Prologue

Taking a final lengthy drag of a Mild Seven cigarette, I glanced indifferently at the fanatical woman kneeling before me. As I exhaled, I thought about how these cigarettes had walked hand in hand with me in high risk jobs like these for 25 years. Flicking the butt to the side I calmly exhaled holding perhaps the thing most worthy of my trust in this world, my beloved Colt Python .357 Magnum to the fanatic's forehead.

"Do you realise that going against The Order is equivalent to resisting the will of the Gods?", the radical lady spoke calmly, a slight smirk tugging at her lips, as if everything was in the palm of her hand.

'I hate that smug fucking expression these zealots always have on their faces'.

"We can do this the hard way, or the easy way. Where is the crystal?"

Ignoring me, the zealot raised her head to the sky before saying a strange chant.

"Tuum negotium dominus servi illius perficitur."

Before I could say anything, the woman's eyes seemed to glow, a golden light illuminating the gloomy bloodbath within the warehouse.

Ignoring the strange happening I raised my voice, "What's it gonna be? My patience is wearing- ", she withdrew the holy crystal from her strange cultist robes offering it towards me.

Seeing the artefact, my trigger finger tightened, but I was too lax. From within her robes, she withdrew a sacrificial dagger in the final moment she skimmed my wrist causing my blood to spatter the artefact. Bits of the woman's head rained down in the warehouse, the smell of tobacco and ammonia mixed with the curdling gore.

I ignored the searing pain from my wrist, instead I watched in what seemed like slow motion as the blood covered crystal clinked on the ground. Before I could react a red ray of light shot out from the object surrounding me in a strange formation. In mere milliseconds the warehouse floor vanished, revealing an endless abyss which swallowed me whole.

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'What the fuck is going on?', my frigid heart raced as the terrifying sensation of free falling endlessly resulted in my skin crawling. A cold sweat ran down my back as I brainstormed ways out of this ridiculous situation. The jolting pain from my wrist was too real for it to be a dream, or rather a nightmare. As the wind screamed past my ears a strange blue dot, no bigger than a pinpoint came into view. Once I noticed it the pinpoint began to grow exponentially in size, I soon realised I was about to hit the ground.

Not bothering to think about survival or whatever the fuck had just happened, I saw the faces of those I killed, I remembered those I once loved, those who once loved me. 'So, this is what they felt'. I thought glancing at the Colt Python in my hand. The blue light like the bullet which my victims saw, if they were unfortunate enough to see it. What was the point of it all…

'What a shit-show this life is.' As I neared the end of my tunnel, I noticed it was a strange lake of neon blue liquid. Certain death.

I smiled widely and giggled to myself, closing my eyes and embracing the cold kiss of death, the lover who I longed for. I had found my peace.

*Bang*

Strangely, the end did not come as I had expected. Somehow despite knowing my body had died, my mind lived on, something I found difficult to imagine while I was alive. I walked amongst my deepest memories, even ones I had buried for the sake of my own sanity.

I just watched as the past me made the same decisions, the same mistakes. The memories left me wondering whether the me back then would make the same choices, knowing the end was so fruitless. To me, this is my repentance for my great sins, surely forgiveness will follow, right?

Eventually I realised such hopes were in vein. Each time I closed my eyes before colliding with the blue lake, one of my final moments, my memories would start again. I died when I was forty-two. These forty-two years have now played what feels like a thousand times. Unable to stop observing, I now know every minute detail of each memory, even now new things become apparent to me, as if I am experiencing the memory for the first time.

I finally understood, after an eon, what I lived was not life, I lived seeking death. Now that I have died, what I yearn for is… life. This is the fickleness of reason. Craving that which one does not have.

As I thought this, my soul began to stir, I felt a pair of eyes watching me. They seemed amused almost, the same eyes one would look at an ant doing a jig, or something peculiar like that.

My soul trembled as a certain power, an understanding of this world, an enlightenment graced my mind and I fell into an eternal slumber.