The sky didn't cry when the world ended.
No thunder, no mourning clouds. Just silence.
Even as the last body dropped to the floor, twitching and sputtering blood like a broken fountain, the world dared to stay still.
He stood alone in the middle of it all.
Clothes drenched.
Hands trembling—not from fear or exhaustion, but rage so deep it had no place to go.
Elias.
That was the name he once bore with a smile.
Before the kingdom of Athellion.
Before the blood.
Before gods and demons made a joke out of his existence.
Now there was no one to call him that.
His foot crushed a photo frame beneath it, shards slicing through the sole of his boot like it wanted him to feel something. The picture inside was faded. A birthday party. His mother's gentle smile. His younger sister's toothy grin. Friends crowding behind them with cake and laughter. All ghosts now. And ghosts didn't bleed when you screamed.
Elias picked up one shard—just one—and stared at the reflection.
Sunken eyes.
A jaw clenched too tightly for comfort.
A scar down the bridge of his nose, a trophy from the sword duel with the Warden of Blackvale.
A monster, wearing the skin of a man.
And somewhere behind those dead eyes… something moved.
"Why?" he whispered, though he knew no answer would come.
His footsteps echoed through the ruined house.
Blood painted the walls. Not just recent blood—layers of it, old and dry, hiding beneath new smears. He saw handprints. Scratches. Desperate messages scrawled in fingernails. His sister's journal lay open on the floor, pages torn, ink smeared.
They came again. He's looking for you. We tried to hide, Eli. We really did.
He tore the page free and pocketed it, like it could matter now.
A static hum tickled the air.
Not magic—no, he knew that scent all too well. This was different. Synthetic.
Like a memory trying to push its way back into the world.
He turned.
Someone stood in the hallway.
Tall. Hooded. Wearing a mask shaped like a broken clock.
"You're late," Elias said.
The figure tilted its head. "You never asked for the truth."
"I didn't need to."
The masked one stepped forward. "Then why are you here?"
"To finish the past."
"You are the past."
Elias raised his hand, fingers flaring with violet flame. "And you're the last one tied to it."
They didn't flinch. Instead, they laughed—a hollow, mechanical noise that seemed to echo from inside his skull rather than the hallway. "You still don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?"
"That this world wasn't supposed to exist."
The flames in his hand died without warning. Not because he willed it—but because something tore the magic from his bones.
The hallway bent. Walls cracked and stretched. The ceiling peeled upward like skin from bone.
Reality shivered.
"Your grief is artificial," the figure said. "Your pain, your memories, even your return—planted. Groomed. A narrative written for a weapon."
Elias staggered back. "Shut up."
"They never lived, Elias."
"You're lying."
"Were they ever real?"
The world twisted harder. The blood-stained walls blinked. The hallway became a forest. Then a battlefield. Then a classroom. Then—
His childhood bedroom.
Elias gasped. Photos on the desk. His old cracked phone buzzing with missed calls. Laughter down the hallway. His sister yelling for him to turn down the volume.
No blood.
No fire.
No magic.
"Welcome home," the masked figure whispered.
Elias dropped to his knees, clutching his head. The power surged inside him, trying to rip free. But it was drowning—drowning in doubt, in heartbreak, in something deeper than betrayal.
He screamed.
The walls shattered. The illusion burned away. Back to the blood. The broken picture. The mask.
But the seed was planted.
"What am I?" he asked.
The figure tilted its head again, then slowly reached for the mask.
Underneath…
A mirror.
It was him.
Not older. Not younger. The same age. The same face.
But eyes filled with something Elias hadn't seen in years.
Hope.
"Goodbye, Elias," the figure said.
Then it vanished.
And Elias stood alone.
For the first time in a long time, his hands stopped shaking.
The silence was louder than any battlefield.
Elias stood in the ruins of the house, the echo of his other self's departure lingering like smoke.
The mirror-faced figure was gone, but it left behind something worse than death—uncertainty.
Was any of it real?
The demons he'd killed.
The quests he'd bled for.
The gods he'd defied.
The friends he buried with shaking hands.
Were they stories someone else wrote?
His fingers dug into the floor. Beneath the dried blood and cracked tile, he could feel the hum of power still clinging to his skin. Not magic. Not anymore. This was raw will—unrefined, unchained, and dangerous.
The lie burned in his skull.
"They never lived, Elias."
He punched the floor hard enough to shatter it. Chunks of cement and wood splintered across the room. A pulse of black energy burst outward in a shockwave, disintegrating the furniture. Dust filled the air, thick and suffocating, like a world choking on its own secrets.
He rose slowly.
"You wanted a weapon," he muttered, "and you got one."
If they made him, they would regret it. If they lied about his world, he would tear theirs apart.
Even if the people he loved weren't real…
He was.
And he remembered the pain.
That made it real enough.
He stepped outside, boots crunching over glass. The street was empty. The sun was too bright.
It felt wrong.
Everything did.
Across the road, a boy rode a bike, headphones in, oblivious to the fact that a god-killer was walking a few feet away. A mother shouted from a window about dinner. A dog barked.
Normalcy.
But Elias saw the seams in the illusion.
The world glitched for a moment. Just a flicker.
The boy froze mid-pedal. The sun skipped a beat. The dog barked twice at once.
He blinked—and it was gone.
"Yeah," he whispered. "You're slipping."
The cracks were getting worse.
This world—if it even was a world—was rotting.
Because he had returned.
And he wasn't meant to.
His phone buzzed.
He hadn't touched it in days.
Unknown Number. One message.
"Come to the origin."
No address. No explanation. But he knew.
