Finn got to his feet, feeling a strange lightness in his limbs. His voice returned to him, but the words got stuck in his throat. "Where am I? Who is this...?" thoughts raced as he examined the trembling contours of the figure.
"I am Fate," the creature said, and its voice sounded both solemn and bored, like a teacher repeating a memorized phrase for the hundredth time. "You are between life and death. This is a state when the soul wants to leave the body, but cannot... usually due to desire."
Black fingers turned the pages of the book.
"Sometimes the desire for life is so strong that even I..." Fate suddenly fell silent. The smooth mask of its face tilted towards the text. "But wait. You... have no fate? How is that possible?"
The figure jumped up abruptly, the chair toppling over with a dull thud. In three steps, it covered the distance to Finn and grabbed him by the wrist.
The touch burned like dry ice. The darkness around them contracted—first the desk disappeared, then the walls of the nonexistent room, until the whole world turned into a black ball the size of their clasped hands.
And then—a flash.
They stood in a spacious room with sky-blue wallpaper. On the right wall stood a sofa-wardrobe—a massive structure of light oak with a pull-out sleeping space, covered with a checkered plaid. On the opposite wall hung a plasma TV with a cracked corner.
At the writing desk sat... himself. Only younger—about ten years old, no more. The boy was diligently sharpening pencils, a pile of shavings growing before him.
Fate glided through the desk like a shadow.
"What are you doing?" she asked, leaning towards the child.
Finn wanted to answer, but the words came from the child himself, sitting at the desk.
"Trying to pretend I'm busy..." his childish voice sounded muffled, with a hint of weariness.
"Why?" Fate insisted.
At that moment, the door burst open.
A man in his forties filled the doorway—tall, at least six feet, with hair as black as pitch and sharp facial features. His brown eyes gleamed with a wet shine. Pajama pants and a worn sweater hugged his muscular body.
Finn felt his fists clench. He lunged forward—and passed through his stepfather as if through smoke.
"Who is that?" Fate asked, watching the man sit on the edge of the bed.
"Andri," Finn hissed. "Stepfather. Mom's husband."
Andri patted the mattress with his palm: "Bring here what you've sharpened."
The boy flinched. His fingers trembled as he gathered the pencils. With barely audible steps, he approached and offered the bundle—each sharpened to razor sharpness.
The stepfather took one, checking the tip with his thumb. He grunted in satisfaction. Then, without warning, he plunged the pencil into the child's thigh.
"Ow!" the childish voice broke into a squeal.
Finn saw the bluish graphite enter the flesh by two centimeters. Blood welled around the wound, soaking the light pants. But there were no tears in his eyes.
"Tears only make him angry," Finn whispered, watching his younger self clench his teeth.
Fate watched silently. Her featureless mask expressed nothing.
Andri pulled out the pencil and threw it on the floor.
"Too sharp," was all he said. Before leaving for the corridor.
The moment the door slammed shut behind his stepfather, the air in the room thickened. Time accelerated, turning into a kaleidoscope of agonizing days:
*7:00 AM.* The boy jumps out of bed at the slightest sound of footsteps in the corridor. His fingers tremble as he fastens his torn school uniform. He slips out the window while dishes clatter in the kitchen.
*4:00 PM.* Returning home. The door bursts open—Andri stands with a mop handle. The first blow lands on his back, tearing the fabric of his clothes. The second—on his legs, knocking him down. Blood seeps through his shirt, leaving scarlet prints on the floor.
Sometimes his mother appeared—a woman slightly taller than her son, with long unwashed black hair and a puffy face. Her figure, once slender, had now spread under a layer of fat and alcohol. She would grab Andri by the arm:
"Stop, please..."
The response was a blow to the stomach. She would fall, gasping, and the beating of her son would continue. On better days, she would crawl in later, with a bottle of spirits and tear-filled eyes, trying to dab his wounds with a dirty rag.
And then time slowed down. Finn recognized this moment.
The boy sat in the kitchen, half-naked. His body was covered in bloody streaks—traces of a wire, left with mathematical precision. On the table lay an old cordless phone with a cracked casing, the buttons worn down to metal.
Andri was dialing. Speakerphone. Dial tone.
"Hello?" a thin girlish voice. 12 years old, no more.
"This is Andri, Finn's father. He wants to confess something to you," the stepfather smirked, shoving the receiver into the boy's bloody palm.
Finn-the-child was already crying. Tears mixed with blood on his cheeks.
"H-hello... Mila... I... I love you," his voice broke into sobs.
