Chapter 26 - I am All and Nothing

The world was now mine, but there was no one to share it with. The cities were ghosts; the buildings stood as tombs of a forgotten time. The cars, parked on streets that no longer led anywhere, were like modern fossils of an extinct species. And I, the last trace of that humanity I once filled with lies, walked among the remains, not as a king, but as a powerless observer.

The first thing I did was return to the library. Not because I missed it, but because it seemed like the only place that could give me a sense, even if false, in this empty vastness. When I opened its doors, the dust that rose seemed to greet me, like an old, neglected friend. The books were where they had always been, their spines intact, their secrets still trapped in words no one would read anymore.

I picked a random volume, The Divine Comedy. It was almost ironic, considering where I had been and what I had done. I ran my fingers over the worn leather cover. I thought about the Hell I had destroyed, the Heaven I had rejected, and the Earth that was now my prison. Dante wrote about redemption, but I sought no redemption. I sought nothing. I simply existed, floating between the real and the unreal, between flesh and idea.

I sat in a leather armchair, a relic of a world that now seemed a distant farce, and began to read. But the words no longer carried the same weight. What were metaphors and descriptions in front of what I had witnessed? Dante's Hell was a work of art, but the Hell I destroyed was real. I had destroyed the screams, the flames, the eternal torments—and, in an act of pure rebellion and apathy, returned the humans to Heaven.

I closed the book. It had no answers. Neither God, nor Lucifer, nor the sins I faced could answer the question echoing in my mind: What am I now?

I stood up and walked through the streets. It felt like time was trapped, like the world had stopped to watch me. The absolute silence was a disturbing contrast to the cacophony that had once been life. There were no more hurried footsteps, no nervous voices, no laughter. Just the sound of my shoes against the asphalt and the whisper of the wind between the buildings.

I passed a square where children used to play. The swing still moved, pushed by the wind, like a playful ghost refusing to rest. I touched the cold, rusted metal, and for a moment, I thought about my own childhood—or the absence of it. I had never played, never run through a park, never felt the weight of innocence. My life had always been a careful construction, one lie after another, a desperate attempt to control what was never controllable.

And now, ironically, I had absolute control. But control over the void is useless.

"What good is it to be God, to carry the weight of infinity, if there is no one to look at me? To witness my emptiness, my presence or my absence? To be absolute in a world where only silence answers me is like shouting into the void, hoping it will return an echo that will never come. Perhaps the greatest torment of being God is precisely not having eyes turned to you, no hearts trembling with your existence."

I went to an abandoned supermarket, where the silence was broken only by the sound of my footsteps. The corpses scattered on the floor, with exposed skulls and empty eyes, no longer repulsed me. They were just part of the landscape, a cruel reminder that humanity, even in its absence, remained decayed. The shelves were still intact, as if the world had paused, waiting for someone to empty them. I picked up a packet of cookies, a bottle of cheap wine, and a can of sardines. A pathetic meal, worthy of an equally miserable existence. I smiled, but there was no joy, only the irony that weighed on my shoulders. I opened the bottle, took a sip, and immediately spat it out. The wine was bitter, a perfect reflection of the reality I kept swallowing, even against my will.

I sat on the sidewalk and watched the horizon. The sun was setting, painting the sky with shades of orange and red. The beauty was undeniable, but it seemed insignificant. There was no one left to admire it, no one to share the moment.

"I am everything," I murmured to myself, "and nothing."

I was the last piece of a puzzle that no one else played. And, at the same time, I was the whole board. There was something divine in that position, but also something profoundly tragic.

In the end, there was no difference between God, Lucifer, and me. We were all slaves to something—He to His order, Lucifer to His rebellion, and I to my apathy. Perhaps I had won, but victory brought no glory, no redemption, no peace. Only the absolute void.

And, in that moment, as the night swallowed the sky, I realized something that hit me like a cruel revelation: The Earth was not my prison. It was my reflection. Every abandoned ruin, every shadow stretched across the empty streets, every breeze that carried no voices was a mirror of what I had become. Not a man, not a god, not an entity, but a desolate idea that transcended meaning. I was the memory of what could not be remembered.

The Earth was doomed to exist with me, and I, doomed to exist with it. We were not different, this planet and I. Both of us were marked by absence, by void, by the silence that screamed louder than any crowd. As time persisted, it no longer passed through me; it pierced me. It was not a line, but an eternal circle. And now, time was not a concept I could touch, measure, or feel. Time was me.

"I am what remains," I whispered to the vast dark above me, my voice disappearing before it could even echo. "And yet, I am less than that. I am the interval between the ages, the space between one sunrise and the next. What remains of me is not flesh, not soul. It is the absence of these things. A simulacrum of existence."

