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There was nothing left. No rain, no asphalt, no screaming tires. Pain itself had been erased, replaced by an infinite white. An absolute, milky white, without shadow or contour, that stretched into a silence so deep it was deafening. Zac was no longer a broken body, but a disembodied consciousness, a lost spark floating in this ocean of nothingness. He had no eyes, but he saw the sterile immensity with supernatural clarity. The void was not empty; it was full of its own weight, an invisible pressure crushing what remained of his soul.
Time no longer flowed. Seconds stretched into eternities, eternities contracted into an instant. In this cottony torpor, Zac's consciousness wandered, aimless and memory-less. Then, slowly, like dark wreckage rising from the abyss, fragments began to float up to him.
The acrid smell of rain. The icy touch of wet fabric on his neck. The coppery taste of rage at the back of his throat.
'...failure... again... three times... why...?' The thought was distant, distorted, an echo of a life that was no more.
The images became sharper, more cutting. His father's chapped hands. "We'll get through this." His mother's evasive gaze, her eyes too bright. "You did what you could." A lie as heavy as a tombstone. And then, Liberty's face. Her eyes wide, first with surprise, then with pure fear when he had bumped into her. The terror in her gaze when...
'No... not that... NOT THAT!'
The memory exploded, not in images, but in a pure sensation of horror. The brutal impact of the truck, an absolute violence. The shriek of tires tearing through the night. The excruciating moment his spine had given way, an obscene crack. But worst of all, the final image seared into his soul: Liberty's face, contorted in terror, staring at his head twisted at a 90-degree angle. His own body, monstrous, inert. A silent accusation in her eyes.
'I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN TO...'
His mental screams were lost without an echo in the white silence. Guilt overwhelmed him, vast and all-consuming. It was more real than the nothingness that surrounded him. It was now his reality. Responsible. For his own absurd death. For the terror inflicted upon a perfect stranger. For the eternal sorrow he left behind. He was just trash. A mistake. A stain on the immaculate canvas of the void.
An eternity passed. Guilt was his only landscape, a burning desert in the heart of the white cold. He floated, apathetic, eaten away from the inside. His name finally came back to him, like an epitaph engraved on an empty consciousness: Zac. A weightless, meaningless word in a place devoid of it.
Suddenly.
**BOOM.**
A sound. The first one. Deep, resonant, like the heartbeat of a titan at the center of the void. Zac's consciousness jolted. What was that?
Before he could form the question, golden lights erupted from the depths of the white. They were not rays, but solid forms, thick and complex chains, twisted like solar serpents. They rushed at him, relentless.
'No! Leave me alone!'
Too late. The chains encircled him, binding him not physically, but spiritually, with a titanic force. They were cold, glacial, despite their burning glow, and they pulled.
**WHOOSH!**
Zac was flung at a dizzying speed through the nothingness. He tried to struggle, to resist with the sole force of his will, but the chains were absolute. It was judgment itself, dragging him toward his sentence. Panic turned into a resigned terror.
The journey stopped dead. The golden chains held him motionless before something new. A screen. Vast, rectangular, of perfect transparency, as if carved from eternal ice crystal. It floated there, unsupported, shot through with lines of electric blue code too fast to be deciphered. A clinical coldness, an intelligence devoid of humanity, emanated from it.
An unpleasant, viscous sensation washed over Zac. He wasn't being watched. He was being scanned. Dissected. Every thought, every regret, every speck of his guilt was exposed, analyzed. He felt naked, violated in the intimacy of his damned soul.
The lines of code vanished. The screen turned a deep black, then sharp, white letters appeared:
[Negative Karma]
Zac's fear turned into an icy terror. It was true. All of it was true. His contempt, his violence, his cowardice... everything had been tallied. And the result was there, irrefutable.
'No... please... I understand... I'm sorry...!'
He tried to struggle, one last time. The chains didn't move a millimeter. There was no escape. The screen was right. He knew it, and that certainty was crueler than the chains.
The text faded, replaced by a new, chilling message:
[Punishment ...]
The ellipsis blinked slowly, ominously. Zac waited, his soul hanging by a thread. Torture? Oblivion? The message completed itself:
[Punishment 1: There is no escape...]
Zac stared at the words. 'There is no escape...' Escape from what? The anguish rose, suffocating. He was trapped. Condemned. Hopeless. Then his dread doubled, crystallizing on one detail: the "1". *Punishment 1*. If there was a 1, then... there would be a 2. A 3. A litany of punishments? Panic seized him, paralyzing.
Before he could sink, a second line appeared, slowly, under the first:
[Punishment 2: ... in the depths of Mordor]
The two phrases combined to form a complete, absurd, and nightmarish sentence:
**There is no escape... in the depths of Mordor.**
'WHAT?! MORDOR?! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! IS THIS MY PUNISHMENT?!'
The screen remained impassive, displaying the cryptic sentence. The golden chains shone with a cold light. The white nothingness seemed to tighten around Zac, suffocating him. The trap was sealed. His punishment had just begun, and he didn't even understand the rules. The void turned black. Silence, once again, reigned, heavier than ever.