A man sits alone at a rundown bar after a long day of work, his soulless eyes projecting a heavy, lingering despair. Deep in the mind of the troubled man, a war is brewing. His mind aches with a pulsing hatred. He can’t shake the terrible thoughts. He dreams of torture and damnation. Eternal fires that rage and sear to the bone those unlucky enough to cross his path. Thoughts of the purest, most vile forms of evil imaginable. He orders a glass of absinthe, the green liquor swirling like a portal to another world, its bitterness masking his underlying torment.

Spanning the vast expanse of his mind, nestled between his horrendous thoughts, are the gaseous clouds of creation and fiery balls of destruction that permeate through infinity. The clouds contort and writhe around his thoughts like a hungry conniving serpent. Each fiery ball of destruction roars with the hellfire of the mighty eternal flames he conjures to do his bidding. In the surrounding graveyard, mighty boulders of unimaginable scale tumble and collide in utter chaotic beauty like a cosmic symphony. Amid this chaos, tucked away on the lucky few boulders that find a small window of time when the orchestra is at rest, are those who occupy.

The occupiers live a prosperous life. For eons, they have flourished and advanced, a society of scientists and engineers united by one goal: to seek out the hidden knowledge of their universe. There is no war, no crime, and very few disagreements. By all accounts, they reside in paradise. For all but one day out of the year, that is, when the true cost of their prosperity must be paid.

The annual harvest has existed for as long as their history books chart back. It is a night like no other, bringing the fanatic out of even the least devout. In the early days, they’d make their rounds to the houses of the old and the sick.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The doors fling open and the Crusaders flood in. They tie up the sacrificial fodder and drag them through the dark streets toward the tree line. The chosen wrap their arms around the trees in their final act of intimacy, their trembling hands nailed to the trunks in a grotesque embrace. They close their eyes and calmly wait to face their fate.

Dong. Dong. Dong.

The bell tower tolls an eerie chime signaling the arrival of midnight.

Off in the distance, a pale rider approaches, his horse tinged with the sickly green of a decaying corpse. He is shrouded in a loose black robe that whispers calamities in the wind as he rides. The fabric clings to his skeletal frame, revealing only bony, off-white hands and a skull that looks as though it has just risen from the grave. An evil, restless spirit, armed with a golden sword meticulously crafted, as if forged from the Pearly Gates of Heaven. When the debt collector comes to collect, those who know better cower in the safety of their homes to avoid his gaze of judgment.

The treeline screams in agony all through the long night. The townspeople wake the next morning only to find jagged bloody stakes where bodies and trees once were—swift and final justice at the hand of his gilded sword.

It used to be so simple.

One year, in an act of utter disobedience and hubris, they attempted to deceive their servant of death. In the weeks leading up to his arrival, they slaughtered one-quarter of their livestock and used their flesh to construct effigies in their image, which they draped in their clothing. They left them out on the night of his arrival bound to the blood-stained trees where he would come to collect his debts.

The treeline screamed in agony all through the long night. The occupiers woke the next morning, and to their shock, the effigies remained where they began, unclothed but otherwise untouched. They searched all through the village for any signs of the debt collector’s arrival, and to their horror they found their life-giving river streaming red with blood. At its source, they found the lifeless bodies of their own piled up like a grotesque dam, their life essence slowly oozing into the water supply. Gently draped over their bodies were the clothes that previously adorned their effigies, as if meticulously placed one by one.

Fueled by the red hatred of the river, their crops warped into corrupted, rotten forms. One-quarter of their population starved to death in the ensuing famine. It took a decade to cleanse the river of their sins.

“I always collect my debts.” The collector warned them.

And they swore never to deceive him ever again.

As their civilization has expanded across the cosmos, the collector's appetite has grown increasingly insatiable. What began as a few of the old, the weak, and the wicked has escalated over millions of years to entire villages, cities, countries, and now planets. They never dare to question his hunger out of fear of how far he could go if he does not get his fix. Driven by this merciless cycle that has grown unwieldy, the occupiers desperately seek a way to break free.

This year’s sacrifices are rapidly approaching.

But this year, a secret plan is brewing that the leaders are keeping close to their chests. They sprawl with their fleet of hundreds of thousands of ships from star system to star system, depleting them of all their energy. Before they can even let out their final whimper into the dark expanse, the occupiers are already onto the next. They tow the ball of energy they have amassed behind their fleet in a gravity prison. It takes nearly as much energy to contain their fiery ball of destruction as it contains itself.

The universe waxes and wanes as its life force is sucked out. At a rate never seen before, distortions are appearing and rippling throughout the cosmos. Black holes are spontaneously forming in the ether and tearing through galaxies. Entire galactic webs are dying off like the coral reefs on the shores of their home planet.

