He was falling. Streaks of light ascended and descended into the infinite void passing him again and again. Occasionally, he sensed the gaze of other entities, near and far, but none of them ever lifted a hand to slow his descent.

Why? He thought as a pang of loss bloomed in his chest. Why am I falling?

The pang grew into an ache which increased in severity. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore and lost consciousness.

When he woke, he knew that time had passed, but he couldn’t tell how long. The lights still passed with little pattern aside from their constant presence. Only one thing changed.

His heart trembled under the unmistakable weight of defeat. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know what it was, yet without a doubt, he knew that it was beyond him. All he wanted to do is rest, so rest, he did.

…

How many times will I repeat this cycle? He thought as he awoke for the hundredth time. He looked into the endless gray expanse around him and wondered, Why am I not allowed to rest?

He somehow knew that these other lights weren’t like him. For one, they had no form or substance. He tried touching them in the past, a meaningless effort to assuage his loneliness and melancholy, and his efforts were rewarded with a scattered mess of light particles as shattered like a glass ball thrown against a stone wall. If only he were so lucky.

…

“ANSWER ME!” he screamed into the void. His targets didn’t react. The entities who watched persisted in their inaction. He felt their ridicule, apathy, curiosity, and disdain— or perhaps… madness had joined his retinue of mental demons. WHO AM I?!

He screamed until he slept once more.

…

There is nothing I can do… He concluded after an eternity of falling.

A new burden weighed on his existence: exhaustion. In some twisted sense of grand irony, the insidious sensation was the worst of them all. Rather than beckoning him into the sweet oblivion of sleep as he wished, the exhaustion plagued his mind with chills that left him restless. His rests became shorter and each time he woke, he flailed and screamed with panic as though something horrific had chased his mind into consciousness. Oftentimes, his episodes would last until slumber claimed him once more. This went on and on. After more cycles than he could count, he was too weak to do anything but tremble.

He couldn’t take much more. He knew that. Yet what could he do, powerless as he was?

Everything fells so far off… So broken… He wondered through the mental fog. Is any of this real? Am I real?

…

This is it. He had awoken with a sense of finality. Not even the demons plaguing his mind could shake him because he knew. This would be the last time. The revelation gave him peace, a peace that he had never felt before in this awful emptiness. He smiled, ready for it all to end.

Then, he stopped falling. It came so abruptly that he didn’t notice at first. He waited a long time for his final rest to come, for a new mental demon to strike, or for anything to happen. Nothing came.

Eventually, he lifted his head looking around the void for the first time in what felt like eons.

There, only a short distance away stood the silhouette of a man. He stared at the silhouette for an even longer time before a small spark of hope ignited in his breast. The hope burned in his heart setting fire to his blood. That blood pumped through his body filling his muscles with strength, just enough to move his arms and legs.

He pushed against the transparent, yet solid ground with his hand, barely managing to get into a sitting position. The exhaustion and defeat urged him to lay back down and rest, to accept their embrace. For a time, he sat there, courting their temptations. They were so familiar to him, his mental demons. Loss, defeat, pain, anger, jealousy, exhaustion, and more had been his only companions throughout his existence until now. They may hurt him, but at least, they were there. At least, they cared.

No, I… The acceptance of the end suddenly wavered. A sense of obligation joined the hope bolstering its heat. His demons hissed at the light. I have to…

What did he have to do? He didn’t know. His eyes found the silhouette. It must know. It had to know.

With great effort, he pushed himself to his feet swaying with trepidation. One foot found its way in front of the other. His gait was unsteady and his conviction wavered more than once, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t have told anyone why the resolve that solidified in the core of his being held against the onslaught of his eternity of torment. He could only attest to the deep familiarity of his state of mind. It felt like coming home— like it was where he belonged.

Keep fighting, never surrender… He chanted. Onward… Always.

His hand touched the silhouette and everything changed.

The transparent ground erupted with a wave of color that radiated from between himself and the silhouette. They stood on the likeness of a golden throne. Surrounding them, a myriad of visions flickered in and out of focus evoking a deep feeling of confusion within him. People, places, and scenes made up the majority, but there were other types too. Symbols spoke of old memories out of his reach. Blobs of color and sound tantalized his consciousness with answers to questions asked long ago. He could’ve watched the glassy floor for ages; however, fate had other plans.

“Jack, listen to me,” said the silhouette. Hearing the name, Jack knew it to be his own. He had forgotten the name long ago, along with so many other things still hidden to his mind’s eye. He couldn’t savor the revelation though because the one who delivered it soon continued, “This… will be our last chance.”

The figure before him flickered like a dying light. Panic rose in his heart as Jack reached forward willing the silhouette to stabilize. Sadly, his hands simply passed through its body.

“I know you have questions, but I can offer few answers with the time I have left. My name is Jarkal, and I leave this message to you, the next in our long line.”

Jarkal’s visage flickered again. This time, he saw a few features of the figure when it stabilized. It was an old man with gray skin and a gaunt face. He looked… sick. He wore tattered robes woven of crimson fabric that filled the mind with distant screams if observed for too long. His robes were open in the chest area revealing well-toned pectorals despite his sickly face. However, anyone who looked upon Jarkal would have their eyes drawn to the center of his chest where his heart should be. Instead of flesh, there was a bleeding hole that went all the way to his back allowing one to see behind him.

