'What…!'
'What's happening?'
'My body… 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 in a sea of torment, with no arms to swim and no lungs to breathe.
Because his limbs were gone, flesh and ligaments strewn across the floor, tangled in the torn fabric of his dark robe, the aftermath of the fall.
What was left attached was a grotesque mess of flesh and blood.
The pain was agonizing, yet unlike before it was somehow bearable.
'Why is the pain still here?'
Oren tried to look around the ruined attic… but he couldn't move… too weak.
'F**k… I need to move. Get up! Move, move now, damn it.'
But 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 sky loomed.
The warmth of his blood pulled him back to reality for a moment.
Yet even as time passed, his body was not healing.
'Why isn't it healing...? To hell with it!'
His gruesome wounds refused to heal, though they should have healed already.
How was that even possible…? 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.
'Damn the heavens! Damn them, everything! Am I really going to die In a world I dont even belong to?'
A heavy breath escaped his torn lips.
He 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...
'They are here too...? In these outskirts, in this realm.'
His eyes softened as an unfamiliar warmth, one he had not felt in so long, stirred within his chest.
Their distant voices reached him from the District below, filled with panic and confusion.
Talk of an invasion. Of a Light Festival. Of it being ruined.
And despite their shouts betraying any warmth, envy glistened in Oren's eyes as he listened.
They were all so full of life, memories, and emotions. They would live to experience so much, feel so much, see so much.
They still had time to live their tiny lives.
Upon that understanding, Oren found himself thinking. How he wished to be as full of life as those mortals.
How he wished to stand up and move.
To walk, laugh, shout, and eat. To indulge, cry, and experience the best of life.
In the end, the simplest things mattered most, the things he had forsaken.
And so, 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 have never happened.
A wry smile touched his lips.
A divine being like him should not die like this.
And yet he was going to die. There was no point in holding on to such a useless notion anymore.
'It had all been worthless anyway, hadn't it?'
If it meant living for even a moment longer, any sacrifice would weigh lightly on his mind.
Oren groaned.
'I'm spouting nonsense... but it wouldn't change the fact that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my anchor.
If I hadn't been so easily influenced, so moved, if I had only suppressed my instincts and curiosity toward the unknown.
And what did I gain from it? The fading might have vanished along with the pain.
I may have had a split second of peace, but now a new pain rises in turn, and a storm of emotions clouds my mind.
It seems I am fated to die. It really is inevitable. Using the anchor has merely prolonged my erasure.'
A pain rose in his chest, sharp and deliberate
How could something meant to be forged at birth, intricately bound to his soul betray him—
No, how could he betray himself. He did not understand its inner workings, but he recognized the shift he felt when he used it.
A warning… one he had dismissed.
It was supposed to take him "home."
But instead it led him here, into the depths of 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.
Lying there motionless, 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.
His abyssal golden eyes remained fixed upward through the tangled beams and chipped wood.
Light shifted faintly in front of him.
He tried to watch, but the world no longer held steady, spinning as he fell in and out of consciousness.
Oren's body suddenly twitched.
Something was there, spectating. Standing beyond the shattered beams of the attic.
Before he closed his eyes, something within him quietly faded.
In his final moments, he never lived to see the sun reach its zenith.