A boy lost his mind, it was fragmented and broken apart as information that should not have been discerned.
The Tower was a space that remained a mystery to mankind. It was not only because of its indiscernible nature, but because attempts at looking beyond the tapestry that composed the labyrinth of trials brought more harm than good.
None had ever looked further than the boy, however. It should not have been possible for a person to bridge a connection between the worlds that made up a tower and its various floors… but he had.
The child, whose name had become equally as lost as his mind, pushed his mind beyond the reaches of the First Floor and subsequently connected himself to something that was beyond his understanding. He had not consciously done it, but the world didn't care for causes — only effects.
Most curiously, the pieces of his mind did not remain fragmented for long.
They were moving, or at least they felt like they were moving, traveling through a place that was hard to explain… it felt like it was the present, but it was undoubtedly the past. Yet, it felt like his consciousness had somehow gone into the future as well.
…He was feeling and recognizing time. Points of time, past, present, and future. Naturally, this should not have been possible. He saw nothing, nor did he actually feel anything: it was a paradox.
After years, countless years from what his mind could tell, his consciousness began to slow and settle, no longer dragged across time by an invisible thread and instead being placed down to rest somewhere else.
An unclear amount of time passed before the boy felt the ability to breathe again, and his body felt strange once he recovered his consciousness.
That was because he had not recovered his consciousness at all, nor had he woken up in his body.
His eyes wished to move frantically, but they could not. He could not command a brain that was not his own, and therefore he understood what he was seeing now… was someone else's perspective of the world.
He could not make out his features, but he could make out the world around him:
The sky was red, but unlike the Tower, there was a sun to be seen. The tinted state of the sky was a result of… the world. Memories surfaced and remained the child that the world had always been that way. Also, the shimmering orb in the sky was not the Sun that he knew.
The ball of plasma was known as the Dream of Hope.
As more time passed, more information came to the boy's mind, and it was after a few moments that he realized he was no longer a boy at all. Instead, he was seeing through the eyes of a woman, a young woman who looked strikingly gorgeous and otherworldly…
…As a matter of fact, she was otherworldly. From what he could recognize from the memories that were filling his mind, the woman he was seeing through the eyes of—Alice—was not human.
'...Huh?'
When he thought that, the image, which had previously been still, suddenly came to life.
As though she detected a commotion in her mind, Alice rose to her feet, her fair hair blown violently by a mighty gale shortly after she stood to her feet. Her hands rose and protected her face as best as they could from a torrent of blood carried through the air like pollen.
Between the slips of her finger, she could see the source of the mighty winds. Something was slapping what looked to be a dozen malformed wings, creating gusts that were powerful enough to knock down buildings. Somehow, Alice remained unperturbed, standing firm in a way unfit for a woman of her stature.
In the space between them, a sea of blood waited — challenging anybody to try and step foot for more than a second.
Alice was no fool, she had no intention of stepping foot in the ichor. It was the blood of an abomination that should have never been killed, and now it had drowned the world and allowed the abhorrent titan in the distance to run free, devouring all things to satiate its endless gluttony.
Blood Marauder, she called it.
Even though it was thousands of miles away from her, its size impacted the world around it, tearing and molding it according to its sinister will.
Circling the shore of the bone island, Alice studied the sentries she'd forged to protect her from the abomination and its less shells. They were small, rather adorable things, each looking like an unadorned porcelain doll. Naturally, the appearance of the sentries betrayed their unmatched power, each capable of splitting a man's body apart with the overwhelming strength they possessed.
She'd opted for a small design, because the Blood Marauder underestimated things that were smaller than itself.
Soon, the woman was speaking to herself, a voice laced with bitterness laid bare, "Damned pest. Countless lives, swallowed by this wretched sea, and you delve and desecrate all you see. Blood Marauder… Blood Marauder, your days will come to you soon."
At the end of the world, the words Alice spoke were those of vengeance. All life was lost, and only she and the Blood Marauder remained, both joined by an army of their creation… and she was on the losing side.
