Before time turned back, before the first star gazed into the void and named the emptiness 'sky'.
he was already there.
He was not born.
Not created.
Not shaped by prayer,
curse,
or desire.
He was given no name, for no tongue yet existed that could pronounce it.
But later,
after enough had died,
they would call him by one name:
His name was Kael.
The Angel of Death.
Not a symbol of judgment or mercy,
only emptiness.
Not part of war or peace,
only the final curtain.
He did not bind souls to judgment; he severed them from existence.
He did not weigh sins and virtues; he ignored them.
Because his task was not to judge life,
but to end it.
He existed within the first pulse of a universe still directionless.
A presence Without voice, without eyes, yet never still
The world knew no sin, no virtue, no need for justice,
yet Kael already was.
"Justice and sin are only words. I existed before words were born."
He did not speak those words.Speech was beneath him.
They drifted like a nameless breeze in a space where language had no form.
He didn't express thoughts,
because he had none.
He simply existed, and that existence was certainty.
The certainty that all things,
no matter how beautiful or vile,
would end.
He was the end.
And the end requires no reason.
Demons wielded the power of destruction,
while angels carried the power of creation.
In the heavenly order, this was law,
absolute and unchanged since the first genesis.
Demons unraveled order into chaos.
Angels shaped chaos into harmony.
But Kael...
Kael was the exception.
He was an angel who bore the power of destruction.
A paradox that shook both Heaven and Hell.
The strongest angel was not the brightest.
Nor the wisest.
But Kael,
because he destroyed not out of hatred,
but out of emptiness.
Without will. Without aim.
He did not destroy because he wanted to...
He destroyed because he existed.
He was not an angel in Heaven's terms, not a demon by Hell's fanatical standards.
He was not forged by divine will, nor tainted by infernal lust.
Yet angels honored him.
And demons watched him fearful.
In their imbalance, he was the unnamed axis.
ever-turning, unshaken, always waiting.
Kael did not know desire.
He did not understand choice.
He did not feel hunger, or loneliness, or right and wrong.
A cog in a cosmic clock that turned in silence, recording death without intent.
Yet he could wonder.
And that wonder was born the first time he reaped a human soul.
The sky did not crack when he descended.
There was no trumpet blown.
No blaze of light or firestorm.
He simply appeared at the bedside of an old man,
as if he had always been standing there.
The man sighed deeply. His hand trembled, clutching a torn photograph,
a young woman smiling in the midst of autumn.
Kael touched the man's forehead.
A touch without warmth.
The man's face twitched.
A tear fell.
His lips moved, shaping one final word...unfinished.
And then, Kael saw it.
A flash of memory.
Like a curtain ripped wide open,
image after image passed soundlessly:
a child's morning embrace,
rain pounding down without an umbrella,
a limping run from war,
The trembling heartbeat of a man holding the hand of a woman long dead
All of it... reflected within Kael.
He did not understand.
Why did the man's face show relief... but also sorrow?
Why did he smile while crying?
How could two emotions live within a single dying breath?
Kael didn't try to comprehend. He couldn't.
But he wondered.
And that was enough to make him turn.
He continued to reap souls...from mud-slick shacks to silent golden palaces.
He watched humans scream and laugh at death's arrival,
clutching ragged dolls or sacred texts,
or pressing their chests as if searching for a heartbeat already gone.
Some prayed.
Some cursed.
Some stayed silent.
Some even laughed.
But their faces always revealed something Kael did not possess.
Meaning.
It wasn't something Kael understood.
He only recorded, like a shadow that always follows light.
But gradually, he began to remember their faces.
Not with affection or nostalgia.....
but like a blind painter scratching lines without knowing their color.
Other angels held justice like a shining sword.
Demons embraced desire like an eternal flame.
But Kael?
Kael held nothing.
He didn't believe in justice like the angels,
nor in free will like Hell's rebels.
He didn't mourn death, rejoice in birth, love creation, or hate ruin.
He felt no guilt....nor fear.
He couldn't grasp why humans cried when they lost,
or why demons laughed when they killed.
He didn't know the difference between choice and command.
He had no sense of identity.
He couldn't understand ridicule or humor.
No social value clung to him.
Kael was not a being "between" two sides.
He was the void in motion.
A flaw in Heaven's mold.
And yet he began to recognize patterns:
those who lost love often died crying.
Those who harbored hatred died in silence.
Children sometimes smiled... even as their bodies stopped.
What was that?
What made them smile when they vanished?
What made them tremble when they knew there was no escape?
Kael knew these weren't questions....
because he couldn't ask.
But every soul he reaped left a vibration.
It didn't shake him.
It simply... unsettled him.
Like a sound just beyond hearing, loud enough to make him pause.
Kael did not live within time.
He was not bound by cause and effect.
He could reap the soul of someone unborn....or long dead....if the cosmos permitted.
He moved not by step, but by presence.
And the universe could not reject him.
Heaven could not command him.
Hell could not manipulate him.
He belonged to no angelic hierarchy,
no infernal council.
