Everything goes white.

It’s cold.

That’s the first thing that the man noticed, after he died.

Sure, it had already been cold while he was falling from the bridge, what with this wind and all. But down here, down in the place that he’s landed in, it’s cold in an entirely different way.

…Is he dead?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t feel dead? He feels very much awake, alive. But also… not. It’s like his body is gone, but his mind is still present and he is simply floating. He is floating in some empty void. It's like being stuck in that phase of sleep between being awake and dreaming. Is this the afterlife? How did he get here? He was fighting on the bridge and then he…

He…

…He remembers. They pushed him. They pushed him.

He remembers falling. In that vision of his mind’s eye, his body cracks against the stones.

He doesn’t have eyes or a body or anything corporeal like that anymore. But he sees nonetheless with eyes that aren’t real, he sees the memory playing out over and over. Sure, he didn’t really have many friends, or, well… any friends, but does that warrant killing him?

The memory of his body cracking against the stones replays again.

Sure, he wasn’t the nicest guy. But he wasn’t the worst one either. He was always just kind of in the middle of things. Sure, people didn’t really talk to him, but he also just didn’t really talk to people. And sure, he wasn’t super popular, but… he wasn’t a total outcast either. So why did they kill him? It doesn’t make any sense.

It doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense. The vision of his falling, of his being pushed, plays out over and over and over and over and over again and each time, so does the memory which follows, the sensation of him striking against the ground just as many times. It isn’t even like a memory at this point, it feels like god is just picking him up and smashing him against the rocks again over and over, as if he were some animal that a frightened child were trying to kill, confused as to why it wouldn’t die.

But all of these deaths only play out in his memory, the real one having very much been successful.

Well, easy come, easy go. Right?

Everything goes white.

He still isn’t dead-dead. He’s still here, floating in the empty. Where is everyone? Where is… anyone? God? Hello?

Nobody responds and he floats. He doesn’t know for how long. Days? Weeks? Years?

This is his own fault, isn’t it? If he had been a better person, if he had been a nicer person, if he had been a kinder person, then they wouldn’t have pushed him, right?

It’s his fault. It’s only fair that they pushed him. After all, he was unlikable, wasn’t he? It was his fault. It was his fault. This happened to him because he was bad. He was the worst. This is all his fault.

Everything goes white.

Not only years, but aeons have passed.

The entity floats in the maddeningly silent void that is filled with nothing but his own thoughts which have repeated themselves over and over for as long as he can remember. He doesn’t even know what their faces look like anymore, or the sounds of their voices, or even those attributes of his own prior existence. All he remembers, as he writhes and lashes, punishing himself for having dared to exist, is one, single thing.

“It’s my fault.”

“It’s my fault.”

Everything goes white.

There isn’t really anything left of the man that could be considered human, or even reminiscent of the soul of such a thing. The odd, shapeless gestalt that he was, made up out a strange yarn, has become entirely undone as he had chewed his way through himself over and over and over in an attempt to find a satisfying enough hurt to make things right again. Like an animal trapped in a cage that maims itself in order to experience anything, even if it’s just pain.

But it doesn’t matter how badly he ‘hurts’ himself, as he never finds a pain that is acceptable enough as a token for him to feel alleviated and unburdened. It doesn’t matter how badly he hurts himself, this isn’t enough. It doesn’t feel like enough. He is bad. It has to hurt. It has to hurt. That’s the only way that he can feel better, but nothing he does to hurt himself hurts enough to scratch that itch.

Through this process of self-mutilation of the strands and fibres of the spiritual gestalt that is his own soul, the strings have become unraveled and frayed at every angle imaginable, giving him the impression that he is more of a loose, vague cloud than the tightly strung entity he might have once arrived here as. The colorful threads have become black with rot and wear and spit.

He is nothing but a shapeless, bad thing.

Everything goes white.

He found a way out. He gnawed his way out.

Everything goes white.

The bodiless entity floats through the world of the living, like a dark cloud that has come to poison the light of every sunlit day he might find himself beneath.

Everything goes white.

There are others like him. Other clouds. Other entities. But they are all satisfied with the results of their escape from the quiet place. They find bodies, sometimes their own, sometimes others', to return to. But they are lesser. Their threads are only torn and shorn here or there. They are like him, but they are not like him. He is the darkest, the largest, the worst.

Once again, he is something that is wrong. So now he has to suffer for this too, on top of his old life. It has to hurt. He has to find a way to make himself hurt. It’s the only way that he can find quiet.

Everything goes white.

It has been many years. He floats through another town, unseen, unheard. He has a plan. But he needs something… he’s missing something. He stares down, looking at the crowds that are walking together and then he sees it. He sees the thing that he can hurt himself with.

A pair of extremely bright souls, literally entwined in one another, as they walk hand in hand. What if…

What if he not only made himself that bright? But what if he also attached himself to someone else? To something else? What if he built the highest tower in the world, just so that it could crash down on top of himself?

Would that hurt? Would that hurt enough? It’s worth a shot.

He just needs…

- Somewhere, from behind the glass of a window that he stares through, there is a ticking sound and the shapeless entity watches with wide eyes at the sight that lies beyond, at the clockmaker, busy at work.

After many days of floating there, he gets an idea. Floating through the glass of the window, floating past the desk, floating towards the cot of the sleeping child that he lingers over, he watches her shallow breaths leave her rising and falling chest.

The shadow that would eventually become Canta presses itself closer to her, lower, holding a hand over her mouth as she sleeps. His gestalt falls towards her like a smothering blanket of ash, raining down to bury the vibrant spring-tide world beneath its blemishing presence.

Evita stops breathing and his plan sets into motion, like the fine mechanics of clockwork.

Everything goes white and this time, it stays that way.

