Xylia Kildare, as I had become know. I'm not sure where that name came from anymore. It seemed to follow me through all my lifetimes. I can remember coming up with it as a completely original idea several times. I've used it as an alias while under pressure to come up with a false identity. I've been called by that moniker by complete strangers. I've found it in random name generators for video game characters and I've come up with it as if it were an original thought.

now though, that name holds power. It carries a weight of my legacy.

To many, that name meant salvation.

To few, it meant friend or family.

To the rest, that name bore unspeakable horror.

Among my many exsistances, I have done things that cannot be undone, nor would I undo any single one of them if it meant risking unraveling the things I have done for even just one person I cared about.

I have only thought of myself a hero a few times in my many lives and a villain a few others. After living countless years and seeing both pain and pleasure come from my actions independent of my will in the matter, I have seen beyond the spectrum of morality. There is no black and white, good and evil. There is also no grey in between. There is only the choices that we make. The universe moves forward whether there are people in it or gods behind it. We don't get a say in how the earth spins. All we can do is make sure that we don't stop moving ourselves and the people we want to spend that time with don't stop moving either.

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I have been so inclined that I decided I wanted to keep everyone I could alive and well, regardless of my wishes or theirs. There have also been times when I decided that I wasn't going to spend my time surrounded by idiots. Both times those worlds burned. Both times, my actions led to a misery of my own making.

Now, I'm here in the void at the end of time. It's cold emptiness feels comforting in its strange stability. This vast nothingness that feels both noisy with my own thoughts and peaceful with its numbness.

I feel like I could finally rest here.

I feel like I could finally stop. No more stories, no more incarnations. I could just close my eyes and drift off as the last light in a sea of blackness.

I think I just might just rest here for a while. If I finally sleep here this one last time, I think that just might be nice.

one last sleep...