Chapter 3.2: Reborn Again

And yet, even as the station’s destruction loomed, a strange calm settled over him. He clenched his fists, jaw tightened. If this was the end, he wouldn’t face it cowering.

As the station’s frame collapsed under the immense gravitational pull, Roy felt the first signs of his body succumbing to the black hole’s tidal forces. The sensation was unlike anything he had ever experienced. His feet stretched initially, an unnatural pull that travelled up his legs, elongating him as though he were being unravelled.

Pain exploded throughout his body, sharp and unrelenting, as the spaghettification process began. The immense difference in gravitational force between his head and feet made every nerve scream in protest. It was as though he were being pulled apart molecule by molecule, each fragment of his being separated in slow, agonising detail.

Roy’s vision blurred as his mind struggled to comprehend what was happening. The concept of ‘himself’ began to dissolve, his thoughts fragmenting just as his body did. Memories from his lives, his first as a teenager who was about to enter university and his current one as an astronaut. Flashed in rapid succession, fragments of emotion and experience crashed against one another like waves in a storm.

He saw his mother’s face, her soft smile as she waved him off to school from behind his front door. He remembered Kieran’s kind words and his laugh, Ivan’s steady leadership, and his sister’s adorable yet mean stare as she said goodbye to him when he left for training. And then Mason’s cold betrayal, the push that sealed his fate.

Rage flared briefly, a desperate, primal emotion. 

I wasn’t ready. I could have done more. Done better. I …

The thought dissolved as another wave of pain tore through him, scattering his consciousness further. He felt stretched thin, his sense of self unravelling as the black hole consumed him. Yet, amidst the chaos, a peculiar clarity began to emerge from deep within.

The black hole wasn’t just pulling him apart physically; it felt as though it was unravelling the very fabric of his being, forcing him to confront the essence of who he was. Memories he had buried deep, regrets he had ignored, and truths he didn't want to face all rose to the surface.

He remembered the witch, her piercing crimson eyes, the soft black veil she wore over her head that was slightly covering her silver hair, and the eerie smile she had given him as she granted him a gift. Her voice echoed faintly in his mind, a whisper threading through the chaos.

Roy could hear his own voice.

“You wanted to live. This is what it means to live. Facing every death, every failure and every regret.”

The words lingered as the last vestiges of his body were pulled into the singularity, his thoughts spinning into a vortex of light and darkness. Time seemed to stretch infinitely and collapse simultaneously. He felt as though he were falling forever and yet standing still.

As his consciousness fractured completely, a single thought emerged, clear and undeniable: This isn’t the end. Not yet, at least.

And then, everything stopped.

The pain, the stretching, the ripping – all of it vanished in an instant. Roy felt weightless, suspended in a void of absolute nothingness. Slowly, faint sensations returned: the warmth of his skin and the faint hum of distant sounds. His chest heaved, and he gasped for air as if surfacing from deep water.

When he opened his eyes to blink, he found himself in a new world, a new reality. The memories of the black hole’s torment lingered like a distant nightmare, like the previous one.