The world ended in a rush of cold and the sound of a thousand screams in my head.
There was no pain. There was no transition. One moment, I was a man, standing in a plaza of the dead, my arm locked in Koshva's terrified grip. The next, I was... nothing.
Just a point of awareness in an endless, silent, absolute blackness.
No up, no down. No body, no senses. Just the lingering echo of a hundred tormented souls screaming in unison. And then, even that faded. There was only the black. The quiet. The end.
I was gone.
The wave of spectral energy hit them like a physical blow. Koshva felt Dokja's arm go limp in his hand, the life and cynical warmth vanishing in an instant. He stumbled, falling to his knees as the psychic onslaught washed over him. He squeezed his eyes shut, expecting to be torn apart, to join the chorus of the damned.
But it didn't come.
After an eternity that lasted maybe three seconds, the pressure was gone. He gasped, sucking in a lungful of air that tasted like ozone and static. He dared to open his eyes.
The plaza was empty.
The ghosts were gone. The monolith was just a black rock. The only thing that remained was the still, silent body of Dokja Choi, lying face down on the glowing grid floor.
"No," Koshva whispered, crawling over to him. "No, no, no, no." "Don't die on me you bastard!"
He rolled him over. Dokja's eyes were open, staring up at the glitching, flickering sky. They were empty. There was nothing behind them. No cynicism, no fear, no divine spark. Just glass.
"Hey, mister! You gotta get up! We gotta go!" a panicked voice shouted from the edge of the plaza.
Koshva looked up. It was the kid. Riko. He was standing by the archway, his small frame silhouetted against the city's broken geometry. He wasn't looking at the ghosts. He was looking at Koshva. The kid wasn't scared. He was determined.
"They're just echoes!" Riko yelled. "Their pattern is reset! They'll be back! The whole plaza is a loop! This way! I know a path!"
A cold, clinical part of Koshva's brain told him the kid was right. The Authority's files on Error Zones were full of "looping" phenomena. He had a choice: follow the terrified slum kid, or stay here and have a breakdown.
He chose the kid.
Heaving the dead weight of my body over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, Koshva ran. He didn't question how the kid knew a path; he just followed. They plunged down a side street, Riko leading them through a maze of crumbling alleys and half-built corridors that Koshva's map didn't even register.
They finally stopped in a small, dark service tunnel, the sounds of the glitching city muffled to a distant hum. Koshva dropped the body, collapsing against the wall, his chest heaving. He was alive.
"We're safe for now," Riko said, his voice small but steady in the darkness. "The echoes don't come down here."
Koshva stared at the still form of Dokja Choi, lying on the dirty floor. He was alive. But Dokja wasn't. The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. He had saved the body, but he'd lost the man. The anomaly was gone. The file could be closed.
He'd just risked his life to smuggle a corpse.
"What are we gonna do with him?" Riko asked, his young voice holding a terrible maturity.
Koshva didn't have an answer. He just stared at the empty, staring eyes of the god who was scared of ghosts, and felt a despair so profound it made the ghosts look friendly.
Two hours later, they were in the back room of a small clinic on Sub-level 5, a place Koshva knew took cash and didn't ask questions. The back-alley "doctor," a grizzled ex-Ment with a shaky hand, shook his head after a five-minute scan.
"He's an empty shell," the man grunted. "No brain activity, no neural response. We're getting some residual neurological echoes—static from the Event—but they're already fading. He's gone. Sign the release and I'll process him for organic recycling."
Koshva just stared at the body on the table. He couldn't sign it.
He left without a word, Riko trailing silently behind him. He found a bar on Sub-level 4, a dingy place where the灯光 was low and the synth-ale was cheap. He drank. He got loud. He got angry. He got kicked out.
Stumbling through the corridors, his vision swimming, Riko having to steady him, he found himself near a transit hub. And there, nestled in an alcove, was a vending machine. It was old, scuffed, and covered in faded stickers.
On a whim, or perhaps a divine nudge from the alcohol, he peered through the grimy glass. At the very bottom, in a special slot, was a single, slender bottle. It was filled with a swirling, purple-blue liquid. Tiny silver specks floated like miniature stars. The label was simple, handwritten in elegant script:
Another Star.
Koshva stared at it. An idea, born of pure, drunken desperation, sparked in his ruined mind.
The system said Dokja was gone. But what if the system was wrong? What if he wasn't just a body? What if he was a machine that had just run out of fuel?
"What's that?" Riko asked, peering over his arm.
"A stupid idea," Koshva said, his voice low and raspy. "A stupid, insane, career-ending, galaxy-brained idea." He turned to the kid, his one good eye gleaming with a terrifying, drunken light. "I need you to cause a distraction."