The ocean that swallowed the world had long-since fallen into the hands of the ancient, intelligent calamity.
She'd created many weapons to destroy it, and the vast array of abilities in its possession rendered her attempts inadequate.
That did not mean she was helpless, though. Alice had more than one way to harm the Blood Marauder, which is why it opted to assault her from a distance, trying to pester her into entering the sea and closing the distance with it. That would be the end of her, so she knew better than to attempt such as a suicidal mission.
All the minions it sent, fragments of itself, were dispatched by her miniature sentries, and more powerful ones waited on the center of the bone island for a direct confrontation with the titanic, world-sized entity. Although she could only see its silhouette from a distance, she knew its haunting appearance well.
Suppressing the memory that threatened to deal a mental blow to her mind, she instead focused on what was in front of her.
The final confrontation was drawing near. This time, the Blood Marauder was not just pestering her with the lacerating winds blown by the flap of its plethora of wings. That beast was preparing to take flight, to finally come and claim her head.
It was capable of human-level thought, and therefore it knew as well as she did that this standstill would never change.
Because she could create her own food, she would never go hungry. Because she could create her own defenses, she would never grow tired. Because of her versatile ability, it would never catch her when her guard was down — thus, the Blood Marauder would need to take the initiative to consume its final prey.
Alice could not remember when she came to life in this world, or why it had ended, Perhaps this was the result of one creature absorbing the right set of abilities, and using it to indulge itself in a god-given feast, consuming all the life that made up the world and leaving it flooded in blood and carnage.
Neither the Empire nor the Giants and Olden Beasts who once walked the world could stop the Blood Marauder once it began to split itself.
It was because the Lord of Hope had been killed. The deity who watched over the land had been killed and his blood flooded the world, destroying everything in its path and leaving mankind in a state where they could not defend themselves. When the Blood Marauder went into the holy ichor, it consumed the dead and inherited their attributes, eventually rising to become stronger than everything that could challenge it.
Only after most of humanity had fallen, Alice received a blessing from the divine ichor, which she threw herself into in a fit of despair from the death of her world. In that ichor, she found torment, agony, and salvation all at once. It awakened something within her, blossoming into the sea of limitless possibilities she held in storage in the back of her mind.
Alice could create anything, and by doing so, she could battle a monster capable of everything.
What the child saw through her eyes as the Dream of Hope was blocked out by the overbearing size of the beast was a battle unlike any other he'd seen or heard of in history.
From the sea of blood, thousands of fragments belonging to the Blood Marauder rose and assaulted the Bone Island. When equally gargantuan golems emerged from the island, the clash made the divine ichor boil and turn into mist, slowly draining the sea of blood and unveiling more of the lost world that was soon eviscerated anyways by the gross awesomeness of their clash.
Alice did not meet the Blood Marauder in direct combat, and instead unveiled inventions of her own, one standing out unlike any other.
A massive bow, hovering in the sky and decorated by hundreds of carved symbols within it, further amplified by divine blood within its strings and countless other personal creations that ensured its allegiance to her, and only herself.
The Blood Marauder had turned her weapons against her many times in the past, so she spent much time finding a way to prevent it. And in that time, she succeeded at not only creating a weapon that was loyal to only herself, but also one of divine proportion.
Thus, as the string of the bow pulled itself back and aimed at the beast whose size started to grow and swallow the world whole, light transformed and shaped an arrow of its own. When loosed, the arrow divided itself into billions of streaks that covered the sky like stars — the Blood Marauder, for the first time in its existence, was peppered by attacks imbued with divine radiance that left injuries that it could not heal.
However, that was not nearly enough to destroy the beast that had bathed in divine ichor for countless years and devoured the entirety of a world, and the unique abilities that its inhabitants possessed. Though the Lord of Hope was dead, the Blood Marauder was by no means inferior to the dead god.
