Epilogue: Zoan Dalton
Zoan opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was white fog. When he reached out his arm in front of him, he realized that he was actually laying down on the paved ground while his arm was reaching out towards the heavens.
He noticed something was amiss. Instead of the mechanical prosthetic he was supposed to have, he saw a skinny, organic arm, made of flesh and bones, covered with a layer of skin.
Zoan did not remember what happened to him before, and as he was trying to prod his memories… his head began to hurt. The pain slowly subsided as he stopped trying to remember. In due time, he noticed something was lacking.
In the last couple of years, Zoan’s mind had been plagued by the many auditory and occasionally visual hallucinations. He had presumed that it was due to some sort of nanomachines that had attached themselves onto the identification bracelet he had suddenly found in the pockets of his custom tailored uniform. However, when he looked at his left wrist, the bracelet was nowhere to be found.
Zoan was relieved to finally not hear the madness-inducing ramblings of the hallucinations. He did not miss them even one bit. If anything, he would most rather have eliminated the sources of the hallucinations if he could.
Zoan raised his body up to regain his sense of balance and took some time breathing in and out slowly, assessing the situation in a calm manner. He looked at his surroundings as to find any clues regarding his situation. However he could see nothing else but the fog.
Deciding that staying on one place without being able to see will probably not beneficial to himself, he decided to walk on the paved path until he found something. After walking for three minutes, Zoan noticed that the fog is really dense. He couldn’t see anything, but he did realize he was neither in a forest nor a civilization. There was nothing to be found other than dirt and a stone-paved path.
Taking no longer than a minute, the Cadet eventually found a building barely visible in the dense fog. After walking around the building and confirming the lack of prescence, Zoan turned the handle and entered the building.
// A humanoid creature appeared from the direction where the character came from. It spared no time to enter the building. It did not take more than a minute before the creature exited the building with the character behind it.
// The two walked through the fog for but a moment. It did not take long before the fog suddenly began to dissipate. The character noticed that they have arrived at the place where the dead are buried to return to Mother Nature; a graveyard.
// This was the Graveyard of the Forgotten Characters.
From Zoan’s perspective, it was as if the creature disappeared while he had appeared out of nowhere in the center of an endless graveyard. At the graveyard, there were many graves. Some big, some made of silver, and some were just wooden crosses. In front of the character, there was a deep rectangular hole. Behind it lays a tombstone. However, the Cadet could not read it.
– “Here lies Zoan Dalton. A puppet who was never thought the concept of freedom. An entity who could have become a superhuman, but was doomed to fail from the start.”
Zoan looked around. He understood it was his final stop. The graveyard knew no bounds. There was no fog to be seen.
// The creature growled from somewhere the character could not see, and a coffin had emerged from the character’s grave. It did not wish to prolong the end of its story.
Zoan was once more greeted by the humanoid creature, floating above the grave. The figure of the humanoid creature next to him became more and more apparent. “It” was not a human being. A scythe was conjured before the mass of black matter, and without uttering a single word from start to finish, the Cadet was given a swift death.
// Its body fell into the coffin as his head rolled on the ground.
// The creature picked up the head, and looked at the character’s face.
// …even after its death, the Cadet’s puppet’s expression could not be seen.
// The creature stared at it for a moment, before tossing it into the coffin. Immediately thereafter the coffin closed itself and fell into the grave that was completely filled with dirt.
// In the end, the creature disappeared, continuing its journey to putting nameless characters into eternal sleep.
