Antihero Stories & Novels

Nulls

He wakes inside a body that will one day stop. He does not remember when he first learned to call this vessel his own. The memories before are smoke, curling away from his grasp each time he reaches for them. Something burned. Something ended. He was there. The worlds change around him. One gives way to another through doors that only he can see, through rifts that seal behind him like wounds healing. Each reality has its own sky, its own sun, its own smell of life and death and the endless churn between them. He learns the taste of each one. He forgets the taste of the last. The screams follow him. They always follow him. He cannot stop them from following. Every face he has seen crumple, every voice he has heard rise in prayer before falling into silence, every child who reached for a mother who was already gone. They linger in the spaces between his thoughts. They surface when he closes his eyes. He does not close his eyes often. He does not know why he moves. The purpose that drove him once has eroded, worn smooth by the passage of too many years across too many dimensions. He knows only that he cannot stop. The body carries him forward when his will falters, and his will falters often. He has grown tired in ways that have no way to explain themselves. The idols of each world watch him pass. They sit on altars, on pedestals, in the hearts of temples that took centuries to raise. Their eyes follow him. Their mouths do not speak. He has seen what happens to idols when he lingers too long. The cracks spread across their marble faces. The gold leaf peels from their halos. The prayers of their worshippers turn to ash on the tongue. Sometimes he wonders if the others still exist. The ones who shared his burden before the fire. He reaches for their names and finds only smoke. He reaches for their faces and finds only the faces of strangers he has killed. The smoke thickens. The smoke chokes. He walks through cities that gleam with impossible light. He walks through wastelands where nothing grows. He walks through oceans whose depths have never seen the sun. The body carries him. The legs move. The lungs fill with air that belongs to whatever world he currently trespasses upon. The screams grow louder when he stands still. So he does not. He walks, and the worlds change, and the idols crack, and the prayers of the dying fill his ears with their desperate music. He remembers every note. He has forgotten how to forget. One day, he will stop. Not because he chooses to. Because the body will fail. The legs will refuse to move. The lungs will fill with something other than air and at last the screams will finally have their way with him. That day is not today. Today, he walks. A door opens. He steps through. The world behind him vanishes like a dream upon waking. The world ahead smells of salt and blood and the distant promise of fire. He has smelled this before. He will smell it again. Nulls does not look back. He never looks back. There is nothing left to see.

Nikolai_nikolaus · 28.3k Views

antihero

DC : The Template System

Eldritch Horror? No, I'm A Doctor

Virtual reality; The Realm of Legends.

Star Wars: Void Merchant

Chainsaw Man: I Conquer with the Dark Dark Fruit

I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities

NTR Harem: Building A Harem Of Yandere Heroines

Kamikawa Naoki

Beneath the Rubble, an Apostle

The Boys: Manipulating Sups

One Piece I Transmigrated into Marco

Nulls

Mirroring Fates

Got the Assassin System, But it was the Demoness Pathway [An LotM Fic]

One Punch Man: Becoming an Ultimate Being

Transmigration by SMS: Earth 199999

Marvel: Abysmal Spider-Man

The Devouring Dark

Vessel Awakening: I Can Evolve and Assimilate Talents at Will

Star Wars: That One Word...Ordo