When Ethan opened his eyes, what greeted him was not fire, oceans of blood, or piles of corpses, but a strangely spotless white sky—so clean it looked like an obsessive-compulsive janitor had scrubbed it for eternity, leaving not a speck of dust. The air was so thin it was nearly transparent, as if even dust motes had been exiled.
"Heaven?" he muttered.
But after a few steps, he realized this was no heaven.
The streets were flooded with people, an endless crowd moving like ants along predetermined tracks. Their faces were blank, lifeless, as if someone had pressed a cosmic "pause" button, leaving only the mechanics of breathing and blinking.
Elderly bodies bent nearly in half still shuffled forward. Children, eyes dried hollow, kept on wailing like broken gramophones stuck on the same sob.
"They… don't die?" Ethan whispered.
A figure shuffled toward him. An ancient man, skin cracked like bark, eyes milky-gray. His lips twitched upward in something that might have once been a smile.
"Die? Doesn't exist here," the man rasped, voice like rusted iron scraping. "There is no death—only endless living. Every pain, every despair, perfectly preserved… until your soul collapses beneath the weight."
Ethan saw the man's chest torn open by a grotesque wound. No blood flowed; instead the injury replayed endlessly, like a stuck videotape—muscle tearing, bones cracking, then resetting, then tearing again.
"This… is punishment."
The man raised a skeletal hand and pointed. On the corner sat a woman. Her tears had dried ages ago, yet the tracks carved into her face remained, like cracks in marble. In her arms lay a child—silent, stiff, yet grotesquely alive, a doll that would never grow.
"There's no end here. No period, no finale. Only living—endlessly—inside hell."
Cold nausea surged in Ethan's stomach. This wasn't life—it was life twisted into torture.
The ground beneath him shivered. The pavement split, and an eyeball bulged up from the crack, staring at him with diseased curiosity.
"Void…" Ethan whispered. He recalled the dossier notes: the Void was not destruction—it was preservation, the theft of endings.
Then he saw a familiar figure.
Karl.
His friend stood not far away, body laced with endless wounds, each one splitting and healing in a grotesque loop. His eyes were empty—but when they found Ethan, a spark flickered within.
"You came too," Karl's voice trembled, breaking into a manic smile. "Welcome… to the hell of immortality."
Ethan rushed forward, trying to grab him. But Karl's body shattered like glass on contact, only to reform instantly, still trapped in the cycle of pain.
"See?" Karl laughed, a laugh twisted more than a sob. "We thought death was the ultimate terror—but it's the gift we never understood. Here, death doesn't exist. Void has caged us inside bodies that never rot."
Ethan's heartbeat hammered in his chest. He finally understood: this wasn't reward—it was satire, cosmic irony at its darkest. Immortality wasn't salvation. It was carving pain onto the endless scroll of time, like a symphony that would never, ever reach its final note.
The white sky split open. Not with light, but with eyes—countless, watching. The will of the Void bore down on him, silently asking:
"Now… do you still wish to live?"
Ethan's throat tightened. Forcing out the words, he croaked:
"If this is immortality… I'd rather die."
The crowd turned their heads in unison. Their hollow eyes fixed on him, lips splitting into identical smiles—uniform, cold, a courtroom of puppets.
"Die? That privilege is denied to you."
The white sky collapsed into darkness. Only the countless eyes remained, hanging in the void like absurd stars.
And for the first time, Ethan realized—he wasn't simply in another world. He was trapped in the Void's cruelest joke:
Death was never the enemy. The true terror… was having death taken away.