Perfect Cut

Blink, blink blink.

Sultan's eyelashes fluttered like wild fans. he kept opening and closing his eyes.

what else was he supposed to do when clearly what he was saying couldn't truly happen.

However, the scene never changed.

No matter how much Sultan willed it to do that by batting his eyes, his feet still gone.

he only can see himself hovering above the ground.

a clear and obvious gap between his shin and the floor,

and the gap was still growing.

he really didn't know what to make of it.

Was he… vanishing to thin air? disappearing into nothingness?

There was only two plausible explanations for what's happening.

1: Sultan got insane.

second: the world itself got insane and it started removing people from existence.

And as much as Sultan doubted the capability of his mind,

it hasn't deteriorated to this level of madness.

Well, not yet .

 So something was happening to him, and it was super, super unnatural.

Panic threatened of taking control of his actions, and a scream lingered in the edge of his throat.

 back growing cold, Sultan tried to manage his emotions.

he can't scream or panic right now, that wouldn't solve anything.

What he needs is to start taking some deep breaths, and to try to think rationally.

Once he got a grip of himself, and started to examine his body closely, Sultan noticed something unusual in the back of his mind.

a slow and steady pulse which increased in volume by the moment.

 Concentrating inward, he noticed a phantom Resonance echoing in his head that was clearly connected to the disintegration of his leg which was increasingly creeping up to his midsection.

Mind reeling, Sultan can only think of one course of action.

he knew it to be futile, but beggars can't be choosers after all.

Not waiting to dwell on it, because he wasn't sure if he took any longer, he would be able to convince himself to precede with it.

Sultan raised the knife in his hand and put it slightly above his knees, aiming to sever it off.

inhaling deeply, Sultan waited for a few moments and then lower his hand dejectedly.

In the end, he couldn't go through it.

the logic was brutal yet simple. If the vanishing grows like an infection, he will have to cut it off by getting rid of his legs, preventing it from reaching the rest of his body.

 But this reasoning had an obvious hole in it. the likelihood of this being any kind of disease is very slim. He wasn't a doctor, and knew little to nothing about human anatomy, but even Sultan knew that there is no kind of virus or bacteria that will deteriorate that fast and wouldn't leave any clear biological sign.

'Unless… it is there, and no one survived to tell the tail. Since it vaporizes the person in the matter of seconds'.

or what if such thing just came to the world, and chose poor little Sultan as its first victim.

Sultan broomed such troubling thoughts out of his mind. Because at the end, it won't matter at all if some, or all of them came to be true.

He still won't do it, and not for a lack of resolve, or a fear of pain.

Decisiveness is a synonym of Sultan in the dictionary of personal traits. And agony was a faithful companion of little absence in his recent years.

For Sultan, there was a much more important aspect than the efficacy of this solution to consider.

It was the consequences of its success.

While it is true that this desperate act has the potential to save him, the cost is too steep to pay.

crippling himself in the process of avoiding this unknown and dangerous oddity is a worse fate than certain death in his case.

The reason. Sultan refuses to run from his responsibilities. He loathed the idea of being a burden on the shoulders of a little girl ,his only remaining family, who life hadn't shown much kindness to until recently.

And for what? So he can continue existing pitifully without will or purpose.

No. he would rather take his chances and have faith that it is going to be alright. and if it is truly the end, so be it. at least he is going to leave quietly without causing more suffering or disappointment for any of those he loves.

Using such thoughts to fuel his resolution, Sultan squeezed his eyes shut, and awaited the long unending seconds for the void to embrace his entire self.

Still, It was far from straightforward.

being erased from existing is, to put it mildly, a nerve-racking experience.

'at least it's going to be over soon'. Sultan seized a fleeting positive thought amidst the rollercoaster of dread and doubt inside of him, and latched on it.

He has always taken this approach in most of the problems in his life. Whether he faced an unsurmountable crisis or an everyday annoyance, Sultan instinctively sought any possible upside and made it the defining focus of this encounter.

soon enough, the entire of his body, except the head, had completely vanished.

He judged that by the unresponsiveness of every organ apart from his tongue and even that has gone silent.

Sultan found this state of being utterly surreal.

As if he was inside a memory of himself. For instance, He could only recall being able to move his hand when he attempts to actually do so. There was no resistance to his will.

Instead, Sultan had the sensation that his thoughts have proven to be just an echo in reality, his actions are solely a replaying of memory's, a mere repetition of what had already occurred.

a whisper of living that promises insanity as its inevitable end. A miserable and tormenting way of existing that is full of doubt and powerlessness.

Thankfully, It didn't last. A moment later, the rhythmic sound in Sultan's head had grown so deafening that it even muzzled his thoughts. reverberating in his head like the drums of war, a cacophony of sound consumed Sultan. It enveloped him in a world of vibration and rhythm, a painfully beautiful song playing in the unreachable island in the ocean of his soul.

He didn't know how much he stayed like that, maybe for a second, maybe for an eternity. There was no way to tell.

Then, as if the clashing armies of sound and chaos had reached their crescendo, an all-consuming stillness descended on him.

Following that, he heard it.

a distant booming voice Rising From the horizon of time, and emerging from a place far in the future, it said:

[Let the challenge begin.]