Rebirth

His eyes were still closed, but Debraj could feel the ground beneath him pulsing faintly as if whispering. The world seemed covered with an unnatural stillness. The air was too thick, too quiet. No birds. No wind. Only an eerie hum that sounded like silence humming to itself.
He opened his eyes, propping his body up with his two hands. He stood there only to see a world unknown to his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was the absence of a blue sky. Rather, it was a rotting silver, stretched endlessly above like an old wound refusing to close. He wondered if he could even call that sky. Beneath him was a land cracked and colorless, like burnt skin under moonlight. The soil flaked as he moved, dissolving into dust without a sound. There was no sun, or moon for that matter. Yet, the land was dimly lit by an ambient glow—like light with no source.

He blinked, confused. "Where am I?"

Only after examining his surroundings did his attention go to himself. His throat felt dry. His skin was tingling all over. His body felt strange... lighter somehow, yet solid. He looked down to check himself, only to freeze.

He was clothed only in a tattered rag that reached his knees, similar to a tunic. His skin was covered in dirt-like ash. But that didn't hide the faint shimmer and pale color—unfamiliar to what he had always known. Strange symbols shimmered faintly across his arms and chest, like ink trapped beneath translucent skin. They pulsed gently, in rhythm with some unseen force. He tried to rub one off, but it remained embedded, not drawn.

He thought to himself, ''What happened to me?"

A distinct memory surfaced in the conscious part of his mind, like bubbles rising from the depths of the ocean.

The people. The chase. The gun.

A single crack, sharp pain assaulting him, and then he went numb. His world turned black.

His hand instinctively went back to his head, expecting blood and pain. There was nothing. Just smooth skin. As if it all were a fragment of his imagination.

"I'm... dead?" He thought to himself.

But the world and his sensations were too real.

"Is this... perhaps... hell?"

He moved his hands, jumped twice where he was standing, and stretched a little.

"No, this is too real!"

He has never seen such a world. It didn't resemble Earth in any way. The atmosphere, the ground, and the sky were too foreign for it to be Earth. Rather, he wondered if he had seen anything even close to this.

The only connection he could make with what he was seeing was descriptions of hell.

"Am I really in hell? For real?" He thought out loud to himself. But there was no one to confirm or disapprove of his conjecture.

There was just silence... to the point it felt deafening. In front of him stands a vast expanse of barren land. He stood there for some time, waiting for something—anything—to move. But the horizon was empty.

There were no trees. No animals. No buildings. No humans.

It was only him in a barren land stretching in all directions.

"Is this how astronauts feel looking at space?" He sighed. At least he has ground to stand on.

Devraj sat down to think... to get his thoughts straight. He sat down in lotus posture, his legs interlocking into each other. He put his right elbow on his right thigh, his chin on his palm, supporting his head, which is heavy with thoughts right now. He used his left hand to pat his left knee while he was thinking.

"Chances are, this is hell. If not so, then I don't think they sent me somewhere far where I couldn't be a problem to them. This doesn't even feel like Earth. And I'm supposed to be dead right now. But here I am, alive."

Confused about what happened to him, he steeled his resolve.
"It doesn't matter what has happened... I seem alive. So, let's survive this. I'm not going to go down here. I'll fight to the bitter end and survive."

"I can't be here forever. I need to move. Let's start by exploring this place. I might find some clue."

He squinted into the distance. The barren land stretched endlessly, warped and wild—but then something caught his eye. A dark mound, hazy on the horizon, like the hunched back of some forgotten giant. A hill?

It was the only feature breaking the flat monotony of the terrain. He felt an urge—primitive, instinctive—to reach it. From up there, he could scan the land and maybe find signs of life, of shelter, of... something.

He got up. Dusted off the cloth that was somehow covering him.

He took a step. His bare feet pressed into the dry, grey earth, gritty and powdery like burnt bones. He took a breath and started walking.

His breath was steady. Devraj tried to keep calm even though he found himself in an eerie situation. The air neither warmed his lungs nor cooled them. It simply was.

One step at a time, filled with determination to survive.

Time passed—or at least, he thought it did.

There was no sky to change. No sun to fall or rise. The light above was constant and dull and the color of faded parchment soaked in ash water. The air, too, carried no change in temperature or wind. Only stillness. The only sign of change was the growing strain in his legs, the dull burn in his calves, and the dry rasp of breath in his throat.

He walked. He breathed. He walked again.

And then... he stopped.

Not because he had reached the hill. No—it was still some distance away. But something had changed.