Authors note: I would like to thank xXTheOtakuFaeryXx for prereading and helping me correct some errors, as well as giving me her insight on the story. Thank you.
This…this is the way the world ends. In the reflection of one boy's eyes, the world had already ended a long time ago.
As a boy, he learned to live. He was not brought up as a child, he adapted to this world, and he learned how to live, how to survive the evil and corruption of this world. He learned to see in this dark world by using nothing more than the flames that burned the world around him. He learned to stand on his own two feet atop of scorched earth. He learned to breathe the air which was polluted with smoke and ash. In this world, everyone deserved life, but sadly, not everyone was given this privilege. Life was not given; it was earned, earned by those who adapted to such a world. This boy rightfully deserved to live, yet, he resented his life. He resented being born to such a dark world. He resented its sights, its sounds, its feelings. This world, no one, child nor man, should have to be in such a disgusting, dark world.
As he grew, he was forced to watch as everything he knew and loved was taken away from him, burned by this world, destroyed by the plague know as war. Loved ones perished, and at a young age, he found himself an orphan, much like most children. To these children, this war, this world had left a deep impression on them. To the boy, it left an ideal, an ambition to change this world, to turn it into a place where everyone deserved life, a world without war. No one has to die yet everyday countless people lost their lives for nothing. War wouldn't change anything other than the complete extermination of the human race. His ideal, what he strived for, was to end this war before it had ended them.
With all his ideals and dreams, he fought the world, but sadly, at the end, he found himself under its control. This world wouldn't change. Now, as a young adult, he could do nothing as the drums of war rang out through his ears as he faced the nightmare he resented and feared the most. The nightmare, one they were all too familiar with, one that cannot be awoken from, war. The notes of the drum were loud and ugly, all around sour. This hideous, sad song is one that no one should ever have to hear, yet, here they are, at the end of humanity. The song itself was sad and depressing, not angry, how one would presume. The song played a tune of realization, of war, of the end. It was their swan song. Looking to each of his sides he noticed that all the soldiers were, just as he, young adults, still children in their own rights. It was sad. They never had a life, a childhood. No. That was taken from them, from all of them, by this ugly, disgusting world. Together, they all marched, marched towards war, towards the end. They followed behind the horsemen of war who sat atop a mighty dark horse; every step it had taken seemed to darken the burned earth even more. This demon, this horseman, was the bane for all this. In his eyes burnt a fire, one so bright, no flame in hell could hold a comparison.
Before long, it had ended.
In the eyes of this child, a desolate world, empty and barren by this corrupted world. The many bodies that littered the once empty field were all that remained of what were once the people of this world. This truly was the end of humanity. The echoes of the fighting, of the drums of war, seemed to swirl around the child's head. This was the swan song that told of the end. The child, the only one left to see this world, wept. The song that was full of melancholy was the last thing that this child would hear.
With all his strength, he fought to stand. He looked to the many bodies of the men and woman that he stood by, his brothers, all dead, wronged by this world, by this hell. War would only end when man ends as well. He looked away, towards the horizon, away from this depressing scene. Why? Why did he fight? Why did any of them fight? Why must they all throw their lives away for nothing? No one knew. From the horizon appeared a horseman. He wore a large black cloak, shrouding him in an air of mystery and darkness, his very steed, white and almost skeletal. This was him, the horseman of death, coming to reap the many souls of all those who lost their life on this battlefield. There was no reason, no reason for all their deaths.
He resented his life, this world, and everything about it. Maybe, this was for the best. This world must destroy itself before it can ever start to rebuild. This world was hell, and now, in his eyes, he no longer wished for a change, he wished for an end, for mercy on humanity, on himself. As the horseman passed so with it, the echo of war. Alone, on the very field were the fate of humanity was set, it was silent, almost, surreal. Gun in hand, he closed his eyes. Placing the muzzle to his temple, he no longer cried.
And that is how the world ended, with one final bang, followed by a whimpering silence.