Chapter 3: I Think This Is the End
A few meters away, I glimpsed a transparent ring floating among the rubble of the buildings. It wasn't very large, about the height of a grown man. I knew what it was: one of those strange holes that had torn the sky. But what caught my attention was that it was different from the others.
It had a distinctive color in my eyes, one that was almost non-existent. I couldn't spot it until I focused my gaze in its direction, and then I saw faint ripples in the air, like vibrations on the surface of still water.
I looked at it once, then looked at the rest of the holes scattered across the sky. Hundreds of holes, each with a different color, but I didn't see one that matched this. I wondered: Am I seeing correctly? But even if there were dozens of holes with similar color gradations, this one seemed different, as if it were the original among copies.
Curiosity and despair led me to search the ruins of the city. Perhaps there were similar holes hidden by dust and blood. I set off, weaving through the city back and forth.
All I saw was ghastly destruction. Patches of dried blood, and ash, so much ash. Ash mingling with the dirt, perhaps all that remained of the people who were here, of families who fled, took shelter, or were vaporized in an instant. I imagined them running, carrying their children, screaming. And now they had become dust scattered by the breeze.
I felt a heaviness in my chest, but it wasn't feelings of sympathy that weighed on me. I was trying to remember my mother's face, my father's voice, my sister's laughter. Were they among this ash? I rejected the thought and shook my head. No, my home disappeared, and they with it. They must be somewhere else.
I retraced my steps back to the transparent hole, as if it were pulling me with a hidden magnet. And when I stood a meter away from it, a strange feeling came over me: a sense of familiarity. As if I were returning to a house I had lived in once before.
I stepped forward hesitantly, stretched out my hand, and slipped it into the hole.
I didn't feel anything. No cold, no heat, no electricity. Just a slight aerial emptiness. After reassuring myself, I crossed the threshold.
When I entered, I felt a slight dizziness and blurred vision for a few seconds. Then everything settled.
I saw nothing.
White. Pure white filling everything. At first, I couldn't open my eyes because of the intense brightness, but after adjusting, I realized I was in an endless space, every direction looking the same: unbearable whiteness.
I stepped forward. My footsteps made no sound. No air moving, no smell, no life. Just me and this still whiteness.
"Am I even still alive?"
I wondered aloud, and my voice sounded strange, disappearing into the void without an echo. This place resembled what I'd read about heaven in books: whiteness, peace, eternity. But it was a hell of another kind. A hell of silence, a hell of isolation.
I ignored the thought and continued walking in a straight line. How could I know the direction? All directions were one.
I kept walking. An hour? Two? A day? I don't know. I tried to look at my watch and found it had stopped at the very moment I entered this place. Even time had died here.
I continued. I had no choice left. Going back was impossible, as I no longer knew where I had come from. The whole place was identical. All I could do was move forward.
At first, walking was easy. Then fatigue began to creep into my muscles. Then thirst began, that deep sensation that splits the throat. I didn't feel hunger yet, but the thirst was enough to remind me that I was still alive, or that my body was still functioning.
I sat down to rest. The only sensation I felt was the coolness of the white ground beneath my hand, if this place even had ground.
I got up and continued. I walked while counting steps to stay connected to something, anything. I reached a thousand steps, then ten thousand. I walked until it seemed as if I hadn't moved from my spot. The scene doesn't change: white in front of me, white behind me, white everywhere.
Weakness began to seep into my body. My lungs were burning, my feet blistering, and my spirit withering. I felt as if I had been walking for years. How many kilometers had I covered? A hundred? Two hundred? Measurement had lost all meaning.
In the end, I fell.
I collapsed onto that white "ground" like a puppet with its strings cut. I no longer had the strength to even lift my head. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the same white "sky."
I felt life seeping out of me. I raised my hand before my eyes and saw it pale, skin over bone. I touched my face: my cheeks were hollow, my jawbones protruding. My eyes were heavy, trying to stay open against this blinding whiteness.
I sighed, and the gasp was rougher than the rustle of sand. I realized a bitter truth: death here wouldn't come from an explosion or bombardment. It would be a slow dissolution into this void, a fading into white nothingness.
"I think this is the end."
I whispered it into the void. It wasn't a complaint, but an acknowledgment. A surrender.
And at that moment, as I closed my eyes in surrender, something strange happened...