The bells of the capital ring.
Not for celebration.
For war.
My armor is blackened by smoke, my sword heavy in my hand, its edge chipped from hours of battle. Around me, knights scream oaths and prayers as the sky tears open above us.
The Void has come.
It is not an army. Not a god. Not a storm. It is… nothing.
A tide of black that swallows towers, forests, rivers. Wherever it touches, the world ceases to exist.
"Hold the line!" the king's marshal roars, though even he trembles. "We are the shield of the realm!"
But shields mean nothing.
Steel means nothing.
Faith means nothing.
I fight anyway. I cut down shadows that crawl out of the black tide, things with faces that shift like smoke. My brothers-in-arms fall one by one. Blood stains the cobblestones of the capital.
"Sir Elias!" my squire cries, clutching at me. His eyes are wide with terror. "What is it? What is that thing?"
I want to answer. I want to give him hope. That is what knights do.
But I have no answer.
I watch him vanish in a flash of black. Gone. No scream. No trace.
The castle walls crumble behind me. My king, proud and stubborn, draws his sword and charges the darkness with the royal guard. My legs are heavy with dread, but I follow.
One strike. Two. Ten. My blade breaks against the tide. My king is swallowed whole. My comrades too.
And then… silence.
I stagger through a field of ruins. The world around me is gone. The sky is nothing. The earth is gone. Only I remain.
My armor is cracked. My hands shake. My eyes are cold.
I am alive.
But I am alone.
A thin crack of light opens before me. It pulses, beckoning. I stare at it, numb. Behind me, the last fragments of my world fall into nothing.
Without a word, I step into the light.
---
Light.
When I open my eyes, I lie on green grass beneath a bright blue sky. The air smells fresh. Birds sing. Farmers work in fields nearby, their laughter carried by the wind.
For a moment, I think it's a dream. My armor is still broken. My sword still chipped. My body still aches from battle. But the world around me… it is alive.
"Are you lost, traveler?" a kind voice asks.
I turn. A farmer stands before me, smiling, holding a basket of apples. His eyes are warm, full of life.
I stare at him in silence. Words catch in my throat.
Don't trust it. Don't believe it.
But days pass. Then weeks. The people welcome me. They give me food, drink, a place to rest. For the first time since the fall of my world, I feel something close to peace.
And then… the sky cracks.
A black line above the horizon. At first, they think it is a storm. They carry on with their lives, laughing and trading. But I know. My blood turns cold. My hands tremble around my sword.
"No," I whisper. "Not again."
I try to warn them. I shout, beg, drag people by the arms to flee. They laugh nervously, calling me mad.
"The traveler has lost his mind," they say.
"There is no danger."
Until the first farm vanishes. Until the ground itself turns to nothing. Until their children disappear in their arms.
And still, I live.
I swing my sword until my arms burn. I cut shadows until my armor cracks. I scream until my voice breaks. But in the end, it is the same.
The Void consumes the world. Everyone dies. Only I remain.
Light again.
---
A desert this time. Endless sands beneath a red sun. Merchants cross the dunes with camels. Cities rise from the dust like stone giants.
Again, life.
Again, warmth.
Again, hope.
But I harden my heart. I do not laugh with them. I do not eat with them. I do not allow myself to believe.
I only watch.
When the sky cracks, I am ready. My blade is ready. My face is cold. And again, the Void comes.
This time, I do not beg. I do not shout. I do not try to save anyone.
I fight in silence. I watch in silence as the world is swallowed.
Light.
A mountain kingdom. Its people pray to gods of stone.
Devoured.
Light.
An endless sea. Sailors sing beneath bright stars.
Swallowed.
Light.
A frozen land where tribes hunt beasts larger than castles.
Eaten.
World after world. People after people. All gone.
But always, always, I survive.
I begin to wonder if the Void itself mocks me. If I am cursed not to die. If my punishment is to watch, forever, as everything I touch is destroyed.
And so my heart grows colder.
My honor, my oaths, my prayers, they all turn to ash.
I am no longer a man of faith.
No longer a knight of the crown.
No longer a protector of the weak.
---
At first, I fought.
Because that was all I knew.
Steel. Honor. Oaths.
But years turned to centuries, and centuries turned to nothing.
The Void always comes.
Some worlds last barely a season before the sky splits open. Others endure for decades, even centuries, before the darkness eats them whole. I have lived in them all.
I stopped counting the years long ago. What use are years, when they always end in ash?
And me? I do not age.
I have been a farmer in quiet valleys, my hands calloused by soil instead of steel.
I have been a scholar in marble halls, reciting histories of kingdoms that would soon vanish.
I have been a husband, and a father.
For sixty years I sat beside my wife as her hair turned silver, her hands frail. She smiled at me with the same warmth she gave me when we first met, though I never changed. I held her hand until she was eighty years old, and then I buried her in a field of lilies.
For sixty-five years I watched my daughter grow, laugh, and age. She bore children. She told stories by the fire. Her smile was her mother's. But I stayed the same, a man in his twenties, unmarked by time. She died with her children around her. I stood at her grave, the young stranger who had once been her father.
And then, as always, the sky cracked.
The Void came.
And all of it was undone.
Her grave. Her laughter. Her children. Her children's children.
Gone.
It doesn't matter if I raise a sword, or if I hide it.
It doesn't matter if I fight until my body breaks, or if I live quietly among the people.
It doesn't matter if I find love, or if I wall myself in ice.
The end is the same.
The Void swallows.
The Void erases.
The Void always comes.
And I… remain.
Why?
Why me?
Why must I fight?
Why must I endure when everyone else is allowed to rest in death?
I have tried to die. Gods know I have tried.
I've thrown myself before the tide. I've walked willingly into the black. I've pressed blades to my throat, leapt from cliffs, starved myself in deserts. But death never takes me.
Always, when the world is gone, the light opens. Always, it pulls me into another beginning.
Another cycle.
Another world.
Another reminder that I cannot escape.
And now I stand here, in this strange place of towers and glass, of machines and light. People laugh, children run, and I, I cannot feel it anymore.
I know what waits above.
I know what will come.
It may take fifty years. Or five hundred. But the sky will split, the tide will rise, and everything they are will vanish.
I am tired.
So very tired.
I don't want to fight anymore.
But I know I will.
Because no matter how much I want to surrender, no matter how heavy my heart becomes, no matter how many worlds I've watched collapse into nothing…
I am still here.
And I cannot stop.
I am the Witness.
And the curse of the Witness is not survival.
It is endurance.
To live forever, in worlds that never last.
To fight, even when I don't want to.
To lose, again and again.
Until even the memory of hope feels like a lie.