Fate sat nearby, resting her featureless head on her hands, as if listening to an interesting radio play.
The darkness contracted around them, like lungs before an exhale. When the world materialized again, they were standing in a school corridor.
The walls, painted a dirty beige, were covered in graffiti. The floor creaked underfoot—old linoleum with worn-through paths. The voices of teachers could be heard from the classrooms.
Before Finn-the-child stood Mila. A girl with hair the color of ripe wheat, braided into a tight braid. Her blue eyes, usually kind, now sparkled with contempt. Her school uniform—a brown dress with a white apron—looked perfectly ironed.
Her classmates stood around them in a semicircle. No friends, not even acquaintances—just spectators, eager for a spectacle.
"Are you serious?" Mila snorted, looking at Finn as if he were a piece of dirt on her shoe. "You, stinking beggar, dare to say that to me?"
Laughter rolled through the corridor. Someone pushed Finn in the back. He staggered but didn't fall. His eyes were fixed on Mila—there was not a drop of pity in them, only a satisfied expression.
Fate shook her head: "You have an interesting life, Finn!" the voice was not filled with compassion; it was a statement of fact.
The darkness thickened, engulfing the school corridor, the laughing faces of classmates, Mila's pale face from rage. The last to disappear was Finn-the-child himself—his beaten body dissolved into the blackness, as if it had never existed.
Fate stood, bowing her featureless head. Her fingers slowly turned the pages of the book, where the letters now glowed blood-red.
"And why do you want to live so badly?" her voice, for the first time, sounded with a hint of something distantly resembling sadness. "You are an immature fruit on a rotting branch. Your whole world is dirt and pain."
Finn clenched his fists. A lump formed in his throat.
"Do I want to?" he exhaled. "I don't want this life."
Fate took a step forward. Distant stars flickered in her void-like eyes, and for a moment, it seemed that the featureless mask had moved into a semblance of a smile.
"Then you were hasty with your step," her fingers touched the last page. "In just a month... all this will be gone."
The darkness around them exploded with visions:
Cities burned. The sky split, and creatures poured through the cracks—part insect, part machine, with chitinous shells and steel claws. They cut people into pieces like paper, leaving behind only puddles of melted asphalt and bones.
The school where Finn had just been laughed at was now a pile of rubble. Children's hands, clenched in a final spasm, protruded from under the slabs.
His home. Andri lay with his stomach ripped open, his intestines wrapped around the legs of the kitchen table like garlands. His mother sat nearby, an empty bottle in her hand, her face covered in tears and blood. She was whispering something, looking at the sky—perhaps praying.
"Your entire lineage will go into the past," Fate's voice now sounded with metallic notes, as if from speakers. "You will leave your home and be forced to correct your mistakes."
Gradually, the darkness began to transform, revealing faint glimmers of light that grew brighter and brighter. These flashes resembled stars in the night sky. Light spread around, and soon Finn found himself standing on the railway tracks again. Steam escaped from his mouth, indicating his return to cold reality. Looking ahead, he saw that the dark figure was slowly and smoothly moving towards the teenager. Approaching the teenager, the darkness enveloping Fate's body began to expand again, obscuring everything around, but at the same time absorbing Finn. Fate spoke in a serious tone:
"I give you a choice"—the figure moved smoothly but very quickly and stood to the side, to the left of the young man, and placed its hand on his shoulder—"you had a difficult childhood, a difficult youth, unrequited feelings, the detachment of your own mother. Are you ready to receive a chance for a new life, a new destiny, new opportunities?"—as she spoke, a particle of darkness emerged from the figure and settled on the railway tracks.
"Or... you can give up, and all the problems that may await you will instantly become unimportant, and in fact, everything will become unimportant, because in reality, you do not exist for others." Fate said this calmly, but it was difficult to hide her disgust; she was disgusted by this option. But after a few moments, the dark figure regained its composure and added, "However, the choice is yours, my young boy." At this time, Fate began to slowly dissipate, but before completely disappearing, she whispered:
"We both know what choice you will make, Finnlein Reinbach."
With these words, the darkness enveloping everything around began to form into a small dark sphere, and then began to move around the teenager, separating particles of the sphere and penetrating into different parts of the young man's body.
Time seemed to roll back; the silence that filled this place after its demise was once again covered by the cawing of crows. A moment later, a strong whistle of wagons deafened the place where the teenager stood, but the figure of the young man was no longer there at that moment.
And somewhere far away, amidst the boundless ocean of stars, a new... Star was born.