One of the entity’s followers placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder, then said mockingly and derisively:
“What do you think you are, you idiot?”
His words had barely left his mouth when Adam moved.
He spun around in the blink of an eye, then drove a vicious punch straight into the middle of their leader’s face.
Boom!
The leader’s body was hurled backward with tremendous force and slammed into the ground, causing his followers to rush toward him to help him back to his feet.
Silence fell for a few moments.
The leader slowly raised his head and stared at Adam, astonishment clearly reflected in his eyes.
Then he said:
“You…
you’re not human.”
Adam merely looked at him in silence.
The leader continued, his tone having changed:
“You’re one of those strange kinds…
half-humans.”
Adam answered calmly:
“Yes.”
Then he fixed his gaze on him and said sharply:
“And I advise you to leave, and not come back.”
The leader swallowed hard.
Fear crept into his eyes, but he quickly concealed it behind a forced smile.
He said hurriedly:
“Forgive me…
I’ll go.
I’m truly sorry.”
With the help of his followers, he got to his feet, and they moved away from Adam and Diana.
Adam returned to his seat and sat down beside Diana as though nothing had happened.
But one of the leader’s followers approached him, leaned down slightly, and whispered:
“My lord, we can kill him using a sharp weapon.
The guards don’t care much about who carries free tickets.”
The leader turned toward him, then slapped him hard across the face.
“Shut up, you idiot!”
He placed a hand over his face in anger, then said in a low voice:
“These entities are categorically superior to us.
Their very bodies…
belong to an entirely different level.”
Then he added:
“That wasn’t an attack with all his strength…”
He swallowed.
“He was only warning me…
We need to leave.
I don’t want to attract his attention again.”
Then one of the servants turned to his master and said:
“What about our revenge?”
A sinister smile spread across the leader’s face, and he said confidently:
“Don’t worry…
I have a solution.”
He turned his gaze toward one of the young boys working for him, then pointed at him.
“Do you have the twenty-ton tesseract?”
The boy took out the tesseract.
Its cubical body shimmered with a strange energy, then he held it with a special glove that reduced its weight to zero, allowing him to carry it with ease.
“Yes, my lord.”
The leader approached him and whispered into his ear:
“Wrap it in a candy wrapper, then give it to that man over there.”
He pointed from a distance toward Adam.
“He doesn’t know who you are, and he won’t suspect a thing.”
Then an even more sinister smile spread across his face as he added:
“And the moment he interacts with it…
the fibers of his body will be torn apart instantly.”
The servant looked toward Adam, then at the tesseract in his hands.
“Understood, my lord.”
As for the leader, he continued watching the boy walk away, his smile gradually widening.
“At last…
we’ll have our revenge.”
The leader and his followers left the first area, and the black door closed behind them.
Diana looked at Adam with concern and said:
“You’re okay, right?”
Adam smiled and replied:
“Yes.
Don’t worry.”
Then the two of them turned toward the train’s glass wall.
It was completely transparent and incredibly strong, so much so that it seemed as though there were no barrier at all between them and outer space.
Diana stopped in front of it, her eyes widening as she gazed at the endless scene stretching before her.
She said in admiration:
“This is so beautiful…
space.
It truly has no equal.”
Adam smiled, then stood beside her, gazing at the distant stars and the worlds passing around the train.
He said:
“It really is.”
He fell silent for a few moments, then continued:
“That feeling of smallness and infinity makes any entity standing before it feel submission and fear.”
He turned his gaze back toward space, his eyes sinking into distant contemplation.
Then he smiled and said:
“But…
there is something astonishing about it all the same.”
Diana looked at him in confusion.
“What is it?”
Adam continued staring at the stars for a few moments, then said:
“All this vastness…
all these worlds…
everything that exists here seems unimaginably greater than us.”
He paused for a moment, then said:
“And yet, when you’re beside me, I don’t feel small.”
Diana looked at him in silence.
Adam smiled quietly, then turned his gaze back toward space.
“Perhaps a person doesn’t need to matter to the entire universe…
it is enough to matter to just one person.”
A small child approached Adam, then lightly touched his foot.
Adam turned toward him and smiled when he saw him standing there, then the child extended his hand, holding a small cube.
Adam bent down slightly and said with a smile:
“What is that, boy?”
The boy smiled mischievously and replied:
“A candy, sir.”
Adam opened his hand, and the boy placed the cube in it.
The boy stood in front of him for a few moments, waiting for something to happen.
But nothing happened.
Adam looked at the cube, then smiled and stood up, saying:
“Thank you.”
The boy tensed, and sweat began to pour down his forehead.
