1. How could it be someone’s fault?

For some reason, I screamed—consumed by an unrelenting fury—as blood spattered from the wild, desperate stabs I drove into my own arm.

It didn’t hurt, for my guilt burned hotter than steel.

With that short blade, I desperately tried to erase those infernal numbers from my wrist, ignoring the hell around me or the punishment carved into my skin.

Stab after stab, blood spilled onto my knees as shards of cartilage and splinters of bone flew from my arm, torn apart by my own violence.

My screams of terror faded into nothingness, consumed by the azure fire and the metallic smell of that purgatory. Alone. Condemned where no one could ever hear me again.

Suddenly, that humming ceased, as if the future itself held its breath, allowing me to lift my gaze from the pebbles on the path, which together seemed to smile at me.

…

"Hey, don’t just stand there looking like you’ve seen a ghost…"

On my eleventh birthday, I accompanied my father to the highest peak of the eastern mountain, where the air was thin and the war didn’t reach.

"Come on, William. This will change your life."

I heard his voice beyond the rocks and sand. Without wasting a second, I hauled my small body up, stone by stone, and followed his voice to the very top.

The old man didn’t even pretend to wait for me. The only time he turned his head away from the sunlight was to check that no soldiers had followed us.

It was the first time I had spent more than five minutes alone with the world as my only company.

When we neared the summit, my father extended his hand—perhaps considering that my pants had already been ripped and bloodied enough.

“What you're about to see stays between us, alright?” Holding my hand, he led me through the branches toward the distant murmur. "Something just between you and me."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Okay,” he laughed. “Sorry for insisting."

"Not even to my friends in the militia?" I paused, searching for his eyes. "I play cards with them between drills…"

"No. Not even them," he insisted. "Tell me, William, in this world of tremors, have you ever seen a giant beyond the clouds?"

We both leaned over the mountainous, barren horizon.

A silhouette emerged in the distance, wrapped in a belt of clouds, indifferent to the tiny beings that populated the same earth it walked upon. A giant.

It strode forward, its steps reverberating across kilometers, shaking the land with each step. A divine entity—majestic, vast—the very color of the sky. A force of nature, as inevitable as the rain or the wind.

"What do you think? Impressive, isn’t it?" He held onto my shoulders, ensuring my amazement wouldn’t betray me into tumbling over the cliffside.

"I never imagined a giant could have a body…” I gazed at the towering figure. It moved so slow.

"Of course they have bodies, you silly. Just because you hadn’t seen one doesn’t mean—"

"And can they wield a rifle and shoot?"

In the militia school, they’d taught us that giants were the rightful owners of the land. Divinities, eight kilometers tall, whose feet rivaled the mightiest mountains.

"Always thinking about shooting, William… I don’t think rifles that big exist."

"But could they?" I insisted.

"No, son, giants are divine beings, and divine beings don’t fight among themselves. Even if they do have hands to hold weapons…"

"And clocks?"

"Clocks?"

"Yes, father. If they have hands and arms, do giants also have death clocks?" I glanced at the numbers tattooed on my father’s wrist. The inscription read ‘00|01|06’. One less digit to the right than yesterday…

"Huh?" He quickly hid it beneath his shirt sleeve.

"What’s wrong?" I looked down at mine, which overflowed with digits.

"No, giants don’t have these… I think."

Silence cooled our conversation as we fixed our gaze upon the divine, navy-blue creature. A force beyond our understanding. Even from such a vantage point, I still couldn’t clearly discern its face—if it even had one.

My eyes then drifted toward the pit at the mountain’s base, surrounded by houses and tarps, where banners fluttered in the wind. There lay our home, stretched across a plateau nestled between two imposing rock formations.

Markets, stables, and military structures. The warehouses and homes lay underground.

"Well? Do you like the view?" He placed a hand on my hair.

I simply nodded. It felt strange to see the entire city shrink to the size of my fingernail. Up there, I felt small, as if the world were so vast that no matter how powerful humanity’s weapons were, we could never change it.

"Happy birthday, William. Thank you for giving me the best eleven years of my life."

He whispered in my ear, as if ashamed that the wind might overhear.

"Promise me you’ll always remember this day."

As I had expected, a month later, my father met his eternal rest on a quiet summer morning. He was asleep, so they told me he didn’t suffer. They said he passed peacefully. He used to say that if that was the date the gods had chosen for him, then he would accept it.

I was at the militia school when it happened, so they removed his body before I returned. Before I knew it, I had dinner with my uncles and lay in my new bed, in my new home.

Despite their hugs and gifts, the world still felt empty beyond the rusted, bloodstained jeeps and uniforms.

Some celebrated his death, seeing it as further proof that their faith aligned with the one true omnipotent world—the same as the giants’.

The funeral was so brief I thought I had dreamed it. As a civilian, his body was placed in a mass grave. No military honors, no rituals of the militia. Perhaps he should have devoted his days to something truly important—like protecting the divine message. Instead, he had spent his life raising his son and fleeing his duty.

Confused, I recalled the legend of the Time Witch and the Death Clock, stories I had heard countless times in the scriptures. I clung to them, desperately trying to find logic in the numbers inked onto my skin: ‘73|09|27’. As if deciphering their mechanism was as simple as disassembling a machine gun.

Alone, I feared the sin carved into my flesh.

…

The years passed without distinction, and at fifteen, they sent me to the front. It took exactly two missions, 340 minutes in battle, for me to lose my left tibia. Amid sand, bullets, and bayonets, I was lucky enough to step on a landmine.

Now, at sixteen, they assigned me to the armory as soon as I accepted that that piece of metal was my new leg.

Unfortunately, the cold of that same winter brought with it a face of life I had never seen before—one that would make me forget the pain of my stump.

One fateful afternoon of slaughter, my entire city was razed to the ground.

The earth still trembled.

Friends, foes. I never thought there could be a force capable of stopping a battle, but that day, something did. It felt as if the stench of guts and gunpowder would cling to our clothes forever.

Corpses were stacked separately, for even in death, there were still sides, so the stragglers could approach and weep over the remains they believed belonged to their loved ones—only if they still had tears left to cry.

I was still carrying dozens of rifles in my arms. I was panting, yet my shoulders seemed to have forgotten the effort.

"Wake up, kid. In five minutes, we’re getting rid of all the corpses before the scavenger beasts drag us into yet another hell…" A soldier briefly locked eyes with me. He carried his rifle, exhausted.

Beneath the storm-darkened sky, amidst the mud and scattered rubble, I watched our soldiers rummage through the dying. Puddles of rainwater reflected the golden shafts of sunlight piercing through the heavy clouds, casting fleeting glows across the ruins. They searched for faces, enemy uniforms… and shot them. Not with rage, nor in haste, only with the resignation of those who understand that the world would soon end. The hospitality of war, I thought.

Others—like that thin, white-bearded man now eyeing me— searched the bodies for bullets of the same caliber as his pistol. In case hunger and desperation came knocking in the days ahead.

The putrid, hostile air whispered to me that civilization had reached its end and that the world, as I’d known it, would only grow worse.

Many, though not me—as I was too busy carrying rifles—stared somberly at the death clocks on their wrists, fully aware of the weight of their final days. Some took shallow breaths, rubbing their wrists as if trying to scrub away the mistake. Others simply collapsed, sobbing in horror. A few, however, merely gazed at the numbers in silence, accepting their doom.

That day, I convinced myself that perhaps humanity’s greatest mistake was not trading our kindness with a witch in exchange for knowing the day of our death.

"Eleven months and twenty-two days…"

Perhaps humanity's greatest sin... was forcing them to look down.