Canta, awakening from the ‘vision’, opens his eyes and stares at the shapeless, black, stringy entity that has appeared before himself in the void space of the cosmic-trial. Its threads are so frayed and worn that they have expanded out like the extracted filling from a mutilated stuffed-toy.

“YOU FUCKING DICK!” screams Canta, lunging right towards it without any hesitation. His fingers latch on to the demon-king as his teeth sink into its disgusting mass. Ripping and tearing and screaming, the two of them wind around each other over and over and over, clawing and gouging and maiming each other until eventually, nothing is left but an exhausted silence, as Canta stares out at the even further frayed mess.

He looks down, lowering his gaze towards himself. It’s all him. The ‘other’ was just more of himself. There’s no one here but him. There’s no one here, save for himself.

There’s no one to blame except for himself. He did this. It took centuries, eras, but he did all of this. Everything, from the second of his rebirth, to the creation of the entity that is Alleluia, to the corruption and befoulment of the entire world, just so that he could have an arena to fight through, a dark place to find a sliver of hope in. It didn’t matter how many people died on the way. It didn’t matter how badly they ached and suffered. All that mattered is when the day finally comes, is that it would hurt enough to make things even. It just has to hurt enough to weigh out the cosmic scales.

Canta looks down at himself.

It doesn’t.

He did so much bad, he did so many terrible things that this single new life of his as the sin-eater, this single, tiny attempt at a self-inflicted wound means absolutely nothing. It’s a paper-cut, trying to make up for the agony of countless souls. This entire journey, this entire trip, it means nothing. It’s as hollow and empty as the godless world that surrounds him.

Maybe there were gods once, in a long forgotten era, but now, there is nothing left but those who remain and a broken system that governs the world, which is itself terrible, horrible and forsaken. And it is in such a state, because he, in part, contributed to making it such and honestly, there isn’t a way to make it right. There isn’t a hurt or a compensatory action that will make it all good again.

So Canta stands there, in the void, staring down at himself as the fire begins to sprout at his base. It rises upwards, slowly consuming him bit by bit, coming to erase him once and for all. For good.

He will finally be able to sleep. He will finally be able to put a stop to this childish game that he has been playing with himself for aeons, using others' souls and lives as mere pieces on the game-board.

The fire creeps higher and higher. Every face that has become contorted because of him, every agony, every suffering caused because of him comes to his mind’s eye. Valenti, Salvador, Carmela, Alleluia, Oriol, Nina, Raffael, Jorona, Paw, Samael, Annelida, Phillipie, Emanuela and every body that lays between each and every one of them and where he stands now, they lay there because of him and his own actions.

Canta takes a deep breath, feeling the fire reach past what is presumably his chest.

It’s all going to be over soon. It’s all going to be done with. He’s finally going to be where he belongs. Damnation. It will finally hurt like it should have all along.

Canta closes his eyes, listening to the crackling of the flames, listening to the crystal chiming that comes out from all around him.

“Hello?”

Canta opens his eyes.

“Hellooo?” asks a voice. “Is anyone there? God? Anyone?” Canta turns around, following the sound, following the trail of black fuzz that connects his body to something else’s. He stares at the odd soul that is made up out of perfectly normal strings like any other, a perfectly normal woman, like any other.

Alleluia looks at him and he looks at her.

“AH!” she yelps in surprise, running towards him, batting away at the flames that rise up his mass.

“STOP!” yells Canta as she runs towards him. But she doesn’t.

The burn spreads to her arms as she unsuccessfully tries to bat away the fire, which is deeply embedded into the vague strands of his body. “Canta!” she calls in surprise.

“What are you doing here?!”

“I think we died!” she says, flailing around. Trying to get the fire off of him. “CANTA!” she yells again, scared.

Seeing her scared. It hurts. Seeing her suffering because of himself. It hurts. But not enough. It doesn’t hurt enough either. Canta closes his eyes again, grabbing her as he waits for the flames to take them both.

“CANTA!” she screams a third time, scared, questioning, bewildered. “I’ll find you again! I promise!” she cries, her fingers burning as they dig into the decaying fabric that remains of him as the fire reaches his neck. “I PROMISE!” she shouts, with enough volume, with enough emotion to get him to look at her one last time before the end.

And in that instant, Canta realizes the deviousness of the demon-king’s trap.

This final self-sabotage, much like the one he had undergone several times during his journey, was planned. It was the final piece of the board-game. This final moment, this last second of their entwined inferno had belonged to the plan as well.

That cowardly fucking dick. He thinks he’s going to get away that easily? The fucking demon-king thinks he’s going to get-off with something as trivial as this?! A sad moment and hellfire? Is that really the best that the demon-king has to offer?

What a sad sack of shit.

Canta hates himself with every fiber of his being that remains. Why would he ever want to be something like that? To follow the ambitions of something like that?

For what purpose? So that he can finally finish the tantrumous masturbation of his own ego?

The person who he loves is literally suffering right in front of him and he is here, feeling good about how horrible things are. What a fucking piece of shit he is. He won’t let himself get away with it unpunished.

It has to hurt.

“Vainglory,” says Canta.

[Sin of Vainglory] : Correct Desecration of the world Manifestation of a generation of inhumanity Started the grand corruption [Punishment] : DAMNATION

Canta holds Alleluia against himself as the two of them vaporize into nothingness. He opens his mouth, the two of them pressing their lips towards each other.

[Sin Removed]

The sinner will be returned once more to the well of souls.

He isn’t quite sure, as that final moment arrives, that instant before all light turns dark, but in a saner state of mind he would be sure that he heard a voice coming from above, from the emptiness.

A single, solitary voice coming from an impossible distance saying only one thing.

'Do better next time'.