Darkness.
Complete. Absolute. Eternal.
There was no sky above, no earth below.
No wind to brush against his skin, no ground to stand upon.
No stars to give light, no walls to lean on.
Just a vast, consuming void stretching in every direction, untouched and unmarked—an endless sea of black.
It was not merely the absence of light.
It was the absence of everything.
He drifted within it. Or perhaps he remained still—it was impossible to tell. The concept of motion no longer applied here. Gravity, direction, even time itself had abandoned this place.
He floated, weightless and cold.
Like a corpse submerged in the deepest trench of the sea, long past death, flesh numb, bones silent.
There was no pain.
No warmth.
No sensation of any kind.
Only darkness.
Only silence.
He floated without purpose. Without destination. Like a single drop of ink dissolving into an ocean too vast to ever be known.
But for some reason...
He can still think.
That simple fact should have brought comfort.
But it didn't.
He could not move. Could not speak. Could not even see himself.
He existed only as a sliver of thought, a flicker of awareness drifting in a world stripped bare of meaning.
Even his thoughts did not belong to him.
They moved without command, coming and going like shadows behind his eyelids.
Detached. Uncontrolled.
Like a captive audience, he was forced to witness their procession.
'So this is what it feels like…huh?'
'Death…'
He had always wondered.
Now he knew.
It was not fire.
Not torment.
Nor peace.
No heaven. No hell.
Just slumber. Endless and cold.
It was like falling into a dream from which he would never wake.
A quiet place...
But it was far more terrifying than any kind of hell the human mind could imagine.
Truly, this was the end.
A place of eternal dream, eternal nightmare.
In this dream, his life began to unfold.
Memories played behind his mind like distant echoes—a hazy theatre of light and sound—the moments of his life unraveling before him.
He saw himself as a boy—barefoot, bruised, dark-eyed.
Then older.
He watched himself grow, fight, and...
Then die.
Scenes passed without pause.
His triumphs, his failures, his laughter, his sins.
They flowed into each other like ink spilled across paper—unfiltered, untamed.
But he felt nothing. No pride in his good deeds. No regret for the blood on his hands.
Just calm.
A still, aching emptiness.
Like a man watching his own life through a stranger's eyes.
Faces passed before him.
Every person he killed...
Minutes turned into hours, hours into years... years into millennia... millennia into eternity... eternity into seconds.
There were not many people that mattered to him.
But there were some—his life was connected to them.
The first was his mother. Her eyes were gentle. Her voice was warm. She reached out and patted his head, pulling him into her arms—she was the same woman who would later kill him.
Then his father. His chest swelled with pride, looking down at the son he raised. A proud man, hardened by duty, but softened just for him.
Then his master.
The man who taught him. Molded him.Whose teachings etched themselves into his bones, deeper than love, deeper than fear.
And then—the man who was once his everything...
Then—his younger brother.A boy with a laugh like bells, chasing shadows in the castle garden, waving a stick like a sword, shouting his name with joy.Following him everywhere...
The memories picked up speed.
Soldiers raising their blades in salute.
A nanny humming lullabies.
Courtiers bowing.
Advisors whispering.
Unknown faces, blurred by time, slipping past like ripples in a stream.
Then—something stopped him.
A face.
One face.
A man with hair like a summer sky. Eyes blue as deep ice.
The moment that image appeared, time slowed.
The man smiled—softly, knowingly.
He laughed with his younger self. They joked.
He was not just anyone.
He was his friend—his only friend.
He was his best friend.
But soon the emotions those memories stirred—
Clank.
A sharp sound echoed in his mind, like a chain snapping.
His breath—if he had one—caught.
"You broke the promise."
The voice was not loud.
It belonged to a child.
But its weight crushed him.
Pain, sharp and sudden, flared in the hollow where his heart used to be.
'Go away.'
He wanted to scream it.
To banish that memory.
To sever it from his mind and cast it into the abyss.
But he couldn't.
And just as it came, it vanished—washed away by the tide of the void.
Stillness returned.
"..."
Even the memories began to fade.
Even his thoughts.
He was unraveling.
What once was self was dissolving, thread by thread, into the dark.