Humanity ? 

Human beings live for their deepest desires. To fulfill his dreams, he’s capable of doing a lot of things. Until he forgets the first thing he lives for: to live. But what is living?

But was it really to live that Marc had decided to go to school today? Was it really what he wanted to live for? Like most teenagers, Marc hated school. He didn’t get picked on. He even had lots of friends. Buddies, rather. He’d never considered any of them his friend. He thought they were all fake. They were all there to please the popular guy or girl.

It wasn’t that he’d never dreamed of a girl or wanted a relationship. It was just that he didn’t think she was the one or that she wouldn’t like him if he asked. So he pretended to smile at other people’s jokes and never talked to girls. He didn’t go to parties because he didn’t drink and he simply didn’t want to go.

That was his life. It was a mixture of joy and unhappiness. He had no plans for the future. His parents forced him to work and find a plan for the future. He didn’t really like it, but he had no choice. He’d never had a choice. Like the day he was forced to go back to school. He’d understood that day that he’d never have another choice in his life.

He had often said that he didn’t mind dying. Sometimes he’d call it out in conversation. His buddies would look at him with judgmental eyes, only for him to laugh and say it was a joke. Nothing more to it than that. But his buddies had already changed the subject of their conversations.

This was his life. Marc’s life. He didn’t hate it like he didn’t love it.

But that day, Marc’s life would change completely.

That day. It was a Monday like any other. Marc got changed, said goodbye to his father, took the bus and set off for 8 hours of classes, each as boring as the next. He bumped into one of his friends - well, buddies, at last - an acquaintance he talked to more than the others. He didn’t really dare call him a friend, because he knew he wouldn’t be there when he needed him, he could ignore him for the star of the school, and they were so different. So much so that one wondered how they’d ended up as friends. Truth be told, they had a lot in common too.

“Hi Gibbs”

“Hi.”

They talked for a long time. After that, he knew that the popular guy and his gang were on their way, and there was no way he was going to be able to talk to him properly.

The first class of the week was math. Marc was good at math, but he didn’t want to do it all his life. And despite the fact that he was good, his average was around 5.5/10. For one simple reason: he wasn’t studying hard enough. But Marc didn’t care. His motto was “No problem”, so it was easy to see why he didn’t want to bother. He was just too lazy to get good marks. The proof was that the one time he’d decided to study properly, he’d gotten 8/10 on his test. That was going to raise his average, but the next test he’d got a 3. You’d think he was deliberately keeping his average at 5.

He was sitting in the 3rd row of the class. The rightmost bench. But what he didn’t like was that he wasn’t on the window side. It was his other friend, well, his other buddy he talked to the most. Less than the other one. This one listened even less than the other, and he thought he was a clever idiot.

At the same time, that’s what he was. The intelligent idiot.

On this particular day, the subject under discussion was trigonometry. Sine, cosine, etc... Marc found it easy, but that wasn’t going to stop him from getting 6/10 on the test.

Marc was thinking in a vacuum, as if his brain had switched off. He knew this happened to a lot of people, but this time it seemed different. The spot he’d been unconsciously concentrating on seemed to glow from a point. Marc stood in the void for 5 minutes, concentrating on the point of light and not knowing how to leave. Just as he managed to pull himself out of this state, he heard a voice: “Aregis”.

Marc raised his head slowly. But he noticed that, at the same time, 5 people in the class looked up in amazement. He didn’t think too much about it and decided that the maths class must be so boring that many people felt they were leaving.

The class ended normally. Marc put his chair back in its place, and headed for the exit to his next class. As he passed, he glanced at one of the people who had looked up at the same time as him. She still looked a little dazed by the moment. He was about to go out when he heard the person say, “Aregis.”

Marc stopped in front of the door, blocking the way to anyone who wanted to get out.

“Move over a little Marc.”

He turned and went to stand in front of Elie.

“What did you see just now?”

Elie looked at him distraught. As if she’d seen something horrible.

“Did you see it too?”

Marc didn’t know if she’d seen the point of light or something else.

“You saw a point of light too?”