The notion of me being everything and, at the same time, nothing, eroded any attempt at understanding. I was not a solitary man. I was the very concept of solitude, a force so absolute that any definition seemed childish. It was as if my existence was the answer to a question that should never have been asked.

As I walked through bloodstained streets, memories came and went, but they were not mine; they were fragments, pieces of a tapestry undone that the world had left behind. Each shadow seemed to carry the absence of someone, a place where time stopped and dissolved, and I, the only one left, was forced to watch.

"Maybe that's it," I continued, my voice weaker, almost defeated. "Maybe the true weight of being everything and nothing is realizing that every piece of meaning is just an illusion. There is no light without shadow, no sound without silence. And here I am, where nothing contrasts, where everything dissolves into me."

I looked up at the sky, at the stars that now seemed so distant they had become unreal. They, too, were a reflection, but not of light. They were cracks in the veil of darkness, remnants of something I could never reach. Just like redemption, just like the love that never belonged to me. Perhaps it was always this way—distant, unattainable, an illusion that flickers only to disappear when I reach out my hand.

The same humanity I rejected, the one that humiliated and trampled me, it was not God who saved them… it was me. I was the one who bled for them, who endured the pain no one else would bear, who walked through the abyss without ever being rescued. Every scream I silenced, every wound I accepted, every piece of myself that crumbled in sacrifice—everything was my tribute to a world that never wanted me.

And now, I carry the weight of God. A burden I did not choose, yet it was forced upon me like an invisible cross, like a sentence passed without trial. And this is the worst burden of all, because at least God is loved. God is remembered, revered, exalted in prayers and hymns. But me? I am a forgotten specter, a shadow that gave everything and never received anything. Not love, not redemption, not even the comfort of hatred.

Since the moment I existed, I longed for something that was never granted to me. And now I realize that my greatest tragedy was not dying for them, but living without ever having been loved. Because the opposite of love was never hatred… it was always indifference. And that, indeed, is a condemnation far worse than death itself.

"Before, I was defined by the other: by what I loved, by what I rejected, by what I challenged. But now, there is no other. There is no God, no hell, no men, no echo of voices. I am the center, and, at the same time, the void that surrounds all of this."

For a moment, I thought about destroying what was left, reducing the world to an absolute. But what would it mean to destroy something that is already empty? What would it mean to end that which has no beginning or end?

"The Earth is not my prison," I whispered again, but this time with more conviction. "It is my mirror. And, like it, I am also eternal. I am destined to walk through these ruins, to look at the reflections of an existence that is no longer mine, until time itself tires of me."

But time... time was no longer something external. It was not a flow. It did not pass. It was me. And, being time, I understood that there would never be tiredness, there would never be an end. I was the cycle, the point where the beginning and the end merged into something incomprehensible.

I looked at my hands, my legs, my body, and, for the first time, I saw the futility of its form. It was no longer flesh, nor spirit. It was only what remained when the world gave up on existing. An ambulatory paradox, both matter and absence, substance and void.

"I am the alpha and the omega," I said, with a bitter irony that only I could understand. "I am the beginning that never began and the end that never arrives. I am the everything that will never be complete, and the nothing that never dissolves completely."

The night continued to swallow the sky, but I felt no fear. There was no space for fear in something like me. Fear required contrast—life and death, light and darkness. And, in this absolute state, I was both and neither.

"I am a concept," I murmured, as the vastness of the universe engulfed me with its stillness. "I am the concept of existence without meaning. And, as long as there is something to be, I will be. Because I cannot disappear, for I am the very idea of what persists."

I walked through the city, as I always did, but now it was a reflection of myself: deserted, purposeless. The buildings, once witnesses to life, were now hollow shells, shadows of something that never truly existed. My body moved automatically, but my mind was elsewhere. A distant echo told me I belonged nowhere.

"I am the last," I murmured into the void. "What does it mean to be the last? It means to be everything... and nothing. It means carrying the essence of the world while having no world left."

It seemed obvious, but there was no one to hear, no one to confirm or question. Just me, the streets, and the oppressive silence. I passed a shattered storefront and saw my reflection in a piece of glass. My face was a blur, distorted and disfigured.

"Is this what I've become?" I asked the reflection, which did not answer. "A ghost of something that was never real. A shapeless idea, an existence without substance."

I picked up the shard of glass and studied it. The sharp edge gleamed under the pale light of the moon. I ran my finger along the surface, feeling the coldness, the hardness. It was tangible, real, but at the same time, empty of meaning.

