Prologue — In the Ashes of Ruin (Part 2)

Lian’s mother, Tâmia, existed in two modes.

At home, she was a hurried shadow: perfume too strong, high heels, makeup smudged by the night’s hours out. Red lipstick, running mascara, a practiced laugh. In the corners of the city, she had another name.

“Golden Lady.”

His father never cared.

— I’m going out with the girls, Osvald. Watch the kids, okay? — she’d say, slipping her purse onto her shoulder.

He, already halfway through a bottle, would just grunt:

— Go. Just don’t bug me.

She went. Came back at dawn with money folded into her bra, motel-cheap smell glued to her skin, glitter on her fingers. Sometimes she’d find Lian in the kitchen, drinking water in the fridge light.

— You understand Mommy, right? — she’d say, ruffling his hair with a hand still smeared in shine. — Life isn’t easy.

On Sunday morning, there she was in the front pew at church, veil on her head, hands clasped, tears in her eyes.

— Lord, forgive my sins — she repeated. — I am weak.

Lian went because he had to. The pastor talked about redemption, hell, grace. His mother cried, his father snored at home, and on Monday everything started over the same.

In Tâmia’s head, the equation was simple: sin, ask forgiveness, repeat.

In Lian’s head, even simpler: none of it made any sense.

♦

Bia was the first to leave.

Cancer had been a quiet visitor for months: appointments, tests, medicine too expensive for a family that barely bought food. Lian stacked notebooks and scribbled handouts on hard waiting-room chairs.

There was a night at the hospital when the IV beeped too slowly and the TV in the room hissed on some variety show. Bia looked at her brother, eyes sunken, voice failing:

— If you manage to travel to Mars… don’t forget to plant my flag there, okay? — she said, half laughing, half out of breath. — Someone needs to know I existed.

He squeezed her hand hard.

— Stop it, Bia.

— What? — she shrugged. — Maybe you’ll find a God on Mars.

In the end, there was no God, no Mars, no miracle.

It was in a room too white, full of soft beeps, that Lian held his sister’s hand for the last time.

— I wanted to see… — she whispered, her voice almost gone. — You starting your life over, little brother…

— We still will— he began.

She smiled — a small, tired smile, but so familiar it hurt everywhere.

— Okay, liar.

Her heart slowed. A long, steady beep sliced the air. The world shrank until it fit inside that straight line.

After the funeral, the house felt bigger and emptier. Bia’s bed stayed too neatly made. The colorful scarves were still on the chair, unmoving. The silence in that room was worse than any of his father’s drunken yelling.

Lian found out there were ways to hurt more than he already did.

♦

That was when he clung to the last piece of “home” that still existed outside his own.

Vani.

She’d been his babysitter when he was small. Not family by blood, but she’d taken the space no one else wanted: she gave real food, scolding at the right time, a hug when the world seemed too big. She kept his ridiculous drawings on the fridge door and said she’d sell them for millions when he got famous.

When money tightened and his father decided a babysitter was “luxury,” Vani got a job at a nursing home.

Lian grew up, graduated in physics, but kept visiting her.

After Bia died, he started going every day.

Vani was too old now. All-white hair in a loose bun, thin hands, veins standing out. But her smile was the same: wide, welcoming, like the whole world got lighter just from seeing it.

She’d meet him at the door with a long hug, smelling of simple soap and cheap talcum powder.

— You’re thinner, boy. Eating right? — she always repeated, pinching his cheeks.

— I am, Grandma Vani.

Lie number one thousand.

They played cards at a plastic table, watched TV low, gossiped about afternoon hosts. Lian talked about college, the neighbors, grades, his mom, his dad, the feeling of always being one step behind. Vani listened, shuffling cards, and dropped simple, straight comments that sorted the chaos in his head better than any therapist.

— Some people are born to hit — she said once, focused on a game of buraco. — And some people are born to get hit and stay standing. You look like the second kind.

— That’s not very encouraging, Vani.

— It is, you fool. — She tapped his arm. — People who hit get tired. People who get back up learn. In the end, the ones standing are the ones who learned more.

She was the last piece of home that still made sense.

That’s why when she died, it wasn’t just another loss.

It was the fuse.

It was her birthday. Lian went to the nursing home with a simple cake, bought with the little money he had, imagining her face when she saw the crooked candles.

He found nurses in a rush and a white sheet pulled up to her chest.

— Heart attack — they said. — It was fast. She didn’t suffer.

Lian stared at the cake in his hand, the cheap frosting starting to melt, and felt a physical urge to smash it into a wall, the floor, someone’s face — anywhere that would hurt as much as he did.

“Of course it was today,” he thought. “What other day would it be?”

Something inside him cracked cleanly.

♦

If anyone wanted to sum up Lian Rid’s life up to that point, it fit in one line:

One big, stinking piece of shit.

After Vani, he lived on autopilot.

Go to college. Come back. Put up with his father. Ignore his mother. Dodge the neighbors when he could. The world lost color. Things happened, but they didn’t matter. Diploma? Future? Happiness? Empty words.

He didn’t fear dying anymore.

“Die of what? Lose what?”