“A point of light? ”

Obviously that wasn’t what she’d seen. She’d had to see something else but still had to hear the word Aregis at the end.

“No. I...I saw... ?

Marc didn’t like people who stuttered. He couldn’t stand waiting for someone to string 5 words together before he could speak.

“Did I see the end?”

The end. These words echoed in Marc’s head.

“Hurry up, I haven’t got all day.”

Marc was trying to get his head straight. The words he’d heard Elie say were totally ridiculous. The end of the world. It couldn’t be possible. According to the Bible, the end of the world was supposed to arrive in a world of peace, after the millennium. And Mark was sure that neither the millennium nor the end of the world was here yet.

Strangely enough, Elie came up to him and tugged at his sleeve while he was with his group of buddies. Depending on the circumstances, this could prove strange. That a girl should invite a boy to talk when they never did was usually the start of a little story.

Elie wasn’t a repulsive girl, she was even pretty. Not as pretty as the most popular girl in school, but still. Simple and kind. But if she came to talk to him, it was for something other than love.

“What is it?”

“Can I talk to you?”

Marc, pulled along by Elie, looked at his group of buddies all shocked at the idea of a girl dragging him off to talk to her alone.

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want. What did you see? ”

Marc knew this was going to be complicated. Since the vision, Elie hadn’t spoken to her friends and she’d been looking in his direction all the time. He sighed, knowing that coming after him by the sleeve might give people the wrong impression of them.

“I just saw a point of light and also heard Aregis.”

Elie stared into his eyes for at least a minute. Decidedly this girl was shameless.

“We need to go ask the others what they saw.”

“What? Why? Imagine they were actually just in the moonlight.”

“And then, at least we’ll have tried.”

Before he could say anything, Marc found himself tugged by the sleeve again. Elie pulled him into the middle of the corridor. That’s when Marc realized.

“Wait, you’re not going to...”

“AREGIS!”

Elie had shouted it loud and clear across the courtyard. Marc suddenly felt uncomfortable. He’d understood that she wanted to attract people who’d heard the word, but she really could have done it differently.

“Voila. This way, they’ll come to us.”

“What do you mean ‘to us’?”

“Well, yes, from now on, we’re companions.”

That, too, she’d said quite loudly. So high that Marc understood why people were looking at him as if they were watching a movie.

“No, for me, it’s ciao. You’re too embarrassing.”

“No. Please stay with me.”

That, too, she’d said out loud. Marc couldn’t take it anymore. People were looking around as if it were a romantic comedy. He was about to take her back when he saw her eyes. They were clearly not normal. They looked at him with despair and horror, as if they’d been through war. No, worse than war, the end of the world.

Unfortunately for him, Marc couldn’t help looking at her eyes. Which made everyone think they were about to kiss. After all those words, he was bound to fall in love. But just as everyone was waiting for the show to peak. Another boy emerged from the crowd. Those watching held their breath, thinking it was Elie’s guy who’d come to fight Marc.

“Interesting Marc. I didn’t know you could have a girlfriend. Maybe the world really has come to an end. Maybe I should go see if chickens have teeth now. ”

“That’s not funny, man.”

“I know, I know. I guess the reason you’re here is because you also had that vision and heard that word.”

“That’s just it, we didn’t see the same thing but heard the same thing.”

“We should talk about this somewhere else don’t you think?”

The crowd complained that they couldn’t hear what they were saying. In the end, they saw the three simply walk back into the building without a fight. Disappointed, they went their separate ways.

Chris wasn’t the type to talk to Marc. In fact, he was Marc’s least favorite person at the school. The star, the handsome, the popular, etc... But the fact that he didn’t like him, he didn’t show. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that he hated him, but since the Bible says you should love your enemies, he liked him less than the others. He avoided talking to him, but Chris tried to talk to him often.

“I think we’re isolated enough as it is. I wouldn’t want the others to see me with you.”

That was what he thought. He only talked to her because he could see that her popularity was growing. He didn’t want to sully her image by talking to her face to face. They weren’t on the same level. Marc wanted to leave.

“Let’s get this over with. What did you see?”

