covered with a checkered blanket. On the opposite wall hung a plasma TV with a cracked corner.
At the writing desk sat... he himself. Only younger—about ten years old, no more. The boy diligently sharpened pencils; a pile of shavings grew in front of him.
Fate slipped through the table like a shadow.
"What are you doing?" she asked, leaning toward the child.
Finn wanted to answer, but the words came out of the child himself sitting at the table.
"Trying to pretend that I'm busy..." his childish voice sounded muffled, with notes of fatigue.
"Why?" Fate insisted.
At that moment, the door flew open.
A man of about forty filled the doorway—tall, at least one hundred eighty centimeters, with hair black as pitch and sharp facial features. Brown eyes glistened with a wet sheen. Home pants and a worn sweater clung to a muscular body.
Finn felt his fists clench. He rushed forward—and passed through his stepfather like smoke.
"Who is this?" asked Fate, watching as the man sat on the edge of the bed.
"Andri," Finn hissed. "Stepfather. Mom's husband."
Andri patted the mattress with his palm:
"Bring here what you've sharpened."
The boy flinched. His fingers trembled as he gathered the pencils. Steps barely audible, he approached and extended the bundle—each sharpened to razor sharpness.
The stepfather took one, checking the edge with his thumb. He grunted in satisfaction. Then, without warning, he plunged the pencil into the child's thigh.
"Ow!" the childish voice broke into a squeal.
Finn saw how the bluish lead entered the flesh two centimeters deep. Blood welled up around the wound, soaking the light pants. But in his eyes—not a tear.
"Tears only anger him," Finn whispered, watching as his younger "self" clenched his teeth.
Fate watched silently. Her faceless mask expressed nothing.
Andri yanked out the pencil and threw it on the floor.
"Too sharp"—the only thing he said. Before exiting into the corridor.
At the moment the door slammed behind the stepfather, the air in the room thickened. Time accelerated, turning into a kaleidoscope of tormenting days:
7:00 a.m. The boy jumps out of bed, barely hearing footsteps in the corridor. His fingers tremble, fastening the torn school uniform. He slips out the window while dishes clatter in the kitchen.
4:00 p.m. Return home. The door flies open—Andri stands with a mop handle. The first blow lands on the back, tearing the fabric of clothing. The second—on the legs, knocking him down. Blood seeps through the shirt, leaving scarlet prints on the floor.
Sometimes the mother appeared—a woman slightly taller than her son, with black, long-unwashed hair and a bloated face. Her figure, once slender, now spread under a layer of fat and alcohol. She grabbed Andri by the hand:
"Enough, please..."
The response was a blow to the stomach. She fell, wheezing, and the beating of the son continued. On better days, she crawled later, with a bottle of spirits and eyes wet with tears, trying to dab his wounds with a dirty rag.
And then time slowed down. Finn recognized this moment.
The boy sat in the kitchen, half-naked. His body was covered with bloody stripes—traces from a wire, left with mathematical precision. On the table lay an old home phone with a cracked case, buttons worn to metal.
Andri dialed the number. Speakerphone. Rings.
"Hello?" a thin girlish voice. 12 years old, no more.
"This is Andri, Finn's father. He wants to confess something to you," the stepfather smirked, shoving the receiver into the boy's bloodied palm.
Finn-the-child was already crying. Tears mixed with blood on his cheeks.
"H-hello... Mila... I... I love you," his voice broke into sobs.
Fate sat nearby, resting her faceless head on her hands, as if listening to an interesting radio play.
The darkness contracted around them like lungs before exhalation. When the world materialized again, they stood in the school corridor.
Walls painted in dirty beige were covered with graffiti. The floor creaked underfoot—old linoleum with paths worn to holes. Voices of teachers came from the classrooms.
In front of Finn-the-child stood Mila. A girl with hair the color of ripe wheat, braided into a tight pigtail. Her blue eyes, usually kind, now sparkled with contempt. The school uniform—a brown dress with a white apron—looked perfectly ironed.
