Capítulo 97: Chapter 97
It had been months since Ethan's life had started to unravel, the pieces falling one by one. It was like everything he had done—every mistake, every wrong—had been leading to this. He had always dismissed the stories, the whispers, of the train that came for people when they hit a certain number.
It sounded like a sick joke, something to make the world feel smaller, darker, more hopeless. But when he did the math, when he thought back on the list, he realized something. He had crossed the line.
Twenty-five.
It wasn't hard to keep count. At least not for him. Every awful thing he had ever done stacked up neatly in his head, each one a stone added to the pile. Maybe some of the things had been small—small lies, small crimes—but they had added up.
They always did. He couldn't remember the exact moment he crossed the line from simple mistakes to something more, but when he felt it coming, he wasn't surprised.
That night, after another long day of work, another dismal round of barely surviving in a city that didn't care, he sat on the cracked couch and waited. He had read the warnings: If you had done 25 bad things, you were on the list. The train would come for you.
It was past midnight when he heard the first sound. Low, like a distant rumble at first, like the deep growl of thunder on a stormless night. Ethan sat up. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He tried to ignore it, tried to push it aside as something normal, a truck passing by or an old building settling in the wind. But then it came again.
This time, it was louder. A sound too deep to be anything natural.
He stood up. His feet didn't seem to want to obey, but he walked to the window anyway, staring out at the darkened street below. Nothing.
Then, out of nowhere, it came.
The train.
He could feel the vibration in his chest before he even saw it. The ground shook as the beast passed beneath his window. A train, but unlike anything he had ever seen. Black as pitch. No lights, no windows, just a giant metal mass, with an endless row of doors.
The sound was deafening now, a low, metallic screech of something dragging across a jagged surface. The train passed too close to the building, rattling the glass in the frames, the walls groaning under its weight. Ethan's heart slammed against his ribs as the train slowed to a halt.
The doors creaked open.
Ethan froze, hands gripping the windowpane, his chest tight. He could hear the hiss of the doors as they parted, the sound cutting through the silence like a knife.
He didn't want to go. He couldn't go. But he knew what would happen if he didn't.
That was the rule. You couldn't refuse it.
He stepped away from the window, his feet moving before his mind could catch up. Something in the air felt wrong, a kind of quiet desperation creeping in, something older than time, a force far too ancient to ever understand. He walked out of his apartment, his legs carrying him with no direction, just the pull of inevitability.
When he reached the street, the train was waiting.
The doors were open, as if they had always been meant for him.
For a moment, he thought about running, about turning back, but something in the pit of his stomach told him it was too late for that. The cold air bit at his skin, and for the first time in months, he felt something—real fear.
"Get in." A voice, not a whisper, but somehow still too soft to ignore. It came from the train, or maybe it was in his head. It didn't matter.
Ethan stepped inside.
The moment his foot crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut behind him.
The train was dark. No lights, no windows, nothing but endless black space that stretched into eternity. He stumbled forward, his hand grazing the wall for something to hold onto. It was smooth, cold, like it had never been touched. The air was stale, thick with something suffocating. His breath came out in quick, shallow bursts as he tried to steady himself. The walls, the floor, everything, was the same—dark metal and endless emptiness.
And then the voice came again.
"You've been chosen," it said, not loud but sharp, like a razor cutting through him. "For what you've done. You'll see."
Ethan's blood ran cold as he looked around. No one else was there. No one but him.
The train rumbled forward, the sound reverberating deep in his bones. He closed his eyes, gripping his hands together, praying this was just a bad dream. But when he opened them again, the blackness didn't go away.
It was still there.
"Stop…" His voice cracked as he whispered the word, but it didn't matter. The train kept moving, pulling him deeper into its path.
The seats appeared, one by one, empty. No one else in sight. He was the only passenger. The only one who mattered, apparently.
That's when the door opened again.
A voice called from beyond. "You've reached your destination."
Ethan's stomach lurched. The train slowed, and the lights flickered to life, a faint glow casting long shadows across the car. In front of him stood a door—metal, cold, and somehow too heavy for him to open. But the voice was still there, urging him forward. He pushed the door open.
Beyond the door, another world stretched out before him. A barren, rocky wasteland, filled with jagged hills and smoke rising from the cracks in the earth. Nothing moved. No sign of life, no sounds.
But then he heard it—the faint cry of something far away.
Ethan stepped forward, not knowing what to expect. His breath caught in his throat. The ground cracked underfoot as he made his way through the landscape. The sky above was bruised and broken, shifting in unnatural patterns. No stars. Only a swirling mass of blackness that looked as though it was slowly swallowing the planet whole.
The doors of the train slammed shut behind him. He was alone now.
A figure appeared in the distance, moving toward him at a steady pace. As it got closer, Ethan saw it was a person. A man, but with no features—just a blank, empty face. No eyes, no mouth, no nose.
It came closer, until it was standing right in front of him.
"You've done it all," the figure said, its voice mechanical, as though it were made from the very air. "All of it. Every sin, every mistake. And now you will face them."
The figure reached out, and Ethan backed away, but he couldn't escape. The man—or whatever it was—grabbed his arm, pulling him toward a dark pit that had suddenly opened beneath them.
He tried to scream, but no sound came.
The pit swallowed him whole.
And then he was falling, through the emptiness. No screams, no cries for help. Just the sound of his heart beating in his ears.
Then he hit the ground. Hard.
Pain. So much pain. His body bruised and broken, his skin ripped open in places, his bones shattered. The ground beneath him burned with heat, and as he tried to stand, he realized something. The wounds weren't going to heal.
They were never going to heal.
One by one, each of the twenty-five bad deeds from his life flashed before him. Every lie, every betrayal, every selfish act. Each one burned like fire in his chest, each one a slap to his face. And with each passing second, the pain increased. It wasn't physical pain. It was something worse, something deeper.
The pain of knowing that no matter what you did, it would never be enough to escape. That you were always going to end up here, in this place, where nothing mattered.
And there, beneath the twisted sky, in the place of endless darkness and torment, Ethan understood.
He had always been bound to it.
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