“Look at the devastation wrought upon our universe!” their leader proclaims. “How will we ever recover from this destruction he has unleashed upon us?”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

His mind turns like clockwork. Deep within the recesses of the troubled man’s brain, the tides are shifting. His call to darkness beckons like a relentless storm, feeding on his sanity. His ears ring with incessant screams, and his brain throbs with agonizing pulses of hatred like turbulent waves in an unsettled sea. Memories slip away like grains of sand through clenched fingers, and relentless migraines lash out like fiery whips.

He drinks to ease the terrible thoughts but it’s no use.

The chaos within him festers as nightmarish visions torment him. He is the architect of suffering, relishing the thought of inflicting unspeakable cruelties. His mind conjures scenes of the unending agony he will unleash upon the masses. He dreams of the rifts he will tear through their planets, revealing burning lakes of fire that spew the eternal flames that will sear their very essence.

He stares into his reflection in the swirling green sludge in his glass. A demon stares back at him with a menacing smirk. He slams the glass down on the table and it spills, the green hatred seeping into the grooves of the old wooden countertop. In the commotion, all the other patrons turn their heads and stare with their judgemental eyes. Frantic, he gathers himself and stumbles out of the bar.

On his way home, he passes a church, catching sight of a passionate sermon through the open doors. Slipping inside, he finds a seat in the back. The church doesn’t erupt in flames. He exhales, relieved.

The pastor reads:

Revelation 6:7-8: When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse—

Before the pastor can finish the excerpt, the troubled man’s ears start to ring. A cold chill runs through him, and he sinks deeper into his seat. He remains there in silence and despair for the rest of the sermon. By the end, only he and the pastor remain. The church is dimly lit, with only the muted light filtering through the stained glass to accompany him. Beside him, the iridescent white and yellow reflection of an angel from the glass.

Gathering his courage, he approaches the front and asks the pastor for advice.

“The souls of my victims haunt me. I hear their voices and their screams every time I close my eyes.” He confesses to the pastor. “I command the electricity to stop their hearts from beating, I deliver the poison to their bodies that ends their torment. I am death, and yet I am justice. I am the gavel and I am the guillotine. What am I to do?”

They lock in gaze for a moment, and the man stares into the pastor's cloudy white eyes, devoid of depth. The pastor stares back into the man’s empty black eyes, devoid of soul. The pastor sits in silence for a while, thinking back on the countless bible verses in his mind, juggling the urge to condemn the troubled man for his murderous sins, and the patience and empathy to help him find the light. He says:

Isaiah 1:18: ‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.’

Before the troubled man has a chance to reply, the pastor follows with:

Matthew 12:43-45: When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.

The man nods his head and sees himself off. He hears the pastor mutter a final line of scripture under his breath. The line echoes ominously in the dimly lit church:

Hebrews 10:26-27: If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.

As the troubled man exits, the weight of the pastor’s words hangs heavy in the air.

At the same time, in a distant corner of some forgotten galaxy, the leaders finally unveil their long-guarded plan to the rest of the occupiers. Deep down, they understand that mere evasion will not suffice. If they have any intentions of breaking free from the cycle, they must escape the universe altogether. So, they plan to redirect all the energy they have harvested into the supermassive black hole their home galaxy has been orbiting since the beginning of time, Eden. With the tremendous amount of energy they have harnessed, they plan to spin the black hole at such tremendous speeds that it bores a hole through spacetime itself, leaving behind a portal to another universe.

It is not lost on them that this is a decision with severe consequences they know all too well.

In their previous attempt to escape the collector, the occupiers fled to the far reaches of a newly discovered galaxy, hoping its isolation would shield them from his insatiable hunger. For decades, they thrived in their new sanctuary.

Until they didn’t.

Upon discovering their refuge, the collector unleashed a catastrophic plague upon the galaxy, meticulously crafted to attack their very essence. It twisted their forms into hideous mockeries of their former selves, turning them into shambling husks of unending agony. The husks were cast aside from the general populace and locked away. The plague spread at a horrific speed, carried by the stellar winds and cosmic radiation. Before long there were too many to contain. Entire planets descended into chaos as the disease ravaged all that it touched.

The plague poisoned the air, water, and land, leaving a desolate trail in its wake. Once-thriving civilizations crumbled into ruins, their populations dwindling to mere shadows of their former selves. He left no corner of the galaxy untouched. Every world bore the mark of the collector’s relentless judgment. The once vibrant expanse was reduced to a graveyard of twisted forms and shattered hopes, a silent monument to the collector’s unyielding wrath.

And so the occupiers, once again, were forced to flee. To this day, no one dares to enter that forsaken galaxy, haunted by the monstrosities they left behind.

The collector always collects his debts.

In stark contrast to the crumbled ruins of the forsaken galaxy, Eden stands as an impenetrable fortress. It is encircled by numerous smaller black holes that orbit it like sentinels. Chaotic balls of destruction, they swirl around with blinding white halos. Armed with stellar beasts that orbit them like a flaming sword flashing back and forth, they guard the entrance. One small misstep and the occupier’s entire fleet could meet their fate at the end of their fiery swords. With collection day rapidly approaching, they close in on their target, and along the way collect more energy from stray stars.

