As the last god died at the hands of the evil he had once cast into the abyss —
evil summoned anew by the greed and vice of his greatest creation —
he lost all hope in humanity.
And all was lost.
At least… for them.
For that reality.
I had seen this play out a hundred times before —
in all the realities that came and crumbled before this one.
I walked the path I knew too well —
carved into my being by endless repetition:
The path to a new reality.
I looked back.
And what I saw was carnage —
a world torn apart by the absence of light,
the absence of good,
the silence of calm,
the death of hope.
I should have helped.
I should have tried.
If not for all... then at least for one.
But the truth is:
The path I walk cannot be taught.
It can only be seen.
Then why…
Why did that cowering boy, clutching the fading hand of a friend long since gone,
seem to follow the very path I stride upon?
Humanity's arrogance… their blindness...
They marched toward extinction with heads held high —
not in defiance,
but in delusion.
The skies cracked,
the ground wept,
and still…
they clawed through shattered storefronts,
trampling one another for baubles and boxes.
Looting the corpse of a dying world.
As if one more luxury could buy back the breath of a burning planet.
They did not run.
They did not weep.
They consumed.
Amidst this desolate destruction, the boy — possibly driven by some ethereal force — still kept walking the same path as me. Not out of fear of the chaos around him, but from the grief of losing the one he called brother.
I know not what made me do it.
I know not if it was even truly me.
But I approached.
I called out to the boy —
burdened with a hearse of guilt,
oblivious to the tragic fate that tethered him to my own.
There was something in his sorrow,
something ancient and unspoken,
that mirrored the hollowness carved into me across realities.
I asked him,
"Is this the body of one you hold dearly?
Is he your blood?"
He did not look up.
His fingers tightened around the cold, lifeless hand.
But his voice was steady,
cutting through the ash-choked silence.
"He may not be blood," he said,
"but he is far greater than any family I ever had.
And so, I regard him as my brother."
"But does it not bother you… that he is dead?" I asked —
not out of cruelty,
but curiosity.
A strange, flickering thing I had not felt in aeons.
He looked at me then.
Not with anger.
Not with tears.
But with a stillness that unsettled even the void within me.
"It does," he said.
"Every breath I take without him burns.
Every step I walk feels stolen.
But if I collapse here… if I let grief bury me beside him…
then everything he was —
everything he gave —
will be for nothing."
"Yes… it would be unfortunate," I murmured.
"Then would it not be better… if he walked?"
The words slipped from me like a whisper from something ancient —
something deeper than thought,
older than mercy.
Not a question.
Not quite a temptation.
Perhaps… a test.
The boy blinked, confused.
Grief and hope wrestled in his eyes,
each desperate to silence the other.
"He cannot walk," he said, softly.
"He's gone."
I stepped closer.
"Gone, yes.
But must he remain so?"
The wind stilled.
The sky above trembled.
And far beneath the scorched bones of the earth—
"The body is a temple…
for the being you call a soul," I said.
"If a body leaves one reality without it,
it can never be repossessed.
And if one leaves with the soul,
he gains immortality —
for the soul has no way to escape the mortal coil once bound to it again."
I paused,
watching the boy's grief stricken face.
"But your friend…
for him, it will be different.
His soul has already seen the path out.
I can bring it back —
but walking the path we now tread,
in the next world,
his soul will forget.
It will try to remember,
for it has tasted eternal peace,
and will crave it again.
So he will be mortal.
And it would be better —
for all involved —
if, in the process of his resurrection,
he forgets all that he once loved…
including you.
That way,
he may live a content life —
the kind neither you nor I
have the leisure to enjoy."
The boy looked up at me,
eyes narrowed not in anger,
but in fragile disbelief.
"And how," he asked,
"how do I believe you?"
I did not smile.
There was no need.
"Do not fret, young one," I replied,
my voice like wind through ruins,
gentle, but heavy with things long buried.
"For I have done this…
many times before.
One of them was called Yeshua of Bethlehem —
a remarkable man,
the likes of whom I am yet to meet again."
The boy was silent.
His gaze dropped once more to the face of his fallen brother —
and for a moment,
I saw the war behind his eyes.
Hope battling guilt.
Love contending with loss.
"If he forgets me," he said at last,
"if he forgets all we were…
then who will remember him as he truly was?"
"You," I answered.
Without hesitation.
Without mercy.
"You will carry the weight.
You will remember the laughter,
the fury,
the quiet moments between the storms.
You will carry the memory so he may live unburdened.
And in doing so…
you will walk the path I walk."
He trembled.
Not out of fear.
But acceptance.
And in that moment,
I knew:
Another soul was stepping into the endless cycle.
Another bearer of memory.
Another god walking toward the next reality.