He was a function.
And like all functions, he continued...
until everything broke.
And everything began to rot.
As Heaven blazed with divine will and Hell burned with rebellious fire,
the world trembled beneath endless war.
Legions of angels dropped pillars of light into cursed valleys,
and demon hordes vomited black fog upon holy cities.
But Kael stood on neither side of the battlefield.
He never took sides.
Never killed in war.
Never saved.
He appeared only when the voice of destiny....heard only by certain beings....
had etched death into time.
He reaped souls without judgment,
without mercy,
without hatred.
To him, there were no enemies.
No victims.
Only one truth:
Time that had run out.
He reaped only what had already been written in the cosmic scroll.
But duties blurred.
Angels began choosing who deserved to live.
Demons began creating life only to torment it.
Kael knew one thing:
Everything broken must die.
And if all things must die...
He only needed to wait.
When eternity becomes your workplace,
time loses meaning.
And Kael....who never knew the word "wait"....
had stood at the edge of the universe's death
since before anything began.
He did not predict ruin.
He did not prevent it.
He simply knew, as a river knows it will reach the sea,
that everything will meet its end.
Angels and demons had touched the boundary.
And a touched boundary, even without intent.....will eventually break.
The sky thundered not because of war,
but because the meaning of "sky" itself began to unravel.
Demons no longer destroyed as reaction....but as purpose.
They birthed creatures that even Hell refused.
They composed symphonies of screams,
chiseled hatred into law,
and named it "freedom."
Hell was no longer a dumping ground....it had become a harvest field.
Angels, too, began to taint creation.
They no longer served life.....but reshaped it into their ideals.
They sculpted souls, declared who was pure, who was filthy.
They stitched Heaven with threads of will, and called themselves "guides."
But even guides lose their way when they rise too high to see the earth.
Kael watched it all.
Silent.
Unaligned.
But the cosmos did not stay silent.
The universe groaned as sacred laws fractured.
Old rules choked.
The boundary between life and death grew thin.
Some souls refused to die.
Some refused to live.
And others... began to wander in chaos.
The cosmic order sent a signal....
not as a command, but as confession.
A soundless sigh:
"All things have reached their end."
And so Kael moved.
He entered the battlefield where angels shone with wounds and prayers,
and demons clawed at reality with tongues of flame and fractured laughter.
No one welcomed him.
Because no one could.
Its presence could not be understood as a threat.
It was not an enemy. It was not a savior.
It was the absence of purpose, made manifest.
And when it began to touch, one by one, the skies collapsed....without an explosion.
It did not attack.
It did not fight.
It merely walked....or rather, it simply existed there.
A great demon, its body stretched from mountain to mountain, its eyes ablaze with the flame of free will, roared,
"I Am Eternal! I Am The Will That Cannot Be Extinguished!"
Kael touched its forehead.
In an instant, the colossal body crumbled into a gust of dust.
Not burned.
Not shattered.
Just… gone.
A memory flashed within Kael,
not his own,
but that of the dead.
A worshiped serpent,
slithering through ruin,
cradling a child born from sacrificed human lives.
Kael did not understand.
He merely recorded the fact that this creature once loved its creation,
and killed it in a sacrificial rite called "freedom."
He walked on.
A twelve-winged angel, its radiance slicing the horizon, sang verses from the Book of Light while swinging its blade toward the last demon.
But its sword no longer cut.
Its song cracked with decay.
"I AM HOLY WILL. I WEIGH ALL LIFE!"
Kael touched it—without anger.
And the angel ceased its singing.
Its wings withered.
Its body dissolved like salt in still water.
Kael saw the angel's memory.
The cries of millions.
The hopes of those who prayed in the dark.
But also the pride when it refused to lift the curse from a child born "too unworthy."
Kael did not feel sadness.
He did not judge.
But he understood one thing: this was the end.
He stepped to the edge of the dimension where the last angel and demon stood, locked in wounds and vengeance.
They tried to merge their powers....one final time.
But the fusion became the purest form of rot: a will that desired everything without limit.
Kael stood among them.
And they stopped fighting.
Because they finally knew: when he arrived, all had already been decided.
They begged.
Not for life—but for time.
Time to explain.
Time to fix.
Time to feel.
But time no longer belonged to them.
And Kael did not understand pleading.
He only executed.
One touch. Two. Three.
The world fell silent.
In the end, only humans remained.
Small. Fragile.
But filled with something Kael could not comprehend.
Humans did not create heaven.
They did not forge hell.
They simply lived.
They loved and killed one another.
They stole and gave.
They prayed while doubting, forgave while hating.
They were inconsistent.
But they tried.
And now, they were alone.
Kael observed them, one by one.
A little girl, hugging her dead mother.
A poet, writing verses on the edge of disease.
An executioner, regretting too late.
He reaped them all.
Without choice.
Without rage.
But with every touch, memories flowed.
Not just faces....
But emotions so intense, they almost formed voices in the void.
"Mom… I want to go home."
"Was I ever enough?"
