Chapter 3
Dirt and Godhood
The wind whispered through the foreign air like a song he couldn't understand. It smelled faintly of burnt herbs and soil that hadn't known machines—only magic.
Aki didn't move.
He lay crumpled on the slanted ridge, knees drawn to his chest, forehead pressed into trembling arms. A stone cliff stretched behind him, overlooking the city below—if it could be called a city. Towers of bone-white stone spiraled like twisted spires of coral, jutting from the earth in a pattern that defied logic. Bridges arched across empty air. Green flames lit the streets in stillness.
This was ECARIA. A world he had created.
But all Aki could do was cry.
The cold wind whipped his hair across his face, but he barely noticed. His mouth hung half open in a breathless sob. He had lost count of how long he'd been there. Minutes. Hours. A day. Time was meaningless now. The sun had not moved from its place behind the veil of violet clouds, casting a soft light across the jagged terrain.
Her voice echoed inside his skull, again and again.
"Aki!"
That scream—just one word—was all she managed before her head left her shoulders.
He could still see it.
Her body falling.
Her eyes wide.
The blood.
He gagged again, bile rising but nothing coming out. Just the memory. Just that one moment burned into every corner of his brain like a scar carved by lightning.
Aki's voice rasped from his throat.
"Why…?" he croaked, almost too low to hear. "Why me?"
He stared at the empty sky, hollow and unblinking. As if the heavens would tear open and return Reya. As if they'd offer him an explanation. But the clouds remained shut. Silent. Merciless.
"I didn't ask for this… I didn't want this…"
He had been happy.
Or at least—peaceful.
Drawing with Reya. Talking nonsense at lunch. Riding trains in silence.
He was a quiet nobody. And that had been enough.
Then that prompt appeared.
"You are now the Creator."
"You are now a God."
Aki's head snapped up. His eyes wide, bloodshot, manic.
"God…?" he whispered.
He laughed—a broken, guttural noise that crawled from his throat like vomit.
"You said I'm the God, right? Yeah, I'm a—I'm a—"
His voice cracked. The rage dissolved. The tears returned.
He buried his face in his hands, nails digging into his scalp. He wanted to scream until something inside tore. Until the world turned off.
But then… his hands stopped.
A thought bloomed—desperate, frantic, mad.
What if he could bring her back?
Wasn't he the Creator?
Hadn't that prompt said so?
"You are now the Creator."
Aki blinked through tears.
His backpack was gone. His sketchpad, tablet—everything had vanished with Manila. With Earth.
But he still had the ground.
And he still had his hands.
He dropped to all fours and clawed at the earth.
The dirt was soft—rich with mana. It pulsed faintly beneath his fingertips, like a heartbeat in the soil. The scent of wild herbs and something electric rose from the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a low animal call echoed, but Aki barely heard it.
He dug.
Fingers trembling, nails caked in mud, he scratched lines into the soil.
He tried to draw her face first—Reya. Her eyes, the shape of her lashes. The smirk she made when teasing him.
His fingers wouldn't stop shaking.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, splashing into the lines. Mud mixed with sorrow. The shape of her mouth collapsed into a smear. Her eyes twisted. Her face disintegrated.
"I'm trying…" he gasped. "I'm trying to save you, Reya… I'm trying to…"
He bit his lip until blood ran. The crimson mixed with the brown. He kept carving.
Another line. Another failure. Another smear.
Her smile turned into a wound in the dirt.
This wasn't resurrection.
This was desecration.
He screamed—a raw, pitiful sound.
He slammed his fists into the earth, scattering the image. His tears didn't stop.
Aki collapsed, forehead pressing against the ground.
"…this… this isn't saving her…"
He didn't know how long he stayed like that. The wind brushed over him like a mother's hand, but it offered no warmth.
The magic in the air pulsed on, unconcerned with the grief of gods.
And ECARIA, vibrant, alive, cruel breathed around him. A land shaped by dreams and nightmares, wild and waiting.
But Aki didn't move.
He lay broken among his own creation.
Not a god.
Just a boy.
Just a boy who wanted to go back.
And then..
Aki stood up.
It was a motion slow and stiff, as if his bones resisted it like even his body didn't want to move anymore. The wind tousled his hair, dried the tear streaks crusting his face. His legs wobbled beneath him, sore from kneeling in the dirt too long. But something had shifted inside him.
He turned.
And faced the cliff behind him.
It loomed like a silent judge, tall and unmoving. From where he stood, the drop stretched endlessly into mist and wind. The edges of ECARIA unraveled in the distance, glowing faintly towers of twisted magic, silver trees, serpentine rivers flowing through jagged valleys. The world pulsed with arcane breath, alive and strange and vast.
But to Aki, it all felt so far away. Unreal. Like a painting he couldn't touch.
Only the void below felt real.
His bare feet inched forward, one step at a time.
The wind grew colder.
It whispered past his ears like the soft murmur of voices long gone.
He reached the cliff's edge and looked down.
His breath caught.
A chasm, black and bottomless, yawned before him. Rocks jutted out like teeth. Wind screamed between them. The sight made his head spin. One wrong step, just one, and it would be over.
His legs trembled harder.
But still, he stood there, staring into that abyss, crying quietly.
He thought of her.
Reya.
