Gifted by the divine.
The man's voice echoed with firm conviction.
What does he mean—I'm not done yet?
He injected Mashia with a brighter, fruitful, golden medication that had failed before—pushing it into the vein near his elbow.
And the decay obediently halted.
"I-I'm supposed to be dead. How did t-that work?" Mashia rasped weakly.
"My name is Lisan," the priest whispered softly, covertly placing a cybernetic core into the cavity where Mashia's back had burst open.
"You are dead. Right here. But today, you are reborn."
"Mercury."
"A man of message, forged by the stars."
"Stars, huh. The colorful lights up there?"
The priest smirked, looking up. "They are those 'lights.' Their grace guides me when none hear your cries. I can't see them, but I know they're there."
"Good choice of me coming here, because you saw glimmers… nobody ever does. I owe it to you."
Suddenly, the core activated.
It replaced Mashia's decayed lungs, heart, and other damaged organs.
A braid-like wire extended from his hair, hanging like a dreadlock.
He had died. Now he was… a Replicant—a specialized cybernetic enhancement forged to replace failed organs.
His skin rejuvenated, scars of wires forming across him, marking severe tissue damage.
His organs replaced, enhanced.
His mind cleared like dawn. Rebooted. A new being, artificial.
Mercury was now machine… with conscience.
Looking inside the car of carnage, the priest remained skeptical. "Did you get your antidote from those black boxes?"
Mercury nodded softly.
"The medication only works when cold. That is at fault. I'm guessing they didn't tell you."
"It would've been wise to read between the lines." Lisan rubbed his chin.
"But listen… I know that toxin. Studied countless, yet people still perish. That toxin is not possible. The 'Sklaves' you see as your enemy are only users; the supplier is a horror beyond your imagination." He stared daringly through his sunglasses.
"W-why would the lord Zaleth allow this, F-father?" Mercury desperately asked.
"Please, call me Lisan. But I believe this divine Zaleth isn't all good or all bad, as religious philosophies argue, but rather neutral. Creating life and death, but neither."
"Amoral. The idea of good or bad is superficial," Lisan glanced down at Mercury.
"None factor that one must be in-between to see all spectrums. Free will is an illusion humans took from others to make belief of fantasy too weak."
The desert winds no longer howled.
They hummed, like a lullaby formed before sound had a name.
"Off the ground, Mercury."
Mercury jumped up gracefully, his wired braid flowing in the quiet gusts; however, the cybernetics didn't seem normal.
"You saw them… are you a 'Seeker'?" Lisan asked boldly.
Mercury shook his head.
"Checks out. Your blood is red…"
"Lisan, I have questions. Nothing makes sense."
"I'll explain momentarily, Mercury."
"More importantly, you must know… 'death' led me here."
"Not now, not next cycle or after. I know something is coming."
"Something shreds our ideals."
"A monster far worse, currently slumbering. One day… it will surge."
The purple-violet sky applauded.
They stared.
Into infinity.
"Soon, it will come."
"Requiem."
"Realms forgot beauty," Lisan lectured.
"We will remind them."
In the silence that followed, Mercury breathed—not as man, but as memory reborn anew.
Beneath the desert of a dying sun, long ago, charred remains of bones held bright flowers which flowed in the soft wind of agony. The toxin still radiated like fire and painted the thin air around; faint strands of virus danced in the gusts. There was no life—no swooping birds, nor buzzing insects—only the winds of a perishing deity.
The corpses near the buggy were decaying, revealing blue stems blooming from empty eye sockets and teeth, violent against the violet sky illuminating the endless beige-orange pathways of the desert.
Mercury walked alongside Lisan, embracing a vessel out of comprehension.
Halting, "Lisan… how'd you even find me?"
Lisan didn't look back. His sunglasses reflected no violet light in presence, only the black of glass.
"Nobody came…" Mercury insisted. "They all howled, decaying. I howled."
He tensed, dropping his voice low. "How did you hear me?"
Lisan turned like a creaking boulder.
"I never heard you, Mercury."
Softly tapping his temple, he added, "All I heard was the echo."
"...What echo?"
"The Kolxayne," he replied gently, as if it were blasphemous to speak of.
Mercury blinked twice. "That's not an answer."
"Then listen closer."
Silence sparked between them.
"I was never meant to save you," Lisan added. "Unfortunately, the Messengers don't deploy retrievals—even you should've known that, General. All they deploy… is a prewritten tragedy foretold."
"So what? You just happened to be nearby coincidentally?"
"I was dying nearby…" Lisan remarked. "That's why I came—to see if death was prettier in lands with forgotten aliases."
"...Why'd you change your mind then? You could've left me out here to rot."
Lisan glanced at the graveyard of the once-beloved unit, bound to flowers about their falling flesh.
"I didn't, but you cried in that tone I once felt. Not hope, but refusal. Indifference," he added, marching forward, kneeling near Mercury's fallen helmet resting in the sinking sand.
"At most times, that speaks louder than prayer."
Glancing downward, Mercury let go of tension. "This 'Kolxayne'… does it have to do with me?"
"No, not yet at least."
He stood, shaking dust off his rich-layered white robe. "But it was your call to earn it."
"Earn? You make it sound like a possession, a title," Mercury said.
"It isn't yours. You merely borrow it, and it is what frolics when the soul ascends past adversity, when it's too far mangled to reconstruct itself to carve a new path."
"The Sklaves stole the serpent crest from ignited horrors they tamed, and those worthy steal their gift. It reshapes, molds, reinstates," Lisan stated. "A personally wrapped gift that molds you until it can't die, but it does anyway."