On some random night, heading home by a shorter route — a narrow back lane behind the market, poorly lit, stinking of trash and smoke — Lian heard footsteps speeding up behind him.

— Hey, boss — a rough voice called. — Don’t even look back. Just hand over the backpack.

He stopped.

The guy wore a battered hoodie, low cap, dirty sneakers. Cold eyes. Empty in a way Lian recognized. His hand trembled slightly around a small revolver — small, but real enough to leave no doubt.

The barrel was pointed right between Lian’s eyes.

— Come on, man. Give me everything. Phone, wallet, shoes if they’re expensive. — The thief’s finger hovered near the trigger. — Don’t make me waste time.

A few years earlier, Lian would’ve frozen. He would’ve cried, begged, handed over everything, praying to walk away alive.

That night he only felt tired. A deep tiredness that came from years and years of loss.

Tired of getting beaten.
Tired of losing.
Tired of trying.

He took half a step forward. Didn’t raise his hands. Didn’t try to bargain.

— Go ahead. Shoot — he said simply. His voice came out too calm even for his own taste. — I’ve got nothing worth taking anyway.

The thief frowned, genuinely confused for a second.

— What?

— Kill me already — Lian repeated, staring at the barrel. — Do your job. Don’t waste time.

There was no swagger there. No courage.

Just pure, clean surrender.

In that instant, his life fit into a few short flashes:

Bia laughing with her mouth full of cake.
Vani fixing his collar, complaining he was too thin.
His father calling him a mistake.
His mother crying in church.
The filthy letter dumped in the bathroom trash.

None of it felt enough to hold him.

The trigger was pulled.

The bang exploded in the alley, twice.

The impact hit like a giant fist to his chest. The world spun, the streetlights stretched and shattered. The cold ground caught him with the familiarity of an old friend. The smell of hot blood mixed with old garbage, forming a heavy fog.

— Holy shit, the guy shot the kid! — a distant voice yelled, echoing.

Feet running. People shouting. Someone calling an ambulance. Sirens rising from far too far away.

For Lian, all those sounds were already muffled, like someone had turned the world’s volume knob down.

Pain was swallowed by numbness. His vision darkened at the edges, as if a curtain were being pulled slowly shut.

“So that’s it,” he thought in the last shred of consciousness. “It’s over…”

In the quietest depth of what was left of him — where fists, cancer, filthy letters, and bullets couldn’t reach — something refused to go out.

Something small.
Stubborn.
Compressed into a spark.

While Lian Rid’s body lay still in that filthy alley, a part of him — the part that had never had a chance to truly exist — ignited for the first time.

He had finally died.

But there was no light at the end of the tunnel, no slideshow of greatest hits, no heavenly voice narrating his tragedy.

Just an absolute nothing. No body, no cold, no heat. He tried to breathe, to speak, to move.

Nothing answered.

Only thought, floating in thick darkness.

“So that’s it? Eternal black screen? Not even a little ‘loading 1%’ in the corner?” he thought, too annoyed to die properly.

He’d never believed in heaven, hell, or some invisible judge with a moral spreadsheet.
He’d always thought humanity was a complicated zoo, way too messy to divide into “good guys” and “villains.”

“So many criminals who were just born in the wrong place, surrounded by the wrong people…” he thought. “So many psychopaths with a broken brain straight from the factory… How can someone like that go to Hell as if they had chosen to be a monster from the crib?”

In his mind, the math was simple: either everyone went to the same nothing in the end, or there was an afterlife for everyone. Good or bad, rich or poor, saint or bastard — everyone ended up on the same spiritual level, period.

Death was supposed to be the final full stop in the mess, not the beginning of more paperwork.

Instead, he was still there, conscious.

“Which is already a giant conceptual error,” he summarized. “If I can still think… maybe this is what happens after the end?”

There was no clock, no heartbeat. A second could’ve been a century in there. The void didn’t care.

Until something tightened.

At first, it was just a distant discomfort, like someone poking at the nothing with a stubborn finger. The sensation grew closer, denser, until it turned into a direct pull.

Everything around him seemed to twist, as if the darkness itself were being sucked down a drain.

“What the hell…” he grumbled inwardly.

The feeling of having a body came back, and it was not gentle.

It was like someone was forcing Lian back together: bones snapping into place, muscles being tugged, nerves reconnecting. Every part reappeared with that sharp pain of something being fit together by brute force.

“Shit, is this what I think it is?” he muttered, clinging to his humor as the last shield.

Then the darkness tore.

A single point of light appeared. Then it opened into a slit.

It widened, clean and straight, like someone had sliced the void itself with an invisible blade. Threads of light spread from it to him, sticking to what remained of Lian’s consciousness. Each thread made the sense of “me” sharper. Heavier.

The light pulsed in colors his old eyes had never seen. It wasn’t white, it was… too much. Hot and cold at the same time, calling and commanding.

The pull converged straight toward it.

“I always thought that, if there was anything after the end…” he thought, dryly. “But reincarnation? You’re kidding me.”

He tried to resist. Of course he did.

It didn’t matter.

“Ah… here we go again…”

Then the light swallowed him.