My Last Walk Along A Stage

College graduation.
A place I never thought I’d be allowed to see. And yet, here I am.

As whoever-it-was began calling out names, asking former students, now graduates, to step forward and receive their diplomas, I felt a creeping sense of dread.

“I don’t deserve to be here,” I thought. After all, it was only through some random clause that I’d received passing marks in all my classes. Not grades, not letters, just a note that read: “Passed.”

It was so stupid.

As wrong as it sounds, part of me is glad they all died. Tragic, yes, but their unholy sacrifice allowed me to be here today.

I can’t even recall all their names and faces. That makes sense, technically speaking, I never showed up to a single class, not even once. But college is a business, first and foremost. As long as I kept paying tuition, they kept promoting me: first year undergrad to second, second to third, and on and on...

“Receiving their Bachelor's Degree from the College of Liberal Arts, Akito - ”

There was some mumbling on stage about how I’d forgotten to write my last name on the slip they handed out before the ceremony. Since no one knew who I was, they left it at that.

I solemnly approached the headmaster, or president, or whoever that guy was, to accept my diploma. But just as I reached out, a sharp, paralyzing headache struck.

Then, in a deep, cold, and resonant voice echoing through my mind, I heard words that didn’t belong to this world:

“Your judgment is now hereby rendered. For the crime of mass murder, woven into the fabric of your fate and sealed by the blood of the forgotten, you are hereby condemned to the Eternal Halls of the Damned. There, beyond the reach of all time and mercy, you shall rot.”

To anyone watching, it must have looked like a panic attack. Everything went hazy. My mind throbbed in pain. I collapsed to the floor, but instead of feeling a polished, laminated wood beneath me, I touched freezing-cold stone.

My outstretched arm wasn't holding a diploma. It was gripping a steel bar.

I wasn’t in chains. Not yet, anyway.

But I knew: I was in prison.

For a crime I had never committed.