Chapter 23: 91
A glowing figure sat on the ground with his knees tucked to his chest and his head buried in his arms.
The youth’s eyes fluttered open. They were bright, yet hidden within was a soul-deep exhaustion.
Slowly, he peeked his head out from under his arms.
What he saw was a vast, flat and barren landscape. The ground was not made of dirt, nor stone despite its resemblance. It simply looked…gray. It was gray and rough, emitting a soft glow with the same dreary, murky color that it held.
Raising his head, he discovered that the sky was a vast expanse of calm, soothing darkness. It was not the same darkness as Mila’s, no, this was different. As the darkness that shrouded Mila contained profound violence and horror, Zan could feel, in his heart of hearts, that the endless black sky was different. It wanted to protect, it wanted to embrace, it wanted to allow the youth to close his eyes and be held in its dark, healing waters.
If age could be expressed and identified onto metaphysical elements, Mila’s darkness felt ancient, but the darkness above himself felt primordial, primeval. It felt as if it existed since the beginning of time…no that statement was wrong.
The vast endlessness of the darkness above, hinted at its eternal nature. It did not exist since the beginning of time— it simply always existed. No beginning, no end, it simply always was.
Suddenly, twinkling lights started to manifest from out of the darkness. A single star became four, then twenty, then hundreds, until the vast endless darkness was contrasted by a trillion beacons of pure radiance.
‘Beautiful.’
Before he knew it he found himself standing tall, with his feet firmly planted on the gray surface and his head raised high to the endless starry sky. Many emotions started to swim within his heart. Love, inspiration, creativity, individuality, curiosity, wonder, hope. There were not enough words to describe the abstract, indecipherable and simply incomprehensible feelings, that welled up to the surface of his heart and filled his energy body.
Without his knowledge, his own body that softly glowed, started to shine brighter and brighter.
In the next moment, Zan found himself moving. Looking towards his hands and feet, he noticed that they were shorter and smaller than when he last found himself. He noticed that…he was younger?
Zan observed closer and found that the texture of his hands and feet were rough and rugged, and of course they were. The younger version of him was currently holding a rough stone block while his tired legs walked barefoot upon the rough gray surface. Despite it all, the emotions that swam within his being were those of pride, confidence, contentment, belief and faith. Faith in himself.
And as he raised his head from looking at his feet, he found everything had changed once again.
THUD!
A rough stone block was placed beside his foot. He looked down to see that he was standing upon a tall structure, made purely out of the same rough piece that he had just placed. It was odd. The structure was made out of varying sizes of the same stone blocks, pieced together like a puzzle to make the whole thing.
Whoosh! A gust of wind caught him off guard, almost pushing him off the tall thing but he managed to regain balance at the cost of pushing a few blocks off. Thankfully the stone blocks held enough weight for him to stably grasp. Most of them anyway…
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Looking down once again he noticed that his arms and legs had grown, but they were not yet at the length that his real body was.
On the topic of his body, he somehow felt…empty. Yes, he could feel his various senses and emotions on the surface but…he was missing something. What was he missing?
BOOOM!
Lightning struck the tower and Zan was forced out of his reverie. Storm winds assaulted him, whispering resoundingly to his very being, ‘You do not belong here.’
He looked down below and noticed that the towering structure was so high that it pierced the very clouds. The stone platform that he stood on was half destroyed, and submerged in the soft glow of the white fog. The endless expanse beneath him was no longer that of gray ground, but of faint white.
A sea of faintly glowing clouds, it was breathtaking but Zan could not fully appreciate its beauty. Back and forth the tower teetered, tottered and wobbled as if about to fall. The youth tried to stabilize himself and regain balance, but as he did he felt the wind break above him.
He raised his head, and then suffered a thunderous, monstrous roar. Hot breath and warm spit hit him, for up in the skies was an enormous black dragon that circled menacingly.
The dragon made him unusually furious, as if instead of blood, what coursed through his veins was burning flames of rage.
“How dare you?!”
Zan wanted to rip out its tongue and use it to bind those magnificent, hateful wings. To devour its flesh, and fashion its scales and teeth into unmatched armaments and armor.
Suddenly however, heavier, more intense emotions seized his heart. No longer did he gaze at the embracing darkness, nor the glittering guiding glints of light.
All he saw within his sight was a darker shade of clouds, swirling in the air like a storm but without rain. The abstract, incomprehensible emotions returned but they were different. Conflict, disharmony, blockage, resentment, misery, ruination, doom, despair.
Zan released it all in a tormented shout at the skies, but the feelings returned like a crushing hand on his heart.
The soft glow of his body started to distort and bend. Spirals of energy manifested on his fists and the dark clouds above started to gather even more terribly. Utterly consumed by it all, the youth leaped off the tower, striving to reach past the clouds and into the stars. By the next moment, black flames engulfed his vision.
The youth opened his eyes once again and found himself lying on the ground. Red glow covered his face but he swept his overgrown hair towards the side so that he could properly see.
Wait, what was that texture? He brought his hair to his eyes again, only to see that it was made of flowers, amaryllis flowers to be exact.
“...”
He swept his hair backwards and quickly dismissed it. Many things much stranger had already happened, so his hair being made of flowers was not going to preoccupy him.
As he looked up he found that the skies somewhat cleared. White clouds still covered most of it, but he could see a few sets of stars. Twelve sets of stars that seemed to glow quite brightly, more so than previously. The contrast of darkness and twinkling light gave him an odd sense of familiarity, and relief.
Yet as he stood up, he noticed it. Something was wrong, his senses told him so. There was a sense of incongruence and dissonance in his spatial and distance perception.
The world…it was…upside down? Zan walked along the gray ground, feeling more so like he was walking on an inverted ceiling. He looked up towards the skies yet it felt like he was looking down at the same time.
And as he observed the phenomenon, he spotted a few stone blocks rapidly rising upwards… then suddenly falling back down to the ground.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
What happened to the tower? The sound of his heart beated loudly as it raced, he turned back behind him and saw that the tall thing was still somewhat intact.
It was damaged, heavily, but it was still there. Piercing the skies even though everything in the world had been turned upside down. That single fact calmed his anxious heart.
Wait, why did he even care about such a thing?
THUD!
Suddenly his knees touched the floor as he found himself in unbearable pain. A hole constantly dug itself beneath the ground he started to collapse on.
SPLAT!
Zan screamed in pain. His left eyeball had exploded.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Blood spluttered out of his mouth and his half limbless body fell completely to the hard ground. Open stumps on his shoulder and thigh were all that was left from his left leg and right arm. The flowers on his head started to wilt and wither from vibrant red to lifeless, dreary black.
…Despite his confusion, he stubbornly raised his head from the gray ground and with all his willpower turned his body to look at the sky. If he were to ever die it would be looking up, not face down, and here he was, waiting for death.
He waited and waited and waited but death did not come. The pain tormented him for what seemed like an eternity but of course not that much time had passed.
Zan cursed his willpower that did not allow him to faint from the agony, but soon enough, he would not be able to form any coherent thoughts at all.
There was no sun nor moon in this space, but the shifting clouds allowed him to know that time was indeed passing.
The boy wondered how someone could bleed for hours on end and not die.
It went on and on, but the torment did not stop. Through the endless passage of time, his very mind started to unwind, it started to crack and break.
Death and rebirth was the natural way of the world, but for Zan, death never came.