Eternal Collapse
Chapter 1. The Beginning of Eternity
When I was seven, I learned what death sounds like. Not in movies. Not on the news. At home.
I remember the smell. Gunpowder, blood, and scorched air. I remember how my father screamed even after they'd already shot him through. I remember how my mother tried to shield my brother with her own body, as if her flesh could stop bullets. It couldn't.
I sat under the table and watched them die.
Then they found me. Not the police. The same people who came to kill.
They didn't shoot. They smiled.
"Such eyes," one of them said. "They'll be useful to us."
And so, my new life began.
They didn't teach me how to live. They taught me how to kill.
No name. No past. Just a part of the mechanism performing its function. My function was simple — to kill.
By the age of forty I was already a legend in narrow circles. Politicians, generals, businessmen… People who thought they ruled the world died by my hand.
I never asked questions. I didn't care.
One day they gave me an order. The president. My president. The man who gave orders to kill. The man because of whom my family died.
And I didn't refuse.
I killed him. I killed his wife. I killed his children.
A week later my country drowned in the fire of civil war.
I realized it too late.
So, I simply pressed the barrel of the pistol to my temple and pulled the trigger.
…
I expected darkness.
But I received white light.
Endless empty space. White walls — if they even were walls. White floor. White ceiling. And a table.
I was sitting at it.
Across from me sat a man in a black suit. White shirt. Black tie. He had no face.
Or rather… he did have one. But my brain refused to see it. As though there was something there that a human being is not supposed to know.
"Do you understand what you've done?" he asked calmly.
"I took revenge," I answered.
"Yes," he nodded. "You took revenge. And you also destroyed a country."
Images appeared in front of me. Burning cities. Dead children. Tanks in the streets. Rivers of blood.
"Civil war," he said. "Millions of dead. And you became its beginning."
"So, I deserve hell?" I asked.
"It's not that simple."
He clasped his hands together.
"You were a victim. You had the right to hate. And yet… your actions triggered a catastrophe."
He fell silent. As though weighing my life on invisible scales.
"I cannot decide whether you deserve punishment… or peace."
I smirked.
"Then why am I here?"
"Because there is a third path."
He stood up. The white space trembled.
"You will go to another world," he leaned toward me. "In time you will understand everything."
The white space vanished, as though sucked into a single point.
…
And I opened my eyes again.
On a shore.
Before me stretched a blue sea that reached all the way to the horizon. Beneath my feet I felt white sand. I turned around. The beach was narrow. Behind it rose hills covered with bushes and trees. It somehow reminded me of the French Mediterranean coast, where I had been only once in my life, but still remembered clearly.
I took off my leather boots and the clothes that belonged to my old world, and stepped into the water. Why not. The view was too beautiful to just stand on the shore.
In the reflection on the water, I saw a completely different face. The face of a young, rather handsome guy of about twenty, maybe even younger. I touched my face and head. Dark wavy hair fell to my shoulders.
"Well, thank you," I smirked. "It's better to start a new life in a new body."
I swam for a couple of minutes, came back to shore and got dressed.
Then I decided to climb the hill and look around. Perhaps there was a settlement somewhere nearby.
…
I didn't notice it right away. At some moment something appeared on the top of the hill.
At first it seemed like just a person. But it looked too strange.
Then it moved. After that it slowly turned toward me.
I froze.
I blinked — and there was no one on the hill anymore. But suddenly I felt someone's presence right behind me.
Goosebumps covered my whole body.
I turned around.
He stood motionless. I didn't move either.
Before me stood a being as if assembled from two different worlds.
Its body was divided exactly in half: one side pale, as though scorched by the sun, the other — black as wet coal.
The skin on the light side was cracked and seemed ready to flake off. On the dark side it was alive, dense, and something constantly moved beneath it, as though thin worms crawled under the surface.
From the shoulders and back rose something like smoke.
The face… if it could be called a face… was stitched together from those same two halves.
One eye burned with cold, dead blue light, as though ready to devour me. The other — with warm orange glow.
It felt like those eyes weren't looking at me. They seemed to see everything at once. I couldn't understand why it felt that way, but I could sense and realize it.
The mouth was twisted, as though someone had tried to tear it apart from the inside.
The entire body was wrapped in small chains. The chains broke off sharply and vanished into the air, as though attached to something I couldn't see.
"Cause and effect is the fundamental connection between phenomena, where cause is that which produces or gives rise to another phenomenon," he suddenly began to speak, although his mouth didn't move. "And effect is the result or consequence of that phenomenon."
"What the hell are you—"
Before I could finish, he continued:
"Nothing happens without a cause, and every action or event has its basis in another event."
He sounded like a soulless robot reciting information from Wikipedia.
This place didn't look like hell, but the creature before me seemed the pure embodiment of the devil.
What was all that talk about cause and effect for?
"Strange," he said. "I cannot see either cause or effect."
I didn't understand what he meant, but most likely it had something to do with me not being from this world.
"Who are you?"
I managed to say — and in the next instant one of the chains that enveloped his body pierced straight through my stomach. A second later the chain returned to him. And the blood that remained on it was sucked up by tiny worms that crawled out from under his skin.
I clutched my stomach. The pain was unbearable. My old body had been somewhat accustomed to pain and wounds, but in this body the pain hit full force.
Yet all this time, along with the pain, I felt something inexplicable. A second later I understood what it was. My wound had completely healed.
"So, you can regenerate?" the demon asked in surprise.
Yes, I think "demon" was the most fitting name for this creature.
"Trust me, I'm just as surprised," I answered.
"Release your energy," the demon said.
I didn't understand what he meant.
"Release energy?"
I wanted to ask again — when suddenly I felt my body beginning to emit an enormous amount of… "An enormous amount of what?" flashed through my mind.
Perhaps this was the "release of energy" the demon had spoken of.
In an instant he appeared right in front of me and swung his arm to strike.
I blocked the blow by crossing my arms, but the force was so great that it threw me dozens of meters back.
I crashed through one tree after another, breaking both them and my own bones.
My limbs cracked, ribs shattered, yet I kept tumbling forward.
I somehow managed to stop, but lost balance and rolled down the hill.
The bones in my arms were crushed, several ribs broken.
But they quickly restored themselves.
I slammed into another tree and finally came to a stop.
The pain was intense, but almost immediately vanished thanks to the regeneration.
I tried to stand, but dizziness made me fall again and roll further down.
That's how I rolled all the way back to the beach.
The demon was already waiting for me there.
I didn't have time to get up before he kicked me.
The blow was so powerful that I immediately felt dozens of bones break.
I was thrown several meters, I started vomiting blood, but the demon had no intention of stopping.
He lifted me with one hand and hurled me dozens of meters again.
I landed head-first, broke my neck, but within a couple of seconds everything healed.
I stood up sharply.
"You don't hit a man when he's down," I smirked. "Where's your demonic honor?"
In moments like these people get an adrenaline surge, and the survival instinct kicks in at maximum.
But I… I was enjoying it.
"Want to fight, you bastard?" I shouted, laughing. "Then let's fight!"
I took a fighting stance and…
in the next instant I felt my head separate from my body.