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The rain fell in thick curtains, warping the shadows and smothering the trembling glow of the streetlamps.

In front of a house entrance, a man stood motionless, soaked to the bone. His hair dripped onto his forehead, and the fabric of his shirt clung to his skin like a second sentence. Droplets slid down his numb fingers, but the chill consuming him came from within.

Suddenly, the door swung open with a sharp crack. On the threshold, bathed in the pale light from inside, a pregnant woman unflinchingly hurled a handful of men’s clothing.

The garments landed on the drenched street, soaking up the grime until they mirrored their wretchedness.

—Pick them up and get the hell out of here!—she spat, burning with rage and contempt—. You disgust me, you know that? No… not even pity, just disgust! How many years have passed, and you’re still the same? Look at you! All our peers have moved on, careers, money, real families… but you’re stuck in the same miserable life, no ambitions, no future. You’re an embarrassment!

Her screams echoed down the street, loud enough to draw the neighbors.

Behind cracked curtains and half-open doors, curious faces peered out, some amused, others simply hungry for spectacle.

The man felt something inside him snap, a stabbing pain with no relief. His throat burned as he swallowed, and the weight in his chest made him stagger before stepping forward, hands open in supplication.

—Please… Not like this. Not in front of everyone. We can talk… For the baby’s sake, at least.

The woman fell silent for a moment, then suddenly began to laugh.

—The baby?—she repeated, tilting her head with a twisted smile—. Where do you get the right to worry about him? This child isn’t yours. It never was.

The silence that followed was absolute. Not even the rain could dilute the cruelty of her words.

—Please…—he whispered, his voice shattered, as if each word crumbled his world—. Tell me it’s not true…

The woman laughed with acid mockery, savoring every second. Her lips curled into a venomous smile as she delivered her final blow:

—You? Did you really think I’d ruin my life carrying the child of a nobody like you?

The world went silent. The onlookers’ laughter, the rain pounding his skin, even the echo of his own breath… Everything faded into an abyss of stillness.

He didn’t answer. He had nothing left to say. No strength left to hate her. He turned and walked away, each step clumsier, slower, as if his bones resisted moving forward.

The rain fell silently, streaming down his skin as if trying to erase what remained of him.

—Disappear! I never want to see you again. Take your misery with you!—Her shout reached him muffled, distant.

But he’d already stopped listening.

His consciousness floated in a numb limbo. The world blurred, as if reality itself were unraveling.

There were no flashes of warning.

No voices calling him back.

The roar of the engine was the last thing he heard before the impact hurled him into the air.

His body slammed into the car’s windshield, bounced off the hood, and crumpled onto the slick asphalt.

His arm bent at a grotesque angle, his leg twisted like a broken puppet, and warm blood slid down his forehead, staining his world red.

He gasped, fighting for a breath that never came.

And even then, as his last breath escaped his lips, as death claimed him without resistance…

He felt nothing.

…

When he opened his eyes, the cold, wet asphalt had vanished. In its place, an immense white void stretched endlessly. There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above, yet he hung there, suspended in silent, suffocating nothingness.

Around him, an endless line of human figures stretched into infinity. They were blurred shadows, motionless, trapped in an eternal wait.

No one moved. No one acknowledged his existence.

He didn’t understand how he’d arrived, or the purpose of the line. But something inside him refused to move, as though breaking an unremembered pact.

He blinked.

Just an instant. But when he opened his eyes, the crowd had vanished. Only he remained, facing a colossal threshold covered in inscriptions that seemed to shift under his gaze.

He didn’t try to understand. There was no logic—only the urge to move forward.

There were no other options. No other fate.

So he took a deep breath and crossed.

Before him loomed a black door, so vast it seemed to merge with eternity. No walls, no floor, no sky, just that colossal door floating in nothingness. And silence… until the whispers began.

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Voices from nowhere and everywhere. They sounded like wind scraping ancient stone, like echoes of foreign thoughts. They weren’t ordinary words, yet he understood them.

—Is it him…?

—It is. His essence is bound by the same fate.

—Then the wheel will turn once more?

—Only the Supreme knows the ultimate truth.

—Five hundred and seventy lives of suffering… What purpose does such punishment serve?

—It is the decree of the Ascended Ones.

—But he hesitates at the threshold… Why?

A shiver tore through him, and his fingers clenched into trembling fists. Five hundred and seventy lives. Not just a number. Centuries of pain, loss, anguish.

Was this his fate? An eternity of suffering, trapped in an inescapable loop?

—Five hundred and seventy lives of misery…—he murmured, his voice broken under the weight of condemnation—. Is this all that awaits me…? How much longer…?

The voices didn’t answer.

—Why?—he screamed into the void, his soul撕裂ed—. Why am I condemned to endless torment? TELL ME!

Silence was his only reply.

That door… he hated it. Hated its imposing presence, the life beyond it, the cruel magnetism pulling him in.

—I won’t do it… I WON’T CROSS!—he roared, as if his voice could shatter destiny.

Suddenly, an impossible force crushed him into the absence itself.

Pain devoured his reason, grinding him, shredding him until his existence felt alien. He tried to breathe, but the void forbade it. He tried to scream, but his voice dissolved like ash.

He couldn’t die. His punishment was to exist.

Time melted into his suffering.

Then, the pressure vanished.

His broken body gasped for relief. But there was no respite. A voice emerged, unlike the others, an echo of something forgotten, a whisper from a nameless abyss.

The void trembled, and the black door cracked, bleeding dark light.

—You will.

With those words, the door opened soundlessly, and an invisible force dragged him inside.

