-???-

How long have I wandered these gray hills? Days? Months? Years? Time is meaningless here, a forgotten concept swallowed by the endless gray. I know I once declared that my last entry would truly be the final one, that I would simply lie down and let death take me. But that moment never came. I didn’t die. Instead, I kept walking, aimlessly drifting through this colorless wasteland. But why? Was I still trying to escape?

Then, I found my corpse. Lying there on the ground.

One would think I should feel horror, seeing my own body sprawled across the field, a bullet lodged in my skull. But in this place, nothing makes sense. Horror has no place here. It was my body—unmistakably mine. With a face full of terror. But am I the real one? Or is that lifeless shell the true me, and I am just a copy? A clone?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I remember now. I never wrote about what happened before... Perhaps I am too far gone to care.

While wandering the Graylands, there came a point when the weight of it all—the isolation, the endless walking, the gray gnawing at my mind—became unbearable. Sam had given me a gun for protection, though it offered little comfort in this land. I remember raising it to my own head and pulling the trigger. The crack of the gun echoed across the hills, and I felt the bullet enter my skull. I thought that was the end of my torment.

But I didn’t die.

I woke up again, just as before, whole and unharmed. It was as if nothing had happened. I was trapped in this endless cycle. And so I kept wandering, kept pushing forward until starvation claimed me. But even then, I didn’t die. I collapsed, weak and empty, but woke again, revived as if nothing had ever happened.

I don’t know if I can die in this place. Or maybe I’m already dead. Is this the place of darkness that the church speaks of? The burning abyss where souls are trapped forever, wandering in their sins and regrets? Whatever this place is, there is no escape from it. There is no peace. Only gray.