Chapter 344 - Beyond the Vision

Yuzu kept her eyes closed as the vision came to an end, letting herself become immersed in the lingering darkness. She held onto the clockwork shell’s golden thread, feeling the subtle energy flowing through it.

She pondered over the nature of the shell. It was a creation of the Clockwork God, constructed by his ‘daughter’ Clairoix and implanted in a girl in place of her heart. This girl was sent on a journey, where she went corrupt, died and was tossed into a void. Somehow this heart found its way onto another ship and caused the doom of its crew, eventually making its way into the possession of the Reza family’s staff.

The visions had answered the question of ‘how’ the shell had come to arrive here, but not ‘why’.

Accessing the fate string of a spiritual object was different than accessing the string of a person. The golden thread of an object— and for some reason it was always golden— didn’t tell of its future, but rather delved into its past.

For a person, their gently flowing fate thread became defined as its multiple futures solidified into the present. As for their recent past, the thread quickly faded out of view becoming inaccessible to Yuzu.

She had accepted this trait of being able to see the future but not the past as a natural limitation of her powers. Similarly, the fact that she could only see a limited distance into the future of the strings also felt like a limitation based on her current power.

Why, then, can I see an object’s past? And why is it only specific moments in its past? Yuzu mused to herself, reflecting on this strange inconsistency. And if it’s the past, why does the thread still flow freely in the air?

The thread, of course, gave no answers.

With nothing more to see, Yuzu was about to let go when she heard a soft sound coming from within the darkness. She strained her ears to listen. It wasn’t coming from the vision, or from the thread, or from any particular source, but it was strangely familiar.

It was the harsh clanging of chains as they strained against an ancient metal door.

Why was she able to hear it here? Why was it slowly getting louder? It was as if the act of focusing on the sound caused it to amplify in her mind.

With a start she realized that the darkness was just a few shades brighter, like the ever so subtle hint of dawn in the pitch black night sky.

An ominous feeling sent a shiver down her spine. Yuzu instinctively tried to sever the connection but she suddenly felt a sucking sensation dragging her down into the darkness.

The light that came from every direction grew as she fell through that endless void until the darkness was dissolved away into a pure white that stretched off into infinity.

The clanging sound continued to grow louder, now with a directionality to it.

Yuzu was falling directly toward it.

By this point Yuzu had already understood where she was headed. She had somehow been dragged into the white world, carried down the current of aether to the door at its bottom.

The last time she had visited it, the mysterious entity behind the sealed door had healed her body. She had called that entity’s bluff and, presumably, insulted it enough to eject her back to the physical world.

So it’s happening now. Yuzu steeled her mind even as she felt her heart tense anxiously. Somehow she knew that she’d find herself at the bottom of the white world again, but she thought that maybe she could wait until she’d gotten stronger. She’d only just made her way back from Kumin and yet she was returning, wasn’t that too soon?

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The last time she’d come, the entity had threatened to kill her if she didn’t obey his commands. Her reply had been… perhaps a bit confrontational.

Finding herself powerless to resist the current’s flow, Yuzu could only take a deep breath and wait for the door to come into view.

As she fell the clanging intensified, vibrating her teeth and bones. She raised her hands to her ears but the sound penetrated through her flesh. As the door came into sight below, she could see it tremble and shake violently. The chains wrapped tightly around the door’s frame shook and jingled, the runes inscribed into the links glowing with an intense glowing light.

The clanging was accompanied by bestial, rage-filled roars.

No, not rage.

Fear.

The banging wasn’t the rhythmic, intentional banging of something trying calmly to break down the door. It wasn’t a savage, rabid beating of an out of control monster. The banging was arrhythmic, disjointed and full of scrambling and punctuated by screams.

It was the sound of something trying desperately to escape.

The banging wasn’t different, but it hadn’t screamed and roared like this before. Yuzu clenched her hands together as she realized that something had changed.

And yet, as soon as Yuzu’s feet touched the pale white ground, the banging once again stopped. The clanging echoed into the white void, silence fell upon the space as she landed one hundred meters away from the door.

Yuzu didn’t waste any time staring at the door, but immediately made a full turn, scanning the area around the door. She took off at a run, keeping a wide berth around the door as she went to look at the other side of it.

This was a plan that she had come up with during the many long, solitary nights in Fuha. If she ever were to find herself in front of this door again, there was one thing she absolutely had to do—

Find the ornate chest!

The entity couldn’t pass itself through the door, and Yuzu assumed that it also couldn’t pull things over to its side— If so, wouldn’t it have dragged her through and enslaved her?

It had some ability to affect the world beyond the door, evidenced by its ability to communicate with her, apply spiritual pressure on her, and eject her back to the real world… But did that also apply to the chest?

Surely, given the option it wouldn’t have ejected the chest as well to some random place in the world. Yuzu was also betting that it wouldn’t attempt to destroy the chest, though that was a possibility.

As she ran to the other side of the door a golden thread came into sight. Yuzu’s heart jumped a beat, recognizing it immediately. The view of the thread seemed to have been blocked or drowned out by the raw spiritual energy of the door.

The last time Yuzu was in the white world she hadn’t had the chance to walk around the door. Who would have thought the chest had simply been moved to the other side.

The image of the entity cackling craftily to itself sprung to her mind as it hid the chest around the corner. “Hohoho, she’ll never look for it here! My chest hiding skills are even better than my door opening skills!”

Yuzu tried not to wonder what the entity was doing, or why it always seemed to fall silent when she arrived in the white world, or how long she would have before it inevitably woke up.

If only I could run faster… Even though this is the aetheric plane, why can’t I fly like in other places?

Her speed felt woefully slow as she ran around the giant monolithic door.

The ornate wooden chest came into view, sitting directly under the door just a few meters from its base.

Yuzu forced down the lump in her throat as she made a beeline for the chest.

Once she grabbed it, she was betting that whatever was inside the chest would give her the power to traverse the white world and get her out of there.

Her white hair streamed behind her as she rushed toward the base of the door. She stretched out her hand, begging the entity behind the door not to wake up.

Danger!

Her spiritual intuition flashed at the last moment before she reached the chest. A powerful spiritual aura surged out of the door, sending a blast wave outward that Yuzu only just barely missed as she pulled backward.

Damn it!

Yuzu stepped back, hands clenched at her side as the entity’s powerful malevolent presence descended around the door.

The ground rumbled as its dark, deep voice rang out from the door.

“You cannot take it.”

Unlike its confident, overpowering presence from the past, this time its voice sounded haggard and strained. It wasn’t commanding her not to take it, as she’d expected it would, it was… warning her?

Yuzu didn’t take this change at face value, instantly becoming suspicious of the entity’s motives. While it could press her to the floor and cause her pain, it clearly couldn’t force her to do things. Perhaps it couldn’t stop her from taking the chest so was it trying a different tactic?

“It’s mine.” Yuzu said, resisting the urge to directly challenge the entity, in case it took offense and ejected her into the middle of the Altic Sea this time, “Why can’t I take it?”

The entity took a heavy, laboured breath.

“That way oblivion lies.”