After the sign arrived, the world did not improve.
It only became honest.
The sky remained in its place, but felt empty, not because it had lost its light, but because there was no longer any lie holding it up. The ground no longer trembled, yet every step felt like walking upon something that was listening.
Artor Conan Davil stood alone.
The crowds that had once filled the world had vanished without farewell. There were no screams, no lamentations. Humans did not die one by one; they stopped, as if the function of their existence had been completed. Like a word erased after its meaning was understood.
He lowered his gaze to his hands.
The sign was there.
It did not glow. It did not pulse. It did not punish.
It simply existed, like a truth that no longer required witnesses.
Artor did not cry.
Tears are the language of supplication, and he was no longer asking for anything.
He remembered all the acts of worship performed out of fear, all the prayers uttered as barter. All of it now felt distant, not wrong, but not yet arrived. Like knocking on the correct door with the wrong reason.
The wind stopped.
Not softened, but stopped.
The clouds did not move, yet they did not freeze. Time did not stop, but it did not advance. The world stood in a state of waiting that was not meant for humanity.
And at that moment, he saw it.
In the distance, at a boundary that was neither horizon nor void, stood a single being.
Without wings.
Without radiance.
Without terror.
It stood as something stands when there is nothing left to be witnessed.
Angel Azrael.
The final angel.
He did not face Artor.
He faced a direction that could no longer be called a direction.
Around him there was no sky and no earth. There was no above and no below. There was no sound, not even an echo. All of creation had completed the course of its meaning.
Artor stepped forward, but the distance did not lessen.
He realized this was not a place to approach, but a place to stop.
Angel Azrael did not speak.
There was no need.
Everything that needed to be known had been known since the beginning of creation, and everything unnecessary had fallen away with the world.
Artor opened his mouth, then closed it again.
There were no questions left that deserved to be spoken.
At last, he understood something simple and late: that the heaviest judgment is not when God asks, but when He does not ask at all.
Because not every soul is summoned to explain itself.
Some are only asked to stand before the truth, without defense, without resistance, without false hope.
Time, if it could still be called time, moved toward a final point.
Angel Azrael lowered his head.
Not to the world.
Not to humanity.
But to a command that could not be heard.
And the command came.
Not as a voice.
Not as light.
Not as vibration.
Only as absolute certainty that could not be postponed.
"Die."
Angel Azrael obeyed.
He did not fall.
He did not vanish.
He was finished.
At that moment, there was no longer anyone to witness anything.
There was no angel.
There was no sky.
There was no earth.
There was no "end".
Only the absence of worldly meaning, which was not emptiness, but return.
And within the silence that even silence could not explain,
Artor Conan Davil stood.
Or did not.
There was no record.
There was no conclusion.
Because at that point, human consciousness was no longer the center of the story.
And God did not require witnesses.