"This 'gift,' you say, this 'Kolxayne' you sense… what does this all make of you then?" Mercury asked.
Showering gusts of orange sand pranced upon the two, with violet smiling glints amongst their grains.
"I am the result of one who perseveres in searching lands of tranquility even when none believes, and the atlas's only lead to remnants of beauty."
Mercury glanced backward, understanding vaguely, then stared at the graveyard holding his unit in a car. Flowers emerged in frisk, bones decayed relentlessly, all contained in the slowly sunken buggy that would take the memories with it.
"My men died agonizingly, Lisan," the Replicant muttered.
"It's true," he paused. "But did you not feel peace in their suffering?"
"I never said that."
"There was no need. You had it written in feathers and ink eloquently on your face."
Heartbeats arose from the desert louder and louder as the sand of violet-orange smiles passed without care.
"I wasn't in peace," he mumbled.
"You weren't. Yet you felt free, didn't you?"
The priest exhaled like a beast from the divine, like sand dripping slowly from an hourglass.
Lisan stepped forward, marching in imposing veneration, with the writhing passion of a black spectacle that didn't seek attention, only reverence.
Meticulously, the sand drew a gust revealing Mercury's note, the page scattered in the wind, spotlighted by the lilac crescent near the veil of stars.
Mauve lining emphasized a line: "Life is punished by the burden of wake."
Noticing this, Lisan lit a faint beam in a clear grin. "So, you too believe that living is suffering?"
The Replicant responded with clarity. "It is, and it only ends when one perishes."
"So are you not glad for your unit?" Lisan tilted his head in curiosity.
"They didn't deserve to die in pain. Fate is merciless."
Lisan gazed downward, giving a faint smile. "I see… tempest trifles."
Confused, the droid raised an eyebrow at the phrase.
"Among your troops, they are grains of sand with others in the realms. Washed in expendability of governments, phenomena, disasters, and the unknown. No matter the largest stone, or tiniest rock that constructs an individual—they'll still sink. We will be the island that upholds every grain, every rock, to become a beautiful island. To make them recall what beauty was."
Mercury swallowed, throat dry from the infinite desert.
"Forgetting is beautiful on its own. However, one cannot forget that which they look into with dilated pupils. I was unraveling myself, then I heard your cries of unraveling too, and so I arose again. I had died like you; now we are anew to slip off the mask of this ravishing plain that is ubiquitous."
The priest stood with broad shoulders as his ponytail whipped back in the air, letting loose his tiger-like hair as nightfall crescendoed.
"So… we will make them remember." Mercury concurred.
"Exactly." The priest grinned brightly.
He knelt in true prayer, taking out a cross necklace from under his robe, firmly holding it as he mumbled a prayer.
Mercury looked down at him in recognition, noticing a tear dropping from the pitch-black sunglasses narrowly passing a scar on the right side of his jaw.
"Are you… crying?"
Lisan inhaled. "Although life is suffering, it's the most beautiful of all. So it is best to make it worthwhile. But I shed no tear in sorrow for death; I shed it in contentment, as they are allowed to be forgotten, drifting as their soul lets go. It's wonderful, isn't it?"
Mercury knelt near Lisan. "It's an internal clock that's predetermined. They got a bad hand. All by a clock kno—"
"Known as the heart. Which determines our lifespan based on the quality of hands making it." Lisan finished.
"Did you read all my notes?"
"No. I simply knew how you think, for we think the same. Just like how you screamed, and I listened." Lisan smiled.
Mercury glanced at the man he now considered a comrade.
Lisan stood. "Now we've stalled for too long. Let them rest. They made their train stop; time for our destination." He waved as he walked away into the foggy desert of piercing dust storms.
Following, Mercury caught up.
"Say, Lisan, how could you even sense that I had potential for a Kolxayne?"
"It's a part of me I shroud in disdain; for such ability, I do not deserve."
What an interesting person. Suspicious, but for now I have to keep watch, although I know he is not of bad will.
"If you suspect me of nonsense then—"
The priest rolled up his sleeves, revealing not one… two… three… four… five!
Five titanium bracelets with sigils and gold lining, placed on both vascular forearms, showing at least ten years of construct training.
Solythebitors? Who the hell is this guy? I thought he was just a priest?
"I'm sure you've seen these before. They restrict the energy from the blood, training it, but unethically."
Lisan continued, "You know 'Solythe,' don't you? The energy that makes up the Volvern's vortex in the pocket of your military cargos."
"I've heard of it before," Mercury nodded.
Even with one of those things, the blood in your arms is tight, and with two can lead to a total blockage. But five? Either he's an anomaly, a lunatic, or both. If I got into combat with him, I'd most certainly lose at the moment.
Hours passed. The two men walked for what felt like eternity. Their sweat left images of their corpses in the sand as rebirth—the voice, the vessel.
A minute, then another. When would this desert end?
"Still going, huh?" Mercury said monotonal.
"Do not fret, for this pain purifies us," Lisan stated.
Mercury pondered.
Interesting…
"We should be arriving at a road where buses pass. Perhaps we ride in there," Lisan stated gleefully, not an ounce of stress on his face.
Mercury nodded, wiping his face, which was all that stayed intact when he crumbled.
Cascading sand lost its violet light as the sun began to rise, peeking at the aftermath it could do nothing about.
Vast dunes extended, now conquered, as the two who march past the facade of treachery stepped towards beauty.
It was their victory, as they were renewed to prestige between them.
It was their victory, and none could take it from them.
That is the beauty of such triumph.
Nobody can steal it.
Nobody.