“I suppose you don’t have the same version of events. But what I saw were feathers. Lots of black feathers littering the ground as far as the eye could see. I saw myself in the middle of these feathers. It was dark and I was alone. Just as I managed to turn my head, I also heard the word Aregis.”

The three looked at each other. Their visions had nothing in common, but they were all strange. None of it made sense. Maybe they’d all had a dream and the teacher or someone else had brought them out of it by saying Aregis. But Elie countered this theory by saying that she’d asked her friends and no one had heard her. So it was the only word that united their dream.

Another student burst in on them. He was a young, brown-skinned boy called Nathanaël. He was rather tall and muscular, but very friendly. But more importantly, he was also one of the students stunned by the absence he’d had in class.

“Have you heard that word too?”

“Yes, but we didn’t see the same thing.”

“Okay. Since you’re all here, I can tell you what I saw. I saw a tall man, dressed all in black with a robe. He had six wings on his back and you couldn’t see his face. He stood in the middle of a field of black feathers. He held a sword and brandished it high into the sky. At the end of the sword, a light shone so brightly that I couldn’t look at it. Just as I turned my head, I heard him say ‘Aregis’.”

By now, everyone had fallen silent. The vision they had just heard gave them cold sweats. It was as if Nathanaël’s vision was the fusion of all the others. The light Marc had seen at the end of his sword and the field of black feathers Chris had seen. The one vision we all didn’t know about was Elie’s. But we understood that it was the man in the black robe who had surely brought about this famous end.

Another girl appeared in the room.

“Manon. Don’t tell me you too...”

“Yes, I heard the word Aregis. At first I thought it was a joke you’d played to wake me up. But when I saw you gathering here, I knew something was wrong.”

Manon looked at Chris before sitting down next to him. Marc, and everyone else in the room knew one thing about her. She was one of Chris’s groupies. One of the pretty girls who followed him everywhere. They called themselves friends, but deep down everyone knew what she really wanted. Marc liked her a lot less too. This made him want to leave even more. The only thing he didn’t understand was that Elie kept sticking to him. Like a cat hiding behind its master to protect itself from a dog. His trauma was such that he hadn’t let go since the last time.

“What I saw was a sky. I was above the clouds. But the clouds were so pure black that you couldn’t see anything below. When I tried to see what was below, a red light came from above. When I looked up, I saw a horror. The light was coming from several falling meteorites. But in the middle of these meteorites were two eyes watching me. Crimson-red eyes that seemed to contain something. But I turned my head before going any further.”

Manon’s vision complemented Nathanaël’s.If it was dark, it was because of the dark clouds. But what worried Marc most were the eyes. The eyes that were all looking down. This confirmed one of his theories.

All this was being organized by someone. Not someone. Something. A being more powerful than them. The man in black? No, the eyes didn’t belong to him. But what if it was? Nathanaël had said they couldn’t see his face.

And why them? Why had they had these strange visions? What’s going to happen to this world?

Everyone’s killing themselves while they think. Elie had gripped Marc’s sleeve even tighter. Nathanaël didn’t look very well. Manon had stuck to Chris.

There was silence in the room for another 5 minutes when Chris spoke up.

“I think we should all just forget this weird stuff.”

Manon nodded immediately. Nathanaël continued:

“He’s right. I don’t want us to think about it. I don’t want us to organize meetings to talk about it. Or try to solve the mystery. Let’s leave it aside, it’ll be better for everyone.”

Marc said nothing. Something wasn’t right. Where was the fifth person?

He’d seen her in the yard when Elie had cried out, but she hadn’t come.

“I don’t think we should tell anyone about this. ”

Hadn’t they seen him? It was true that Marc was in the 3rd row. So it was easier for him to see the whole class. He was the only one who had seen him. Except he’d forgotten his name.

“Wait, I saw...”

Ring

Marc didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Ringing had replaced all sounds in this school. The ringing sounded louder than usual.

“Good. I hope we won’t be talking after this.”

Chris had gone first. Followed by Manon. Nathanaël looked at Marc.

“Marc. You’d better forget it.”