I slowly opened my eyes, momentarily forgetting that I had literally spent the past couple of weeks in Hell. The old man that had saved us, stood by the window, staring out at the empty street, mumbling in a language I couldn't understand.
“Good morning,” he said without even turning, somehow noticing my awakening.
With a throat like sandpaper, I couldn't even respond. I looked around the room with my tired eyes, quickly realizing that Mia was missing.
“Mia, where is she?” I forced out, barely a whisper.
“Don't worry about her, Thomas, she's resting in the chamber as the infection fades,” he said matter of factly.
I pushed myself up into a sitting position, noticing a glass filled with a murky, brown liquid on the bedside table.
“Infection?” I asked as I inspected the glass.
“It's the closest translation I could come up with. Everyone touched by the void slowly starts to drain, their souls wearing out as they merge with this place.”
He turned and limped towards me, revealing a mangled leg kept up by his cane made from bone and a bright-green crystal; Exactly like the ones from the fields we'd passed.
“Everyone except for you, Thomas,” he said.
“What does it even mean?” I asked.
Before the man could answer, a loud, brief scream could be heard from one of the other rooms, one sealed by a heavy metal door; Similar to the one on the locomotive.
“What was that?”
Without an answer, he limped over and touched the door with his cane. It morphed into an opening, which he walked through, then it promptly closed itself off.
A few minutes passed, and I got back on my feet, stumbling over to the door, unable to open it. I pushed my ear against it in an attempt at listening to the other side, but as soon as I touched it, the hole returned, and the old man walked through it, shortly followed by a drowsy Mia.
“Tom!” she exclaimed in joy as she embraced me in a tight hug.
The three of us sat down around a table made from concrete and bone.
“You must have a lot of questions, and though we're short on time, I'll answer as much as I can,” he said.
Mia and I looked at each other, both wondering where to start.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“That's a tough one,” he said as he scratched his head. “I'm what you could call a 'Guardian,' and my job is to keep this place locked down, preventing any unfortunate souls from accidentally slipping through dimensions and ending up for the rest of eternity here. Before that, before my time, I don't know who or what I was. I believe I used to be human, but it has been so long that any memory before this place has long since been wiped out.”
He paused, and looked at the untouched glass on the bedside table.
“Drink it,” he said as looked me.
Without questioning him, I drank the liquid out of some strange compulsion. It tasted like piss, but it immediately revitalized me, as if I had returned back home and recovered from the ordeals in Hell.
“How did we here then?” Mia asked.
The man looked at the floor with a shameful expression on his face.
“It's my fault. For millennia I've kept this place safe, but even I have aged, and eventually I will perish like all things should.”
“And... the people that are already here, like the one we...” Mia trailed off.
“They came during the time between the last Guardian and myself, when there was nothing here to keep the gates between our worlds closed. Those who meet an untimely death or narrowly avoid, unable to process or accept it, they all come here. I tried to help the ones that were already trapped, but they were far too gone, not like you two.”
“Not like us?”
“No, you two still have a chance at escape, but we have to move quickly!”
With that, the man shot out from his car and started gathering a bunch of papers, filled to the brim with drawings and hardly intelligible text in a strange language.
“Take these,” he said as he put the bag of papers in my hand.
We left the house and carefully ventured into the dark streets, with a sky so riddled with thick clouds that even if a sun existed, it couldn't possibly brighten up the ruins of Gehenna.
The street was mostly empty, just a few suffering, lost souls wandering, curious to our sudden presence. Though they started to follow us, they kept a safe distance.
“Don't pay them any attention, they won't bother us until we get closer to the light,” the man said.
He guided our way through the twisting and turning streets, eventually giving way to a vast, barren field riddled with the mutilated bodies of the lost souls.
Without hesitating, the man started walking into the piles of dead, faster than the both of us despite his mangled leg.
Ahead of us, miles and miles in the distance, lay massive cliffs stretching straight up into the sky, obscured at the top by the storm clouds. Then, as we touched the cold ground with our feet, a dim light appeared by the base of the cliffs, shooting through the air.
“What's that?” I asked.
“Your way out, it's a cave that serves as a doorway between our worlds. I've tried to close it, but I'm too weak. Now it will at least serve some purpose.”
As we passed the dead, some of them awoke, albeit too weak to rise, they stared us down, shrieking unintelligible words of agony.
