The edges of his vision were misty and blurred, as Gaius shook from the sheer amount of power that had smashed into him. His vision sparkled and faded, the tsunami of power buffeting him like a leaf in a gale. As his Domain revolved madly, resisting the onslaught of the demon Demigods’ divinity, his mind began to shake and twist.

A memory…here? Why now, of all times?

Before he could think of anything, the impossibly bright world all around him faded away. In its place was a vast view, a vantage point that someone standing on the rooftop of a high-rise building would have.

He was holding a sniper rifle. Far below him, in an area hundreds of metres away, a person laid on the floor. Gaius — the him now and the memory-Gaius then — could immediately picture the blood that was blooming from his target’s chest, lifeblood that was draining away. The enormous crowds that thronged the wide streets were screaming wildly, but his attention was now elsewhere.

A walkie-talkie came to life. “Target confirmed. Money transferred. Pleasure working with you.”

The voice cut out a moment later, and memory-Gaius tossed the walkie-talkie on the floor. Crushing it to pieces with his foot, the Gaius back then dumped a small bottle of gasoline on it, before setting it on fire. An acrid smell, though muted through the canvas of memory, assaulted Gaius’ nose…but that was the least of memory-Gaius’ worries.

Something had caught their eyes.

The crowds that had filled the streets below had formed up into two distinct groups. Cars burned and windows shattered as a riot — no, the beginnings of a civil war — tore through the entire capital city of…

An incredible pain stabbed through Gaius, and he shuddered. Time seemed to meld into an indistinct mess, muting the violence that ripped through the entire city. Men and women, each of them driven by their own desires and wishes, charged at each other with all sorts of impromptu weapons, and blood began to flow.

A country, on the verge of reconciliation.

With that shot, Gaius had brought it to the brink of ruin.

Ah…so that’s what I did. An urge to vomit welled up within him, a feeling that was reciprocated by the memory-Gaius as he stumbled onto the ground floor of the building, which was slick with blood and torn flesh.

The nightmare sped up from there. Within the span of three days, the entire nation was at war with itself. The high-rise buildings, once the hallmark of the nation, was now a danger zone, as extremists on all sides of the civil war demolished them by detonating explosive charges at the ground floors.

There was no more truth to speak about. No more right. No more wrong. Just a bloody mess of hatred and violence, an ever-spreading bubble of bad news that came in on the radio airwaves over and over. The television channels had been taken over by all sides, with the only source of reliable news from the peacekeepers of the United Nations.

In the midst of all this, the Gaius back then had fled the nation, aghast at what he had done. Someone had ordered a hit on the politician most likely to unite both sides of the civil war, offering him a stupendous price for it. The Gaius now…remembered taking it up.

Even if he didn’t take it up, someone else would probably do so. That was why he took it up. As part of an organisation dedicated to answering such requests, he had never seen the need to research his targets.

Obedience and mission compliance would do.

The Gaius then and the Gaius now had never expected such an outbreak of violence to follow. He didn’t know that his target wasn’t just likely to unite both sides…he was a symbol of rights.

Of fairness.

Gaius, with a single bullet, had put an end to that entirely.

As the nation continued to tear itself apart, he fled to a neighbouring country, cutting himself off from the organisation that he had been a part of and his old life.

The money had been transferred, as promised, but the him back then could no longer bring himself to use it. Every day, he would check on the war-torn nation, following the local news like a man possessed. Reports of death and violence continued to escalate. The United Nations tried to mediate, sending in even more peacekeepers…but by the time both sides of the civil war reached the negotiating table, the damage had been done.

An entire generation of adults, whipped up by fury and fervour, had been crippled or killed in the civil war.

Blighted by both guilt and insanity, memory-Gaius eventually found a good use — the only use — of the bloodsoaked money he’d earned by trading hundreds of thousands of lives. Returning to the country, he started off by setting up a shelter for those who had lost everything in the war.

There were far more than he thought existed.

From there, the montage sped up. Days passed in seconds, creating a monochrome montage of him picking up children who had lost everything in the war. He would bring them to a disused warehouse, which would have the barest necessities for living. There, they would stay for as long as possible, until desperate adults noted the presence of an orphanage there.

The Gaius back then would move on to another such warehouse that had been prepared in advance stealthily, whenever these desperate people had gathered in sufficient numbers. There was no point in clashing with desperate people, and in the early years of his endeavour, leaving behind mattresses and other daily implements there was common for him.

He had no issues with finances, however. The money from that single bullet was more than enough to provide for orphans over and over again, although getting them on time was the real difficulty. Eventually, he made do with a paramilitary organisation, ordering essential supplies from them at a marked-up cost.

For the next few years, as the peace process continued, Gaius continued to bring the orphans he picked up from place to place. Fortunately, he wasn’t alone in this regard — charities from all over the world were beginning to stream in to help, encouraged by the drop in violence. With their help, Gaius finally found a stable living place for his wards.

At the same time, he began to pass down knowledge to the older children, the ones that would eventually leave the orphanage. In a world of violence, the most important thing he had to do was to arm them with the ability to survive the streets. He didn’t care about what the people from the charities thought, and surprisingly enough, some of them supported it.

Normalcy followed…or at least a farcical semblance of it, but he could never forget what he had wrought with his own two hands. There were always homeless, dying children roaming the streets whenever he went outside. It got particularly bad in the winter, when heavy snowfall claimed both life and limb.

All these things combined to remind Gaius that his efforts, in the remaining decades of his life, couldn’t never match up to the impact of that one bullet. As a single person, capable of only ensuring the lives of a few hundred children, there was nothing he could do about the true cause of so many orphans.

The civil war he created, and the violence and animosity that followed.

He could not change the hearts of people. In the end, his efforts at redemption only addressed the outcomes of his single act. The conflagration he’d ignited could not be controlled by anyone, and every so often, violence would break out, setting back the peace process drastically.

Under his care, orphaned children grew into adults, some of which who helped out in running the little place. At the same time, charities sent both aid and orphans that they picked up to him, but by then, he had been stricken with some disease he no longer cared to address.

Forty-three years after the peace process started, with no end in sight, Gaius passed away in a wintry night, surrounded by the people that he had orphaned indirectly.

In the end, he had not done enough.