Around them in a semicircle stood classmates. No friends, not even acquaintances—only spectators thirsty for spectacle.
"Are you serious?" Mila snorted, examining Finn like a piece of dirt on the sole of her shoe. "You, stinking beggar, dare to say that to me?"
Laughter rolled through the corridor. Someone pushed Finn in the back. He staggered but did not fall. His eyes were fixed on Mila—in them there was not a drop of pity, only a satisfied expression on her face.
Fate shook her head:
"You have an interesting life, Finn!" the voice was not filled with compassion; it was a statement of fact.
The darkness thickened, absorbing the school corridor, the laughing faces of classmates, Mila's pale face from rage. The last to disappear was Finn-the-child himself—his beaten body dissolved into the blackness, as if he had never existed.
Fate stood, tilting her faceless head. Her fingers slowly rifled through the pages of the book, where the letters now glowed blood-red.
"And why do you want to live so badly?" her voice for the first time sounded with a note of something remotely resembling sadness. "You are an unripe fruit on a rotting branch. Your entire world is dirt and pain."
Finn clenched his fists. A lump stood in his throat.
"But do I want to?" he exhaled. "I don't want such a life."
Fate took a step forward. In her eye-voids, distant stars flickered, and for a moment, it seemed the faceless mask twitched with a semblance of a smile.
"Then you hurried with the step," her fingers touched the last page. "Literally in a month... none of this will be."
The darkness around them exploded with visions:
Cities burned. The sky cracked, and through the fissures poured creatures—neither insects nor machines, with chitinous shells and steel claws. They sliced people to pieces like paper, leaving behind only puddles of melted asphalt and bones.
The school where they had just laughed at Finn now was a heap of debris. Children's hands protruded from under the slabs, clenched in the last convulsion.
His home. Andri lay with a torn stomach, his guts wrapped around the legs of the kitchen table like garlands. The mother sat nearby, an empty bottle in her hands; her face was flooded with tears and blood. She whispered something, looking at the sky—perhaps praying.
"Your entire kind will go into the past," Fate's voice now sounded with metallic notes, as if from speakers. "You will leave your home and be forced to correct your mistakes."
Gradually, the darkness began to transform, revealing faint glimmers of light that grew brighter. These flashes resembled stars in the night sky. The light spread around, and soon Finn found himself once again standing on the railroad tracks. Steam burst from his mouth, testifying to the return to cold reality. Looking ahead, he saw that the dark figure was slowly and smoothly moving toward the teenager. Approaching closer to the teenager, the darkness enveloping Fate's body began to expand again, obscuring everything around, but at the same time absorbing Finn. Fate spoke in a serious tone.
"I give you a choice"—the figure smoothly but very quickly moved and stood to the side, to the left of the boy, and placed her hand on his shoulder—"you had a hard childhood, a hard youth, unrequited feelings, detachment from your own mother. Are you ready to receive a chance at a new life, a new fate, new opportunities?" As she said this, a piece of darkness emerged from the figure and settled on the railroad tracks.
"Or... You can give up, and all the problems that may await you ahead will instantly become unimportant, well, and everything will become unimportant, because in fact you do not exist for others." Fate pronounced this calmly, but it was hard to hide her disgust; she was repulsed by this option. But after a couple of moments, the dark figure regained her composure and added—"anyway, the choice is yours, my young boy." At this time, Fate began to slowly dissipate, but before completely disappearing, she whispered,
"We both know what choice you will make, Finnleyn Reinbach."
With these words, the darkness enveloping everything around began to form into a small dark sphere, and then began to move around the teenager, separating particles of the sphere and partially penetrating into different parts of the boy's body.
Time seemed to roll back; the silence that had filled this place after his death was once again covered by the cawing of crows. A moment later, the strong whistle of the cars deafened the place where the teenager stood, but by that moment, the boy's figure was no longer there.
And somewhere far away, in the vast ocean of stars, a new... Star was born.