I'm alone. Ever since I was born, I have been by myself. That is the truth I came to accept with the passing of time.

Even though all those faces around me would react rashly to such cold words, that was how I felt deep inside. I had tried many times to do something about it, but all efforts were fruitless. It didn't matter how much love they gave me, how much care they showed, or how hard they worked to make me happy. None of that mattered, because it wasn't something they could fix, it wasn't their fault at all.

There was an abyss deep inside me, a voice coiling around my thoughts and pulsing with slow-burning death. When it was dark outside and lights were turned off, when the doors closed and the windows shut, silence took over, and from its depths that voice would bestow judgment. Just like the demons of smoke, it would attack where it hurt, whenever I feared it the most.

It knew who I was, it knew my successes and also my failures, my ups and downs, it knew it all. The cries of war resonated, ever since I was born into this world, I have been at war with something inside me.

Lethargic thoughts emerge from the depths of unconsciousness, a few sensations slip through my skin, a warm feeling bathes my body feeling like I'm floating on a soft mattress.

'It's over.'

Whatever I had been trying to accomplish was out of reach now. The memory lay in a corner, still intact, though its grotesque tentacles made an unwelcome effort to extend over my mind. The memory of dying crushed like a mundane cockroach, shouting my lungs out as a meatball of boiling flesh devoured my body. Liquifing my bones and merging with me into a homogeneous mass of filth.

Those last thoughts come in a tide, as faced the reaper himself.

'I don't want to-'

I couldn't even finish that sentence before meeting my fate.

And now that it had ended. This is what existed behind the veil of reality. I lay somewhere far away from pain, suffering, misery, and terror. Somewhere far beyond that hell, and yet close to it too. It was something strange, I could describe it as being a step between this world and the next. Somehow.

My consciousness manifested as a half-transparent, ethereal body. My lungs didn't inhale, my heart didn't beat.

An outsider, I was a spectator stuck between both realms. Surrounded by a pitch-black background, my knees and legs felt soaked in transparent liquid as I floated on its surface without sinking. I didn't need to glance around to figure out this wasn't the afterlife either.

My cyan eyes fliquered, staring down at my feet.

"Of all people..."

Without lips, my words resounded in the emptiness. I didn't need something spectacular, I didn't need to wake up in a dreamland where I could make my last wishes come true, I didn't need to reach heaven. None of that mattered to me, I just wished to rest now. To remain alone, and to think before choosing where to go in this vast expanse.

Yet, of all the people that could have been here to receive me.

Cold and unmoving, roots extended from the depths of the dark liquid. Surfacing a single crimson-colored rose.

"Why is it you."

A dead man.

Just like the people he had met on his short journey, his eyes were hollow. His skin was as thin as paper, consumed in acid, his bloodied skull had cracked at the back, with pinkish brain matter spewing all over the floor, together with its flattened and mangled limbs. It almost looked like a skeleton, a truly miserable sight.

It almost seemed the world had placed all of its wrath on that man. All the odds had been stacked against him and yet here he was, resting before me, dead. And still not defeated.

"Why is it you again."

A palpable wide grin remained drawn over what remained on his face. Like if it had been all a game, like if he had achieved anything at all. Who would have guessed, even though I lived through all that bullshit, I managed to smile at the very end.

"What am I saying... You were always that way. Only smiling when everything is stacked against you, only trying when it was too late."

I began walking away from that corpse, whitish ripples followed me as I advanced. I wanted to get far away from that sorry sight.

"You have seen enough, tried far too many times to beat the impossible."

I kept walking.

I walked for a very long time, without a compass, with only direction. The burning conviction that there was something else waiting for me eventually extinguished. The only resonance was the ripples of my steps.

| Plop |

Falling water, rushing black liquid. The foreign sound made a contrast and shook my mind awake. Like a lighthouse, in the depth of mist, a multi-colored brilliance radiated in the same direction.

'Maybe there was- afterall-'

Once the radiance died out though, there were no surprises. I was back at the start.

It had always been the same, it was him, the corpse, and myself.

He had taken the form of a spirit, similar to mine. His body resembled an ember, with thin shining limbs, and deep torch-like eyes.

| Plop |

Without even acknowledging my presence his hands dived in the black liquid, letting it fall over the dead me.

| Plop |

'What are you even trying to accomplish?'

