He walks forward, stretches out a hand, and there- there's the end of the world. The horizon is smudged, out in the distance, wisps of clouds hover far off, but they're not really there; no one can ever reach them.
"I do not have memories of any point past here," the Voice echoes throughout the lonely desert. "This is the end of Creation."
And Ryou sits there, at the end of all that he has built, that the Voice has given life to, his back against the invisible wall, until he is suddenly wrenched away (or maybe awake) and finds himself back in his apartment.
He can still hear the echo of insane, pleased laughter.
xxx
Kul Elna has been empty for the longest time, but the world is finished now, waiting, and the spirits whisper in the abandoned streets. Ryou finds them comforting. They do not wish death upon him; they know he is important to this world. Still, the village echoes with dreams of justice, of revenge, of darkness.
It reminds him of the Voice, but softer, their harsh words almost caressing and gentle, never mocking.
He never knows the passage of time in this frozen world, with a cold sun and indistinct stars that can switch in seconds or share the sky for what seems to be days, but he drifts off sometimes on dusty floors that still have faint markings of blood, and the ghosts' calls for death to the Pharaoh are his lullaby.
xxx
Sometimes, the spirits of Kul Elna are louder than usual, their hatred bleeding out of every grain of sand, and so Ryou leaves them and wanders the streets of the Pharaoh's city (the Voice may have said the name, but Ryou cannot remember it). It's quiet, and wind runs in strange bursts down only a single street, sometimes vanishing halfway. He wanders though the empty halls of the palace with figurines done in gold none of the future inhabitants will know is just metallic paint, and he sits on the balcony and looks over this silent city he's built of polystyrene and plywood and paint.
There are dark clouds near the shadowy horizon, purple or almost-black, and Ryou watches them pulse and can feel their evil. He isn't concerned, and just barely interested. He knows all evil in this world is the Voice, and all darkness his realm.
He finds that he sleeps best in the intermittent night. The darkness is choking, but the watchful gaze he can feel is almost protective.
xxx
The world is waiting for him and he cannot enter it, not now that the game has started, and his eyes burn with tears- beautiful the world may have been empty, but he wants to see it with life, the life that only the game can give it. He wants to see the clouds move regularly and the days and nights exchange smoothly and people thronging the streets and more than anything, he wants to see the dark clouds gathering on the horizon.
He doesn't care anymore whether his friends win or lose; that is their own problem to deal with. He only wants his shadow, his Voice, to come back to him, and to feel that comforting sense of security, wrapped in the heavy veil of darkness.
And he knows that if the Voice returns, it will bring memories of that living, breathing world that he wants so much it hurts, that he cannot enter because of the darkness in the heart he and the Voice share.
He isn't sure he can differentiate between the Voice and the world created from its memories anymore.
xxx
The Voice is gone forever, they tell him, and he doesn't tell them that he already knows. His mind is quiet now. There are no whispers of death in the dark, no plots of revenge. He never wakes up with no memory of how he arrived where he is, no idea of the time, only vague concepts of the havoc the Voice may have wreaked.
There are no more protective gazes at night.
He has his life back. He is terrified.
xxx
He gazes at the destroyed tabletop, the masterpiece of he and the Voice, and he feels something like sadness or loss or longing. He takes all the pieces away and discards the endless sand, cleans the room of the museum until it's just as it was before. No one who was not a part of this will know that it ever happened, and only he will remember not what happened, but the world it happened in, the beautiful, empty world.
He throws out all the pieces. He would burn them but for the black smoke he knows would be produced, he knows would choke him.
He's not suicidal, not yet.
xxx
Ryou has never planned for a future, not since he was a child, before the Voice attached itself to him. He had never planned for the present, either. Every moment was a gift from the Voice. Ryou could not steal from it, who told him that it had been the King of Thieves.
His life, his body, had never been his own, and now that he is in full control of both he wanders aimlessly, his mind blank and quiet.
He reaches a field, the long grass waving in eddies of wind, and on a whim he reaches out, and-
There.
There's the end of the world.
He looks out and slowly, so slowly, the dark shadow is beginning to gather on the smudged horizon, and the sun shines cold and pale behind him.
And insane, pleased laughter echoes throughout the lonely field.
xxx
"This is the end of my Creation."