The school.
Not the one he grew up in—the real one. The one he woke up in, bleeding and broken, after falling back from the other world.
It had been sealed. Condemned. Swallowed by time and government hush-orders. But it was where it all began. The portal. The blood. The vanishing.
He turned without hesitation.
---
It took hours to reach the edge of the old city.
Skyscrapers fell away to rot.
Neon lights gave way to broken street lamps and alleyways thick with forgotten screams.
The school stood like a corpse too stubborn to rot.
Gates rusted shut. Windows shattered. Doors chained.
But the building pulsed—soft, blue light flickering behind the cracks. Like a heart still beating after death.
He stepped through the front gate.
Inside, the walls were alive.
Paint peeled like scabs. The floorboards groaned under his weight. And the memories hit him like bricks—blood on the lockers. Screaming teachers. A girl with half a face crawling toward him as the portal ate the classroom whole.
He climbed the stairs.
They creaked in protest, like they remembered too.
At the top floor—room 3-2.
It was untouched.
Exactly as he left it.
Chalk on the board. Blood on the floor. His name carved into the desk.
And in the center of it all—
A chair.
Facing a mirror.
Just like the one worn by the figure before.
He stepped in slowly.
His reflection moved on its own.
"You look like shit," the mirror-Elias said.
"Not here for compliments."
The reflection stood.
It stepped through the glass like it was water, landing softly on the ground.
No mask this time. No cryptic message. Just Elias… without the hate.
The version of him before the war.
The one who still smiled.
"What now?" he asked himself.
The other Elias shrugged. "Depends. You want the truth?"
"No more riddles."
"The world's fake."
"I figured."
"But you aren't. You're the glitch. The virus. The reason this world is falling apart."
"So kill me."
Other-Elias chuckled. "No. You've already done that part."
Elias froze. "What?"
The room flickered again.
Bodies. Dozens of them. All versions of him. Some smiling. Some sobbing. One clawing at the mirror screaming to be let out.
"You've done this loop hundreds of times," said the doppelganger. "Each time they send you back. Each time you reject the peace. You want revenge so badly… the system resets itself."
Elias staggered back.
"No. No, I remember. I never—"
"You don't remember because they erase it. You think you're back for the first time."
A pause.
"But you're not the first Elias. You're the only one who survived long enough to find this room."
The door slammed shut behind them.
Elias turned.
All mirrors.
Hundreds. Thousands.
Each reflecting a different version of him.
The soldier. The mage. The assassin. The coward. The king. The traitor.
And in each one, something worse. Something monstrous.
"Pick one," his reflection said. "Or break them all."
Elias clenched his fists.
Then he screamed and shattered the mirrors.
All of them.
The building shook.
The ground split.
And behind the glass…
Something smiled.
The mirrors shattered.
Thousands of Eliases screamed in unison. Each version twisted, deformed, screaming no in a thousand different languages and tones. Some begged. Some cursed. Others simply laughed—mad, hollow laughter that echoed across the multiverse.
And behind the glass…
The truth.
A single black eye opened.
Not metaphor. Not magic. Not illusion.
A real eye. Wide, ancient, older than time—staring directly at Elias through the void.
It didn't blink.
It didn't move.
It didn't need to.
Because it was watching.
Elias staggered back. Blood trickled from his nose. His vision cracked like glass.
"What... the hell... is that?"
The echo of his former self was gone. No more riddles. No more mirrors.
Just the eye.
Watching.
It had no voice, but its presence roared inside his skull.
You should not have come this far.
He tried to run—but his body didn't respond.
His legs twitched. His arms locked.
The air thickened into syrup. His heartbeat slowed to a crawl.
He was drowning in a gaze.
The classroom burned around him. Not fire. Memory. All the versions of himself screamed from the fragments of the past, each reliving the death of their world in looped torment.
He had unlocked something he was never meant to see.
A console flickered in front of him—hovering midair.
It was labeled:
[ADMIN CONTROL: SYSTEM CORE // LAST USER: UNKNOWN]
Two buttons.
[SHUT DOWN]
[REBOOT]
He stared. "What the hell is this?"
You are the last free variable. The others complied. You resist. You break. You infect.
He coughed blood. "Good."
Reboot, and you'll live a peaceful life. No memories. No pain. A clean slate.
He didn't move.
Shut down... and everything ends. No story. No world. No gods. No you.
Still, he didn't move.
"You kept me in a loop," Elias whispered. "You killed the people I loved. You erased them again and again. You made me think I had a purpose."
He looked at his reflection in the broken glass. The monster. The murderer. The god-slayer.
And he smiled.
"Fuck your peace."
He slammed his hand on SHUT DOWN.
---
[CRITICAL ERROR]
[MEMORY COLLAPSE INITIATED]
[WORLD END SEQUENCE: CODE BLACK]
The world cracked.
From the sky, from the sea, from the soul.
People froze in mid-breath. Cities halted. Gravity warped. Colors drained.
And at the center of it all—Elias stood alone.
The eye closed.
The scream of existence dying was beautiful.
And then—darkness.
---
...
...
...
...
...
> [SYSTEM LOG CORRUPTED]
[ALL SAVE FILES LOST]
[NO BACKUP AVAILABLE]
...
Until…
A faint heartbeat.
In the dark.
A child's laugh.
A shadow.
A whisper:
"You think that was the end?"
And somewhere—deep, deep in a corrupted folder buried beneath the digital ruins of the world—
A new file appeared.
Untitled_Sequel_Prototype.ver0.01
But no one would open it.
Because no one survived.
Or did they?
---
Fin