The Second Return

What do you imagine the end of the world will look like? Smoke-choked skies? A land buried in frost? Ruins and bones scattered across the earth? No. It could be something far quieter: everything declining beyond hope of recovery, until the world grinds to a halt one step at a time. In the long ages you no longer remember, the world has already ended countless times. Concepts have been purged. Civilizations erased. Everything you pride yourselves on creating is nothing more than a joke to the gods! And now you’re ready to kill one another over the last scraps of power they left behind?

Roche had lost his memory. All he knew was that he worked in the field for the Paranormal Affairs Association, where his job was to neutralize the things that shouldn’t exist: machines that replicated themselves, lunatics who set themselves on fire, corpses crawling across the ground with gangrene spreading over their flesh. It all stemmed from a conspiracy that had been unfolding for a very long time.

His team leader said, “Enough. I don’t want to hear another word.”

His friend said, “The biggest lie in the world is that everyday life is normal.”

And his lover only turned away, walking again and again into the cracks between reality.