I just sat there, completely closed off from reality. My fear continues building and crippling me to the extent I couldn’t do anything but let it control my thoughts. Only to be broken from my trance by a crash and the sound of breaking wood.
Turning around to see what it was, I see four people standing at my door. Two random knights, my personal attendant, and Oriana. My thoughts flip over in confusion when I see Oriana. Why was she here? She isn’t supposed to arrive until later this evening.
Quickly turning my head to the clock above the fireplace, I see that the time read 5:07. Wondering where the time went, I’m pulled back to the scene of the four of them standing by the doorframe of a door that looked like someone had kicked it in.
“Young master! Are you alright?” My attendant calls in concern as he rushes to me. Pushing myself to my feet, I forget that I was supposed to be hiding myself and don’t put up the act of pretending to be Moravi.
“I am perfectly fine. Im more worried about why the fuck you broke my door down.” I say with a blank face, a hint of anger and annoyance slipping into my already nonexistent facade. “W-well, your door was locked and we saw that you ran into here injured. We tried knocking, but you didn’t respond. So… we…” My attendant stamers out an excuse.
I turn to look at them instead of staring at the wall, and lock eyes with him. He immediately freezes and tries to stand on his best behaviour. “So you broke my door down, because you thought that I had injured myself, in my own home.” I continue to stare at him, and all he does in response is give a guilty look and fidget under my gaze.
“I appreciate your… dedication to serving me.” I continue, “but I fail to see what warranted you breaking into my room. Especially with a guest here.” At this I turn to look at Oriana. She matched the description I was given, maroon hair with green eyes, and a stature you’d expect of a seven year old.
Yet all I can feel when I look at the two of them is annoyed.
Just as I was about to continue berating my attendant, my parents burst into the room with worried expressions. Well, one worried expression. My father looked confused and just as annoyed as me.
As they look to me and see my indifferent expression and controlled yet angry demeanour, a look of shock crosses their faces before being replaced by worry and understanding for my mother, and a tired yet angry face for my father.
“Son, why is the doo-” My mother begins to say before my father cuts her off, “Why are you bleeding and why is the door broken?” he asks while looking at me. Matching his gaze and not caring that he was obviously yet unreasonably directing his annoyance at me.
Holding his gaze I respond without so much as adding a hint of emotion to my voice, “The door is broken because the incompetent serevent you hired found it to be the right course of action after seeing I had a single drop of blood on me to break in. As for the blood, it was because I injured myself while in the garden.”
He starts to redden as I insulted him and my attendant before stepping forward just as I finished my explanation. “Everyone out!” he yells.
My attendant snaps out of his stupor and gingerly leaves the room while ushering Oriana with him. As he walks out with her, she looks at me and asks him, “Why do his eyes look like that?” “He's just angry, it’ll be fine.” He consoles her, yet as they leave I catch her saying something about stars and the deep ocean.
As all of them leave the room to me and my parents, my father turns to look at my mother, “You too, I need to have a talk with our…’son’.” he says to her. She stares at him, taken aback. She ends up trying to talk back to him, but after a considerable amount of back and forth, she leaves looking dejected and concerned.
My father then moves to the door and closes it. With it no longer having a handle, he drags a nearby dresser in front of it and then turns to me. He doesn't say anything, but just walks over to me.
‘I wonder what he intends to do. Why did he feel the need to bar the door?’ I think to myself. Several scenarios move through my mind, none of which I like, so I try to form some sort of countermeasure to whatever was about to happen.
He comes to stand before me and doesn’t move. He just stands there while looking down at me with a scowl. “I assume you didn’t order everyone out and bar the door just to have a staring contest you were going to lose, did you?” I taunt him, trying to get some sort of reaction so I could gauge what he was going to do.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
His scowl deepens and he lashes out. I see him moving to grab me by the collar easily, yet I forget that my body had no physical skill, making me unable to do anything about it. Realising that he must intend to either yell at me or try to beat me, I’m surprised and confused when he grabs me by the throat.