Meanwhile, the troubled man finally stumbles home, his mind in turmoil. The pastor's words echo painfully through his skull as if his thoughts are being ripped apart. He paces around his room, haunted by the faces of his victims. The questions won't stop: How can I leave my job behind? How would I support my family?

“I’m only a few years away from getting my pension,” he mutters to himself, trying to soothe his conscience. “I just need to hang in there a little longer, then it will all be over.”

Every excuse feels hollow, burdened by the blood on his hands. Each time he considers walking away, the stark reality hits him: quitting would mean upending everything. He feels trapped.

Eden’s fleet only grows stronger as the dead stars collapse and are reborn as rogue black holes. They patrol all throughout the universe, corrupted stellar beasts set forth to consume entire civilizations. The troubled man hears all their voices as they cry in agony when the beasts come by to devour them. Somehow, the occupiers still push on despite the onslaught from the universe.

The sun from their home planet rises, and with it, an arid, suffocating silence fills the void that can only mean one thing: collection day has arrived.

The remaining occupiers storm past the guards of Eden and unleash all of the energy they have harnessed. Half their fleet is sucked into oblivion as they cross paths with the event horizons that sprawl in every direction like thorny vines. In an instant, the ships go from the edge of the horizon to the center of the slow-beating black hearts of the corrupted beasts, frozen in eternity just before they can be put out of their misery. Eden pulses and writhes as the energy streams into it. Their magneto-drive pumps spin up a powerful vortex of plasma that locks the supermassive black hole in their grasp. It spins and spins faster and faster, distorting spacetime around it. The very fabric of their universe is dragged around by the rotation and knotted in on itself.

Caught in the wake of rippling distorted spacetime, their remaining fleet of hundreds of thousands of ships patiently waits, bracing for their impending fate. All around them, the crumpled fabric of spacetime reveals a gallery of pasts and futures. They witness the collector atop his deathly pale horse, riding through villages from millions of years ago. They see countless scenes of slaughter, an unending nightmare of death’s construction stretched across infinity. When they glimpse into the future, it blazes with blinding white light, forcing them to shield their eyes and turn away.

Ships are stationed at every pump, ready to fight with everything they have. Restless, they stand guard and wait for the collector to arrive, to challenge their desperate bid for freedom. Holding their breath, they empty their reserves into the black hole, watching as the last bit of energy they have swirls endlessly around its goliath halo.

And they wait.

And nothing happens.

Shocked and horrified, they quickly realize they have made a grave mistake. They did not have enough energy to break through.

“There must be something we can do!” some of the occupiers plead, looking to their captains, who sit frozen in fear, terrified of what the collector has in store for them.

While they wait to face their reckoning, the troubled man confronts his own demons with the lethal injection he has scheduled for today. He moves slowly through the dimly lit hall toward the execution room, wrestling with his decision. His heart races.

Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump, Thump.

The door is half open with a soft white glow emanating from it. Deep down he knows that his mind was already made the moment he left home to go to work this morning. He fills his syringe carefully with a green liquid, one fluid ounce of death swirling in its glass chamber. His hands steady and his heart heavy, he approaches the prisoner. As the needle pierces the skin, his heart slows.

Thump… Thump… Thump…

Until it gives its final beat.

Thud.

Growing impatient, suspecting that the collector is playing tricks on them before he plans to unleash his judgment, the occupiers cry out into the void. “Show yourself! We know that we have wronged you. Punish us if you must.”

A heavy, lingering silence fills the void.

Without the pumps to keep it going, Eden’s death roll grinds to a halt. As the fabric of reality unfurls around it, the universe begins to devour itself. The lights of distant stars flicker around them, and the nearby black holes endlessly swirl their halos in a chaotic display as they zoom past, dragging the occupiers with them through the gates of Eden.

It is dark and desolate, a lonely passage that stretches on forever. They drift through the empty ether for an eternity, lost and without purpose, free at last but without a home. Their memories fade as the endless dark stretches on. Eventually, they are one with nothingness, as if they had never existed in the first place—an amorphous blob of infinity.

Then, at last, a faint white glow pierces through the unending night. Suddenly, they burst into existence, hovering over a massive, lifeless form. He looks just like them, yet far too vast to appreciate in his entirety. They orbit around his head as if bound by some invisible tether, following him as he is scooped up and taken first to the coroner and then to his funeral.

The priest reads:

Matthew 7:13-14: Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

And with their host finally laid to rest, they are released from their tether. Before the troubled man is lowered into the earth from which he came, the priest gently caresses his casket. Briefly, he drifts his cloudy white eyes to his reflection on the gilded accents of the casket, a demon idly stares back at him.