"Will... will this never end?"
"How long... have I been... drifting like this?..."
Sol spoke to himself in a hollow, bleak tone that carried no emotion, no life. He could not give voice to the words with a mouth, for he had no mouth, nor even a throat. And even had he possessed such things, he would have found himself unable to speak them nonetheless, for Sol was little more than a twisted human corpse adrift in the lightless void.
The stars blazed forth in splendid array within that abyss—that darkness absolute, that cold most bitter, that silence which made the very flesh creep. From afar, the stars adorned the void as though they watched over Sol: that corpse which none could have foreseen existing in this mute emptiness. A ruined body, drifting aimless and rigid, bereft of purpose.
The corpse lacked many of its parts, yet it had retained fragments of the head. The brain was somewhat visible. A single eye remained. There were not many layers of skin left. It was closer to the remnants of a human form than to a whole cadaver—but this was not the strangest thing. No, there was something else: Sol was aware. Awake. Watching his surroundings with that remaining eye.
He gazed through an eye so frozen it had become like a sphere of brittle glass—gleaming, fragile, ready to shatter into a thousand shards at the slightest pressure. Yet this mattered not at all, for that eye still functioned, however poorly, and it presented to Sol the darkness and the stars that surrounded him.
Though the blood had solidified, though flesh and skin had frozen into thin, brittle layers like dried autumn leaves, Sol had preserved a spark of awareness in this cold and silent solitude. Perhaps the bitter cold itself was responsible for numbing his sensory nerves—else he would have suffered agony beyond description.
Suddenly, a searing golden light erupted from somewhere, casting its brilliance upon Sol, blinding his remaining fragile glass eye and plunging him into true darkness this time—without stars, without sun, without any source of illumination.
"What... is this... what... is happening..."
Sol spoke within himself, then fell silent for a moment before continuing in a different tone—a tone that carried the faintest trace of comfort, and only a trace.
"Warmth... so warm... and soothing... Hope... I hope this lasts a little while... just a little... a little... then it may fade..."
No sooner had he thought this than the warm and comforting golden light gradually dimmed, until at last it vanished altogether. The cold rushed back as though racing to intensify the torment upon that conscious human remnant.
But something was amiss. Something felt different—something he could not properly sense, for his nerves were overwhelmed by the maddening cold. It was closer to intuition. Yes, it seemed he yet possessed intuition, and keen intuition at that. And his intuition proved correct.
Sol was being drawn toward something. He was heading for a planet, his speed increasing steadily—slowly at first, then faster and faster, until he entered the atmosphere. There, his velocity multiplied beyond measure, accompanied by friction that ignited flames upon him—flames that melted the frost and began to burn the corpse, charring it to cinders.
Yet though the fire's heat was intense, it did not swiftly consume the body.
Sol The human remnant passed through the stage of burning, and what remained of him emerged to continue its downward trajectory at a lunatic speed. It struck the earth, rebounded, struck again, and continued in this fashion until at last it reached a small pool of yellow water. There it fell, sinking slowly to the bottom.
A few seconds passed for that remnant at the pool's bottom. Then parts began to emerge—things like worms, crimson and pink and white and yellow and green (though the crimson were most numerous of all). These worms emerged from the wounded, missing, and twisted places, and they connected with one another to forge new parts in a spectacle that could only be described as hideous and grievous to behold.
At last, these worms finished shaping bone, then layers of flesh, then skin. Hair follicles sprouted and grew with speed, forming long tresses—a mixture of two colors, white and black. And in the end, the renewal was complete.
He shuddered, then slowly emerged from the foul-smelling yellow pool, crawling across the ground until he had put some small distance between himself and the water. Finally, he stretched out on his back upon the earth, utterly naked, without a stitch to cover him.
A young man in his early twenties, with features somewhat handsome—though dark circles beneath weary, exhausted eyes marred them. He possessed an excellent physique: neither bulky nor thin, with prominent muscles that gleamed from the yellow waters and carried their foul scent besides.
Sol lay there upon the ground like a lifeless corpse—which indeed he had been moments before, though his spirit yet lingered within. He remained thus for some time.
"Even this... could not kill me..."
After several minutes had passed, Sol finally spoke. His voice was hollow, empty, slow—befitting his exhausted and morose appearance, his darkened and weary eyes that longed to witness their own end.
He remembered his final moments on the planet Earth: how he had been in an explosion-proof glass chamber, surrounded by panicked scientists within a government facility, before that searing white light had blinded him utterly and everything had exploded.
