Prologue – The Weight of Sin
"Twilight…"
"You piss me off, don't call me like that…"
"What? They gave you that nickname and it's cool, hehe."
"Who even came up with that? I swear I'll kill them with my own hands."
"Haha, hurry up and finish so we can go.. I'm sick of waiting."
"Fuck waiting for me. Go if you want."
"Karlo, are you serious right now?"
"Aha, get lost… But wait for me at the «Dissolve», okay?"
"Okaaay, I'm off… you're extra angry today."
"Yeah, that piece of shit deserved it."
I clenched my teeth and looked at the dead body… half of him was already gone, and his face was covered in blood so one couldn't make out his features.
"Watch your step on the way back…"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"What, anything can happen sooner or later." She said it with a smirk, and it put me on edge.
"Mira, what does that mean?"
"It means I have to go." Without looking back she walked down the alley, and in the last moment as she turned, I saw a strange, creepy smile on her face. I'd never seen anything like it before.
Damn, what does it mean… My gut told me to get out of there, fast. But it was already too late…
~~~
They moved like they'd rehearsed it. Flashlights cut the dark; voices snapped into the alley.
"Police! Hands on your head!" a voice barked.
"Don't move. Get down!" another shouted.
My first thought was stupid and immediate: «Fuck– I've been caught.»
I couldn't escape in this situation. Just the sharp click of cuffs and the heat of a hundred eyes I couldn't see.
They read me my rights like a litany. Questions came fast, loud, pointless. I said nothing. Silence fit better anyway.
At trial they put me on display. The prosecutor spoke as if reciting a score: facts, dates, names. The judge's gavel fell like a final chord.
"Guilty," the judge said. "Life imprisonment."
The courtroom exploded. Sound closed in: sobs, curses, a sick chorus of demand.
"Kill the bastard!" someone screamed.
"Burn him! Make him pay!".
I sat there while the noise tore itself apart behind me. I didn't flinch. I didn't speak. I watched their faces.
~~~
They shoved me into the cell and locked it with a cold, final clang. Concrete, a single bulb swinging, the smell of metal and sweat. I sat on the bench and waited.
They opened the door again. Two officers, then another man pushed in behind them, huge, broad-shouldered, dark as a storm. He didn't hurry. He just stood there for a second, looked at the officers, and said, calm as a church bell, "Thanks."
I blinked. «What the hell? Why are you thanking them?»
He looked at me then, slow and simple. "They owed me this," he said. "They did their duty." His voice had no hurry. Like someone explaining how the weather worked.
"What do you mean?" I asked. My voice sounded small in the cell.
"Doesn't matter," he answered. "You don't need to know." He smiled in a way that had nothing friendly in it.
Before I could put anything together, he moved. Fast and brutal. He jumped at me like a weight dropped from a height. I tried to shove him off, tried to twist, tried anything. He was too big, too practiced. My arms hit his chest and slid; his weight pinned me down.
"You killed my brother," he said between blows, each word a hammer. "You bastard."
I kept trying to get up. I spat words I meant to sting – "What the fuck are you doing, you psycho?" – because silence felt worse than whatever came next. He didn't answer. He only hit, again and again, the room narrowing to the rhythm of his fists.
I felt my strength leak away. Breath came short and hot. Pain flattened thought into simple attempts to survive: block, breathe, try again. I couldn't. He was a machine I couldn't reason with.
At some point the noise changed. The shouts and the blows blurred into a steady drum. My fists went heavy. My head swam. His voice rose above everything, pure animal, raw. "You'll pay. You'll die for him," he yelled, like a sermon.
Black pulled at the edges of my vision. My knees folded, my cheek hit metal, and the last thing I heard clear was him screaming my name into the concrete air: "You killed him.. you piece of shit... and now I'll kill you."
How much it hurts to take those blows...
Did my victims feel this same helplessness when I beat them the way I did?
Funny, who would've thought someone like me could end up so pathetic.
By then, I was already slipping under. That unbearable cold crawled through my veins, isn't that what people feel right before they die?
I'd killed without hesitation, in ways too cruel to justify.
Maybe this was exactly how I was meant to go.
Better to die like this than rot away for the rest of my life in the "Dissolve."
«What a pity…»
What would come next? Fear pressed down on me.
For all the sins I'd committed, hell felt inevitable.
I didn't even dare open my eyes.
That creeping cold wrapped around my thoughts, numbing everything.
~~~
~~~~~~
«What the hell… Where am I?»
Before me stretched an endless cosmos, swallowed by darkness.
The faint glow of distant stars told me I was floating in space.
«What the fuck… why am I on a boat… what the hell is going on?!»
I was sitting in a wooden boat, drifting through the vast emptiness of the universe.
I couldn't understand a thing, only that the whole scene terrified me.
«Unbelievable… I actually died? That's… creepy.»
Strange. For everything I'd done, I was certain I'd go straight to hell.
Yet here I was, floating through the stars on a wooden boat, still sane, still aware.
Too strange to be death… too vivid to be a dream.
Before I could catch my breath, a faint glow appeared ahead of me.
From it, something began to form – a sheet of "Paper," shimmering softly in the dark.
«Ah, right… of course. Not only am I floating through space on a wooden boat, now I'm hallucinating.»
Idiot. Even as I tried to convince myself it wasn't real,
somewhere deep down, I knew, every bit of this was happening right before my eyes.
And on that "Paper", letters began to appear.
Each one written in a hand so impossibly elegant, it almost stole my breath.
[ «The Landscape of Eternal Nightmare» has detected an unknown entity. ]
«What the hell.. what does it supposed to mean?»
[ The Painting «Strange Oddities of the "Landscape"» responds to your presence! ]
[ The Painting «Strange Oddities of the "Landscape"» considers you as an 'strange' entity! ]
[ Entity synchronization is in progress…]
As those words appeared before my eyes, I could only stare at them with eyes full of confusion.
[ The Painting «Anomalies of the Day of Apocalypse» responds to your presence! ]
[ The Painting «Anomalies of the Day of Apocalypse» selects you as a candidate for the title: "Dragon of Apocalypse" ]
«Whaat?.. What the hell is that supposed to mean, now? Dragon of WHAT?!»
[ Transferring consciousness to a compatible vessel… ]
[ 100% ]
[ The Painting «Winter of the World of Irheira» refuses to accept the entity! ]
[The Painting «Heavenly Islands» refuses to accept the entity! ]
[The Painting «Bloodlands of Chaos» wants to get this entity! ]
[ The Painting «Infinite Suffering of the World of Mirettus» wants to get this entity! ]
[The Painting «Hellish Loneliness» wants to get this entity! ]
[The Painting «Hellish Loneliness» quietly waiting for your decision! ]
«Wow, I think these are the worlds.. But why, many of those representing something bad, wants me that hard?!»
[ «The Landscape of Eternal Nightmare» quietly waiting for your decision! ]
«Damn, why is it so hard.. i don't want to pick those worlds..»
[ The Painting «Hellish Loneliness» offers you a mysterious role! ]
«Damn, I got an offer from the world.. hehe. Now it's hella interesting..»
[ The Painting «Hellish Loneliness» quietly waiting for your decision! ]
«Ok, ok.. I'll choose this one. Anyways, I can understand what is happening later on.»
[ "Unknown Entity" made his decision! ]
[ Transferring consciousness to the chosen world! ]
[100%]
[Remember: the "Painting" you create will remain in the memory of the 'Landscape' for all eternity.]