Adam noticed that, so he stared at the glove covering the boy’s hand and said:
“What is that glove on your hand?”
The boy did not answer.
He remained silent while Adam studied him for several seconds.
Then Adam suddenly remembered something and said:
“Wait…
I have another candy.
I’ll give you one.”
Then he extended the cube toward him.
“Hold this for a moment.”
The boy extended his gloved hand.
Adam smiled, but grabbed his hand and gently moved it aside.
Then he said:
“No…
hold it with your left hand, little one.”
The boy tensed violently, and his expression changed when he realized that Adam had discovered what he was up to.
Adam stared at him with a cold, terrifying gaze, then said:
“Take me to your master immediately.”
The boy swallowed hard, then nodded.
“Yes…”
Adam followed him, while Diana remained behind, watching the two of them in confusion.
In the second area, the leader was sitting and waiting for the boy to return, certain that his plan had succeeded.
Suddenly…
The black door slowly opened.
A smile appeared on the leader’s face when he saw the child’s foot stepping out from behind the door.
“At last…”
But before he could say anything else…
The cube shot forward at tremendous speed.
It pierced straight through the leader’s head, sending his body flying backward amid the shock of everyone in the second area.
Silence fell for a split second.
Then alarms rang throughout the train.
“Warning!
Warning!
An attack has been detected inside the second area!”
The creatures in the area froze, while some of them began backing away in panic.
On the other side, Diana heard the alarms.
She immediately stood up and headed toward Adam.
“Adam!”
At the same moment, the gates ahead began opening one after another.
Large numbers of guards emerged from them, wearing advanced armor and carrying strange weapons coursing with bright electrical charges.
The guards quickly spread throughout the corridors and aimed their weapons at Adam.
Adam, meanwhile, stood calmly where he was.
He looked at the guards surrounding him, then at the boy trembling beside him.
While the alarms continued screaming throughout the train, Diana finally reached him.
She stood beside him and looked around anxiously.
“What happened?”
Adam did not answer immediately.
He was looking at the cube that had scratched the glass before he caught it.
He said calmly:
“Looks like our journey won’t be as peaceful as I expected.”
A woman stepped forward through the ranks of soldiers, her appearance clearly suggesting that she held authority, while the soldiers stood silently behind her.
She stopped in front of Adam and looked at him seriously, then said:
“Passenger, you have violated Law Number 909 by damaging part of the train’s walls.”
She paused for a moment, then continued in an official tone:
“Under this law, you are under arrest.”
Adam looked at her in confusion, then turned toward Diana as though trying to understand what had just happened.
Adam sighed calmly, then raised his hands without resistance and said:
“I will surrender myself.”
But at that exact moment…
The train shook.
Everyone froze in place.
It was not an ordinary tremor.
The walls shook, the floor trembled beneath their feet, and the lights inside the train began flashing violently.
Then something worse happened.
It was not only the train that shook.
Space itself trembled.
The stars shuddered, distances warped, as though the very fabric of the universe had been struck by an enormous shockwave.
Then…
Something appeared in the darkness.
A massive rift tore open in space, and through it emerged a gigantic eye.
It was so enormous that the entire train looked like a tiny speck before it.
The eye stared at the train.
No one spoke.
No one moved.
Then another eye appeared.
Then a third.
Then a fourth.
One after another, enormous eyes began appearing from the depths of space until they surrounded the train from every direction.
The sight was beyond the ability of any creature to comprehend.
One of the passengers screamed:
“What is that?!”
Diana recoiled toward Adam, trembling, while Adam stood in front of her without moving, his eyes fixed on those eyes.
That train carried nearly every sentient entity in that universe.
Humans.
Creatures.
Strange races.
Beings that possessed will and consciousness.
Almost everything capable of thought and awareness was inside that train.
As for the rest of the planets…
They were empty.
Entire worlds, countless cities, civilizations that had spread across vast stretches of the universe, yet all of them had become devoid of sentient life.
As though everything that possessed a mind and a will had gathered in one place.
Inside this train.
The eyes stared at the train in silence.
Then…
Suddenly…
The darkness drew closer.
It did not move like something with speed or direction.
Rather, it seemed to collapse over them from every side at once.
Everyone’s eyes widened.
Then the screams began.
The passengers screamed, followed by the soldiers who had stood moments ago like immovable mountains.
Even the commander herself froze where she stood, all authority gone from her voice.
“What is this?!”
Diana clung tightly to Adam’s arm.
“Adam!”
Adam raised his eyes toward the glass wall.
Space was disappearing.
One star after another sank into the blackness, distant planets vanished, then the lights disappeared, and then there was nothing left but darkness.
