Once In Time

Several souls wandered aimlessly through the gates of life at the edge of the worlds, surrounded by the infinite darkness that spread from the void, a mysterious place that was said to have been the origin of every fabric of the universe, and the worlds spread across it.

There was nothing that could be seen in it, from the start to the end, it was all complete and total darkness that spread out without a defined path. The poor people who had died and lost themselves along the way were now doomed to lie there, senseless and mindless, for eternity.

That is, until a strange event that had never occurred, suddenly happened; shocking the magical transmission channels that served as the route for the mana on the edge of the worlds.

Suddenly blinding orange glows took over that uncontrollable and infinite darkness. In a matter of a second, the place, once completely empty and without the slightest sign of anything, had now turned into a weird-looking dark place.

Most souls were sent flying away and others just disappeared, however, at the same moment, a translucent blue-colored energy was pulled by an unseen and strange force, which brought it to the floor of the place. In a split of a second, there was another flash, accompanied by a huge crack that reverberated throughout the empty hall.

A caucasian-skinned person appeared on the floor from thin air, his eyes were teary and tired, surrounded by a huge layer of dark circles. He blinked a few times, feeling his pupils heavier than usual, and then despaired when he realized he was 'alive' again.

''What the hell happened?'', the shaggy black-haired man yelled to himself.

He rose from the icy ground he was lying on, in an instant with that scream, still terrified of what had happened a moment ago.

"I'm alive?!?", he yelled again, the words ripping through his throat.

Garrick touched his body curiously and was actually able to feel the sensation of the touch.

He looked around twice, still not understanding anything, and a second later he took a deep breath, shaking his head down, then left and right, in an attempt to get the thought of suicide out of his mind.

"Let's think about this calmly", said the boy, lacing his fingers together nervously and trying his best not to stutter, "I was dead, right?"

Asked himself something he already knew the answer to. Still, his brain seemed to want to play a prank on itself and the memories of that recent traumatic event returned like a wave in Garrick's mind, causing him immense pain, both physically and mentally.

He might be used to all that suffering, but the pain was as real as the one he felt when he felt the bones puncturing the organs of his body. He dug his nails into his arms, and some blood seeped through them. He felt bad remembering it all, after all, even though he hadn't had any reaction at the time, now he was feeling it all coming back to him as an instant shock.

Garrick felt nauseous and fought his body not to vomit there, his vision blurred for a few seconds as he remembered everything he had been through in just a few moments of his life.

He remembered his body going cold, the bones that creaked strangely whenever his chest rose and fell with his breath, and a myriad of other troubling and disturbing things as well. Just a few minutes ago, his legs had refused to move at his command, his arms had grown cold and heavy, and his head had emptied completely as he bled onto the asphalt floor of a popular street.

With all that in mind, he was definitely dead, there was no doubt. So where the hell was he now?

"Is this life after death?", he asked himself and his voice echoed through the empty place, "I thought it would be a more welcoming place, but there aren't even people here, right?"

Garrick quickly pulled himself together and took the initiative to try to find out what was going on and where he was.

As a former inhabitant of Earth, who lived a miserable life on his great blue planet and died in a way that almost no one cared when he departed the world of the living; he used to trust nothing and no one, always trusting only himself. And as usual, once again he was trying to figure things out for himself.

But in the end, he was still very confused, after all, he had never been through such a strange situation. That is, with the exception of the events that led to his death by suicide.

The young man looked around, his eyes shifting with surprising speed as he analyzed the entire situation in his mind. Although he didn't show it, Garrick was quite intelligent and had a well-qualified analytical ability concerning such things.

It was visible that there was nothing in the place, it was just a completely white room that surrounded him on all sides. From floor to ceiling, it was all painted white, accompanied by the bad lighting of the place, which gave a scary look to the place.

"What the hell is that?"

FSSHHH

Suddenly, the boy felt a strange sensation spreading violently in the back of his body. A weird, extreme heat that burned his back came out of nowhere as he thought about what it meant to wake up in that unfamiliar place.

"Shit! Hot, VERY HOT!", he yelled, throwing himself forward and rolling on the floor on instinct.

He stroked his back for a few seconds, there was no more pain, just a weird itch, but he ignored it. Then his head, which had been turned downwards, lifted, and Garrick began to survey his surroundings, noticing something even more bizarre than the sensation he had just a moment ago.

