Man was born with consciousness… and that was his first sin.
The cold did not judge.
It simply existed.
As if the world itself had decided that feeling was no longer worth the effort.
The ruins stretched as far as sight could die:
skeletons of cities, organs torn from a civilization that had consumed itself.
The only plague capable of devouring everything it creates… has always been humanity.
Among faceless corpses, beneath a gray sky where blood clotted along the horizon, lay a figure that did not seem to belong to that failed landscape.
A man?
Or a mistake of fate that someone simply forgot to erase?
Darkness concealed his face.
The only light came from a small stain of blood on his left hand, as though the world were struggling to remind him that he was not yet dead.
The clouds stood still.
Time… suspended.
Birds circled in endless loops, tracing a funerary rite for a humanity that no longer deserved salvation.
"Not one, not two, not three," the man murmured without lifting his gaze. "The cycle never changes. It is written that way… in fate."
No one answered.
Only the weight of a life he had never asked to feel.
He rose with the lethargy of one who had resurrected too many times and walked through the remains.
Rust-eaten weapons, shattered homes, walls that once protected dreams now reduced to dust.
Everything man had boasted of mastering… had become a monument to failure.
In the distance, a shadow watched him:
a judge without eyes, a god without purpose, a demon without hatred.
A perfect white smile floated in the darkness, as if savoring the rot.
"I forgot my name… my strength…" the man whispered. "I have lost again."
He stopped before a gravestone eroded by years.
He could not remember who rested there, yet nostalgia sank its teeth into him all the same.
He fell to his knees.
A weary smile traced his face; it was not tenderness… it was resignation.
He covered his face with one hand.
With the other, he drew a pistol.
The cold metal pressed against his temple like an inevitable verdict.
He did not tremble.
He had forgotten how.
"How pathetic," he spat. "The condemnation of an idiot."
Dead trees pointed at the sky with their brittle branches, as if accusing a god who had never answered.
He closed his eyes.
Tears slid down.
Not from sadness, not from pain… only because the body still remembered how to cry.
"I wonder… when did everything end?"
He pulled the trigger.
The sound was dry, clean, almost merciful.
The shadow sat atop a pile of corpses, crossed its legs like an ancient scholar, and declared calmly:
"Every story has a beginning, a present, and an end… but never a true cause. They simply exist. And that is why humans go mad, searching for meaning in what never had any."
The corpse lay among dust and oblivion.
Seconds passed like centuries.
The flesh began to rot.
But then… something disturbed the stillness.
The body convulsed—barely a spasm, yet enough to defy the logic of a dead world.
As if existence itself refused to let him go.
Even though his mind had already surrendered.
Even though his soul did not understand why.
His eyes opened.
The sky twisted, delighted by every tragedy that would be born from that absurd decision.
Silence reigned absolute.
As if the universe held its breath… at the return of the idiot.