Optional Music to Accompany the Chapter:
mitski - washing machine heart (extended chorus) [slowed + reverb]
https://youtu.be/-rZrRGfFN74
Early Afternoon - Early Summer : Year 0 | Month 0 : Richmond, Virginia | East Coast United States
World: Earth | Rank: 6 | Population: ~1,895,413,000
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"~You know just as I that you shouldn't be here...~" The thrum of speech pulsed through my very existence—not passing through the vibration of molecules, but the shuddering of the fabric of reality. "~Your presence alone will capsize this world, you know.~"
Everything was still—every sound, every movement, every sense—strangled. My mind, usually capable of rivalling the pace of gods, slugged through tar, and the muscles I had tempered over eons refused to tense.
-I.. can't.. move..?- My fingers, still clasping my armor, refused to even tremble.. my eyes locked in place, unable to adjust their focus...
But they didn't need to.
In a single, imperceivable instant, light bent, warped, and snapped, giving way to an infinite darkness, and from it, pale feet walked across knots of reality. "~Evren Lestir...~"
Unable to move my eyes.. my gaze never lifted, finding my focus trapped on the white, blurring and blending threads of his robe, wrinkling and flowing like a mass of squirming worms with no beginning or end.
It was an obvious illusion.. and yet my mind couldn't escape it...
At least.. not yet.
"~Ah, I apologize...~" His voice, thick and weathered, rapidly warped pace before slowing. "~I'm not used to slowing down so much...~"
Then, with a gentle, almost idle motion of his hand, my mind thawed.. and the steel casing trapping me loosened its grip. *WOOM*
He was a being far beyond what I could fathom.
Snapping my gaze to its face, I found a young, pale boy with long horns curling out of his head, and eyes almost translucent with blindness.
He looked even younger than me.. but every speck of processed thought dissolved that illusion. "Is this better?~"
He was a god unlike the administrators. He was a creature born from an eternity without weakness.. a being whose hand was laid by the loom that spun reality's web.
An orchestrator of the System.
Matching my wide, startled gaze without the slightest waver, a smile crossed his face.. one so hollow it even gave my chills an echo. "~Good.~" Pausing, his head tilted almost playfully.. his gaze not looking at, but through me. "~You know.. for someone who broke the calculations of a device separated from time, I expected more... Though, I suppose it's fitting that the.. 'dusty' system you used before would try to drag down everything with it.~" Disdain aimed at nostalgia slowly curled off his lips.
But the chill-inducing hatred behind his mask only lasted a moment.
Quickly tightening his expression, his tone leveled—not loud, nor sharp. "~Honestly.. I should congratulate you. Though ancient, and long-outdated, you are the first to ever snap a string strung by The Construct. That thread couldn't hold half your weight, and yet you clung to it with teeth and nails until it inevitably snapped...~" His smile deepened in an instant, growing colder.. and sharper. "~What I find more fascinating though, is that you survived it.. and somehow landed yourself in such an unfitting world.~"
I could taste the coming words before they left his tongue—the weight of their certainty tightening the chains that bound me like the jerk of a dogs leash.
"~The system is a lattice of balance—a web spun from threads laid across eternity... With one such as yours.. I can forgive you for breaking it... As you've seen, a newer, far stronger thread has already taken its place...~"
*Vwoop* Snapping his fingers, my system panel appeared, flashing my mind like the burst of a star that his gaze somehow still pierced.
"~But you show resistance...~" *WOOooOooM* His presence rippled again, distorting the walls of the suite until the skyglass shimmered into a storm of scattered static. "~You know I must return you to the thread you belong on... So.. why..?~"
Looking into his eyes, seeing a puzzled curiosity lighting a spark of interest, I mustered every bit of strength in my body to force words through the iron-like casing of frozen air. "F..Freedom." The word practically blew a hole in space between us.. but in that moment.. staring through the crack in the wall of the labyrinth.. the light of hope lit a blaze in my chest. "I.. want to be separated from the system."
