The moment you woke up, you knew. You felt the weight of a mission that needed no explanation; the Honkai had embedded it deep within your being. Exterminate humanity. That was the only thing that mattered, the only thing you had to remember. The sole reason for your existence was to erase every trace of human life. Humanity had dared to resist and managed to contain thirteen Herrschers before your arrival, stealing their cores in the process. But you were the final sentence that would turn their hopes to dust and their bodies to ashes.
In the very moment you opened your eyes, everything ended for them. Humanity was destined to be annihilated, and you were the one chosen to fulfill that fate.
However, a small group of humans who had the audacity to challenge the power of the Honkai had dared to stand against you on the moon, in a pathetic, desperate, and futile attempt to stop you and save wretched humanity from its inevitable fate. You would have exterminated them with total ease if it weren't for the fact that, surprisingly, they managed to cause you some damage at the cost of losing several members of their small group. But all they achieved was temporarily incapacitating you, merely extending humanity's existence by a few more minutes.
It was enough time for the cowardly survivors to escape, momentarily slipping out of your reach. However, such an event mattered little, if at all, since there was nowhere they could hide; they were going to be exterminated along with the rest of their kind. It was just a matter of waiting a little longer until you fully recovered, at which point you would fulfill your mission, the reason you were created, and reduce the wretched human civilization to ashes.
...
But for some reason you still don't understand, you feel empty. You managed to complete your mission, but at the same time, there was nothing left for you. You lost your purpose, your reason for existing... and you don't know what you're going to do now that there's nothing left to destroy, no more humans to kill.
At first, every second of your existence was marked by an insatiable desire to destroy everything that represented humanity as quickly as possible. But that desire, which had fueled your mission, gradually faded until, eventually, when you fulfilled your purpose, nothing remained, leaving behind a suffocating sense of emptiness; as if a part of your soul had been torn away.
Why that was the case is something you've been pondering over the last few hours as you floated in the darkness of space, gazing at the corpse of the planet that was once the home of human civilization. But the answer was beyond your understanding. From your position in the dark, infinite void, you slowly touched the area of your chest where your heart should be, and in silence, you asked yourself a question.
Why do you feel empty?
...
It was sometime after that, when you had decided to close your eyes just to simply exist, ironically emulating a human action—something they knew as sleep. But something strange had happened, causing you to open your eyes almost immediately. You felt that something had appeared in the space around you, very close by, and driven partly by curiosity to find out what it was, you found yourself slowly turning in the direction where you believed it to be.
What your eyes found was a human figure, who, like you, was floating in space. She was small, resembling a human child, with dark gray hair and red eyes, which were silently watching you.
You didn't kill her immediately, as you would have done with any other human, for the simple and particular reason that she wasn't truly human, she only appeared to be. Her joints were different from those of the humans who had faced you on the moon; they seemed too artificial to belong to something living, nor were they a Honkai beast. Rather, this being was an imitation of humans, probably created by them.
"Greetings, Herrscher of Finality," she spoke to you in an oddly calm voice. "It's a pleasure to finally have the opportunity to meet you."
A few seconds passed in which you simply stared at her in silence. This small human replica had something about her that seemed familiar to you, as if you had known her in the past. "What are you?" you finally asked, looking her directly in the eyes. "Why do you seem familiar to me? Were you one of those humans who tried to stop me?"
"Unfortunately, I wasn't present in that battle," the small human replica shook her head as she answered your question. "I was busy with something… more important. But let's put that aside for now…" She fell silent for a moment before continuing. "You can refer to me as Prometheus. May I call you Finality? Or do you have a name that I don't know and would prefer I use?"
For the first time in all the time you've existed, you frowned, partly out of confusion. You don't have something like a name, as it wasn't necessary to fulfill your mission. If she wants to call you Finality, let her. It's not like you really care. But you suppose that, since she asked if she could use that name, she wouldn't use it unless you told her it was okay, or at least, that's the conclusion you can draw, because why else would she ask? "I don't have a name, but Finality is fine."
"Perfect," she nodded to herself with a small smile, clasping her hands together in satisfaction. "May I ask you a question?" Before you could even consider it, she seemingly assumed you would agree, as she quickly spoke again. "Tell me, Finality, how do you feel now that you've completed the mission the Honkai set for you? Are you happy? Sad? Does it not matter to you? Or… do you feel nothing?"
The tone of her voice had shifted slightly when she spoke those last words, as if she were aware of how you truly felt. For a moment, you considered the idea of simply ending her existence, just as you had with all the humans. However, something stopped you, and instead, you found yourself lost in your own thoughts, trying to find an answer to her question.
How do you truly feel?
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