Grabbing his wrist of the hand that was on my neck, I get reality checked as I realise that he was trying to choke me out. My eyes widen at this before he lifts me up by my neck and slams me against the wall behind me.
Having the wind knocked out of me, I cough out the remaining little air in my lungs. Unable to breath, I try to kick his arm or crotch to have a chance to escape. Flailing around in his grasp, I fail to get him off of me because of my size.
He then moves his other hand to my neck as my vision starts to haze over. The last words I hear as my vision fades fill me with a sense of dread, and understanding.
“You shouldn’t have taken my child from me! This is your own fault!”
I feel a familiar sense of weightlessness. A sense of strength, as if I had regained my old body. I open my eyes and see before me a man staring at me with fear and drenched in a cold sweat, his hands on my neck.
I move myself forward and phase through his hands. He stumbles back while yelling out to spare him. I watch him try to scramble away from me, and decide to take an eye for an eye. I walk towards him and watch the world shift and sway as if it was turning to watch what was unfolding.
Branches and roots with a grey hue crawl over the corners of the wall, shifting and swaying as if they were shadows. The waning sun just slightly creeping through the windows as it sets, moving its rays to centre in on the pathetic man who was paralysed in fear.
I crouch down over him and wrap my wispy grey hands around his throat as they let off tendrils of smoke that fade away as they depart. Almost as if they wanted to watch from a better place, almost looking like they had faces.
The man lays there, struggling while trying to grab me. Yet every time, his hands pass right through me. Right as he was about to pass from my grip and to a place wreathed in agony, I lean over so our faces were nearly touching, and I stared into his eyes and say, “You shouldn’t have taken my life from me. This is your own fault!”
I watch his flailing slow, and then stop completely. I watch him lose the glow of life, and feel satisfied with my work.
Letting go of his neck, I feel as if I was finally free. I could die and be unshackled of my worries. I look to his eyes a final time as I feel the calm cold of nothing embrace my mind, and see a featureless humanoid staring back at me with eyes that looked like a broken kaleidoscope, with gold iris and no pupil that seemed like it was bordered by a thin purple hue that looked like the ring of a galaxy, and with a cracked void filling all of what was left.
The final thing I see before the being reflected in the corpse's eyes fades away as if dust in the wind.
Formless, matterless, yet undeniably there.
Endless yet cramped, nonexistent and weighted like a blanket.
Nothing, yet everywhere and everything.
The void of in between, endearingly called the after death by me.
I feel nothing, not physically, or mentally. Left to drift with no destination yet again, left to wander the expanse in search of anything.
But a single seed, one small, inconsequential, unnoticeable seed.
A seed of doubt sets root. Claiming the existence that wandered the expanse.
The being thought, ‘life is the beginning, yet it ends. Death is the end, yet it begins… One life, died. One puppet, disposed of. One survivor, killed. All was a life that ended, yet all had a death that began, so am I not free from this burden?
Is there something more that watches? Does it have control? Some eternal existence? I must be a child in its eyes.
So I will be forced to begin and end yet again. Will I not?’
The void echoed those thoughts, reverberating through the nothing.
And a response.
“Find.”
One word to set the road for a fate undying, for a fate eternal.
Nothing creates, for it can’t be destroyed, yet it can’t be nothing.
So it changes.
From that void crawled a renewed being.
Still broken, still incomplete.
The calm heft vanishes, as if it was nothing to begin with. To replace it, a cold, hard existence. A stone floor devoid of light, it was uncomfortable. I can’t accept that I can’t die. I died three times! Yet every time I wake up in some new place.
I was betrayed yet again. If what I perceived as the truth was fake first, and hidden the second time, and yet I trusted that lie, then I simply won’t trust. But that doesn’t mean I can’t live, first I need to find out where I am. And what I am.