Anku's vision flickered from light to darkness at regular intervals, in simpler terms, he was blinking.
The able-bodied man was sitting on a low-hanging pillar, beneath an arch, constructed of dirty white marble. The arch connected to a heavy-looking concrete gate on the inside, which Anku's pupils frequently leaned to observe.
He looked rather anxious from afar, as he blinked speedily, and his legs shook uncontrollably.
From a closer distance, red strings zigzagged from his pupils, up to the outer parts of his sclera, straining his eyes into a red spider web.
*Gasp*
Anku let out a breath of air, one that he seemed to have been holding in his lungs for too long.
"Feeling anxious?" A feminine voice called out in his direction, from his right.
Anku turned around, and for a split second, he smiled dryly, though his face returned to its anxious manner soon enough.
On his right was a tall, sandy-faced woman.
Her dull eyes and complexion showed that she was of common birth, though her story couldn't be any farther from that.
Frankly, Anku loathed her.
He didn't loathe her because she was an unpleasant, or vile person, but it was because he was...
'Jealous?' Anku muttered under his breath.
The woman noticed the movement of his mouth, but she did not question him about it, but instead, she maintained eye contact from her high standing position.
However, as he did the same, he noticed that she had somewhat of a...blank expression, as if all emotion had been erased from her being, which, knowing her background, made him extremely confused.
'Did she consume something?' Anku pondered for a short moment, though he forgot about it, akin to a passing thought, and remembered the reasons why he hated this woman.
Unlike him, she hadn't cheated her way into becoming one of humanity's representatives in the tournament.
She was the type of person that, after great tragedy befell her, would still smile, and make others smile along with her.
She maintained her values and principles, even as law no longer dictated human behavior, and their species had returned to the time of savagery.
As the great flames of the global pandemic destroyed humanity from its inner core, she bravely went through the fires, and helped all of those who needed help, saving thousands of lives in the process.
Anku couldn't bear her, because she reminded him of how much he hated himself, and the lie he built his life and now, his death, upon.
Years ago, though, when exactly? he did not remember, he was a soldier serving for a now inexistent nation in a meaningless war.
'Was it 2004? 2002, perhaps?' Anku had lost track of time, along with the rest of human civilization.
Anyways, after days of traveling through the endless battlefront, the battalion was thoroughly exhausted, and worst of all, they were completely lost amidst the desert landscape.
Anku had a friend, who, although he was a common soldier, had an amazing proficiency of a particular subject...geography.
"Anku?" The man's comforting voice came back to him.
The young Anku turned around to face his friend, who he found staring at the horizon and the endless dunes, with a dry face that could not even sweat in the high temperatures due to their dehydration.
He pointed to a distance far away, and said, "At the base of this dune, the layer of impermeable rock under the ground is much higher than anywhere else we have traversed, and there, it seems the average height of the dunes is falling."
Anku, a common man with no background in the field, confusingly asked, "So?"
His friend suddenly burst into a smile and seemed to be crying, though no tears came out of his dehydrated body.
"There's maybe an oasis in that direction, and..."
Anku remembered the face of excitement his friend showed as he looked back at the resting, disheveled troops.
Then, Anku came back to reality.
In a tragic turn of events, his friend died that day of a scorpion bite, and was never able to announce his findings to the other soldiers.
Anku, however, did so, and the skeptical soldiers reluctantly followed him, and they did end up stumbling upon an oasis.
As his army mates clamored towards him in excitement and showered him with praise, Anku made the worst decision of his life.
'I'll tell them about you later, my friend.'
He never did.
The feeling of praise and validation was too exhilarating for him, a common man, and now, he was chosen as a 'representative for humanity' based on a lie, a lie he never bothered to shed the truth about.
"Are you there?" The virtuous woman waved at him, bringing his attention back to the present.
He had forgotten to reply to her, and in the meantime, a bright light shined from the inside of the arch.
The light came from the gate, that was now open, and out of the heavy and ugly concrete doors, came out beautiful winged men and women.
They fit the human description for 'angels', and they did not speak, instead, they simply pointed their fingers at the bright light inside the gate.
Anku stared enigmatically at the angels.
Deep down, he had a feeling of skepticism.
In front of him were angels, the representatives of a god, and Domini was supposedly one such god.
Perhaps, this Domini was not a god, but a great demon, and his tournament? A show of sadistic brutality.
He could never know, and what laid for him behind that door, he also could never know.
However, the worst thing he could face was death, and the emptiness of existence he had felt for decades anyways.
Anku turned to the woman, whom he knew the name of, but did not want to pronounce.
"You're humanity's true hope, if you don't smile in front of the unknown, then what should the rest of us even do?" He mustered up the most positive tone he could in this precarious context.
She didn't seem to understand his question, though she felt no hostility from his voice, and a dry smile emerged on her face.
Now satisfied, Anku nodded, stood up, and sprinted towards the gate.
Soon, only light covered his vision, and his senses shut down.
The 10 representatives of humanity from Earth had crossed the boundary, and now, the fate of this world was in their hands.
Would Anku uphold his fate? Or would he wallow in selfishness as he once did?