Time did not flow; it bled. Decades dissolved into centuries, drifting like cosmic dust across the void of my consciousness.
Through the glassy, fractured mirror of my isolation, I was forced to bear witness to my own life, from childhood to adulthood.
I was born into a fairly wealthy family, though I never knew the source of our affluence. It was just one of many things kept hidden from me. When I was three, my father vanished. I never knew where he went, and even his memory became a blurred shape in my mind.
But my mother was everything. She was my entire world.
I saw reality through her eyes. She used to tell me the most captivating stories—mostly fantasies. Sometimes, I was so fascinated that I believed them all. Magic, auras, dragons… those childhood fantasies encouraged me more than anything else.
But when I turned seven, my mother suddenly fell ill.
We took her to all the renowned doctors in the country, spending countless sums of money, yet no one could diagnose her. It was hard to believe that in the twenty-first century, modern medicine couldn't unravel the cause of her disease.
By the time I was eight, she was entirely bedridden. I started going to school then, only because she insisted that a boy my age needed an education and friends. I went to primary school for the first time without high expectations, but I found some comfort there, surrounded by my peers, and eventually made a lot of friends.
As I grew, my mother's condition only worsened. I couldn't bear to see her like that, but what could a nine-year-old child do? I prayed to God with all my heart to give my sick mother back to me.
But my prayers were in vain. She passed away when I was ten.
Her last words still echo in the silence:
"My son, I am sorry that I cannot stay to see your bright future. I can't take care of you anymore, and I am truly sorry. But I have something to give you. It's about your father."
I was too stunned to process the mention of the man who had abandoned us.
"Go to the basement," she had said, pressing a key into my hand. "You will find a notebook there. If you ever face a problem you cannot solve, read it. It will give you the answer. And finally… I am sorry for keeping so many secrets from you. If you are destined for it, you will uncover the truth. Please, go to Lunar University. Get admitted there; you will find many answers."
She had paused, struggling for breath. "But more than anything, I want you to lead a simple, ordinary life."
Then, she was gone. I cried the entire day. I neither slept nor ate properly for weeks. Eventually, our housemaid, Vena, managed to comfort me. Thinking of my mother's final wish, I forced myself to walk forward again.
Later, I went to the basement and found my father's diary. Shockingly, there was only a single line written on the very first page:
It felt like a blasphemous phrase, and the rest of the diary was entirely blank. I was left in a dilemma, but I kept the book carefully hidden with me.
From that day on, I was determined to get into Lunar University when I grew up. It became my primary objective. But the real problem surfaced later—nowhere on Earth was there a place called Lunar University.
I was forced to wade through all those painful, suffocating memories I had tried so hard to bury. Soon, the visions passed like a storm, and the void engulfed me whole once more.
But this time, I was not alone.
A book hovered in the pitch-black air. It was the same book. My father's diary.
I grabbed it. I didn't understand how a physical object could appear in this dark realm of consciousness. I opened the cover and saw that something new was written beneath the title on the first page. It was inscribed in the same ancient characters I had seen on the hexagonal device that had teleported me here.
This time, however, I could comprehend it. I couldn't read the letters, but their meaning transferred directly into my mind, as if I had known the language for decades.
Perhaps this book was the root of my suffering. But for now, I had no choice but to trust my mother's final words and see what would happen.
I couldn't speak in this void, but I could project the ancient words through my mindscape, reciting the incantation:
One soulless heart stationed beneath,
In the pitch-black memories' fright.
To the depths of harrowing nights,
O Heavenly darkness, return from bright.
From the sorrowless abyssal light,
Come forth to your destined height.
The diary's blank pages begin to flip frantically. The dark ink of the Song of Darkness bleeds off the paper, floating into the air like liquid smoke before rushing directly into Skyre's chest. He experiences a moment of agonizing, freezing cold, followed immediately by a surge of raw, untamed aura.