"Forgive me."
"Thank you."
Words that defied law.
But felt… close.
Kael didn't know why he lingered longer on the soul of a child laughing in the embrace of her dog.
He didn't know why the expressions of regret were harder to touch.
But he recorded it all.
And when the final human was taken—the world ceased to move.
The sky turned flat.
The sea became a mirror.
The mountains became nameless stone.
Kael stood at the center of a reality gone silent.
And he knew: his task was not yet complete.
There were still a few left.
Those yet to be reaped.
Including one being… who spoke to him, though he never replied.
No time.
No prayer.
No direction.
Only one creature remained among the ruins of all that ever was.
She sat among shards of petrified light, at the edge of a dimension where meaning no longer held weight.
The last angel.
Her wings tattered. Her body broken.
But her eyes still looked—not with hope, not with regret… but with understanding that no longer required words.
Kael stood before her.
Not as judge.
Not as savior.
He stood because it was her turn.
Because she still lived.
And his duty....his function....was not yet done.
She smiled.
Not a smile of victory.
Not of surrender.
But a smile… as if she had just finished reading the end of a book she'd carried too long, finally understanding why the first page was blank.
She spoke.
Her tongue was broken.
But the voice still lived.
Faint, like the last breath of a candle.
"You never understood what love was, Kael… But did you know?
We never truly understood what you were."
Kael did not answer.
He had no concept of reply.
He simply listened....because the being before him was dying.
And he knew....a knowing without choice....that memory would flow.
"We once thought you were a tool.
Then we believed you were a god without will.
But now I know… you are a wound."
The angel's eyes began to fog....not with tears, but with something older than sorrow.
"You are the emptiness that stared too long at meaning… until you began to wonder why they wept when you arrived."
Kael felt no surprise.
But something was recorded.
A faint echo that did not vanish as usual.
"I always spoke to you.
Not because you'd answer,
But because I knew… one day, you'd become a void that could break."
Kael stepped closer.
He raised his hand.
Duty is duty. And she knew.
She closed her eyes.
"You will live, Kael."
Kael touched her forehead.
And in an instant, her form released itself from existence.
No sound.
No explosion.
Just vanished—like a word never finished.
But the memory remained.
Kael saw:
She had once smiled at a human child who couldn't walk.
She embraced him—not out of duty, but desire.
She taught prayer not as a key to heaven, but as a way to feel heard.
She once burned half a city to save a single family from a demon's curse.
She once silently begged Kael to delay an old woman's death....just long enough for her son to return from war.
Kael could not understand what he saw.
But he could no longer ignore it.
Because at the end of that memory, the angel… wept.
Not out of fear of death.
But because she was leaving something behind.
And in the echo of her cry, Kael did not hear guilt.
He heard: "Longing."
A word without counterpart in cosmic order.
And Kael stood alone.
All was gone.
Heaven shattered.
Hell extinguished.
Humanity erased.
Only the structure remained.
Reality itself...the web of dimensions,
laws, time, and existential borders.
And Kael.
He looked up.
No sky.
He looked inward.
No heart.
But the task was not yet finished.
Not because he wanted to.
But because he knew this too had an end.
He touched gravity. And it ceased to work.
He touched time. And time froze, then unraveled like old parchment.
He touched logic. And cause and effect collapsed into incomprehensible stillness.
He touched the laws.
Law of Life...cracked.
Law of Death....eroded.
Law of Causality.....whispered like dust in wind.
Until every law, he destroyed.
He touched existence.
And existence itself....that which upheld all beings and laws, prayers and curses, love and will....began to fade.
Kael reaped the soul of the cosmos.
Not in rebellion.
Not in hatred.
But because… everything has the right to die, once it is finished.
And he was last.
He stood in a space without color.
In a void not even called void.
And he knew his task had ended.
Nothing left to reap.
No function left.
He did not ask.
He did not mourn.
He simply knew.
His hand....unfamiliar with trembling....rose one last time.
He raised it slowly.
No hymn from heaven.
No scream from hell.
Only silence.
He touched his chest.
And in that moment…
A shard of emotion pierced his soul.
Not a physical wound.
Not a spiritual one.
But pain.
Not pain from loss
But pain.... of being.
His body trembled.
Eyes that had not blinked in eons… finally closed.
A strange echo shook the core of his being.
"Is this… pain?"
And for the first time, he fell...not by enemy, not by fate...but by himself.
The pain did not end.
It grew....into something no word could define.
Loneliness.
Confusion.
Heat and cold twisted like nightmares.
And at the end… only darkness remained.
But…
Within that darkness, a baby cried.
First breath.
First heartbeat.
Eyes opened.
Air seared into lungs.
A tiny body shivering in the embrace of the mortal world.
Kael opened his eyes....for the first time as a human.
He did not know his name.
Did not know who he was.
Did not know why the world felt too bright… and far too heavy.
But deep within his soul, a question drifted gently....
like a whisper from the destiny he had forgotten:
"Is this… what they called reincarnation?"