For the second time in Kayn’s life, there was nothing but an empty, white void in every direction that he looked. Despite the vertigo and forced amnesia, he instantly knew what he was looking at and what it meant for me to be here.

“I won’t return this time,” he said.

There was no one in particular upon which his words would fall, but he knew that they would be heard nonetheless.

“I’ve won another chance at life once before, and I have no intention of doing so again.”

“Even if you are needed?” a voice replied, as expected.

It seemed even Gods grew old. The speaker's voice, while much the same as it was nearly a century ago, now showed the wear of time; raspy and wrought with grit; weathered and dripping with layers of knowledge.

“I don’t care if I’m needed. When I died in my first life, you offered me a second chance to return to my world, alive, if I helped you with the struggles you faced in your own. Had I known….that the world I was fighting to return to would become more foreign to me than the one I was fighting in, I never would have accepted your offer. I returned to nothing….to no one,” Kayn said.

Although he tried to keep his emotion away from his words, some slipped out and infected his voice with slight trembles.

“Time flows differently in our worlds than it does in yours. The decade you spent on our side was equivalent to a century in your own world. But regardless of what era you found yourself in, you were allowed to live once more; is that not what humans seek in life? To prolong their days and become everlasting?” the voice said.

“I do not expect a God, emotionless as you all are, to understand the heart of a human. There is nothing more mortifying than being alone in a world where everyone is connected with someone. I have no place left in either world. My place is in the ground alongside my friends and family, so please, let me finally meet them again.”

The voice remained silent for a long while after Kayn finished his piece.

Long enough for him to recall his time in this place and the decade that followed after it in vivid fondness. Born again as a boy half the age he died at, full of the naivete of a man who hadn’t lived long enough that he’d wish to live longer. Full of the blissful ignorance of a man who fought to return to a home that none remembered existed, to a mother whose grave was too dated to even locate, to a wife who had surely moved on after the grievance of his passing faded like the memories of his existence.

Long enough for him to feel all the pain of the fifty years that followed his return to Earth, a man ready to pick up where he left off and start again, only to never start anything at all. Even after all the struggling, Kayn couldn’t adjust to the century of changes; the world had become too fast for him to keep up and he fell behind before he was even given a chance to get running.

Forgotten and alone. If he had died of heartache before natural causes it wouldn’t have been too hard to believe. Even as he had approached death his peace was not made in fear he’d be forced to experience it all over again.

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“I see….” the voice said slowly. “Very well. If you do not wish to return then that is that. I had hoped the Hero you once were wouldn't have lost to the man you became, but time ruins all if enough passes.”

“Time is what made me that man in the first place,” Kayn said with a vicious bite.

“So it was….rest assured that the world you saved long ago still flourishes in the freedom you granted them. They do not face any danger.”

Not once did he wonder about the state of that world. But if the other world wasn’t in danger again, then….

“Why would you be asking me to return to a world not in need of saving?” Kayn asked.

“It is not MY world you’d be brought to, Kayn. I am not the only God in control of a Realm. I was of the lucky few to be left untouched.”

So there were other worlds after all.

Over his years in both lands, Kayn had speculated the existence of others but never concluded whether they existed or not.

How funny.

When his care for it all had completely run dry, his decade-old question finally got answered. Perfect closure.

“It doesn’t matter what world I’d be sent to. I want to move on, so let’s end this talk of ours, and let’s make it our last,” Kayn said.

There was no response.

The voice, all though not tangible in its existence, seemed to no longer be present in the empty void.

What it said at the ending there was a little usual. What did he mean by “the lucky few to be left untouched?” Kayn thought.

But no. It didn’t matter what the voice meant. Kayn’s time had finally come to an end. Whatever problems the world found itself in now, or universe for all he cared, had nothing to do with him.

He was free.

Suddenly, the land of white that surrounded him caved in on itself; the edges gave way to a void of darkness that seemed to lay beyond, slowly collapsing inward to the singularity point that was Kayn’s existence.

This was different.

All those years ago, the world had grown brighter and his body had ascended high to the sounds of harmonizing angels; typical fare for resurrection. However, as frightening as it was, falling into a void of darkness instead of ascending to a beam of light meant that his wishes were granted, and there was some comfort in that.

“This is not what I wanted,” the voice said again, finally returning. It seemed troubled. “Things would be different if I had my way, I want you to know that. I tried my best.”

As Kayn fell deeper into the void, he couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that something wasn’t right.

But surely, if the voice said he didn’t get his way that meant that Kayn had gotten his, right?

He fell quicker and quicker through the nothingness and his surroundings grew ever warmer. His mind went numb, and he fell into a daze for the remainder of the fall.

As his consciousness slipped, before his mind was truly gone, a small voice spoke to him. It was a woman’s and had his emotions not dulled to an apathetic numbness, he would have been filled with rage simply at the sound of her voice, let alone the words she spoke.

I’m sorry, she said. But you’re much too valuable a piece to let go of.

And everything went blank.