White and black flames surrounded the entire space he was in, in some sort of formation he was totally unaware of. It was like a fence on a gravel road, the kind that guided people into towns and villages.

FSSHHH

The flames were extremely hot, and their temperature was so high that it could be felt even from the distance that Garrick was now.

He looked around and confirmed that those flames did indeed spread infinitely throughout the place. It was something that happened suddenly, and now the room could be better observed with the help of the lighting coming from the flames.

Garrick also noticed that the white room seemed to have no beginning and no exit, just a straight path surrounded by these weird things. Their temperature was such that just because they were surrounding Garrick, they still slightly burned their bare ankles and legs, disappearing and reappearing in the young man's field of vision.

No, he knew that was unlikely, bordering on the impossible. Since the person he knew who had the biggest quantity of information and also the smartest one was Jullie and he hadn't spoken to the woman in months. It was impossible for the group of loan sharks and the others who wanted his head, to touch Jullie since she worked for the government.

"So what the hell is this all about?"

"..."

Garrick fell silent, then the room was silent with only the crepitant sounds of the flames, crackling nonstop in the background. He cleared his mind of the depressing thoughts and began to walk as the flames dictated.

When passing a certain point, walking through the formation that the flames took, something strange happened. The crackling stopped and only a loud sound could be heard at once. Surely most people would be deafening at such a sound, but Garrick covered his ears with his hands, hoping it would stop quickly.

The flames began to turn into a thick gray fog that prevented him from seeing ahead, or going beyond it, which made it impossible to 'go back the way he came'.

The flaming light sources that had lit the place before had gone out completely, but the room was still bright enough for Garrick to see and walk around without any problems. After all, his eyesight had been trained by his years in the army, as he had followed all the strict training to the letter.

He kept going without blinking, always trying to find something that was visible through the veil of mist that filled the room. And his agile steps quickly carried him forward through those dark corridors.

PSHHS

"Huh?"

Two torches lit alone fifty feet from Garrick, revealing their surroundings more clearly and precisely than before.

"A damn castle?"

Garrick asked in bewilderment, he had been completely naked since he arrived at that place and his body showed the results of what several years of procrastination and bad luck could do to someone.

The mist around the torches was thinner, so the boy could see more accurately than before.

Torchlight revealed dark ornate walls and a checkered marble floor. Golden chandeliers with a few candles protruded from the ceiling in random places, with no defined gaps between them, giving the place a mysterious and unique aesthetic.

He stood still for a few seconds, finding it all incredible, but soon he came out of his stupor and started walking again. When he finally got close enough to the torches, it was visible that they were hanging from some sort of gate.

Despite his trained eyesight, it was almost as if the gate were translucent or invisible, so Garrick had to squint to see what was in front of him.

As he did so, Garrick was able to distinguish what appeared to be a huge half-broken wooden gate. One thing that caught his attention was that the gate was accompanied by a semicircular ornament made of yellow-painted cobblestones, which encircled its edges.

Once again, every part of his face showed curiosity and interest. Since arriving at that place, he hasn't stopped asking himself questions and being impressed by the things that happened there.

He shuddered and realized something disturbing. That wooden gate was extremely similar to something that marked his memory. It looked like the gate to a place where he and his old ops team had been instructed to eliminate all monsters... The same gate that had started all of his life's misfortunes.

"Am I repeating my life? Maybe then, I'm in purgatory?"

He shook his head from side to side repeatedly and hit his head a few times.

"Let's ignore these silly thoughts for now and find out what this is first. It could be a clue to what happened to me and how I got here."

He used his eyes and senses that had been developed over the years to closely observe that huge gate.

He noticed that the gate had a few gold-covered silver ornaments, which distinguished it from the wooden gate he had opened moments before he had seen most of his companions die.

There were also some dolls that seemed to depict some kind of mythical event, almost as if they were an illustrated book.

For a moment Garrick felt like a child reading a story from a book.

Despite not being very strong, he was very intelligent and had a great knowledge of history and other matters. Still, that scene described at the gate was unlike anything he remembered, so nothing really useful that would help him came to mind.

His eyes flickered with interest as he placed a hand on his chin.

''So what the fuck is this?