"Cough… The freedom of the common soul has never truly manifested as a reality for the masses to behold," Chanel spoke with a torturous slowness, each word an ordeal. He coughed, a searing heat burning his throat. The voice of the Dark General was parched, abrasive, and seemingly devoid of substance—yet every word exhaled carried a blunt truth, coiled like a cryptic jigsaw puzzle.
"You are treading… into a place where you must confront… those who hunt you…" The Dark General turned his Soul-Caging Lantern toward a piercing, ear-splitting screech. Deep down, he knew the source better than anyone.
"O spirit… Cough—your soul does not belong here. Be silent. I wish not for you to endure the same tribulations as a mortal." It was not an omen of dread, but a flicker of genuine concern for the minuscule beings of this overlapping realm. This, despite the fact that moments ago, he had extinguished the lingering remnants of a young girl's soul, casting her into the abyss of the Soaring Celestial Fountain—a place where waterfalls defied gravity and flowed upward. Beneath his feet lay the cavernous depths, littered with the skeletal ruins of a nameless ancient civilization.
Nested beneath that inverted waterfall, Chanel navigated through jagged crevices and massive roots protruding from obsidian stones. He pressed on without a word of exhaustion. The silence, devoid of its usual haunting whispers, granted the Dark General a strange, inexplicable serenity. He moved through the narrow obsidian passages, their razor-sharp edges slicing into his flesh as he squeezed through. Yet, conditioned by a lifetime of strife, he uttered not a single groan. Remarkably, those deep gashes vanished without a trace the moment his own shadow passed over them.
"In the ages past… the tales of the land beneath the river, the demented abyss, the haunting beauty… I feel a sense of familiarity, yet I cannot grasp it." With a hand encased in steel gauntlets wrapped in barbed wire up to his elbows, Chanel—Chenelic—inhaled the essence of nearby spirits. There was nothing; even the faint scent of decay was absent. This stood in stark contrast to the charred ruins of the scorched village he had bypassed earlier. He felt an agonizing kinship with every corner of this world, as if he had known it all, only to have the memories devoured by black clouds and crimson lightning. Everything was being swallowed, bit by bit, by his own rasping voice—a sound too tormented for a human heart to harbor.
"Are you longing for someone, O Dark General? The thoughts within their heads and yours… they seem to mirror one another perfectly." Chanel did not offer an immediate reply. He turned toward the voice, his hand gently caressing the air. Even in a place this malevolent, he could sense the melodic cadence of the fae nearby… perhaps even too close, hidden just beneath the thin veil of reality.
The roar of the inverted waterfall served as his orchestra, accompanied by the distant groans of shifting timber. Colossal roots obstructed his path intermittently. Scaling them was no great feat for a general, yet a lingering fatigue gnawed at his resolve.
He peered upward through the narrow gap between the obsidian monoliths, seeing only black spires that pierced the heavens beyond sight. Images flickered in the periphery of his mind. In a world bathed in light, the soul remains dark; nothing here followed logic or any law of the sensible world. To this place, the words of that slandered scholar rang true: The world is but a shard of broken glass.
"Perhaps I long for a certain lady… Perhaps I miss the young master I once served…" he finally answered after a heavy silence. The atmosphere shifted violently the land was a chaotic, uncontrollable entity.
"Whither are you bound?" the fae inquired. The General fell silent again as he scaled a stone barricade entwined with gargantuan roots. Throughout the ascent, he used but a single hand to grip the terrain, propelling his weight upward with raw strength—the very same hand that had just been tenderly stroking the head of a small, harmless sprite in the void. Chanel descended from the crag before answering in a parched voice.
"Home. The battlefield. The ritual grounds. Chaos… or perhaps… to the one who once stood shoulder to shoulder with me." The Dark General made no effort to stem the flow of bloody tears. No one in this world truly knew what they felt anymore, how much they suffered, or what they had surrendered to oblivion. It was the destiny the world imposed upon all—deities, kings of kings, tyrants, and the primordial spirits alike. Death was the only constant, circling every shard of memory.
"Are you a Sage? O Exalted One, are you a Sage?!" A voice, distinct from the fae, erupted. He sensed no spiritual aura from it. It was the voice of a woman, her cry echoing off the claustrophobic walls surrounding him—a grandeur so suffocating it turned the stomach.
Swish—Thud. Small, slender feet landed upon the short, soft grass. Myriad voices debated beneath the obsidian pillars. Chanel chose to press on, ignoring the silence of the little sprite and the gale that roared loud enough to shatter eardrums. The Dark General seemed to be trying to forget something… or perhaps his memory was simply revolting, much like a man fleeing from a shadow that is permanently stitched to his soul.
"You cannot flee from me like this, My Lord! You never fled from me… did you, Dark Knight? You stayed by my side even when the world grew cold. You—" The world before him plunged into momentary darkness. His eyes flickered open and shut; he rubbed them in vain. The eye beneath the mask could never truly close. Ever since the wars preceding the age of gods, the iron mask—shaped like a formidable demon—had fused with his flesh, consuming his face and eyelids entirely. He lived in agony. Beneath his armor and shadow-cloaked mantle, his skin seethed as if in hellfire. Shackles manifested around his wrists the moment an external thought pierced his mind, as if trying to shroud a truth he was meant to know.
No, it was not just him. All peoples, countless races, and even entities too lowly to perceive reality—they all deserved an answer, however murky, however shrouded in fog it might be.
"Stand. Back." He commanded sharply. His armored fist clenched, and blood flowed like a river of raw power. The aura radiating from him was a terror that even gods would hesitate to face.
"You… you promised me… You—would never leave me." The voice was that of a young woman, but it held not a shred of truth.
"Silence your rot, you infernal beast! Low-born creature! Do not dare to defile her voice with your breath!" A violent, scorching fire erupted, incinerating the roots. A crimson light flared, annihilating the surrounding mana. Nearby creatures—some small as vermin but shaped like rats, others large as hounds with the features of serpents—were reduced to ash. Red lightning struck with such fury that the obsidian monoliths collapsed into a roar of dust. Every living thing, every soul attempting to dissolve back into mana, was burned until neither scent nor flavor remained. The Dark General stood deathly still. He did not move a muscle. The crimson lightning continued to purge the surroundings. His wrath, his hatred… it never truly left him.
He had touched the memories of a man who had dived too deep into the abyss to ever return. It was too dangerous. The Asuras could not endure his cleansing fire. The wailing spirits dared not manifest, fleeing the alleyways like birds from a forest fire. Obsidian pillars fell like dominoes, crushing everything in their path.
Chanel remained silent. He could not perceive, could not hear, and could not understand that which he…
Loved… and… once loved… and… would continue to love until the very last ember of existence faded into the void.