The final battle between the two lasted for years, and those years passed by in fragmented sections in the eyes of the child, whose mind could not comprehend all of Alice's thoughts, actions, or resolve.
Nevertheless, he saw the end of the battle and the world that was created.
Alice succeeded in her battle against the Blood Marauder, whose size grew to wrap around the entire world before its defeat.
Although she'd won against the ancient demon, she did not kill it. Instead, she found that the beast's body was broken into fragments, countless, lesser entities — much like the titanic ones that it used to battle her now ruined army of golems, which had been dismantled by the demon personally near the climax of their war.
The Blood Marauder, in the face of defeat, still remained determined to live and used its own corpse as a medium to entrap the world within itself, where its remnants continued to wander about, searching mindlessly for something to consume.
Sadly, there was nothing left to consume. None of those remnants were powerful enough to consume Alice, now that they lacked the various abilities the Blood Marauder once had.
"..." Alice had no words when she stared at where the sea of blood once drowned the world.
The ocean that covered the world was no longer there, reduced to a single area, which had once been the deepest point of the world, where a true ocean once rested. Draining the ocean had been a wonderful boon, as it created land that Alice could once again journey through.
Now that the demon was dead, nothing barred her from her journey to the edge of the world, which was once theorized to not exist.
Before setting out, Alice was exhausted from her battle. Thus, she descended from the island, which had become more like the summit of a mountain overlooking the world, and decided to calm her loneliness by building. She created a city for her lonely self, one that she used to rest and recover the energy she had used and exhausted for the first time in her life during the strenuous battle with the Blood Marauder.
Once she'd recovered enough strength, she fortified her city, where she hoped that one day, someone might emerge to reside within its walls.
She created a series of defenses that would protect those within its walls. Blessings that would lose power over time, but hopefully ensure that those within their walls received a boon that awarded them with no hunger. It was wishful thinking, that someone would rest in the impossibly large city she built. A dead world would always be just that… dead.
But… It was not impossible for Alice to believe someone would come to reside in her city. After all, in the future, thousands of people did.
This was not the memory that shocked the fragmented child the most, however. Instead, what shocked him the most was the journey and various, seemingly random things that the woman left as she journeyed across the space that was once barred by a calamitous foe.
He saw her create an impossibly large naval vessel that she used to sail over the remaining sea of blood, which sank into the depths at the end of her journey.
He saw her create arrays that acted as barriers, preventing the various, mindless abominations that resided at the end of the world from leaving — they were far more harrowing than the ones that he'd seen thus far in the memory.
He saw her easily dispatch enemies that would make some of the mightiest of men tremble; abominations who still wielded remnants of the powers the Blood Marauder once possessed.
However, most shockingly of all… he saw history be made.
Not the destruction of the world, which would undoubtedly be a landmark in this world's history. Rather than that, what he saw made it look small in comparison.
He watched as the woman wove runes through space, and cast them into the carcass of the Blood Marauder to use him as a medium. He also when the intricate string of runes and other spellcraft he could not comprehend reached the Dream of Hope, which still existed behind the corpse that blocked the world.
When it was complete… he watched as hundreds of spirals tore space open throughout the world, carrying an ominous radiance that was all too familiar to the child.
What he saw… was the creation of the Gateways, and the story of the First Craftsman, Alice.
And when that memory ended, Alice stepped through the Gateway, and the child felt his fragment mind pulling itself back together, dragging him through time once more, for what would hopefully be the last time he had to experience such things.
By looking through the tapestries of the Tower, the child saw the scene that created the wasteland he now challenged, and furthermore, saw the truth of the world itself.
Esme was wrong when she said that they weren't inside a monster. No, maybe she was right. They were not inside of a monster, but instead the corpse of a demon. And the place where they needed to go… was the only remaining piece of the Blood Sea that remained.
Yes, War Reaver was right to have humanity join hands. Because one way or another, to find the final Gateway, they'd need to go to the world's edge.