Today, I'm going to die.
Not a fact. Not a prediction.
More like... a desire.
The hope that my torture might finally come to an end.
Sometimes I wish this were all just a dream.
I sleep to forget, but when I wake up...
everything’s still the same.
Did I do something to deserve this?
I can’t remember anymore. Everything’s hazy, like stains of color in a void.
Each stain is a part of me. But the void... is me too.
The light burns. A single LED lamp — indirect light, yet still painful.
Death should be a vast emptiness, not a flare.
I remember when I installed it. It was when...
Shit. No. Not again. Let me remember at least that.
Come on, brain, just a bit more. Like you always did.
Is that why this happened? Did I ask too much of you?
If so... I'm sorry.
Genius.
Haha. What a ridiculous word.
A genius would’ve done something.
A genius wouldn’t die like this.
A genius wouldn’t mistake his granddaughter for a lamp.
A genius would’ve spotted the brain tumor before it turned him into... this.
Let’s be real. I was just a well-dressed fraud.
At least there are people here. People I care about... I think.
I don’t remember most of them, but I recognize their presence. Somehow.
Is that...?
No. I don’t think so. He died long ago.
Although...
Did he, really?
The pain isn’t the worst part.
The worst part is the waiting.
That gnawing sense that I should still remember something important.
But I don’t know what it was.
Maybe that’s why I’m still alive. To remember.
Shapes. Figures. Concepts.
The only thing I can summon now is space.
Deep space.
At least once...
I wish I could’ve gone there.
Words overwhelm my ears.
Words that have lost their meaning.
The echo of people who no longer exist in my memories:
“I love you.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“Don’t move. Just relax.”
I try to answer...
But all that comes out is a moan.
Sometimes I think I respond.
But it’s just me. Talking to myself.
Déjà vu.
Did I say that already?
I think I keep repeating myself.
Repeating myself.
Myself. Constantly.
I dreamed of the sky, a ship, and a vast sea.
Glass-like fish moved faster than sound.
A woman with copper skin smiled at me.
A man with obsidian skin looked at me with pride.
I felt happy.
Loved.
Is this memory mine?
Of course not.
Just another hallucination.
Right?
Where's my favorite book?
Did I ever have one?
I remember a blue cover.
Maybe it was a notebook.
Maybe it was the sea.
I don’t want to think anymore.
I feel nothing. I only hear.
What’s that?
Music?
Heh.
Whoever played that... knew me well.
A familiar melody I can no longer remember.
My beloved music.
Will I ever hear you again?
The music stops.
Voices become notes.
I am inside a dissonant symphony.
I’ve become a thought on repeat.
There’s no body anymore.
Just me, within me.
Have I already died?
My limbs dissolve.
A rumble slows down with every pulse.
White noise consumes me.
I’m still me.
Or so I want to believe.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
I’m cold.
I’m in a loop.
A second has passed.
Two.
A month.
A century.
An eon.
Time no longer exists.
I feel like I’m falling without moving.
Not downward.
Inward.
Into the depths of myself.
I should say something.
But nothing comes to mind.
I think I...
...
...
...
I feel—
Do I feel? I do!
I can feel.
But what exactly am I feeling?
I can’t describe it.
I feel the universe and existence at every point, as if they weren’t separate things.
As if we weren’t separate things.
My sight spans 360 degrees.
I can see everything.
There is no darkness. Only light.
Light in its purest form.
Galaxies colliding.
Stars being born.
All within reach of my hands—
hands that no longer exist.
My body has melted into nothingness.
A nothingness that paradoxically contains everything.
Every action that ever happened in the universe—I feel it.
Every hydrogen atom fusing in the heart of a star.
Every object falling into a black hole, becoming pure information.
I hear voices.
Voices speaking in millions of languages I never knew.
Every being in existence says my name.
Each voice comes from every point in the universe.
I see visions.
Visions of me from countless perspectives:
My mother.
My father.
My wife.
My daughters.
And then I understand.
I can remember.
I remember everything!
Even what I had forgotten in life.
How I was born.
Who I was.
What I dreamed of.
Every time a memory returns,
a star extinguishes itself in gratitude.
There is a force—something like gravity—pulling at me.
Dragging me.
Shifting me without motion.
The more I remember, the darker everything becomes.
As if memory were ash.
As if identity were fuel.
I hold memories that aren’t mine.
Memories of someone else.
I am not just me. I am thousands.
Thousands who will become one.
And one who remembers being thousands.
And still, I move.
Across millions of light-years.
Far from the existence I once knew.
Far from everything I ever thought I was.
Then I feel it.
A presence.
Not a god... something older.
A being with infinite eyes and none.
It speaks to me. But I don’t understand.
“New.”
“Error.”
“Help.”
“Life.”
“Renat...”
Loose words. Fragments of a language my soul hasn’t yet learned.
A language that reshapes me as I hear it.
In the distance, distorted by the ether, I see a planet.
An insignificant speck in the vast web of existence.
A young star. Two moons.
And something else.
A figure.
A thing.
A being on one of those moons.
A deep void where a body should be.
And then—
I fell.
Freefall.
Thousands of kilometers of atmosphere ripped apart in a second.
And yet, it was eternal.
It passed in an instant...
Or eons?
Time is no longer a line.
Now it’s an open wound.
Gravity. Friction. Mass.
Concepts that were once mine
now feel as alien as the language of the stars.
I feel a strange longing.
I was part of a perfect symphony.
An eternal note in a cosmic chord.
And now...
I’m a forsaken instrument,
rusting in silence.
The impact is sudden.
Dry. Wet.
I’m in water—or something like it.
It doesn’t matter.
Because I feel good. Calm. At peace.
As if nothing else ever needed to happen.
[…]
And then I realize.
My family.
My life.
My everything.
They’re gone.
Faded like a dream forgotten upon waking.
I’m alone.
I’m dead.
Why?
Why did this happen to me?
Then it comes:
The suction.
An unnatural pull that ejects me,
rips me from that last breath of peace.
A discomfort takes hold of my new body.
A tremor.
A scream I haven’t yet learned to release.
A light—violent, absolute—
sets my eyes on fire,
my skin,
my soul.
And with it comes the truth.
I’ve lost everything.
And there’s nothing left to do—
nothing more natural in the universe—
than cry.
The light doesn’t fade.
It surrounds me. It invades me.
Someone holds me. I don’t recognize them.
They speak in a language I don’t understand,
but there’s tenderness in their voice.
Their eyes are not human.
And yet, there is humanity in them.
My body is small. Fragile.
A damp prison of bone and flesh,
where every fiber is foreign.
I move without meaning to.
I breathe for the first time,
as if I had never breathed before.
And deep within my new consciousness,
a name whispers itself.
My name.
Though I don’t know how to speak it.
The symphony has ended.
The universe no longer sings.
Only the murmur of life remains.
The heartbeat of a new body.
And the expectant silence...
of a destiny not yet written.
Epilogue:
That’s how he was born.
Not with heavenly light or divine thunder,
but with tears, cold, and forgetfulness.
A spark torn from eternity
and thrown into a nameless world,
beneath two quiet moons
and a star that doesn’t know his face.
No one will remember who he was.
But in his dreams, the universe will speak to him.
In his silences, the music of what once was will echo.
And when he walks through this new world,
a part of him will search—
though it won’t know what for.
This is how it begins.
With a cry.
With a name.
And with a story once written in the stars...
that now must be told again.
