I loved them.
I loved them as family.
But they all abandoned me when I needed them the most, without a second thought...
Yeah, that doesn't matter anymore.
In fact, I am starting to lose my sense of self as time passes in here.
I don't know where I am.
All I remember was that bastard using the relic on me before they all abandoned me in that pocket dimension. With the dimension collapsing, I was trapped in there and the spatial distortion got to me. Next thing I knew, something was invading my senses—it felt like something was infesting me through my mouth, nose, and ears. I felt so much pain, and the inability to scream, to let out something, made it all worse. I could only cry... An irony it is: back then I wanted to feel emotions better, to experience the pain that made everyone human, but when I finally felt it...
I DETESTED IT.
At that last moment while dying, the memories of my life flashed across my eyes numerous times... Moments I smiled, moments I laughed, moments I acted like a teenage idiot, moments I let myself go, let my guard down thinking I was close to people I could trust.
Never once considering the possibility of betrayal...
That hurt more than anything.
More than anything I ever felt in my life.
From then on, I found myself here... Wherever HERE is. If I had to describe it, I would use the word "voided." Since I couldn't see or do anything, couldn't move, couldn't even talk. I was just here. I don't even know how long I have been here. A month? A year? A decade? A few decades? Millennia? Centuries? I don't know. The only thing that has kept me sane is my memories, and the hate I have for everything that I once considered a creation of mine.
I am probably dead.
Most definitely, but why then am I here?
The first time I died, I just woke up as Artemis. I never stayed in a place like this. Or maybe this is just a protective mechanism of the brain—it probably shut down to protect my sanity from the traumatic experience I went through. I could be alive in that place but just comatose, but if that's the case, then I could be here for a much, much longer time.
That doesn't sound encouraging.
Why don't I just die... I have had enough already.
Repeating my memories over and over again is getting old. Even creating scenarios in my mind where I killed or tortured them as payback no longer intrigues or interests me anymore... At this point, I'm just bored, tired, and suicidal... Yeah, I'm back to being Jake.
*Sighs.*
Damn, I really made a fool of myself there. I wasted my life. I should have found a way to escape Atlantis, after all—I created the story with the possibility of endless worlds existing. I just needed to grow strong enough and study dimension shifts, wait till the moment the barrier surrounding Atlantis got destroyed, or just straight up escape while it was still on. Who knows? Perhaps there was a way to punch a singularity through reality that would tunnel to another world... Yeah, that... was probably not going to work... However, there were still other ways I could have done it. I had gained true emotions—the possibility of a normal, happy life was no longer an impossibility. I could have left for a world where the plot I created didn't hold sway, created my own life, had my own adventures, and died fulfilled, unlike my first life.
But here I am now...
Worse off than in my first life.
.
.
.
.
Huh?
I'm still here?
Is this how it's going to be forever?
Damn it.
I'm already losing my mind at this point.
Why won't—
"Sendal theven backaen."
Huh?
What was that?
I'm sure I heard a voice—no, it sounded like a thousand voices in one. Just hearing it was breaking my mind.
It was coming from... inside me.
"Ithen willok leadus nosael to ithaen."
That was all I heard before a tremendous level of pain hit me.
It was like feeling a zillion worms crawl into your nose, ears, and mouth and move all the way to your brain. What made it worse was the fact that I was restrained, literally unable to do anything but feel it.
I couldn't even scream, couldn't shake, couldn't do... anything.
It was hell.
Hell in its truest possible form.