Today was not a day he ever wanted to have happen. It was easy to naively say that “today” never happened anyway, since the concept of “days” in space, when you’re millions of light years away from the one tiny planet in a forgotten part of the universe, where the rotations around its baby sun arbitrarily denote a “day” for the rest of the humans across the rest of the solar system.

And yet, sadly, the agreement of “today”, out in the middle of space, just a few paces past “nowhere”, was an agreement that he had once subscribed to and thus reluctantly admitted that “today” had in fact come to pass.

Thoren sighed deeply as he pinched his eyebrows together with his thumb and fingers of his free hand, and squeezed his eyes shut as if to block out a bright light.

His other hand still clenched the fragment which was no more than a memory by now.

He held his curled fingers firmly around the jagged object. His originally tight fist had slackened as the realization set in of what he had done.

He would not admit it to anyone for a long while, but inside himself he knew that ultimately he was the one responsible for the flecks of glass floating in front of his face, for the lumps of metal floating among the glass, for the giant debris all around him, for the utter annihilation of this whole sector of the universe.

He sighed again and took his hand from his face. He looked out at the mess around him.

The Reddins really had no reason to go to war with the vermillion-clad people of District 45. The inhabitants of District 45 were mostly Angears. Only a handful among their forces were from the neighboring satellite planets. The Reddins, hailing from District 43, did not permit their neighboring planets to enlist in their Space Force.

Despite the lack of conflict between the Reddins and District 45, it hadn’t been too hard for Thoren to pin them against one another. Their Governments ate up his lies like starved beasts and never once questioned his words, nor his motives.

Ah, and what a beautiful war it had been.

Now he looked out at the aftermath. His lip curled up in a smirk in the darkness.

One of his best men had told him once that he was a god among men. They didn’t know the half of it.

Finally he moved, setting off for his next game.

With no home to go back to, and nowhere to be, he could go anywhere.