"Natasha..."
His voice was a mere whisper, soft enough to be carried away by the wind.
"It's you, isn't it?"
He smiled. It was a weary, melancholy smile—one that felt entirely out of place amidst the devastation surrounding us.
"I remember you well," he coughed, a thin trail of crimson escaping his lips. "You are the girl... whose home I woke up in. Back then."
At first glance, the scene might have seemed tender. Two people finally recognizing one another. It would have been exactly that... were it not for my other hand.
In my hand, I held his heart.
I had torn it from his chest with my bare fingers. The organ, still warm, dripped blood onto the charred earth. The sound felt deafening in the absolute silence of the wasteland.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Every drop was a hammer blow to my soul, dragging back memories I had fought to bury. The suffocating weight of the past surged over me like a tidal wave.
My hands were stained red. But this wasn't the first time.
I saw them all—the faces of the fallen, the ghosts of those who had stood in my way. The deeds I had done. The monster I had become. All of it led to this moment.
Tears began to fall. Pure, crystalline tears on a face marred by filth and gore. They mingled with the blood of the man whose heart I still held. I looked at him—at that sorrowful smile etched upon his face.
"I hate you," I whispered. My voice was laced with a venom so pure it burned my throat. "If I hadn't saved you then... if only I hadn't... none of this would have happened."
Not to me. Not to those I loved. Not to the world he had shattered just by existing.
He fell.
He collapsed, and for a moment, the world felt empty. I stood alone in the heart of a desolation I couldn't comprehend. It was as if the apocalypse had already passed, and I was the only thing left behind.
His heart finally slipped from my trembling grasp. It hit the ground with a soft, dull thud—a sound far too quiet for the violence that had preceded it.
It was the sound of a journey ending.
Or perhaps... it was merely the sound of a new, darker world being born.