The world was dead.
Nothing alive remained. No grass, no wind, no rain. Only a silence too heavy, too perfect, erasing even the memory of movement. Above, the sky was fractured like broken glass, each crack glowing with a golden light, suspended as if time itself hesitated to flow.
Collapsed mountains, dried oceans, cities reduced to dust — all bore witness to a vast past, perhaps glorious, but long extinguished. And in the midst of this frozen desolation, as if torn from reality by the will of a superior force, floated a golden city.
It hovered above the void, rootless, without foundation. Its spired towers reached toward the fractured heavens. Its hanging bridges led nowhere, connecting broken platforms in impossible balance. There was no sound, no breath. But the city endured. As if refusing to accept the collapse of the world.
And at the center, where the invisible paths of this divine architecture converged, sat a lone figure.
He did not move.
Cross-legged, hands resting on his knees, head slightly bowed, as if meditating. His body was veiled, blurred — not entirely human, not entirely energy. A mixture of shadow and light, of substance and absence. He looked like a tear in the very fabric of reality.
But it was his eyes...
His eyes were open.
Two abysses.
In one, stars shimmered, countless. In the other, they were extinguished, swallowed in a darkness blacker than death. His eyes were not made to see — they were made to contain. They had seen. Eras. Cycles. Entire civilizations born in pride and dying in silence. Truths fervently declared, then broken, forgotten. His eyes did not judge. They observed.
Forgotten texts, whispered in dead tongues, had called him: The One Who Sees Through the Void, or He Who Walks Beneath the Black Sky.
But he… had no name.
Not yet. Or perhaps he had lost it.
He no longer remembered.
There was no pain in his expression, nor fear. Only a cold, absolute peace — like that of a being who had transcended the need to understand, or to struggle.
Suddenly, a voice echoed.
It came from no throat. It did not vibrate through air, but through the very weave of what was still real.
> — The time has come.
The silence contracted.
As if the universe itself had drawn a breath.
A golden breath slowly descended from the sky. No — not a breath. A presence. A mass of energy, fluid, luminous, alive. It had no defined form, no clear outline. At times, it resembled a man, at others, a mythical beast, or a cloud of fire. But it was. Majestic. Solemn.
And it was afraid.
Its voice, though firm, carried hesitation, restrained reverence, a buried fear.
> — You have seen… you have understood… you have endured.
> — But now you must forget. To be reborn.
> — This world is finished. The next awaits you.
He, the being with eyes of the void, did not respond.
He simply bowed his head, slowly.
He accepted.
In the air, a seal appeared. Vast, complex, magnificent. It seemed woven from ancient symbols, fundamental laws, golden and silver lines pulsing with the rhythm of forgotten truths. The runes turned slowly, forming circles, spirals, impossible geometries.
It was a Seal of Forgetting.
He did not resist.
He knew.
He had chosen.
> — You will keep a few fragments… shards of truth. But nothing more.
Then, the golden city trembled.
A nonexistent wind rose, and the towers began to dissolve. Not violently. But with grace. As if they had never been meant to last. As if they were merely a memory too ancient to still exist.
Stardust lifted slowly, carried away into the void.
He closed his eyes.
And in that final instant, before everything faded, a single thought passed through his consciousness:
> "What am I really?"
Then, all was gone.
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