And the king ashed away, like everything, like all lives… everything, everyone would one day turn into nothingness.

The ball the boys used to enjoy, the love his family used to give, the people they pretended to be, everything would fade… along with themselves.

The empty road tasted a breeze, the edges of his gauze flattered and he closed his eyes. The second he turned them, the moonlight reflected on a boned face, peaky like a dog, hunched like an old man with a sickle by one of their hands.

"Children always go to paradise. There they reach whatever they want…"

Said the bone head, death grazing out of his sleeves in dark clouds.

"I don't really care. Now I'm seeing things I shouldn't. And I'm scared of the ones roaming around. They seem to doubt me, and seem to look for people who see them."

Davish didn't smile. His stiff legs edged to walk and his knee burnt but felt new.

As if he recovered his once dead energy.

"They are curious just like humans. And if they discovered that you can see them they might eat you or provide you aid and hospitability… just like humans again."

The sickled monster stood beside Davish, his long head looking at Davish's knee, "I see that you are approaching your real self."

"What do you mean?"

"I wouldn't need to say anything, fate would do enough, you will understand who you are in the next few days or maybe... hours."

The monster turned and started to walk, "whatever you will turn to be, it must be a rare breed."

Everything was a secret since his meeting with that white-haired guy. Everything became vague and wrong. He was once a human and wished to stay that way. It wasn't that his human life was perfect, he met people, lost people, worked for people, and slowly lost his joy in life… but it was better than seeing things that would never fail to freak his heart.

"Old man," the boy called, his face rising to the moon and his dark eyes slowly widening. The boy waited for the sound of the monsters crackling steps to stop and then voiced his words.

"Hadn't they turned into ghosts?"

Silence overtook the air, Davish didn't know what expressions wore the monster, he was so focused on the moon and gave the monster the least of interest.

"You are looking at the right place," the monster said, "dead people always ascend and find their judgment, your family didn't have any wishes to stay for."

"They had a wish," said Davish, his eyes still fixed on the moon and his grips losing their strength. "all of them, had a wish."

"And was that wish achievable in this world?"

"No." that was enough, this word abbreviated all of the explanation, their wish didn't belong to this world, neither it was achievable due to their principles.

Davish knew that the monster understood what he had meant, his family had a wish to vanish away. None of them had an interest in life, but none of them was interested in committing suicide. After all, Alsura told them that suicide was the most hated act by God, and whoever committed suicide would be sent to hell with no prior judgment.

"Well Davish, I will look at you in my free time, the future of demihumans is always interesting after all."

This time the monster moved without looking back and disappeared into the darkness of the night. Davish lowered his face, remembered the smile of his mother, which at one stage of his life he had adored…

Disgusting.

Davish chuckled and walked along the edge of the pavement. Toward the polluted river of the neighborhood, the river that once was bombed with ten bombs and killed more than three thousand people, a place like that wasn't for people to inhabit anymore, it was a good place to enjoy in a time like this, a time of loss.

He didn't know what to do, how to live anymore, or how to support himself. He was seventeen, burnt and no longer handsome, who would give him a job? He no longer was the rich boy, no longer had wealth or gold under his parents’ bed.

He took a deep breath, maybe at the park lined by the river, the answer would come.

******

If Life had a meaning, what it would be. If there was a monster who could reap people's souls, there should be a God as well.

Davish had faith in the presence of God, his religious environment forced him to believe that, and he was too lazy to resist. But he couldn't resist those thoughts.

what would be the meaning behind the life the God had created, what his place in this world, what was the meaning of the world itself.

Davish shook off the infinite thoughts off his head, and his neck stung, he bit his lower lip to hold the pain and slowly recovered his posture.

He was on a bench, a broken one. The wood was tattered and battered, the bench no longer had a back and its long seat hardly held his lightweight.

He was sitting at the head of a slope that led to the polluted river. On this river's sides used to be hundreds of stalls and festivals, and there were many laughing faces, many stories.

Now this place became the habitat of the ghosts. His pupils waved around, examined the ghost of the children who used to play here. Their laughter was loud. They were three, glowing green, running in a row that kept passing before him, once to the left, once to the right.

A few ghosts were sitting on the yellow semi- dead grass, staring blankly at the river, the water that hardly flowed.

The ghosts stared blankly at the river and he stared blankly at them, for what? He didn't exactly know. From now on, he knew nothing. He had no relatives, his father used to be the only child and his mother spent most of her life in a religious orphanage.

And even if there was a place, or a person to pursue, he didn't think that he would pursue. Being alone wasn't so bad, less of a worry and more to enjoy. If there was something to enjoy.

Davish inhaled through his nostrils, his half-opened eyes widened on a woman of gorgeous figures. Davish was seventeen, in his country coed schools were rare. He spent all of his life without touching a woman. He had just noticed that he was curious about the woman's body.

But…

What would a woman be doing here?