High in the universe, far from the hustle and bustle of time, the immortals gathered, sitting around a table made not of stone or fire, but of frozen light and a living cosmic pulse. In this council, there is no place for time, and no meaning for death. Every being here was created before matter was created, before the first star pulsated. But today, there was an unfamiliar tremor in the air...
"Speaking of Earth."
A land deliberately forgotten, a land surrounded by a dense energy aura, preventing the entry of any non-human being except for a single moment... the moment the portal opens.
That rare moment does not last long, and whoever does not emerge by the time the portal closes is swallowed up, their soul trapped within the unknown universe that contains Earth... and reincarnated, without will or memory, in human form, within an unforgiving world.
That is why it was called in cosmic circles:
"The Cursed Earth"...
"The Defiled Earth"...
"The End of the Soul."
Most beings avoid it like the plague... except for a few, the few who desired realization, pleasure, and starting from scratch.
In the midst of this silence, someone moved.
The Creator, Arius.
A being whose majesty is not measured by the concept of power, but by the degree to which the laws themselves fear him. He slowly raised his hand, and from his palm emerged a turbulent sphere, within which swirling ash, fire, and intermittent sounds swirled. It was a miniature version of Earth, as seen by the gods, but it was not what it truly appeared to be, for its existence was silent in the universe... like a hidden wound in the cosmic skin.
He placed it in the center of the table.
Then he looked into the eyes of all of them, each an immortal entity governing galaxies.
He said in a voice that time had quieted:
"Are you All ... afraid?"
No one answered, Even the light hesitated. Fear was something felt, even unacknowledged.
Then, in a voice deeper than death, Arius added:
"The moment the gate opens... we shall enter."
___________________
Meanwhile:
On Earth, Zarkos (in Alexei's body) grows weaker, illness wears him down, protests increase, conspiracies deepen, and political pressure on the royal family intensifies. All of this is accelerating toward the moment of explosion that will lead to Zarkos's death in his current incarnation. While Alexei was in his room after the Empress asked him to stay there, in a dimly lit room, stood Anastasia, a little girl with eyes filled with innocence and concern, looking at her exhausted brother Alexei, his eyes bearing the weight of the unspeakable.
Anastasia looked at him for a moment, then slowly approached, as if trying to sense the truth behind that fragile body.
She said in a low voice, as if afraid of breaking something:
"Brother... why do you look different? Do things hurt?"
Alexei raised his eyes to her, looking directly at her, trying to hide his confusion behind a deep silence. He smiled gently and said,
"I'm... just tired, Anastasia, that's all."
She smiled lightly, trying to instill hope in his heart.
"Everything will get better, won't it?"
Alexei hesitated for a moment, then said, his voice almost a whisper:
"I want to see the world, to understand it... but sometimes, I feel lost in it."
She leaned closer and gently took his hand.
"We'll stay together. Don't be afraid."
Her words were like a small ray of light amidst the deepening darkness.
Then the maid, Margarita, carried Alexei to his bed, breathing heavily and sweating all over his body.
"my young master , don't worry, . Everything will be fine."
Then she said in a barely audible voice, "Please be well."
The Empress rushed over to Alexei, her face filled with sadness and tension.
"My little boy, I'm sorry."
"Your mother is sorry, my child."
Tears began to stream down her soft cheeks, and she continued, "I'm sorry, my child."
Alexei looked at the Empress, almost oblivious to his surroundings, and said to himself, "Why is my mother crying?"
"Is she in pain?"
Then he lost consciousness. The Empress rushed over, shouting, "Bring the imperial physician immediately! The little prince's condition is critical!" The maid quickly rushed to call the Imperial Physician. The Imperial Physician entered the room, his eyes scrutinizing the child intently. He cautiously raised his hands to place the stethoscope on Alexei's chest, whose breathing was barely a whisper, punctuated by pecks of pain.
"The pulse is weak... and his breathing is ragged... The internal bleeding is worsening," the doctor said, his voice as if concealing his deep concern.
Empress Alexandra approached, her white face almost glowing in the dim candlelight. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but her words came out in a coherent voice that trembled inwardly:
"Is there hope... Can he survive?"
The doctor looked up at her, choosing his words carefully.
"He is a strong child, but his body is more exhausted than we expected... With every passing minute, the odds of survival are further diminished. We must remain vigilant and use every means possible."