One of the passengers screamed:
“Run!”
But where?
There was nowhere to run.
The darkness spread until it swallowed the entire train.
Adam could no longer see anything except Diana, who was holding his hand.
He stood where he was in silence.
And inside him, a single thought passed slowly:
“Everyone runs after their own interests…
and everyone wants to survive.”
He fell silent for a moment.
Then added inwardly:
“The suffering of being.”
The people around him began to change.
One of them turned into black dust, then vanished.
Then another.
Then another.
Bodies fell one after another, as though their very existence were being erased from reality.
The commander screamed as she stumbled backward, then rushed toward Adam and clung to his clothes with all her strength.
Her eyes were filled with terror.
“Please!”
Her voice trembled.
“Don’t let me die!”
She moved closer to him, as though she had found in him the last thing she could cling to.
“Please…
I don’t want to die!”
Adam looked at her in shock.
He did not know what to say.
Then it happened.
Her body began disintegrating before his eyes.
Her limbs turned into black dust, then her entire body dissolved into the darkness.
She vanished.
Adam’s hand remained suspended in the air for a few moments, her fingers still clutching the edge of his clothes before they vanished as well.
Adam stared at the place where she had been standing.
He could not understand what was happening.
There had been no battle.
There had been no explosion.
There had been no chance to resist in the first place.
The darkness was simply swallowing everything.
Diana gripped his hand even tighter.
Her voice trembled:
“Adam…”
He turned toward her.
She was afraid.
But she did not let go of his hand.
Diana began to feel something strange spreading through her body.
It was not ordinary pain.
It was a sensation of emptiness…
as though something were devouring her consciousness from within, slowly erasing her existence.
She looked at Adam, who was staring at the chaos around him, at the entities beginning to fall one after another.
Then she whispered weakly:
“Adam…
I don’t feel well.”
Adam immediately turned toward her.
Before he could say anything, her legs gave out and she collapsed into his arms.
“Diana!”
Her body suddenly trembled in his arms.
Adam froze for a few moments, then held her tightly and said:
“Don’t be afraid…
everything will be okay.”
He gently lowered her to the ground, supporting her head with one hand.
“Don’t worry, please…
hold on.”
Diana’s breathing was weak.
Her hand trembled, then she slowly raised it and placed it on Adam’s shoulder.
She smiled at him despite the tears beginning to stream from her eyes.
She said in a broken voice:
“I love you…”
She paused for a moment, as though trying to gather what little strength she had left.
Then she smiled sadly.
“Looks like my dream came true…”
Adam moved closer to her, his eyes filled with fear.
She whispered:
“I’m going to die…
and I won’t see you die.”
And suddenly…
Diana’s expression changed completely.
The warmth vanished from her face, replaced by a cold, emotionless expression, as she slowly raised her head toward the darkness surrounding them.
Adam stared at her, frozen for a moment.
“Diana…?”
She did not answer.
The hand resting on his shoulder began to fade.
Her fingers turned into tiny particles, then completely evaporated before his eyes.
“No…”
Adam’s eyes widened.
In the next instant, Diana’s body itself began to fade, as though something were erasing her existence from reality.
“No!”
He tried to grab her, but found nothing.
And within moments…
Diana had completely disappeared.
Adam screamed at the top of his lungs:
“No…
no…
no!”
He slammed his fists against the ground with all his strength.
Then he grabbed his head and struck it with both hands as tears poured endlessly from his eyes.
“No…”
His voice shattered with every word.
And suddenly…
Laughter appeared.
At first, it was distant.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Then hundreds.
Endless laughter, coming from every direction, as though the void itself had become filled with creatures watching him.
Adam raised his head.
He shouted:
“Who’s laughing?!”
The laughter did not stop.
It only grew louder.
It rose higher and higher until it seemed to tear the space around him apart.
Everything was gone.
The entities.
The worlds.
The sounds.
Even the traces of Diana’s existence.
Only Adam remained, standing alone in the middle of that void.
He screamed again:
“Who the hell are you?!”
A sudden silence fell.
Then a single voice came from everywhere at once.
“We…”
The voice paused for a moment.
Then said:
“The gods.”
Adam froze.
The voice had no direction.
There was no entity that could be seen.
It was not even present in the place itself.
And yet, the mere sound of its voice was enough to make the existence around him tremble, as though the words themselves carried a power capable of shattering everything that existed.
The laughter rose again.
Adam stared into the darkness with eyes filled with anger and tears.
Then he screamed with everything he had left inside him:
“Damn you all!”
The echo of his scream reverberated through the void.
But the laughter…
did not stop.