The Central Hospital was a monument of polished glass, quiet hallways, and whispered privilege. It was the place where the rich bought time—sometimes more, sometimes less, but always at a price an ordinary person couldn't dream of paying. Its survival rate was legendary; its failures, rare enough to be spoken of only in lowered voices. For the wealthy, it was the first name that came to mind when death came knocking.
Zigeyr sat on one of the lobby chairs as if he were in a park, not a sanctuary of desperation. Around him, the air throbbed with tension. Hospitals collected human emotions like dust—worry, dread, hope, helplessness. Here, everything the world tried to hide was laid bare.
People clutched each other, rubbed trembling hands, stared at screens with unblinking intensity. Zigeyr watched them with a faint smile, as if they were performers in a play staged solely for his amusement.
A sudden wail ruptured the corridor's fragile silence. Zigeyr turned his head just as a woman collapsed to her knees, clutching a small boy—nine, maybe ten. Her tears dripped onto his still face, as though trying to water a flower that would never bloom again.
Her prayers, her offerings, her desperate calls to gods—all of it had gone unanswered. Wealth had carried her to this hospital, but even wealth bowed to death. Her family gathered around her, grief-stricken. The women cried openly. The men tried not to, but their eyes betrayed them. The air grew heavier, thick enough to choke on.
And then a presence cut through it.
A woman walked into view, moving with the serene radiance of dawn itself. Her aura shone with life, warm and impossibly pure. Her beauty was so absolute that she seemed foreign to this world, a being sculpted from divinity rather than flesh.
Yet no one noticed her.
Humans glanced past her as if she were just another shadow on the wall. If they had seen her, they would've fallen silent in awe. But they didn't. Their grief blinded them to miracles.
The woman knelt beside the child. She placed a gentle hand on his head. The boy had been struck by a vehicle, though his injuries—oddly—weren't severe enough to justify death. Someone had interfered. She already knew who.
Light glowed beneath her palm, warm and soft, unseen by all but the one watching from behind.
Zigeyr smiled slightly.
Moments later, the child gasped. His eyelids fluttered. He sat up.
Silence fell like a dropped curtain. His family froze, stunned into disbelief. Then, joy exploded between them like a breaking dam. Their tears changed from despair to relief.
The doctors, meanwhile, looked helplessly bewildered, repeating the same word—"Impossible." Their reputation suffered, but they didn't care. A life had been saved.
And it was not yet the boy's time to die.
The woman slowly rose and finally turned her attention to the only person who had seen everything.
Zigeyr.
She walked toward him, every movement graceful, measured, spotless. Not a wasted gesture. Not a trace of anything mortal.
Zigeyr sighed quietly. Do they never tire of looking so holy?
The Goddess of Life—Eva—stopped in front of him, a chilling contrast of light and shadow. "What is the reason for your presence here?" she asked, her tone cold enough to frost over steel.
Their history was clear in her voice. This was no cordial meeting of equals.
Zigeyr did not look at her. He turned his gaze away, toward another family waiting anxiously outside an operating room. "Tell me, Goddess of Life… Isn't a hospital fascinating? Look at them. Hope and despair intertwined like a knot they can never untangle. They convince themselves their loved one will survive, clinging to that fragile light… until the doctor walks out with the news that shatters it."
His lips curved into a deeper smile.
"That moment when their hope collapses—when chaos spills out of their minds and takes form as grief, rage, or hollow silence—that is art. That is truth. It makes my day."
Eva's eyes hardened. "So you killed the boy just to amuse yourself?"
She followed his gaze to the family he'd been watching. The man inside the operating room was in stable condition. The doctors had assured the family: ninety-nine percent chance of success.
The final sutures were nearly complete. Relief softened the surgeons' shoulders—
—and then a sharp snap echoed through the operating room.
The heart monitor flatlined.
The surgeons froze. Panic spread like wildfire. They scrambled to find the mistake, flipping through instruments and records, their calm shattered.
Outside, the family stiffened, some instinct telling them the air had changed.
Eva whipped her head toward Zigeyr. "You…"
He snapped, and the sound of the snap sounded inside the very soul of the man. Though for other peoples, they do not even hear the sound of snap, but that very sound of snap sounded like multiple planets getting destroyed to the soul of the man. Hearing this voice, the weak and fragile soul was instantly destroyed.
Unlike the child, whose soul was still safe and could be revived. This time there was no soul to pull back
No path for her divinity to reach.
He was gone.
Truly gone.
A being like Eva could reverse death. She could mend a body, rekindle breath, restart blood. But when a soul was destroyed—annihilated at the metaphysical level—even the Goddess of Life was powerless.
Her voice trembled with fury, with helplessness. "You destroyed his soul, Zigeyr! Why? Why this?"
Zigeyr leaned back slightly, folding his arms.
"This is a rarer kind of despair," he said softly. "Do you see how it tastes? A hope so close to fulfillment that they had already begun to breathe easier. And then—death. Absolute, irreversible. No miracle to save them."
Eva trembled—not with fear, but with the violent urge to strike him. But she couldn't. Not in her weakened state. Not here, in a hospital full of mortals who would shatter like glass under the shockwave of their clash.
Zigeyr watched her with amused curiosity, the way someone might observe a cornered but beautiful creature.
"Don't provoke me again," she whispered.
"You walked to me," he replied. "I merely entertained myself."
The cries of grief began behind them. Eva clenched her fists.
Zigeyr rose calmly and walked past her.