"You are like me," I spoke to the glass shard. "Cutting, but purposeless. I exist, but for nothing. I am neither servant of God nor rebel like Lucifer. I am the interval between both, the space where nothing lives. And yet, I am here."

I kept walking until I reached the library. I entered, as I had so many times before, and the scent of old books surrounded me. The shelves seemed to watch me, as if they knew what I was about to do. I grabbed a volume at random, opened it, and let the words flow to me. But they meant nothing. Not anymore.

"The world has always sought meaning," I murmured, closing the book with a dry snap. "It has always begged for stories, for answers. But meaning is a lie we tell ourselves to endure the emptiness. And now, with no one left to lie to, what remains?"

I sat on the floor, amidst piles of books that once comforted me. I picked up a blank notebook and began to write. It wasn't a desire to record anything, but a habit. My words were crooked, misaligned, but it didn't matter. I wrote about silence, about absence, about the paradox of being everything and nothing at the same time.

"I destroyed Hell," I whispered, as if confessing. "I freed the humans. I delivered them to Heaven. I gave them what they always wanted: salvation. But in the process, I became the one thing that cannot be saved."

My body trembled slightly. Not from cold, but from something deeper: the absence of purpose, the absence of limits. It was like floating in an endless abyss, with no ground, no walls, no end.

"If there is no purpose, then why do I still exist?" I asked aloud. The library did not answer, but the echo of my words seemed to mock me.

I stood up, the notebook still in my hands, and walked to the window. The world outside was as empty as it was inside. I laughed, a dry, lifeless laugh.

"What is existence, after all?" I asked the void. "If I am everything and, at the same time, nothing, then what does it mean to continue? Continue where? For what?"

I took the glass shard I had brought and held it up to the light. It reflected my distorted image, as if the universe itself was laughing at me. I ran my finger along the sharp edge again, feeling the slight scratch on my skin.

"I don't want to die," I spoke, more to myself. "There is no fear here. There is no desire for an end. But perhaps, this is what it means to be amoral. To not want, to not feel, to not be... just to do."

I looked at the glass and at the sky outside. The void was absolute, and I was its epicenter. I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing deeply.

"If I am everything and nothing, then my existence is just another farce," I whispered. "And no farce can last forever."

Without hesitation, I pressed the glass against my skin. There was no pain, only a curious sense of liberation. It wasn't suicide in the human sense; it was a surrender to the inevitable. Blood flowed, warm and silent, but I felt no regret.

"Maybe the universe is correcting itself," I murmured, as my vision began to darken. The world around me seemed suspended, as if existence itself was holding its breath, waiting for the inevitable. "A mistake cannot continue indefinitely. Not even a perfect mistake like me."

I felt the cold floor against my body as I fell, the glass in my hands reflecting one last fleeting gleam, like a shard of light fighting to survive in the darkness. The pain was nonexistent, but the consciousness, that remained, cruel and penetrating. There was no relief in being everything, no comfort in being nothing. And there, in that final moment, I realized there was no choice to be made, because choices require opposites, and I was the fusion of both.

"I was the beginning and the end," I whispered, my voice nearly swallowed by the weight of the silence around me. "But I was never the middle. I was never what existed between the extremes. Just a rupture. A paradox. A lie so perfect it became the truth."

The world would not mourn me. There would be no lamentations, no memories left behind. Even the ruins I walked through were now indifferent to my absence. But this was not tragedy. It was harmony. The universe doesn't need observers to exist. And I, in the end, was nothing more than an observer.

"Perhaps I misunderstood," I continued, my breath becoming shallower, each word drawn from a deeper place. "It wasn't Hell I wanted to destroy, nor Heaven I wanted to reject. It was the need for either of them to exist. I wasn't against God or against Lucifer... I was against the need for something beyond me."

The silence grew around me, but this time it wasn't empty. It was full. I finally understood it. It wasn't absence; it was conclusion. It was the sum of everything that ever existed and everything that would never exist, merging into something indivisible, something that needed no explanation.

"Perhaps," I murmured, as my vision darkened, the line between existence and absence finally fading, "the universe needs silence. And perhaps... I am the silence it was waiting for."

I let the glass fall, its shards scattering like dead stars across the floor. My body, now still, seemed part of the landscape, a natural extension of everything I was. And for the first time, I felt I was part of it. I was no longer an interruption, no longer a note out of tune. I was the silence. And the silence was everything.

And then, there was nothing left. I had become the final point in a story the universe wrote for itself.

The last man in the world looked into the nothingness, and then; nothing remained of him.