~~ READ AUTHORS NOTE AT THE END ~~
Juno felt something waking up inside of him. It was not painful. It was not unpleasant. It was like nothing he had ever felt before in either of his lives, and that alone was enough to make him go completely still.
Something that had always been there had simply decided, after Sixteen years of waiting, that now was an acceptable time to introduce itself.
The energy rose from somewhere underneath everything — not his chest exactly, not his mind exactly, somewhere deeper and older and far less polite about making itself known. It filled him from the inside out, reaching into places he hadn't known were empty and filling them with something that felt like heat and something that felt wrong and something that felt, underneath both of those things, undeniably and completely like him.
His emotions sharpened first. Everything he felt became cleaner and more precise, like a signal clearing of static. Then his body followed. Warmth spread outward from his core in slow deliberate waves, moving through his chest and shoulders, down his arms, into his fingertips, thorough and unhurried. Under it, something was being rebuilt. He could feel it happening, bones and blood and everything in between, revitalized in ways that made the body he had walked around in his whole life feel like a rough draft.
It was euphoric.
New confidence settled in him, and unlike most confidence Juno had ever felt, this kind had nothing to do with convincing himself of something. It simply was.
Eventually the warmth cooled, replaced by a gentleness that moved upward through him and lifted things he hadn't noticed he was carrying. Sixteen years of accumulated tension. The exhaustion of one very long night. All of it, gone. The coldness reached his eyes last.
His vision doubled.
He could still see the void and its endless silver-threaded stars. But layered beneath it, or perhaps behind it, was something else entirely.
A sea.
Grey and vast and completely still, stretching in every direction without a horizon. Not dark, not dramatic. Bleaker than that. The color of something that had died a long time ago and hadn't been disturbed since, dead grey shot through in places with a dull red that bled into it the way rust bled into old metal. It didn't churn. It didn't move with any obvious malice. It simply sat there, still and faintly wrong in the way of something that had never been quite alive to begin with.
Above it hung a sun.
The same grey. The same dead red bleeding through at the edges. Not burning, not dark, simply present and hollow, the color of old bone and dried blood, a perfect solar shape containing nothing that somehow felt less like absence and more like potential. Patient. Unhurried. Waiting for something that hadn't arrived yet.
The sea shifted faintly, as if aware of being observed.
'Huh,' Juno thought, looking at it with the honest and slightly delighted curiosity of someone who had just discovered they were a great deal more interesting than they had previously had evidence for.
'Guess I need myself a sun.'
Juno finally saw the shapes inside his sun, however. They were his Memories.
He wanted, he so desperately wanted, to move forward and inspect them and try them out, but to absolutely no avail.
The damn Spell sounded once again.
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT I CAN SEE WHY NEPHIS WANTED TO DESTROY THIS DAMN THING. DAMN BASTARD!"
[Awakening Aspect Ability…]
Crossing his arms with an angry look, Juno started rambling to himself.
"This better be good, you damn little shite..."
Honestly, Juno didn't know what he was expecting. He didn't particularly care what he got, but a ranged Ability would be the best. Sitting in the backline and launching attacks sounded like the perfect thing for him! Though with the Aspect name, he wasn't confident in his chances.
Soon, the Spell spoke once again.
[Aspect Ability acquired.]
[Aspect Ability Name: Soul Blade]
With a disappointed sigh, Juno hurriedly summoned his runes. He wanted to quickly check the description, not think about it, and move onto his damn Memories. Then, he would check on his new Attributes. After that, he would think about his two Abilities. There was an order to these things after all!
Name: Juno
True Name: Sun Chaser
Rank: Dreamer
Soul Core: Dormant
Glories: [Glory of War], [Glory of the King], [Glory of the Gambit]
Memories: [King's Execution], [A Snakes Mask], [Away From Home]
Echoes: -
Attributes: [Dream's Spawn], [Flame of Divinity], [Anunnaki], [Malicious], [Indomitable Humanity], [Godscorn]
Aspect: [Godless Blade].
Aspect Rank: Divine
Aspect Abilities: [Soul Blade]
Aspect Ability Description: [The only blade worthy is yourself. Though be warned, a Soul Core has to be used for a blade to appear.]
"The fuck is that? Anyway!"
Juno quickly moved his attention over to his Memories. Three beautiful and glowing options spread themselves in front of him, and he chose the sweetest: [King's Execution]. Immediately, the image of a short and wide blade appeared before his eyes. It was simple, and yet incredibly beautiful. A black handle, glinting steel blade, and red accents defined the sword.
Approving the design, Juno moved towards the description. The moment he did so, he froze completely. What he saw were multiple strings of texts he was not supposed to see. The only one who was supposed see them was Sunny.
Juno wasn't Sunny.
Memory: [King's Execution].
Memory Rank: Ascended.
Memory Tier: I.
Memory Type: Weapon
Memory Description: [A tyrannical king once ruled a small nation. He was powerful, but never the most powerful. He was always destined to die, and so he did. Sun Chaser did not care who had laid claim to the king before him, whether it was his friend or Fate itself.]
Memory Enchantments: [Blood Fang], [Place of Execution]
Somehow, beyond all reason, Juno was able to see the details of Memories.
It was insane. Too insane! How could he, someone without Blood Weave, see these things? Haha, if he had more time he might've figured it out. It is too bad he did not, as the damned spell spoke once again, its voice resounding across the void as if to mock Junos scathing look. Doubly so, because of what was about to happen next.
[All power has a price.]
[You have received your Flaw.]
[Your Flaw is...]
…
Quickly forgetting about his fixation on Memories, Juno rushed to see the description of his Flaw. Sure, he was never the most saint-like of people, but he didn't exactly want to become sinful! That was not too good!
Finally, he saw it at the bottom of his Runes.
Flaw: [Battle Fiend]
Flaw Description: [Outside of battle, you wither away.]
Juno was about to let out a chuckle, but like many times before he was just a tad slower than the Spell.
'God damned thing...'
[Wake up, Sun Chaser!]
The black void spun, and then disappeared.
…
Juno opened his eyes.
A ceiling looked back at him. Institutional, utilitarian, the kind of ceiling that existed purely to be above things and had no opinions about it. A police station, maybe, or something adjacent to one. The lighting was flat and honest in the way of places that had decided aesthetics were someone else's problem.
He stared at it for a moment.
Somehow, this description rang a bell for him. That statement also caused some sense of Deja Vu.
Anyway, it was the most beautiful ceiling he had ever seen in his life.
Not because it was beautiful. It wasn't, objectively, beautiful at all. It was beautiful because it was real and solid and mundane in every way that the inside of a nightmare was not, because it was a ceiling that had never had a corrupt king sleeping beneath it or a chandelier to fall from or a God's silence hanging over it like a held breath. It was just a ceiling. He could have wept.
He became aware, distantly, of the straps across his chest and wrists. He filed that away for later.
He became aware of the new vitality moving through his body — the absence of aches he had forgotten weren't normal, a clarity and solidity to his physical existence that hadn't been there before, the particular quality of a body that had been quietly upgraded overnight and was only now introducing itself properly.
He felt incredible.
He turned his head to the left, registering vaguely that someone was sitting there, dark hair, still, watching him, and he had just enough time to form the beginning of a thought about that before everything happened at once.
His eyes. His ears. His nose and mouth and skin and the thing underneath all of those things that was not any sense he had a name for. All of it, simultaneously, without warning or preamble or any mercy whatsoever, exploded.
He screamed, and then he was gone.
(End of Volume 1, Part 1 - Oldest Dream)