I was standing before a being with the power to grant my greatest wish... And while it was a long shot.. I had his interest.
But as the space between us froze with silence, his expression didn't warp with deepened intrigue...
It warped with a disgust deeper than a human finding it was speaking to a roach... "~Freedom..?~" In an instant, the labyrinth's cracks closed.. the light of hope seeping through them ceasing into instantaneous nonexistence. "~You wish to sever the cord that fed you? The womb that bore you?~"
Each syllable lashed the air like a coiled serpent—the boy's face losing form as space rippled, and reality bent.
"~After such nurturing.. you seek escape... After such investment.. you wish to cut your debts?!~"
His words resonated in my skull like nothing else ever had...
And from it sparked a rage I had forgotten. "Debts?!" My breath shattered the stiffness in the air like magma landing on cool glass.
"~Every breath you drew, every life you snuffed, every fragment of strength you tore from this maze was given. Nothing blooms without soil, and you-?~"
*WOOOOWOOWOOM* The sound of space itself quivering cut him off as I forced myself closer. "GIVEN?!" In that moment, mana burst from me like an eruption from a supervolcano, and strength rivalling my prime surfaced. "I FOUGHT! I BLED! I STRUGGLED! Every SPECK of power I had was paid for ten fold by blood you made me bathe in!" Clenching my fist so hard my nails attempted to draw blood from my palms, my aura thickened with mass. "I broke dams for you, and you repaid me with barely enough water to survive!"
The being's eyes instantly widened with disbelief, blending his dullness with irritation. "~You are a slave, child. You own nothing beyond what is given. Without the system, you never would have been granted the grace of mana's touch! You never would have been granted power! You never would have been granted purpose! To show arrogance after receiving such gifts-~"
"Then take them from me." My voice carved through the air like a jagged blade, my pupils thinning to slits—feral, psychotic—locking onto him with the murderous promise of a predator with nothing to lose.
For a heartbeat, he didn't move. Not a twitch, not a breath—his pale eyes slowly blinking as if wrestling with the sheer audacity of what stood before him.
But eventually, his expression cracked. What began as amusement dissolved into something jagged—shards of rage glimmering like cracks beneath the frost of his composure.
*Fsshhhk-CRRRRACK* Space buckled, threads of ink writhing and fraying as darkness began consuming the space around me.
"~Take them from you?~" His voice dragged low, scraping against my bones like a tempered blade against rusted iron. "~You know not what you wish for, child,~" his words dripped like venom, "But perhaps this will cure that arrogance of yours.~" *CRACKLE*
Time groaned—space folded.
In an instant, darkness consumed everything and his presence exploded. *WOOM* "~Since you speak so lightly of what you have been granted, allow me to show you the carcass you become without it.~"
*VWOOP* Feeling space itself convulse, a pale hand tore through reality and plunged through my stomach, carving through flesh, bone, and organ to grip the core at the center of it all.
The nexus of mana that bound my soul to physical reality. "~Enjoy the agony of powerlessness, Evren.~" *Cr-RACCKKKLEE*
The sound was instantaneous—the rupture of laws as mana burst from me like an over-pressured magma chamber—an ocean of energy that indiscriminately liquified my organs, bones, and flesh in an unfathomable surge of agony.
But in that instant, I didn't feel pain...
Before my nerves could send the signal to my mind.. something about me changed.
In a blink, my vision pulsed, and I became acutely aware of every particle.. every atom.. every rivet in reality that filled the surrounding space.
And with it, I watched the physical manifestation of the being before me.. the smaller-than-atom fuzz composing his cloudy form solidifying within the outburst of mana from my abdomen.
In that instant, my instincts took over.
Before he could even react, my hand gripped his blackened, solidified arm, and in a trace that transcended the firing of neurons, my black-mythril ring glowed with life. *WOOM* And Draco's handle appeared in my hand.
In that instant, I had taken control of the pace of time.
"~W..What the..?~" Feeling his authority over it wavering as his body crystallized, panic finally graced the boy's face. "~Why is there.. so much..?!~"
But it was too late.
