It began with the pressure of the deep sea, and the dead silence of a volcano.
It was a strange delusion, as if he wasn't lying in bed, but was sealed in the crushing blackness of the Naples Bay trench. The cold of the water seeped through his bones, squeezing his very soul, surrounded by a silence so absolute it bordered on madness.
Then, a voice, ancient like a rusted pendulum, echoed from the shadows.
"...Listen. They sing your praises."
Who? The voice drew nearer, laced with a chilling amusement.
"Listen. They toll your bell."
In an instant, the deep-sea illusion was rent asunder.
He was floating among the clouds. He was home.
The wind whipped at the thin white robe he wore, making it snap and pop like a tattered flag of surrender.
"The sky... Does it always have to fall in the end?"
The voice was not his own. Or rather, it was nothing like his own.
The entire world had become a colossal, feedback-screeching resonance chamber. He could hear the first cry of a newborn from the other side of the city-state; the ambitious, drumming heartbeat within the chests of the thirteen lords; the faint, grating whisper of an ant, miles away, dragging the corpse of its comrade across a blade of grass.
So noisy, he thought.
"You look sad," a child's voice piped up.
Behind him, a smaller boy sat hugging his knees, his eyes as clear and unpolluted as a mountain spring.
He didn't turn back, his gaze fixed on the roiling sea of clouds below.
"I was just thinking," he said in that aged voice that didn't belong to him. "If you pour a cup of water into a larger body of water, has it come home?"
The child shook his head, not quite understanding.
He smiled, a smile devoid of any warmth. "I am that cup of water, but this world... is not my sea."
He slowly turned, walked to the child, and pressed the ancient bronze sword, sheath and all, into the boy's trembling arms. The cold of the blade sent a shiver through the child.
"Remember this: never trust the 'future' anyone paints for you. It's all an illusion," he said softly. "And do not hate. Hate is a poison the weak feed themselves."
He reached out, stroking the soft hair on the child's head. For the first time, his eyes, which seemed to hold the birth and death of the entire cosmos, revealed an emotion akin to "gentleness."
"When the young look back, their youth is gone. A glance, a wisp of smoke... for how long does it last?" He paused, as if even finishing the verse exhausted him.
He poured the rest of his words—his millennia of solitude, his rage at being betrayed, and the last vestiges of his defiance against fate—into the child's eyes.
"Take it. And live," his voice was an undeniable command. "Go somewhere far away, somewhere warm. Then, throw this into the deepest sea and use my bloodline to seal it away forever. And never come back..."
Tears welled in the child's eyes. He wanted to ask something, but at that very moment, the sky changed color.
On the horizon, thirteen colossal banners rose slowly, like thirteen freshly carved, gaping wounds.
The sky was vomiting fire, and the people on the ground were cheering. They thought it a marvel, a miracle, making wishes on the falling pieces of their heaven.
What lovely idiots, he thought.
He rose to his feet, no longer looking at the terrified child. He faced the thirteen banners, his expression not of anger, but of a kind of... weary relief.
He opened his arms to the collapsing dome, as if embracing a lover named "Death" who had arrived a thousand years too late.
"Whoa, hold on, we're really doing this?" a voice griped inside his head. "It's just us against, like, their entire army! This script sucks. Couldn't they at least give us a cheat code? You know... maybe we could just surrender? I bet if we're nice about it, they'll at least feed us..."
"Go, child," his voice urged. "Forget this place. Forget me. Go live your own life. Go fret over a fifty-cent price difference. Go fall in love with a girl who makes you laugh and makes you cry... Go be human. And whatever you do... don't look back."
"No..."
"Don't..."
"Please... don't..."
Ruby shot up in bed, gasping for air in the 3:30 AM darkness.
Outside, a torrential downpour lashed against the windowpane, each drop a tear in a funeral procession for a god he didn't know.
He wiped the cold, clammy sweat from his forehead. The immense sorrow and bone-deep fatigue from the dream hadn't fully dissipated, clinging to his heart like a sticky film.
He shook his head, trying to dislodge the images of burning skies, strange banners, and that damned sword that seemed to scream.
"Freaking psycho..." he muttered, swinging his legs out of bed. "Like I give a damn about you ancient guys and your drama."
But as he looked at the reflection of his own sleepy face in the window, the strange, sighed verse from the dream echoed in his mind, unbidden.
"...But a sentimental heart has nowhere to hide. The past is full of sighs... why not cherish today?"
A shiver ran down his spine.
"Damn it, I've been playing too much Skybound Aces. I'm starting to hallucinate," he said, grabbing a bottle of water from his desk. He twisted it open and chugged half of it down.
The cool liquid flowed down his throat. It should have been refreshing, but the moment it hit his tongue, his pupils contracted.
That taste...
It wasn't water.
It began with a taste.
Salt.
Not the salt of potato chips, nor the salt of tears.
It was the ancient, metallic salt of the deep sea.