"Those boasting scientists failed to do it... Well, they never would have succeeded... this body survived a planet's destruction and drifted through space and now it's survived this ..."
He spoke these words in that same hollow, melancholy voice, then fell silent briefly to consider something before continuing.
"How long did I drift through space to reach this planet, I wonder?... Perhaps thousands or millions of years? But... can Earth's years and days measure time in the void?..."
He fell silent again, but this time he was not thinking of anything in particular. With strange spontaneity, he continued in a voice even more bleak and vacant:
"It does not matter... Earth is gone, and I remain... and this I never wished for..."
He remained motionless upon the ground for a long while—hours, perhaps—without stirring, gazing at the blue sky. It resembled Earth's sky perfectly, even down to the clouds.
Grrrrr…! Grrrrr…!
"I... I am hungry... and this body is heavy... This is natural, for this body drained my energy to regenerate... It does not matter... I shall... I shall lie here on the ground a little longer..."
He said these words, in that same morose tone.
Grrrrr…! Grrrrr…!
"Or perhaps... I should search for something to eat..."
The young man rose unsteadily, with great difficulty. His limbs trembled visibly, as though he bore tons upon his shoulders, but after numerous attempts he finally managed to stand. And then he saw strange things.
He found himself in a place resembling a forest—but the plants were alien, different. The cold, damp soil beneath his feet was dark, almost black—this was not so different from Earth, for there had been forests there with black earth. No, the strangeness lay in the trees, the thickets, the grass—every growing thing around him.
All the plants and trees bore leaves of strange shapes, their color the familiar green but with a difference: they possessed parts along their trunks of a deep blue, nearly black, yet these lay beneath a semitransparent layer on the surface. In the trees, these blue-black veins extended from roots to summit, reaching even to the leaves and thickets. The grass differed somewhat but contained these same parts.
He staggered toward one of the trees with heavy steps—how could this person seek anything to eat in his present state?—but at last he reached it and placed his hand upon the transparent parts without really noticing them. The trees were not his goal; rather, that yellow pool from which he had just emerged.
He reached it at last, knelt down, and leaned forward. He cupped some of that water—clearly undrinkable—and brought it to his nose. His expression shifted from morose to dark and frustrated.
"Forgive me, body... but you must endure this."
He spoke before taking his first sip, then opened his eyes wide and spat out the foul water, coughing and spitting.
"eh...it tastes bad...more than I thought..It seems you survived this, body..."
He leaned back slowly, swallowing his dry saliva—for though the water was foul, it had only made him thirstier than before.
As he sat there, spitting out the remnants of that vile water from his mouth, a large shadow passed overhead. He looked up and saw something flying in the sky. He was not in full possession of his faculties to identify it clearly, but he formed a rough image of the flying thing.
"A bird... There are birds on this planet... On Earth, birds sometimes gathered near water... I don't know about this thing... but it's worth trying..."
He was utterly certain of this information, as though he were an expert in surviving on alien forests. Then he rose and followed the flying shadow—rose and followed the direction that shadow had taken.
After hours and hours of swaying, staggering, and trying to follow the same path as the flying shadow , he stopped abruptly when he encountered the corpse of a strange creature. Its body was enormous—perhaps the size of a full-grown elephant or larger. Six thick limbs, a conical tail with a small opening at the end, a somewhat triangular head with six eyes.
The corpse lay on its side, its belly torn open, leaking a viscous dark azure fluid mingled with entrails into the dark soil. Surrounding it were strange tracks unlike any others—holes in the black earth, as though whatever had made them possessed oddly shaped limbs, or perhaps walked upon the tips of great claws.
He glanced at the corpse from the corner of his eye, then at the tracks, and moved away without touching it—though he was hungry.
After some time of staggering onward—he had not traveled far from that corpse—he encountered another yellow pool, roughly the same size.
He wanted to continue and ignore it, but He looked to the sky. The sun appeared to have set; night would soon fall and cover everything in darkness. But fortunately for him, the ground was littered with wood suitable for a fire. He gathered it, piled it up, and set about kindling a flame.
A spark appeared, then grew, devouring the small twigs and then the larger ones. He seized some wood to place upon the fire, but suddenly... the flames caught his hand, then spread to his entire arm, and continued until they covered him completely.
He screamed in agony, rolling upon the ground—but to no avail. At last he rose and ran toward the foul yellow pool. When he leaped into it, the pool ignited in seconds and exploded with force, hurling him toward one of the trees. There his head struck with great violence before he fell to the earth, unconscious...