Blood

Chapter Forty: Complications

The air was thick with an unsettling stillness, the kind of silence that only existed after the chaos had subsided. Ethan spoke after a few minutes of staring at the now awoken man.

  "For a minute there I thought you were dead," Ethan muttered, his voice tinged with a mix of confusion and astonishment.

  "I'm not? That's bad. What's the point of living anyway?" came the dry, almost apathetic reply.

  Ethan’s brow furrowed in disbelief. The man's words had always carried an edge, but this—this was different. He was speaking as if life had already abandoned him, and the reality of the situation settled over Ethan like a cold shroud.

  "Can't you just kill yourself? You're tired so just end it all and rest."

  The man’s lips twisted into something that could barely be called a smile, more of a cynical quirk that only deepened the mystery surrounding him. "I'm afraid not. I can't die. Or at least, I've not found any method to kill myself."

  Ethan's thoughts swirled in confusion, trying to piece together what was happening. What was this? Some twisted joke? Some kind of riddle?

  "What are you?" Ethan finally asked, his voice steady but laced with a growing urgency to understand.

  "I don't know," came the simple response.

  "What are you?" The man asked Ethan back

  "Same answer as yours," Ethan replied.

  "So where are we?"

  The man shifted, his legs struggling to hold him upright as he glanced around. The broken landscape was all they had now. No more civilization, no more structures—just desolate ruins, an infinite stretch of empty sand, and a sky that seemed to mirror their ruin.

  "I brought you to a place where you can be shielded from the sand and heal properly."

  "Thanks for that but I should be on my way. I have to go find better ways to die."

  "What happened here?" Ethan pressed again, this time with a hint of frustration in his tone.

  The man chuckled dryly, as if the question was one that had been asked too many times. "What do you mean, what happened here? Everyone knows what happened."

  "I've been... Away."

  "Another dimension, huh?" The man asked, disbelief still thick in his voice.

  "Let's address the elephant in the room first. What happened? Who caused this? Are there any survivors apart from you?"

  "One," the man replied, his voice flat. "Hell broke loose. Two, one idiot like that messed with the timeline so the universe closed in on itself. Three, I don’t think so. I'm only alive because I was... away and maybe because I can't die. When I got back, a sandstorm carried me and buried me like we had issues before."

  Ethan shook his head in disbelief. "That explains why I found you there. Why not just go to where you came from then since you hate this place so much?"

  The man’s expression grew distant, his eyes momentarily unfocused. "I can't. My machine is screwed. The impact from the fall damaged it. I'm stuck here, and I can't die."

  Ethan let out a frustrated sigh. "What are you really?"

  The man looked at him with a hard stare. "Humans aren't supposed to know of the existence of anything other than humans, so I'm not supposed to tell you."