The doctor stepped outside to retrieve his own instruments and began preparing the treatment room. The Empress stood, covering her face with her hand for a moment, trying to control the pain, but the sound of her choking breath betrayed her suffering.
Little Anastasia, unable to comprehend the nature of the illness, ran to her brother's bed, grasping his tiny hand, her face brimming with tears and innocence mixed with fear.
"My brother... don't go away... please... be well."
Margarita's maid gently took her hand.
"Patience, my little one... we are here to protect him."
But even her voice couldn't break the solemn silence that filled the room.
Alexei, trapped between consciousness and something beyond it, began hearing fragmented sounds — voices not of this world. Though his body ached and his soul burned, he fought to open his eyes.
And then… he saw it.
A towering, otherworldly figure stood before him — eyes deep and silent, boring through the veil of reality. Alexei hesitated, but the being slowly turned and walked away, disappearing into a vast, unknown darkness.
Desperate, Alexei ran after it, arm stretched forward:
"Wait! Don't go!"
Despite the effort, the figure drifted further away, swallowed by shadow.
Suddenly, Alexei's eyes opened — his real ones — only to find his arm still raised, reaching for something unseen, and tears streaming down his cheeks.
The room fell into a hush.
He was awake, yet not truly present. Suspended between two realms.
Margarita stood frozen, heart pounding. She had seen suffering in this palace before, but this... this was different. The boy wasn't merely ill — he was battling something no one else could see.
It was as if his soul itself was clinging to the edge of some unseen abyss.
The doctor returned and gently touched Alexei's forehead. His voice dropped to a heavy whisper:
"Your Majesty… he's not responding. But this isn't a coma… it's something else. He's fighting… from within."
The Empress trembled, clutching her son's hand between hers:
"My child… what is happening to you?"
Her tears finally escaped, tracing sorrow across her cheeks.
Then, without a word, Anastasia moved closer. She didn't cry this time — she simply sat beside her brother, calm in her silence, as though she somehow knew words would never be enough.
She took his trembling fingers in hers and whispered, so softly no one but him could hear:
"I know you're not just Alexei… I don't know how I know, but I do. You are deeper… farther… closer. Just… come back. In any shape. Even if broken… come back."
The Empress closed Alexei's eyes, leaving him submerged in a silence that resembled death — unmoving, breathless, and void of even a whisper of hope.
Days passed... He lay there, a sleeping doll animated only by breaths so faint they could barely be seen. Yet deep within, he was far from asleep. Alexei was lost — adrift in a world with no beginning, no end, no walls, and no sky. Only an eternal, black void — breathing with thick shadows and a silence that gnawed at the soul.
He walked. Then he ran. Then stopped.
Nothing changed.
At last, he collapsed to his knees in the middle of the nothingness, worn and dazed, swallowed by questions with no answers.
Who am I? What is this place? Why can't I wake up?
And in that crushing stillness, a voice cleaved the dark like a blade:
"Aren't you too weak to be me?"
Alexei's blood froze. He stumbled backward, eyes widening in horror. He covered his ears and began muttering in panic, as if trying to dam a flood that could not be held back:
"Don't come near… don't come near…"
"I'm scared… please, don't…"
Again and again…
And again…
And again…
The words spilled from him like broken prayers, not from his mouth alone, but from the marrow of his soul — a spirit curling in on itself, shrinking into a shell too fragile to hold its pain.
Over and over… each time his voice weaker, but the anguish deeper.
Over and over… as if time itself had trapped him in a loop of terror.
Over and over… until the words sounded less like sound, and more like the sobbing of a body breaking from within.
And through it all, the consciousness of Vinterus watched silently.
Then, like a dagger through illusion, it spoke again:
"There isn't much time left for you."
Alexei trembled. He looked up at the voice, his tone that of a child standing before a force he could not comprehend:
"…Am I going to die?"
But the reply came in a riddle, a whisper woven with dread:
"You will not die alone… all you know will die with you."
Alexei gasped — as if the air had been ripped from his lungs:
"W-What?... My… my f-family?"
The words were fractured, twisted by a storm inside him. Was it pain? Shock? A sorrow no child should carry?
Vinterus did not answer. He vanished.
And Alexei remained, frozen in the void, surrounded by the echoes of his fear, by questions that clawed at him with no end in sight.
In the heart of that endless black, Alexei still sat — arms around his knees, murmuring in a trembling voice as if every cell in his body was shivering:
"Don't come near… don't come near… don't come near…"
Again and again, again and again… the murmurs escaped him like a soul gasping for survival. His voice faded and returned, rose and fell — like a boy drowning in a sea with no floor.