“Since the beginning, we have walked along a path, searching for you. You are the last of us, but you were also the first,” Jarkal said. He drew an unsteady breath that resulted in a violent coughing fit. The projection, or whatever it was, flickered several times. Jack feared Jarkal would fade away before he could finish. “For many lives, we fought, and for many lives, we died without ever knowing our purpose. The enemy’s forces were always too great, and our power too weak. Yet, despite our defeats, we came back. Again, and again, and again…”

The figure paused for a few moments. In the silence, Jack struggled with a cocktail of dangerous emotions: anger at the unfairness laced through the Jarkal’s words, sadness at the self-derision in his voice, and scorn at the feeling of responsibility for it all welling within his chest. He gritted his teeth expending some of his limited strength to suppress the urge to lash out at a specter of what once was.

“It wasn’t until later that we realized we had an Origin— you, and that with each defeat, you crept closer to a tragic end,” Jarkal said, his eyes downcast and the wrinkles on his face deepening. “So, we changed tactics. We initiated a plan that lasted multiple lifetimes with one goal: reincarnate the Origin, bring back the Eternal Soldier.”

Jack’s mind seized at the sound of the last few words. Thousands of visions flitted through his surface thoughts interspersing themselves between his memories of consciousness in the void among the streaking lights. As soon as they solidified, they turned to psychic dust scattering into the bottomless well of what was lost.

No! Jack screamed in his head grasping at the motes of fading memories with every ounce of his weary will. No matter how hard he tried, little remained but loss, regret, and a few inklings of his past.

“We failed,” Jarkal said, his rasping voice like a nail in the coffin of remembrance. “It was my duty to take the final steps and complete the process that so many of my predecessors prepared with their lives. I carved my heart out the Blade of the Eternals, but when I called for you with my dying breaths, you never came. Desperate to succeed and terrified of failure, I bound myself with a dark curse to extend my life while maintaining my connection with the Origin. The torment… It drove me mad for so long…”

Jack met Jarkal’s gaze and saw a kindred spirit in his sunken, bloodshot eyes. For the space of a few breaths, he almost believed that the projection saw him, that he wasn’t truly alone in the void. The illusion broke when Jarkal began coughing again which caused more flickering.

“But in my suffering, I found enlightenment,” said the phantom after a shaky inhalation. His eyes glazed over with reminiscence amplifying Jack’s pain from the lost memories. “I found you… I understood then that you weren’t just the Eternal Soldier anymore. You couldn’t be… What once was, could never be. You had to become something more. You had to find new purpose.”

What…? Jack didn’t understand. If he had been reincarnating, wouldn’t each reincarnation change him in some way? Aside from the additional forms of suffering, he hadn’t changed since he first gained awareness in the void. Is it because I am the Origin? Or the Eternal Soldier? But what does any of that mean?

“I dedicated my cursed life to finding a way to help you. I traveled the realms, spoke to sages and immortals, and wrestled with beasts who could devour worlds. I felt as if I was chasing a phantom while I sensed you beyond the veil teetering on the precipice of irrevocable failure,” Jarkal’s face twisted into a scowl while his brow furrowed and his eyes swam with shades of a living nightmare. The pause stretched on too long leaving Jack to stew in silence, anxious to hear more but unwilling to touch the projection for fear of causing damage. Then, Jarkal spoke as though nothing had happened.

“Then, I met a certain woman. She had answers to questions that even the mighty Timekeeper couldn’t answer. She told me what you had to become.” A wicked smile spread across the projection’s gaunt face. “She helped me devise a way to give you a chance, a final chance to fulfill our purpose.”

“And so here we are,” Jarkal whispered. The projection flickered dangerously for an uncomfortable amount of time before stopping, but Jack could tell it had grown weaker, less substantial somehow. “My time is running out. I have arranged for you to go to a place where you can grow, a place for broken things are remade or transformed with new purpose.”

“Fracture…,” Jack said at the same time as the phantom. He knew the place. It was one of the few remaining memories that hadn’t faded. Unfortunately, he only remembered the name and a monstrous spire jutting deep into an indigo sea below a city beyond imagining.

“You will go there, but it is all I can do. So, I leave you with two warnings and a kernel of wisdom that I gleaned during my long life,” Jarkal said. His words carried a weight to them and Jack knew these would be his last before they were forced to part. “My warning is this: Avoid the lingering memory of your first life before you have completed your transformation: the chimes, they signal his presence. The second warning comes from the woman who saved us, so heed her words…”

“You cannot trust the World Keeper.”

The World Keeper? Jack repeated to himself. The name didn’t ring any bells and he hadn’t seen any glimpses of such a title or being within his fleeting memories. He looked at Jarkal, but the look on the man’s face said that he knew as much as Jack did.

“Finally, I will leave you with this,” his previous incarnation announced. “You need not be the wisest, strongest, smartest, or fastest to triumph over the tribulations ahead of you. You need only be enough. Take things slow and remember, you have plenty of time, but only one chance.”

With that, Jarkal’s projection turned to dust. The dust swirled into a dim orb of blue light which pulsed seven times before shooting into Jack’s chest. As soon as the orb touched him, he began falling again.

A voice echoed in his head as unconsciousness claimed him.