39,856

The first sign something was wrong came when I realized the road ahead wasn’t empty.

It hadn’t been empty for miles, just the usual wasteland scenery: rusted-out cars, skeletal buildings, and silence so thick it pressed against your skull until you started wondering if you were the last person left who could still hear anything at all. But this? This was different. A flicker of orange in the distance. A campfire. Fresh smoke curling into the sky like a beacon, or maybe a warning written in ash. The kind of sight that didn’t belong in this dead world—not anymore. Fire meant warmth, but it also meant danger. It was a signal. A dare.

Someone alive.

I eased off the gas, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. People meant problems. They always did. Out here, a friendly face was just a mask waiting to slip, and usually, there was a knife behind it. Or worse, a smile hiding something you couldn’t see until it was too late. I’d learned that lesson more than once.

From a distance the picture became clearer. One person. Alone. Which was either a rare miracle... or the setup for a very bad ending that I'd see coming a second too late. It was never just "one person." It was what you didn’t see that killed you.

I killed the engine well before I got close, letting the quiet swallow me whole. The hum of the car faded into nothing, leaving only the wind whispering secrets through broken glass and twisted metal. My boots hit the ground with a crunch that sounded too loud in a world this empty. I grabbed my rifle and moved on foot, each step a reminder that curiosity wasn’t just dangerous—it was fatal. Gravel shifted underfoot, mingling with shards of a past life, the bones of a civilization that thought it was untouchable.

The closer I got, the more wrong everything felt. Like the air itself was holding its breath, waiting for me to understand that I wasn’t walking toward a man—I was walking toward something I couldn’t name.

He was just sitting there. Cross-legged by the fire like he was on a casual camping trip, not perched in the center of humanity's grave. Mid-40s, beard wild and unkempt, clothes stitched together from whatever the world hadn’t yet claimed. But it wasn’t the ragged appearance that made my skin crawl.

It was his eyes.

They weren’t just looking at me—they were through me. Past me. Like he wasn’t seeing Gabe the survivor, but Gabe the inevitability. Like he’d already watched this moment play out a thousand times across a thousand dying worlds, and had gone mad from the reruns.

"About time you arrived, Gabe," he said, grinning—too wide, too knowing, like his face wasn’t built to hold that much certainty. "You took precisely 47.326 seconds longer than last cycle. But who's counting when linear time is just a suggestion and causality is a joke no one's laughing at anymore?"

I froze. My heart didn’t get the memo, slamming against my ribs like it wanted out. Like it knew I was standing in front of something that shouldn’t exist.

"How do you know my name?" I asked, rifle raised, though every instinct told me a bullet wouldn’t fix whatever this was.

He laughed—a sound like glass fracturing under pressure it could no longer bear. "I don’t just know you, Gabe. I know the blueprint of your soul. I know the moment the universe first whispered you into existence and the echo of when it’ll forget you ever were. I know the true name of gravity and the secret your shadow keeps from you. I know what waits beyond the edge of reality—and it knows you too."

He tapped his temple, a gesture that should’ve been human but felt like mockery. "Seraphin pulled back the veil. Not just the sad little truths of mankind—no, those are child’s play. I’ve seen the algorithms that dictate reality, the pulse of collapsing dimensions, the hunger of things that existed before existence had a name. I remember languages spoken by stars before they burned out. I felt the silence that comes after everything—and Gabe, it welcomes us."

"W-what…? Sounds like a curse to me," I managed, though my voice barely sounded like mine. My grip on the rifle tightened—not out of confidence, but because it was the only thing grounding me.

"A curse? A blessing? Gabe, those words are for beings who still think choice is real," he sneered, rising with a grace that didn’t fit his ragged frame. "Knowledge isn’t salvation. It’s a mirror—one that shows you how small you truly are. Even the gods you pray to are just specks, clinging to a rock in a sea of indifference. And they scream just like we do when the dark finds them. I’ve heard it."

He stepped closer, and I swear the air around him warped, like reality wasn’t sure it wanted him here. Like the world itself was rejecting him, but didn’t know how.

"You’re chasing a ghost wrapped in flesh, the man who thought he could outwrite the end," he whispered, voice dropping into something that felt like it echoed in my bones. "I could tell you everything. Where he is. What he’ll say. The exact moment hope dies in your eyes. I could paint your future in colors that would drive you mad. But then what would you have left?"

"Then tell me," I demanded, though it came out more like a plea, a desperate grasp for something solid in a conversation that felt like it was unraveling my mind.

His grin split wider, as if his face was never meant to hold it. "No. Because the last mercy I have is ignorance. And you should savor it, Gabe. It’s the sweetest lie left. And soon, even that will rot away."

For a heartbeat, reality held its breath.

Then came the flash of steel.

He lunged, shrieking words that didn’t belong in human throats—sounds that scraped against my mind like claws dipped in ice.

I fired.

The shot shattered the moment, and him with it. He crumpled, blood spilling out in patterns my eyes refused to follow, shapes that felt like they meant something terrible.

Even as life drained from him, he laughed—a wet, gurgling sound that felt like it would never stop. Like it didn’t need lungs to continue.

"Thank you…” he choked, grinning through crimson teeth. "All timelines... end here. Knowing changes... nothing... except you."

His eyes stayed open, reflecting constellations I’d never seen, and never wanted to.

I stood over him, feeling like an insect standing at the edge of a black hole, waiting to be swallowed by truths too heavy to carry.

I tore through his camp, hands shaking, finding nothing but cryptic madness—and a journal filled with symbols that shifted when I wasn’t looking. Diagrams that felt like they watched me, judging, waiting.

I didn’t hesitate. I burned every last page, watching the flames consume things that should’ve never been written. Walking back to the car, I kept my eyes forward, refusing to glance at the sky. Some things weren’t meant to be known.

I got back into my car, the research center wasn’t far now. The man’s words lingered in my mind: “The exact moment hope dies in your eyes.”

And for once, I was thankful for every answer I didn’t have, and terrified of the ones I almost did.