Dream of Futility. Part 1

The darkness was not mere absence of light—it was alive, thick as tar, enveloping both body and mind. Wild felt no ground beneath him, heard no wind, sensed no pain in his back from the moment before consciousness slipped away. Everything had dissolved into this boundless void, leaving him alone—or nearly so. His awareness, fragile as a spark in a storm, clung to itself, struggling to grasp where he was, who he was, what he was. A dream? Death? Or something in between—a liminal state where reality and illusion merged in a chaotic dance?

He couldn't see his body, but he felt it—not the frail, grotesque vessel he bore in the Dakota world, nor the one left shattered under rubble in his past life. This was something else, incorporeal yet heavy, as if his soul had gained weight. Then, a light pierced the void—not soft, not warm, but harsh and painful, like a lightning flash. It blinded him, forcing him to recoil, but it soon dissipated, and Wild saw him.

A figure stood at the heart of the emptiness—a god, or what remained of one. This was no majestic vision from Tekra's legends, no radiant King of the World or fearsome Dragon God. This was a deity mutilated, broken, as if torn from the grinder of existence. His body—if it could be called that—was riddled with jagged wounds, oozing black, viscous blood like oil. His right arm dangled by a shred of skin, exposing bone and sinew, while his chest bore a gaping hole, revealing spilled entrails pulsing in a rhythm that mocked life itself. His face—or what was left of it—was obscured by a crust of blood, but his eyes, blazing red, bore into Wild, piercing to the core of his being.

Wild couldn't move. Fear, mingled with revulsion and a strange, almost scientific curiosity, held him fast. This was no ordinary dream—not an unconscious play of the mind as Freud might describe, born of repressed desires. It was something greater, prophetic, as if his psyche, fractured between two lives, had conjured this image to confront itself. Or something external. A god? The Author of the Apocalypse? Or a projection of his own futility?

"You," the god rasped, his voice a blend of grinding metal and a death rattle. "You've come." The words echoed through the void, vibrating in bones Wild couldn't feel. He wanted to reply, but his voice—that feeble, rasping tool—remained silent. Instead, he thought, and the thought surged outward like a wave: Who are you?

The god stepped closer, his feet leaving bloody smears on an unseen floor. "I am the one who writes," he said, blood spraying from his mouth, droplets hanging in the air like stars in the cosmos. "I saw you. There, where you died. And here, where you live again." Wild's mind faltered. Terrorists. The explosion. Pain in his side, smoke, screams. Images of his past flared like frames from a cheap film reel. He saw himself—25 years old, hunched over a desk, pen in hand, scribbling lines no one read. Futility. The word struck him like a hammer.

"You lived a useless life," the god continued, his eyes narrowing, his entrails writhing as if punctuating each syllable. "Your words drowned in emptiness. Your days were gray as ash. You died leaving no mark. And I gave you a new life—here, in this world. With magic. With a chance. But you're still the same. Useless."

Something within Wild erupted. Useless. Spoken by this bloodied, broken entity, the word wasn't just an accusation—it was a mirror reflecting both his lives. In the past, he'd been a hikikomori, locked in a room where his only legacy was dust-covered stacks of paper. Here, he was a freak, a shadow in the Dakota estate, his weakness and deformity rendering him worthless even to his family. Magic? Yes, he had sparks, but so what? He couldn't summon a flame like Tekra, couldn't stand straight, couldn't prove he mattered. Futility was his essence, his gravity, pulling him down like a Newtonian law.

He screamed—not physically, for his dream-self was merely a concept, but spiritually, in convulsions of the soul. His cry was silent yet ferocious, fracturing the void like a crack in glass. "No!" he roared, to the god, to himself, to the world. "I'm not useless! I don't want to be useless!" His mind writhed, a body in seizure, but the god, this blood-drenched Author, merely watched, his grimace twisting into something akin to a smirk.

"Look at yourself," he said, gesturing with his mangled arm toward the space before Wild. The void shimmered, and an image appeared—his deathbed from his past life. Not a grand tomb, not a monument, but a pitiful puddle of blood on asphalt, mingled with mud and shards. Nearby lay his manuscripts, scattered by the blast, already sodden in the rain, needed by no one. It was unimaginably small, pathetic, almost comical in its insignificance. His death had been as useless as his life. And here, in this new world, he was heading toward the same—weakness, oblivion, even with magic in his grasp.

"Why?" he croaked, his spiritual voice trembling with rage and pain. "Why did you give me this? What for? So I could fail again?" The question wasn't just a cry—it was philosophical, scientific, psychoanalytic. Wild dug into himself as Jung might unearth archetypes from the unconscious, seeking meaning in this absurdity. If life was an experiment, he was its failed specimen, a control group proving some variables were doomed to collapse. But he didn't want to be a variable. He wanted to be a law, an equation too vital to ignore.

The god leaned closer, his blood dripping onto the unseen floor, his eyes flaring brighter. "I didn't give you meaning," he said. "I gave you a quill. Write it yourself. Or burn." His words landed like a blow—not physical, but existential. Wild recalled his novellas, his attempts at a masterpiece, his dreams of significance. And here, in this world, he'd been given magic—not mere power, but a tool, like the quill in the Author of the Apocalypse's hand. Yet he hadn't written. He'd feared, hidden, waited for Tekra or someone else to affirm his worth.

The convulsions subsided, but the fury lingered. He stared at the god, at his entrails, his wounds, and saw not just a destroyer, but a creator. If the Author of the Apocalypse wrote endings, then Wild could write beginnings—his own beginning. "I'm not useless," he repeated, quieter but firmer. "I'll write. I'll prove it." The god didn't reply, only stepped back, dissolving into the void, leaving behind a trail of blood and the echo of his words.

The darkness closed in again, but it was different now—not empty, but brimming with potential. Wild felt the mana sparks pulsing within him, a challenge, a quill awaiting his hand. The dream didn't end—it flowed into something new, a promise he'd made to himself.