The Guardian tapped the ground with his cane, the crystal facing down, and the dead fell silent once more. He fell to his knee as he lifted the cane, unable to support himself without its help.
“What happened to your leg?” I finally worked up the courage to ask.
“It's a recent injury. Caused by the Sentinels, as you call them. They're usually confined to their void, kept at bay by my mere presence in this world, but recently they've been getting braver; I guess they know my time is up.”
“What will happen without you?” Mia asked.
“The Sentinels will take over Gehenna, rule it as they used to millennia ago, and the gates will open, allowing any unfortunate soul to fall through the gaps of reality, unless...”
“...Unless someone takes your place?” I asked.
He nodded.
I looked over at Mia, who had finally realized the same as myself; That one of us had to stay behind and become the next Guardian.
“Tom,” Mia said as she looked at me with pleading eyes. I turned towards her, but before I could respond, the ground below us started moving.
I looked down to see that the barren fields had given way to an infinite pile of corpses, all rapidly waking up by our presence. Some just starting to scream, while others were aware enough to grab for us.
The Guardian pointed his cane at them again, and while some fell silent, he wasn't strong enough to keep them all at bay.
“Something's wrong,” he said quietly.
There was no way we could reach the cave with the lost souls awakening, and the Guardian knew it. Without a word, he slammed the cane to the ground, falling down with it, and an impossibly strong light penetrated the air, instantly silencing the dead. As he saved our lives, his skin started to crack and burn, with the vast amounts of energy surging through him.
“Run for the cave!” the man demanded as he collapsed to the ground, rapidly falling apart.
We rushed to help him, but he was surrounded by an invisible barrier, making it impossible for us to reach him.
“No, leave me,” he groaned.
We looked at him in despair as the light started to fade, and the dead started to awaken once more. He'd bought us a few minutes, but time was quickly running out.
“Do as I say, and run!”
I grabbed Mia and pulled her with me, and we spurted for the cave only a few hundred feet away. The movement of thousands, if not millions of lost souls moved the ground enough to cause cracks that shot towards the cave, ripping rocks from the wall.
The cave started collapsing, and we dove through just in time to avoid being smashed to pieces by the falling rocks, one hitting Mia on her shoulder, tearing through her flesh.
“Are you alright?” I asked as I helped her to her feet.
“Yeah, the wound isn't too deep, I'll be fine.”
We turned towards the light that filled the cave. It was a frame of glowing fog surrounding a pitch black portal, hanging a few feet above the ground.
“That's it?” I asked.
“I guess so, it doesn't exactly look inviting, but there's nothing else around.”
Even the ground within the cave was riddled with the bodies of the dead, and with each second we spent there, they started to awaken.
“We have to hurry, Mia, you go first,” I said as I walked closer to the portal.
She didn't follow, she just stood back and stared at the swirling darkness hanging in front of us.
“I'm not going with you...” she said quietly.
“What?”
“You heard him Tom, this place needs a guardian. If we both leave, millions will suffer, I just can't do it.”
Mia was far too good of a person, unwilling to consider her own well being over that of others, and I knew it in my heart that nothing I could say would change her mind.
She walked up to hug me, a final goodbye before we parted ways for the rest of eternity. I held her tight as I whispered into her ear: “I'm sorry.”
“Sorry about-”
Without letting her finish the sentence, I grabbed onto her, swung around, and shoved her into the portal. The second she realized what was happening, it was already too late, and her body washed away in the darkness, giving me a final look of sadness before she vanished.
Gehenna needed a Guardian, and Mia wouldn't have let me stay behind. So without any other choice, knowing that she had a much brighter future back on Earth than myself, I made the decision for her.
One moment of betrayal, to give her a chance at a good life, even if it meant myself staying behind for the rest of time, it would be worth it...
After Mia vanished, I felt at peace. Something within me knew she'd made it home. With that, I gained a whole new awareness of the place I would call home. The papers given to me by the old man, once filled with an incomprehensible language, suddenly turned into instructions for me to follow, and that's when I know the place had chosen me long before I even entered Gehenna.
I was supposed to stay behind.
My job now will be to close every gap between this world, and Earth, meaning that after this message, no one will ever hear from me again. Tell my family I never suffered, and Mia, if you ever read this, I'm sorry.
I hope you live a great life.
---
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