The man fell into an endless abyss, but soon the void became a narrow corridor of writhing shadows. At its end, a lone light flickered, waiting.

He turned, heart racing. The door remained there, open, calling him back. Without hesitation, he ran toward it. He wouldn’t accept this fate. Not again.

But before he could reach it, the door slammed shut.

The sound echoed in the void. An instant later, the darkness devoured her, erasing any trace of her existence.

The man’s roar ricocheted through the shadows.

—Damn their will! May fate shatter to pieces and the Ascendants devour each other! Let them choke on their illusions! I refuse to be their puppet or bear their cursed chains.

Rage consumed him, and then, unnoticed, something began to give way.

Unaware, his blackened pupils began to crack as a green radiance pierced through them, like fire burning beneath a layer of ash.

The fabric of the world shuddered, trembling as though fearing what was about to awaken.

And then it emerged before him.

Where there had once been only an immaculate glow, now stood a scarlet door, red as if every fiber of its being were soaked in ancient blood. Its carvings twisted like creatures trapped in an eternal trance, arcane symbols sliding over one another as if trying to convey a message lost to time.

The man felt panic crawl up his spine as he gazed at the red door. This was no ordinary fear—it was primal, as though his very blood remembered what his mind had forgotten.

He exhaled slowly, letting a cynical smile curve his lips.

—My soul surrenders to the Black and trembles before you… I don’t know if my soul is a wretched counselor or just enjoys watching me suffer. If it warns me to flee, perhaps the opposite is what I must do.

He stepped forward, wrenching each foot from the ground as if gravity itself sought to cling to him, to hold him back.

Something inside rebelled, clawing at him from within, screaming in a language he refused to understand. But he ignored it, laughing with a fury that scorched his throat.

—I will not be a puppet again… Not even to my own mind.

With a growl, he forced his body across the final meters and stood before the scarlet door.

He raised his hand, fingers trembling, ready to push.

But it wasn’t necessary. Before his fingers grazed the wood, the door slid open silently, as though it had been waiting.

He drew a sharp breath and, with a tense smile, stepped through.

Reality fractured.

Now he stood in an endless corridor, its walls lined with empty picture frames, as though their images had been torn away. In the distance, a greenish glow pulsed, beckoning him.

A deep dread froze his blood.

But there was no other path.

Repeating the torment of his past lives was a fate worse than any risk. Better to face the unknown than succumb to the condemnation of inevitability.

He tried to move, but before his foot could touch the ground, a groan tore from his throat.

His flesh cracked into smoldering ash, bones splintering and evaporating as though they had never existed. He felt ripped from himself, reduced to something he could not comprehend.

When his step landed, his body was gone. Only he remained, naked in his purest form.

The world around him dissolved.

He was no longer a man. He was a child again, huddled in the depths of a cave. His small fingers trembled as they brushed the stagnant water’s surface, warping the reflection staring back with bright green eyes.

The cave’s dampness, the scent of wet stone, stirred slumbering memories.

He took another step.

His flesh shuddered, bones creaking like dry branches. A blink, a heartbeat, and his body was no longer the same. Now he was a youth wrapped in furs, clutching a bloodied spear as though his life depended on it. Before him, a chaos-born monster roared, challenging him with primal ferocity. A lightning bolt of memory struck him: the intoxication of battle, the sharpened instinct, the frenzy burning in his blood. Conquer or die.

Another step.

He saw himself at his peak: a war king upon a throne of bones and beast hides. His people knelt in reverence… but was it devotion or fear? The shadow of his conquests enveloped him, whispers of pasts buried in nameless graves.

Another step.

His body hunched under the weight of years. His hair, now pure silver, cascaded over his shoulders. Before him stood an unreal presence, a formless being, an echo of something that should never have existed.

Memories of his final hour seized him like claws closing around his chest.

He stepped forward.

The nearest frame vibrated, as though something invisible fought to break free. Threads of light danced around him, weaving the image of a weathered old man and a time-distorted entity.

Another step.

Time folded in on itself. His body was small again. The cave had vanished, replaced by a hut of mud and straw. The earth pulsed differently, as if belonging to another yesterday.

Each step mirrored what he had been.

Each cycle, another page in the book of his existence.

Each completed frame, an unearthed truth.

He saw himself as beggar and king, dreamer and destroyer. He was wise and foolish, creator and ruin. He rose to the universe’s pinnacle and fell into oblivion’s depths.

He tasted glory’s sweetness and loss’s bitterness. He relived the euphoria of first love and the desolation of final farewells.

He was a traveler lost between dimensions, trapped in lives never fully his. He beheld the cosmos’ vastness and the narrow abyss of his own mind.

He understood his time was not a line but a labyrinth. And at every turn, he found and lost himself.

One by one, the empty frames filled, rewriting his history into time’s fabric.

Until finally, his steps halted.

Before him, a green radiance burned like an unrelenting sun.

The man sighed and whispered:

—Ninety-nine thousand cycles… Ninety-nine thousand memories… of a forgotten self, finally returning.

He turned slowly, gazing at the corridor behind him. It was a mural of his story, a brutally honest portrait of his grandeur and misery, his light and shadow.

He closed his eyes for a moment before wondering:

—What forgotten sin awakened the Ascendants’ wrath? Why was my condemnation carved into eternity?

He turned back to the emerald glow, his eyes—mirrors of contained fury—blazing fiercely.

—Five centuries of torment, a sentence transcending death. One day, I will demand answers. And if they do not sate my truth, the Ascendants will know the weight of my judgment.

Slowly, he reached out and touched the radiance.

It shuddered, reacting as though recognizing his touch, then, in a single pulse, devoured him without mercy.