Repulsive. I couldn't help but feel disgusted at that scene. Like splashing water over a grounded fish in the hopes of making it swim again. A childish dream. The aptitude to achieve the utterly impossible.

Yet this time, I didn't have the strength to say it out loud.

| Plop |

The water overflowed the body's broken ribs, eroding bloody red flesh on its way. Only a faint rainbowish glow was left behind.

'What is that.'

My hand tried reaching for his arms in an attempt to stop him, whatever futile attempts, but I couldn't.

"We'll get up again."

Without even sparing me a glance, his hands moved on their own. I kneeled down and stared.

'It's over...'

I tried to convince myself, repeating again and again. For hours I stared, as he achieved the impossible with his own hands. The dead came to life.

"The barrier between possible and impossible, we'll break it."

Those words echo inside my skull.

"How?"

I utter to the eternal silence, the only audience is my unconscious body. Of course, no one answers. I do not know when exactly, he vanished somewhere along the way.

The body was complete, death would have to wait until next time. As a gluttonous colossus, reality shallowed us back to those black waters.

Everything went dark for a second, only that noise again. That dreadful rhythmic drum that accompanied all calamities. I hated that noise.

| Bump |

| Bump Bump |

| Bump Bump |

| Bump Bump |

"AGH!!-gsh"

I wince in pain like a rat, and the soft liquid surrounding me becomes increasingly hot. The bursting bubbles of boiling goo reach my ears, together with the dancing sound of flames. I bathe in pain and struggle for air, with a defiant yet joyous smile on my face.

"You did it. You crazy fuck."

The black sky above was now covered in fumes from the unending combustion hunting the city. A subtle smell of meat and blood lingered in the motionless atmosphere. I find myself in a hole, dug deep under the asphalt, spanning several dozens of meters under the surface.

There is no time to wonder why though.

'I must move as soon as possible.'

My shaky legs stood up with a bit of effort. My hands grasp the almost vertical surface before me, I start climbing.

As I climbed, my eyes started adapting to the blazing inferno that surrounded me. The tall columns and solemn entrance to the town hall a couple of meters before me enabled me to pierce under the layers of flames. I found myself in one of the central avenues of the city.

'So it's here.'

This street was somewhat of a familiar place. Just a couple of months back, before my last senior year came to an end, I used to walk up and down this road on my way to high school. It had only been months, yet those memories had become so foggy in mere hours that it almost seemed like a far-away dream.

Those colors that painted the street's plentiful shops were drained by fire, green trees were reduced to ashes, and buildings were covered in a layer of dust and smoke. And yet somehow I remained in the same place.

The buildings blur out as I advance through the sides of the pavement, my hand remains behind me, sliding across the concrete walls. I can feel the rumbling in the distance, closing in with each passing second.

| Bang |

'Shit, It's too close.'

I sidestep and enter a building, the door half-opened, I sneak inside and make sure to contain my breathing. The bursting and bending of streetlights, collapsing of walls, and cracking of bones, all in an improvised unison as that thing approaches. It's multiple set of eyes looking straight in my direction.

My own heart seems to stop beating each time one of its extremities makes contact with the ground. My body is still scared, but I'm not anymore. The grotesque lifeform eclipses the scorching first of destruction, the rancid smell of iron and flesh radiating from its body. Flashbacks from my first encounter with his kind resurface, the smile, the horror.

Have I really been found again? This easy?

Grinning from ear to ear, claw ready to transform my hiding into a tomb.

'Shit.'

I prepare to climb the stairs upwards, even if just to buy me a few more moments to think of a plan. I refuse to believe I can't even achieve it, I can't do it.

| Got yo-! |

Abruptly, the monster's words cut. The tearing pressure on the walls recedes, and only the huffing of steam remains in the place it used to be. The dismembered crustacean-like limbs remain unattached, that thing died in an instant.

A deep blue gem floats in the air, made visible the curtain of smoke disipates.

The crystalline object levitates and disappears in mere milliseconds, leaving a trail of misty-blue material behind. A shadow observes from above.

My knees bend once again as I crawl back up. Like a zombie, my body moves forwards remembering the lyrics that distant song about a far away time spent as an innocent child. Walking through the avenues, talking with classmates, discussing meaningless and childish stuff, smiling without expecting anything. I followed that young kid. Conquered his footsteps.

My legs cracked at each step. My muffled screams trying in vain to contain the pain. Back home. I'm coming back home.