“I know you don’t smile now! But don’t lose yourself!”
Ace smiled a little, for the first time in forever, while his life slowly faded away. There was the Void standing below him as he now waits to see Jane, but the blue-eyed bastard had other plans for him.
In the split of a second, the waters started to get a shade of blue as Ace dropped further deep. The immense pressure of the water crushed his lungs. The Void then swarmed around him, extending, collapsing, and whispering unintelligible things. He looked around frantically, but his consciousness was no longer with him. He then watched a strange stream of light swirl around him as he was drawn faster and faster into the medium that didn’t feel like water anymore. Eventually, there was a flash of light that surrounded Ace, and he relinquished control over his body and blacked out. Then suddenly, Ace landed onto a floating chunk of earth. He was surrounded by empty blue sky and various other fragments of the earth just floating around him in the Void.
“Wake up, Ace!” growled the Void.
“Where am I? What in the world? What is this place?” said Ace while looking at the Void in front of him with disbelief.
Without warning, the ground split apart, and in a matter of seconds, he was falling off into the abyss. Then abruptly, everything slowed down, the air stopped blowing, the whispers lessened, and the piece of ground he once was standing on, slowly broke apart into smaller pieces. He reached his hand out in panic, hoping he could somehow hold on to something. Panic billowed into his body like the smoke of a pipe into an older man’s lungs. In the blink of an eye, he was no longer falling but standing on a pathway that was made up from the rubble of the ground that he was standing on earlier. Ace was looking into the Void as he wondered where he must go. Suddenly, more pile of rubble formed and extended the pathway in front of him, and a whisper told him to go forward.
“Follow my voice!” echoed the Void.
He walked along this path and saw a piece of his life play out more and more. The pain wouldn’t stop. The intense pain and his ragged breath echoed in his mind. Voices were talking, ‘You monster,’ ‘You freak,’ ‘You demon.’ The darkness he was surrounded by, was horrifying, feeling like his very soul is being sucked in by the strange force that called him.
‘I want to die.’ was the only thought in his mind as he felt the pain shoot through his body.
“No, this can’t be happening!” Ace gasped.
“But it is happening!” retorted the Void.
He soon reached a stop as there was a room connected to the pathway. The room was dark inside, apart from a huge shrine of some sort, radiating a purple, blueish shine around it. Incense lamps surrounded the shrine, filling the room with a peculiar scent and a long purple cloth extended from the shrine to the ceiling. The walls and the cloth had weird phrases and symbols written over them, with some phrases even written in blood.
“Dark Darker yet Darker!”
Was scribbled in big, bold letters on the wall behind the shrine. As Ace walked around the room, his eyes gripped onto the pictures and the memories that were once part of his home. He then started looking down at the photographs of Jane and him for longer than he knew. Ace then looked behind himself, making sure he was alone. A man was floating in thin air with his head up. He whispered to himself, the things Ace could not make out because of the distance between them.
Before Ace could begin to try to answer his own questions, he realized something was starting to materialize in front of him, a thick black fog surrounded him and the figure of a man. The atmosphere became claustrophobic. Ace had a sudden urge to run away, but he persisted and continued to watch. He tried to make out who the figure belonged to. All he could really see was the fact that the figured hovered over the ground, with its arms crossed. Then he began to hear the figure’s voice. Distant, but soft and gentle. As the man moved closer, Ace now saw the one thing he never wanted to see in his life — the blue-eyed stranger was floating in front of him.
“Your name is Ace Attano, the year was 2006, and your father passed away from cancer, while your mother committed suicide a year later after she abandoned you. You, being only seven at the time, needed a new guardian. The state ended up sending you off to another state to live with Jane! Time had passed, and in the past 13 years, you and Jane have grown to become quite close, and with the new closeness between the two of you, you had also ended up tolerating Mike’s abuse. But unfortunately, it seems that all good things must come to an end. Last year, the day after your 19th birthday, Jane was killed by my blade, leaving you all alone. Jane was your source of strength, and ever since her death, a lot of things that have saddened you over the years had started to come back to you. After experiencing traumatic episodes one after the other, you had realized that this pain needs to stop, and you committed suicide. The year is 2019 now, and here we are both alone.” explained the stranger as he pointed his blood-stained blade at Ace.
“How do you know me? And why would you kill her, bastard!” screamed Ace as he charged towards the stranger with the intent of striking him down. When his hand touched the stranger’s heart, time seemed to stop. Everything was moving slowly, except for the stranger and Ace. Ace’s eyes shot wide open when the stranger suddenly turned into Jane. An emotion of helplessness and desperation surfaced across his face as he watched his hasty arm plunge straight into her chest — right to the heart. Blood started rising to her throat, and she coughed it back at him.
“You di… You did this to me, Ace! You killed me, Ace!” cried Jane, as more blood fountained through her mouth. Ace’s heart began to pound against his chest, almost as it was knocking, asking to be let out. His hands trembled not because he was scared, but because he was curious. He actually felt the raspy voice of Jane send cold shivers down his spine. What he saw next was more eerie, Jane’s body decayed part by part as if she were a rotting vegetable, placed in an accelerated time frame. The flesh appeared slimy and practically melting off the bone, and she vanished down into thin air.
“She was right. It was you who killed her. Or, more accurately, will kill her.” A voice suddenly bellowed. Ace comprehended it, which only meant one thing. Turning his head to the left, he caught the flash of the stranger again before the rubble that made up the ground collided with Ace and forced him to the floor and held his head tight.
“You bastard, what are you talking about! What sort of trickery is this?” muttered Ace.
“Listen to me, Ace! You cannot let the past control you. You can allow your past to influence you and your decisions, but that doesn’t mean that you can let it control you, and that includes the life that you had with Jane, along with her death. You shall understand why her death is something minuscule compared to what’s ahead of your way!”
“I would never kill her!” growled Ace, who resisted the rubble that was grappling and crushing him.
“I am the Spades. I can see that you have a potential Ace. Therefore, I will gift you something. I am responsible for the gift, but I cannot dictate or control what decisions you choose to take with it. A gift of Rebirth,” said the stranger, and abruptly, he reached out for Ace’s hand and held it tightly. His hands made Ace’s skin ablaze. The mark glowed a bright white, and the skin where it rested on, began to turn black. The Void then roared, and the Stranger’s voice echoed unintelligible things. Ace felt a burning sting on his left hand, and the sensation spread through his arm to his neck. The only way to possibly describe it would be that of a sting bolt shot right into the tip of the index finger.
“Watch out for the Whistleblower, Ace!” stressed the stranger before he vanished into the Void.
After this, strong winds blew away all the paintings inside the room, and eventually, the Void collapsed onto Ace. This caused Ace’s memories to be sucked rapidly into the silverfish-blue hollow of the Void. Ace began to feel light-headed and felt his consciousness slip away due to pain.