But the void was no longer still.
Something had begun to stir — a majestic force, swirling around him, glowing with a blend of black and gold. It didn't touch him… only circled him, as galaxies spin around unseen centers of gravity.
Then, the presence returned — not with words, but as a cosmic vibration, echoing through bone, marrow, breath, and being.
And then…
It reached for him.
An invisible hand of energy took hold of Alexei — not to harm, but to reshape. In an instant, it gifted him a fragment —
a shard of memory from before creation.
He didn't understand it.
But he felt it.
That overwhelming presence — it was the consciousness of Vinterus, . It did not reveal itself, but it surrounded him, planting a seed that would slowly bloom… just as stars are born within chaos.
In the moment that shard entered him, Alexei's eyes burst with a brilliant white light. He did not move — frozen, radiating an energy that poured from his eyes and mouth like divine fire.
And then — silence returned.
Stillness.
Everything, once more… was still..
____________________
[In the Real World]
Days passed… and Alexei remained asleep.
But his body had begun to change — slowly, in ways no doctor could explain. Sometimes his temperature would spike without cause; other times, his limbs would grow ice-cold. Whispers occasionally escaped from him, voices with no discernible source, no earthly origin.
And on the seventh day…
Alexei awoke.
But something within him was no longer the same.
From that moment on, he trembled at night and screamed during the day. He could no longer sleep without waking in terror, crying out from nightmares he could not describe — as if, in sleep, he beheld the ends of worlds.
Margarita wept in silence. Anastasia, frightened of him, refused to leave his side. And the Empress sat beside his bed each evening, reading endless chants in a desperate rhythm.
But Alexei…
He whispered in tongues no one recognized. And in long moments of silence, he would stare into the mirror and mutter:
"I… am not me."
He stared at his body as though it were a stranger. Fear deepened in his eyes.
One dark night, while the imperial wing was drowned in heavy stillness, Alexei sat before the mirror.
His face was pale.
His eyes void of every trace of childhood.
He gazed at his reflection for a long time… then whispered:
"This body isn't mine… this skin isn't mine… this heart beats for something I don't understand…"
"It hurts."
Slowly, he approached a small table.
He picked up a sharp pair of scissors, stared at them — and something deep within seemed to whisper:
"Cut the shell… free me."
He raised the scissors to his chest, his hand trembling, lips murmuring:
"Get out… get out… free… who am I?"
But before he could go further —
Anastasia burst into the room, having heard the whispers.
She saw him.
"Alexei! No!!" she cried.
The scissors dropped from his hand. His body jerked as though he'd awoken from a nightmarish trance… and then he collapsed, sobbing hysterically — a lost child, no longer certain of who or what he was.
Anastasia rushed to him, embracing him tightly despite the fear in her eyes, as he screamed again and again:
"I'm not here! Please… get me out of this body!"
Outside, the Empress had heard the screams. She rushed in — but upon opening the door, found only her son collapsed in Anastasia's arms, broken beyond repair.
Soon, the room filled with doctors. They tried to calm him, injecting sedatives, desperate to soothe a pain that no longer seemed physical — but elemental.
His very being fought their efforts. It was as if something within him was locked in battle — not of flesh, but of soul.
And as they worked, unaware, something unseen began to stir around Alexei — a presence, cloaked in silence.
It held him gently, yet with intent. It did not wish to comfort — it wished to provoke. It demanded he struggle, that he shatter, until the proper moment of awakening arrived.
Alexei's screams did not stop.
He fled from shadows he could not name, from a pain that had no source — a torment blooming from within.
He woke in the middle of the night, stripped of all peace.
The darkness around him seemed to pulse and leap from the very walls, He saw faces that weren't there, He heard voices that never quieted, He lived with screams that were no longer his alone.
He continued to spiral in a war between his own mind… and the consciousness of Vinterus
Eventually, the Empress and the doctors left him, thinking he had fallen into a deep, merciful sleep... But as midnight arrived —Alexei awoke once more. Silently... Majestically... He sat up, his pale eyes scanning the room, fixed on the emptiness before him, The only light came from the moon.
And then… in that silence, his eyes began to glow — not with warmth, but with a cold, still light.. A light that no longer resembled life.
Then…
he whispered, in a voice that was no longer his own:
"The vessel is beginning
to break."_________________