Fin

My eyes part slowly, my head is throbbing, and my limbs hurt. All around me is an endless, infinite void… yet it isn’t “the void” I came to hate with all my being. This realm was filled with calm and serenity, a sense of something I hadn’t felt in years… “home”. Distant laughter could be heard as I floated aimlessly through the space around me, dragged along by some invisible force. Colors stained the darkness around me, flashes and strings of every color imaginable, lightning striking some distant point off in the horizon. Slowly I came to a halt as my feet landed on an invisible surface, which brought yet another sensation to me. A jolting pain struck my body as I collapsed grasping my side, realizing that I was bleeding. The pain was one of the few things worth feeling anymore, and even that was questionable as no amount of pain had ever brought me close to death. Vision blurred I stumbled up to my feet huffing lightly as I looked forward seeing a distant light shining brightly. 

Hours would pass before I finally fell to my knees before the light and looked at it longingly. I reached into it and felt every feeling I had lost rush back into me physically flinging me back. Standing up once more I saw a dark figure hunched over where the light once was. An amalgamation of shadowy tendrils in the form of a human body, twitching in place. I knew what it was, the thing that created this whole nightmare, Umbra Inanis… the being that resided within the Dark Void. The very entity that haunted me for years of my life and literally tore my consciousness apart, creating demons out of my soul. Its head turned to me eyes glaring with a distinct yellow. I had seen it before in apparitions, but so close, and so real? The feeling of despair was overwhelming yet, something was familiar to me in all this emotion. Instinct took over as I walked towards it, and it spoke out in a million tongues spanning space and time itself. 

“End me. Finish the cycle.”

The voices were different yet similar bringing memories to my mind that I knew were not mine but at the same time also mine. I took a step back and confusingly asked it, “What are you?”

It grinned as it took the silhouette of my own body, wearing the clothes that Syndicate so distinctly had worn. It got close to me and in a low rumble explained, “We are everything you created, everyone you were. Every universe that revolved around your story became us. We are you. Every memory, every moment… culminated.”

I froze as the realization hit me, that perhaps this was actually true. The insanity, the pushing me over the edge. My destiny had been set by something this entire time, and while I knew of other beings high above me in the universe it began to make sense. Who better to save yourself, than you. Syndicate had tried to achieve that goal but became corrupted because of it, or had he? 

As if it had read my mind it explained, “He was you, he is me. Before me but after you. The process is arduous to reach our state, it twisted our minds, made us a monster hellbent on stopping the painful cycle Jon. We were not built for living this reality, we were not designed to travel between worlds. In the desperate bid to cut loose the strings holding your fate in place, you yourself drove further into the darkness. We are not darkness Jon, we are good… we are love.”

I teared up as it spoke… Did I speak? This entire time I was living some misunderstood story, a lie made up by who… what? I was strung along by some false understanding, a false goal to save myself. Billions suffered at our hand for the sake of my salvation and yet even then, nothing was achieved. This was the end goal, this is the result of our collective madness. This place is my grave. The endpoint.

I turned to Umbra Inanis once again and offered my hand, which it took, it’s demeanor calming. As we held hands it shifted it’s essence into me, drifting like dust into the expanse behind me. I was whole once more, finally a constant creation in the larger scope of the universes abroad. Tears came to my eyes as every memory I ever experienced across the worlds I lived in flashed before my eyes. Peace was finally upon me, abrupt and sudden but finally, I had attained it. I understood my purpose, and my atonement was clear. 

In my hand was a music box, and as I took the handle and cranked it I heard what I could only describe as the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Something the universe composed for me, to finally put me to sleep. I became one with the stars, my body forever stuck in a sleep as I shed every life, every sin off of my shoulders till one day there was nothing left of me in the universe… goodbye.

Fin