Darkness did not arrive.
It was already there.
Victor Graves existed within it without sensation, without form, without time. There was no falling into the dark, no drifting, no softening of awareness.
One moment there had been something—a shape he could not quite hold—and the next there was only this: a vast, uninterrupted absence that neither pressed in nor pulled away.
It simply was.
He tested himself the way instinct demanded.
No breath.
No heartbeat.
No weight.
No limbs to move.
Thought remained.
That alone kept him anchored.
He searched for memory and found only fragments—impressions without context. The idea of movement. The sense of ending.
A pressure in his chest that did not belong to any organ. He reached for faces, for places, for reasons, and came away with nothing solid.
The absence felt intentional.
Before he could interrogate that thought, the darkness acknowledged something else.
There was no visual change. No light. No shape. No form stepping forward. The shift was more fundamental, like the moment a sealed room gained gravity. The nothingness became occupied without becoming crowded.
A presence asserted itself. Absolute.
Victor did not flinch, because there was nowhere to flinch to.
He was in a void without form.
His awareness sharpened instead, coiling inward, preparing for impact that never came.
Then a voice spoke.
"Victor Graves."
His name arrived whole.
Not spoken aloud. Not echoed. It did not travel through space. It simply appeared in his awareness with the certainty of a fact.
Victor did not try to answer immediately.
He assessed.
The voice carried no emotion. No curiosity. No threat. It was not loud, but it was not quiet either. Volume here was irrelevant.
Authority was not.
"Yes," Victor said at last, once his assessment was complete.
There was no point in denying his name.
"You have been selected," the voice said.
Victor felt irritation flicker.
"For what?" he asked.
"To correct a violation."
The phrasing was precise. Not injustice. Not wrongdoing.
Violation.
Victor folded his focus inward, tightening it. "That's awfully vague."
"It is sufficient."
Silence followed—complete and controlled.
Victor waited. Silence was a tool. Anyone who needed something from you would fill it eventually.
The presence did not.
It waited with him.
That alone told him more than words could have.
"What violation?" Victor said.
"Continuation beyond rightful termination."
Victor's thoughts sharpened.
"Wait… are you talking about immortality?" he said.
"Yes."
The word landed cleanly. Undramatic.
Victor let the idea settle. Immortality was not new. He had heard it framed as ambition, as fear, as fantasy. He had never heard it framed as a procedural problem.
"Why me?"
The presence answered without pause.
"You end things cleanly and quickly. Looking at every moving piece before making a decision"
Victor almost laughed.
"That's not a qualification," he said. "That's a quirk."
"It is an observation."
"No," Victor said. "It's a function someone else assigned me."
The presence did not contradict him.
"You performed the function," it said. "Consistently. Time and time again, you executed before trouble rose."
Victor felt a pressure behind his eyes that did not exist.
"You don't get to pretend that makes me suitable," he said. "I didn't choose that work. I was forced to carry out someone else's orders."
"You are not being asked to choose," the presence replied.
There it was.
Victor's focus hardened.
"Then this is an order," he said.
"Yes."
Victor's answer came immediately.
"No. Let me pass on to the afterlife."
The words were calm. Firm. Final.
Silence followed.
Victor waited for retaliation.
It did not come.
Instead, the presence responded with the same tone it had used for every other statement—flat, exact, uninterested in persuasion.
"Refusal is not a condition that applies."
Victor felt something cold settle in his gut metaphorically.
"That's not how consent works," he said.
"Consent is irrelevant to correction," the presence replied. "The violation exists regardless of your agreement and must be corrected."
Victor clenched his jaw.
"So I'm not a partner," he said. "I'm a tool, and you are my user?"
"Yes."
The honesty struck harder than anger would have.
"You're not even pretending," Victor said.
"There is no benefit to pretense."
Victor's thoughts accelerated—not chaotically, but with controlled speed. He tested angles, searched for leverage, probed the limits of the thing speaking to him.
"You could send anyone," he said. "Anyone willing."
"Yes."
"Then why not them?"
"Because willingness increases deviation from the task."
Victor went still.
"You want obedience without consent?" he said.
"No," the presence replied. "I want completion."
"That's worse."
The presence did not disagree.
"You will be placed into a world where the violation persists," it said. "You will move among the living. Grow your skills, and you will correct one instance."
"One," Victor repeated.
"Yes."
He seized on it.
"And after that?"
"There will be evaluation."
Not release.
Not freedom.
Evaluation.
Victor felt something brittle form in his chest.
"You're asking me to kill again, to do what I don't want to," he said.
"Yes."
The word held no cruelty.
"I won't."
"I can't. It drove me mad in my past life!"
The presence paused.
Then spoke with the weight of something that did not argue with outcomes.
"You will."
Victor's anger flared hot and sudden.
"No," he snapped. "You don't get to—"
"You will," the presence repeated. "Because resistance will be removed."
Victor froze.
"What are you talking about?"
"Your memory," the presence said. "It will be erased."
The words cut deeper than any threat.
Everything he'd experienced in his previous life would be gone.
"You're going to wipe me," Victor said.
"Yes. A full wipe of former memories."
"Why?"
"To reduce friction," the presence replied. "Your prior life contains resistance to function."
"That resistance is the point," Victor said.
"It is inefficient."
"You don't get to decide what I am."
"I already have."
The truth landed with surgical precision.
"You take my memory," Victor said slowly, "and I'm not me. How can I get whatever without my skills?"
"You will retain essential identity," the presence replied. "Name. Temperament. Instinct."
"And the rest?"
"Is unnecessary."
Victor shook his head, thinking of all his time in his previous life—a soldier used by his government to do anything they asked.
"I refuse," he said again. "To the work. To the wipe. To all of it."
Silence.
Then finality.
"You were not asked."
The pressure increased—not crushing, not painful. Absolute. Like a door closing that could not be reopened.
"You will be sent," the presence continued. "You will forget and you will function. The violation must be corrected."
Victor fought—not with force.
With will.
He tried to hold onto something fundamental.
Anger.
Refusal.
The certainty that this was wrong.
They did not vanish.
They compressed.
Flattened into shape.
"You will remember nothing of this," the presence said.
Victor's awareness dimmed.
"You don't get to win like this, coward!" he said, the words already slipping.
"There is no victory," the presence replied. "Only correction."
Victor's consciousness faded slowly.
"I will find you in this next life! I will find you and kill you myself!" Victor barked with the last of his being.
"Kill me?" the shadow replied.
"Victor, I am death itself. You cannot merely kill the Reaper."
The darkness did not rush.
It concluded.