What…!
What's happening?
My body…! My... my senses…
The world thundered, then slowly collapsed into silence. His wounded torso jerked against an oak beam, tattered and scarred.
Oren Xianrath felt a relentless sensation that urged him to scream.
It surged through his torso, then crawled up his neck, stopping at his head... leaving everything else utterly hollow and empty.
It was like he was drowning, with no arms to swim, and no lungs to breathe.
Because he had neither.
His limbs were gone, flesh and ligaments strewn across the floor, tangled in the torn fabric of his dark robe.
Oren tried to look around the ruined attic, only for his body to refuse him.
All he could do was look up, into the jagged opening above.
Warped beams and shattered planks leaned precariously, as if the structure might collapse at any moment.
Beyond the chaos, the dark grey sky loomed, bleak clouds clawing at it.
The lucid warmth of his blood pulled him back to reality, if only for a moment. Yet even as time passed, the pain did not subside, and his gruesome wounds refused to heal, though they should have.
How is this possible? Even forming the thought took effort.
A being like him should not face irreparable damage so easily.
Yet, for some odd reason, Oren felt as though he would not recover from this. He would not obtain the peace he wanted.
This would be far more painful.
Oren shivered.
Get up! Move! Move now, damn it! He demanded, but his body screamed at him to stop.
Damn the heavens… am I really going to die here? In a world I do not even belong to?
A heavy breath escaped his torn lips.
It was true.
Oren had fallen into the world, then into the clock face of the cathedral house.
His arrival had been grand but short lived.
Even now, faintly, he could hear them in the dead of night.
The mortals.
Their distant voices were strained with fear, reaching him from the third district below.
Panic, confusion, talk of an invasion, the Light Festival.
And despite the tone in their voices betraying any warmth, envy filled Oren's eyes as he listened, alone.
How he wished to be full of life like those mortals.
How he wanted to stand up and move.
To walk, laugh, shout, and eat.
To indulge, cry, and experience the best of life.
The simplest things mattered most, in the end.
At the end, he yearned for them, longed for them more than anything he had ever possessed.
But maybe, just maybe, if he had been born a mortal man instead of a damned divine being, this would never have happened.
A wry smile cracked Oren's dry lips.
Because an entity like him should not die like this.
But he was going to die, so there was no point in holding onto such a useless notion.
It had been worthless, anyway, hadn't it?
If it meant he could live for even a moment longer, such a sacrifice weighed lightly on his mind.
Dammit… Oren groaned.
I'm spouting nonsense… but I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that treacherous anchor.
Oren groaned.
The anchor... something said to be forged at birth, intricately bound to his soul.
He did not understand its inner workings, but he recognised the shift he felt when he used it.
A warning… one he had dismissed.
It was supposed to take him home.
But it did not. Instead of taking him "home," to safety, it had doomed him, making him fall from the outer atmosphere into this place, a world that felt heavy and strange.
… A Revos Verum, a ruined realm.
The name surfaced slowly through the haze of drifting thoughts.
Like mortal myths, a ruined realm was a myth amongst the divine, meant not to truly exist.
He let out a bitter chuckle, the sound clawing at the air.
Ruined…! This place?
Oren could not help but laugh through the pain.
Because what was shown to him upon entering the Revos Verum was not ruined at all. It looked beautiful…
… or had it only seemed that way?
The wind hummed around him, bringing forth the biting cold of autumn, making Oren shiver faintly.
Only when he questioned it did everything beyond him feel darker.
Laying there motionlessly, Oren's battered ears gradually muted the world.
But before it faded completely…
A loud splash echoed through the attic as his thoughts slowly faltered, and his chest tightened.
A wistful breath escaped his torn lips as his abyssal golden eyes darkened a shade.
His mind grew hollow, giving way to memories of his past, surfacing like illusions he could watch for wretched entertainment.
But... Somehow, Oren saw nothing.
Nothing worthy of remembering at his end.
He had been born alone and faced the world alone, until the day he chose to join hands with it, but even that was a mistake.
His eyes flickered, like a flame refusing to be blown out.
In the end, they still remain beyond my reach. True peace, eternal rest even. Oren sighed in his mind, his thoughts once tainted by regret now hollow and calm.
Was this what I wanted? Death was a form of peace, after all.
He had long understood it as the easy way out, a short path that was inevitable either way.
But he did not think it would be so soon, Oren could accept this possibility.
He had chosen the long path, an arduous path, a solitary path.
It made Oren wonder.
If I am reborn, will I still want "peace"?
His abyssal golden eyes remained fixed upward through the tangled beams and chipped wood.
Light shifted faintly infront of him.
He tried to watch, but the world no longer held steady.
Oren's body suddenly twitched.
Someone was there.
Standing beyond the shattered beams of the attic.
In his final moments, he never lived to see the sun reach its zenith.