In another place, far from where the fire was raging, a man stood quietly on a hill.
Everywhere around him was silent, above him, in the horizon, the fire burned. It painted the sky in red and orange as the flames moved and twisted like waves. The explosion's afterglow was terrifying and there the man was. Standing tall, the light of the fire reflets across his face as he watched casually.
His face had a very strange edge to it. It was…. Timeless. The kind of face you couldn't tell his age. It was as if he had existed long before this day and he will still exist long after. His right eye was covered with a dark patch, but his other one, it was nothing like a normal human eye. It glowed faintly. It was sharp and cold, and it felt like the eye could pierce through anything.
Even though he was watching at a very far distance, it didn't matter to him. It didn't matter to him that the the explosion had swallowed the land . He wasn't really looking accroos the earth, instead he was watching it as if everything was happening right before him. He wasn't focused on the fire, it was inside it, deep underground, he watched as everything had happened.
He stood like that for a while, then his lips finally parted and the words came out quitly and softly and they were carried away by the wind.
"See you soon, friend."
And just like that, he was gone. His body vanished like he wasn't here seconds ago. The hill was empty once again and only the fire burning in the distance remained.
——
Drex's eyes opened. Or at least he thought they did.
But nothing changed.
The first thing he realized was that he wasn't in his body anymore. There was no body, there was only this endless darkness stretching in all directions. There was no walls, no ground, no sky. Just black.
At first, he thought maybe he was dreaming, like one of those dreams where you float and nothing makes sense. But it didn't feel like a dream. It felt heavier. Realer. Like the blackness was swallowing him whole.
He tried to lift his hands, to touch his chest, to feel his stomach wound, to check if he was bleeding out. But when he tried it there was nothing. No hands, no skin, no armor.
Nothing at all.
His mind spun. He tried to move his legs, to stand, but again… nothing.
He wasn't standing.
He wasn't lying down.
He wasn't anything.
He was just drifting, a consciousness floating in the void.
"Is this what happens after death?" The thought came to him bitterly.
"This is it? Just floating, forever?"
The more he thought about it, the more fear built up. A fear far worse than when the enforcers raised their guns. Worse than when he stood bleeding with ten seconds left on the clock. This was a fear no laser could compare to.
The fear of being alone.
Completely, absolutely alone.
He wanted to scream, but he had no mouth. He wanted to cry, but there were no eyes. He wanted to run until his lungs burned, but he had no legs.
There was no Drex anymore. Just the thought of Drex.
The silence was maddening. He didn't know how long he had been drifting. A minute? An hour? A year? Maybe eternity had already begun. He couldn't tell. Time didn't exist here.
At first he tried to fight it. He tried to count he tried to make sense of it, to hold on to something, maybe there is hope somewhere, maybe he was just traveling to heaven, if it exist. But then even that slipped away. His thoughts scattered. His memories blurred at the edges. Even his own name felt far away, like it was fading from him.
And that was when it happened.
Something pulled him.
It was sudden, like an invisible tide rushing through the void, it grabbbed his consciousness like it was a ragdoll and dragged him forward. He was caught in the whirlpool, he tried to resist it but he was too powerless to do so, his awareness stretched and broke as he was sucked in.
He didn't even have time to ask what was happening before it stopped.
And then he heard a sigh.
It echoed around him. It was low and long, filled with disappointment.
Drex froze. If he had a body, he would've felt his heart stop. But there was no heart. No breath. Only that sound.
The darkness didn't change. There was no figure before him, no shape, no glow. Just black. But he knew he wasn't alone anymore.
The sigh came again, sharper this time.
And then a voice.
"Why is my luck always this terrible…"
The voice was female, smooth but cold, dripping with pure arrogance. Like someone who thought themselves above everything and was annoyed something wasn't going her way.
Drex tried to form words, but there was no mouth. Then he realized something, his thoughts weren't trapped inside anymore. They could be heard. He could project them to whoever this person is.
So he tried.
"Am I… dead?"
For a long time there was nothing. Just silence. The kind of silence that made him think maybe he had imagined the voice, Maybe the void was playing tricks maybe he really was losing his mind.
But then finally, the answer came.
"Yes."
It was very cold, sharp and unbothered. That one word was enough to cut through him.
He didn't even flinch. He already knew it. He had come to accept it when the countdown hit zero. He had felt it when the flames swallowed the base. Hearing it now was just confirmation.
"Then… where am I?"