He could hear her laugh again, not clearly, just a fragment, like the echo of a dream fading too fast. She had teased him about his stoic face. Called him "pouty" when he got flustered about his art. Mocked him for bringing plain rice to lunch again, then gave him her dessert anyway.
He thought of her voice saying his name.
Not the scream, no, he didn't want to think about the scream. Just her usual way of saying it. "Akiii~," drawn out with a grin. Her voice was always full of mischief.
He remembered how her eyes sparkled when she talked about things he didn't care about dumb school gossip, some new drink at the campus vending machine.
And he remembered how she stayed anyway.
Even when he didn't answer.
Even when he only mumbled and looked away.
She stayed.
Aki bit his lip.
More tears came.
His fingers clenched.
He thought of his mother.
That faint smile she wore even when sick, when her body was falling apart. That soft hand brushing his bangs aside. The way she hummed an old tune from a radio show she liked, one that played in the background while he sketched.
She never told him to be stronger.
She just held his hand and said, "You don't need to be anything more than you already are."
He could still remember her scent, mild lavender and old books. The rustling of her bedsheets. The sun filtering through their cracked windows.
And if he jumped—
If he ended it here—
Would he remember any of it?
Would Reya's face dissolve?
Would his mother's voice vanish?
Would there even be an "after" to carry those memories to?
Aki's breathing quickened.
He gripped his sleeves and pressed a trembling foot closer to the edge, curling his toes over the stone.
A gust of wind almost knocked him forward.
His heart lurched. His body flinched.
The cliff waited.
One motion.
That was all it would take.
Aki closed his eyes.
And all he could see was Reya's blood painting the stone pavement.
Her wide, disbelieving eyes.
The shadow looming.
The way he'd stood there.
Frozen.
His fault.
His creation.
"I'm sorry…" he whispered. "I didn't mean to—I didn't know…"
He hunched forward, clutching his stomach as if the guilt were a blade twisting inside.
"I didn't ask for this…"
The words spilled from him like a prayer. A final confession.
"I was just… drawing. I just wanted to make stories. Not this… not her…"
He looked down again. The rocks blurred beneath his tears.
The wind screamed louder now. The world shivered.
But he couldn't move.
He didn't jump.
Because despite everything, despite the guilt, the despair, the aching wish to disappear, he was terrified.
He was terrified of what came next.
What if it was nothing?
What if death wasn't peace but absence?
A void where Reya's laughter couldn't reach him anymore.
Where his mother's voice no longer existed.
He dropped to his knees.
Fingers curling into the cold stone.
Shaking.
Breathing.
Sobbing.
Still alive.
Still human.
Still Aki.
The God who couldn't save the only people he ever loved.
But.. Something moved in the distance.
Aki didn't hear it at first. Not clearly. The roaring of the wind was louder, and his mind was fogged—muffled by grief, choked by memory.
But there it was again. A shift in the air.
Leaves crunching. A slow, careful step.
He didn't lift his head.
He thought, maybe, it was just his imagination. The forest playing tricks. A hallucination. Wouldn't be the first today.
But the sound drew closer.
Boots—metal-tipped, pressing into the soil.
He froze, breathing sharp, heart fluttering like a trapped bird. His head turned slightly, sluggish. He wasn't alone.
A figure had stopped several paces behind him.
He couldn't make out the face—his vision was too blurred, his thoughts too scattered—but the silhouette stood tall, unmoving, like some knight out of a forgotten myth.
A long cloak trailed behind them, dark and wind-tossed, fringed in silver and violet. Faint armor glinted beneath the cloth, ornate and worn from travel. A blade hung sheathed at their side, inscribed with markings that pulsed faintly, as though reacting to something unseen. At the figure's chest, a pendant—strange and violet—glowed with a dull, flickering light, as if barely containing some buried force.
Aki blinked slowly.
Not fear. Not relief.
Just confusion.
His throat burned. His body sagged further to the stone, utterly spent.
The figure said something—words in a language Aki couldn't understand. Soft, steady, but laced with tension. Like someone trying not to startle a wounded animal.
He didn't answer. Couldn't.
He was too tired.
Still crying.
Still breathing.
Still not dead.
The stranger took one cautious step forward. Then another.
Their boots stopped just short of him.
A gloved hand reached out—hesitating first—then gently, carefully rested on his shoulder.
Aki flinched.
The contact was real. Warm. Grounded.
He turned his head slightly, eyes half-lidded, and looked up.
For a moment, his breath caught.
Hair—long and pale, almost white but tinged with gold—moved like silk in the mountain wind. A pair of crimson eyes met his, sharp and alert, but softened by something he couldn't name. Pity? Curiosity? Alarm?
The pendant at their chest pulsed again. Stronger this time. As if his grief had awakened something in it.
Aki opened his mouth. No words came.
The figure crouched beside him, saying something else. Quieter now. Calmer. The language meant nothing to Aki, but the tone felt… human. Concerned. Kind.
Still, he couldn't respond.
The numbness was too deep.
He just sat there. Let them speak. Let the hand remain.
It didn't matter who they were.
A dream. A hallucination. A character he'd drawn.
He didn't know anymore.
He closed his eyes.
And this time, for the first time since Reya died…
He let someone stay.
Chapter 3 - End