I walked down the snowy road, thinking about what I had just done. It was killing me from the inside and outward. No one needed to know that I was the one who had done it.

As I walked, the snow became stained with the red that covered my hand. I continued to hold it as the red slid down and around and then fell to the ground.

I continued to walk as fast as I could.

Who knew that silence could kill? It seemed to close in all around me, gripping at my throat. I couldn’t hear anything but that undying silence—undying, unlike any other human.

I had only wanted to know the truth. The truth about the few cities left, the truth about the war, the truth that was kept out of reach from all of us, even the most curious.

I had gotten what I had wanted, but now no one will ever know the truth. Especially now that my memory is falling apart too quickly for me to try to reclaim any of it.

A lot of ancient religions believed that there were souls that would wander the earth. Some of those thought they were looking for something, what they needed to finish before they passed. Others thought that the ghosts just wanted to stay. One stood out from the rest: the Echos. That religion believed the ghosts would lose all their memory only to be reborn later on. Sometimes they would remember fragments of their last life.

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Is that what’s happening to me? Right now?

Am I going to be reborn into another life?

I don’t believe that. I’m not dead. I can’t be dead! I have information to share to the world!

But… What information? The only thing I can remember is a date: August 6, 1945. That can’t be right, can it? There’s no such thing as August. Right?

I continued walking.

The current year is 1976. Right? I’m pretty sure that I’m right.

Pain split through my body. I gasped, and looked down toward my chest. There was blood spilling out and falling onto the snow.

I realized something. Didn’t I already go through this? Didn’t I already get shot through my heart? Didn’t I already fall to my knees and die?

That can’t be right. I am very much alive right now. Dying, but still alive.

My memory was almost drained of me. The only thing I can remember, the only thing that I am able to hold on to, is a face and a line. The face was of a very pretty and brown-haired woman. Her hazel eyes shown as they looked at me. I feel like, as I stare at that memory, that I could live through all of this.

Her thin pink lips move to the words of the single line: “Will you come back to me?”

Without meaning to, I instinctively respond: “Yes.”

I glimpse her face in all its beauty one last time before my world fades to black—

And then there was a light.