In the moment of separated consciousness, I arced Draco across my body.. tracing a line through the black tendrils that composed the being before me before the blade hitched at his core...
It was dense.. a mass of black threads so tightly woven they seemed to be completely separated from time.. almost like its manifestation.. indestructible by anything other that itself.
But the moment Draco's blade stopped, my mana, funneling into the blade, erupted in a focused blast akin to a gamma ray burst. *Fwip-*
Then.. without a sound.. everything went dark...
As if overloading a simulation, reality collapsed.
It wasn't violent.. it wasn't loud...
It was simply.. instantaneous...
The silence that followed was so complete it devoured thought—a vacuum that consumed color, light, and sound so entirely their concepts flickered with nonexistence.
Nothing fell.. nothing rose...
It all just.. vanished...
For what felt like both an eternity and an instant, my consciousness drifted without thought.. without burden...
I gave myself in to death.. and without waiting for its hand, my mind put itself to rest.
Rest that.. didn't last forever.
*Clack*
The sound was faint.. so faint I believed it was my mind succumbing to the madness of silence.
But then the mumbled sounds of chatter came... Then the sensation of touch.. breath.. and heartbeat.
Slowly opening my eyes and breaking myself from the calm, I found myself sat at a small oak table, laying my cheek in my palm while my breath drew in cool, flower-scented air I recognized in an instant.
It was a dream.. it had to be...
Looking down, I found myself in armor I had lost memory of from the passage of time.. old layers of iron weathered with scratches, dents, and blemishes no artisan could remove. -And this room...- Finding my gaze wandering to the side, I traced a wall of flowers—red, orange, blue, and purple—swaying in a pattern that brought on nostalgia so thick it was intoxicating.
It was the garden of a friend I hadn't seen in hundreds of years.
The Elven Queen, Altera...
"Bree..." Altera...
"Hah!"
Hearing her playful scoff, my worries faded with a bath of memory.
"You have a bad dream? Looks like you aged a few millennia with your nap."
-How ironic...- Finding a smile spreading across my face, I turned to the voice, and finally laid my eyes on her: my closest friend... A stunning elf with eyes bluer than the sky, and hair brighter than the most polished gold.
It was all an illusion.. most certainly so...
But as I watched her hair ripple in the breeze, I almost didn't care to even question it...
Instead.. I reached for the cup of steaming tea in front of me and pressed it to my lips.. basking in the warmth emanating through my chest without letting out a single word...
It was a memory replaying itself in death...
And out of fear my voice would dispel it.. I stayed quiet.. basking in the colors.. the scents.. and the taste...
But my mouth inevitably opened on its own. "Bree..." The memory marched. "If you were trapped in a maze with no end.. a maze where you would inevitably lose yourself to time and forget anything other than the hallways around you existed.. how would you get out?"
Pausing, her head tilted.. her gaze growing puzzled. "Isn't it obvious?"
My chest tightened.
"I'd smash it to bits until I found a direction with fresh air." Smiling like a child cracking herself up with a joke, she leaned back before looking up into the sky. "What good does following a path meant to trap you do..?"
The words struck something deep—an ember buried beneath mountains of ash—a lingering coal with heat I thought I'd lost forever.
Her laugh rippled like sunlight on water—until it didn't. The sound hung, suspended in a silence so heavy it rang louder than bells. Even the breeze died mid-breath, freezing the garden in an unnatural stillness.
The illusion fractured.. and I blinked...
By the time my eyes reopened, the garden was gone, and in its place stretched an endless prairie—the grass swaying in a wind so gently it didn't stir the sky.. the endless blue so thick and so pure it felt painted.
It felt like another illusion.. another memory...
But the touch of the breeze on my cheek.. the smothering pressure of the atmosphere.. and the sight of the shattered and weathered remnants of the airship's suite beneath my feet, laying on the ground like the fossil of an old civilization...
I couldn't find fault in any of it...
It was all unrecognizable.. but somehow.. it was real...
-Am I.. alive..?-
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