Standing in the depths of the Origin Sea, surrounded by the endless layers of Oren from all sides, Alnea tried to keep himself as calm as he could. An endeavour, which was being helped by his recently evolved Heart. That was the sole reason he had decided to travel to a greater depth of the Origin Sea. A greater Serenity… He had come to Origin Sea with the intention to see, to feel this new Serenity. To understand it. And to embrace it. But…
“I am sorry, Yuri,” Alnea said through the rings. It was hard for him to use the rings to talk to Yuri in the Origin Sea, but he was starting to get the hang of it. “It might take a little longer for me to come back.”
“…What happened? Are you alright?”
“Calm down. I am fine. It is just that I encountered a Mystery.”
“…You scared me there for a moment,” Yuri said, relief evident in her voice. “It is alright. It is just a Mystery. As long as—
“It is related to my Roots.”
“…Are you sure?”
“Yes… It is resonating with my Roots.”
“…You understand that the effects of the Mystery will be magnified if it is related to your Roots, right?”
“I know.”
“…Don’t do anything crazy.”
“I won’t.”
“It does not matter if you fail in comprehending it. It will come back later.”
“I know.”
“So, don’t do anything crazy.”
“I won’t. Relax.”
“…You definitely cannot do anything crazy.”
“I really won’t. Do you want me to promise it?”
“…No, it is alright.”
“Alright, then I am going back to comprehending the Mystery.”
“…Just be careful.”
“You too. Watch out for those Oren Beasts. We cannot have master coming to rescue us on our first day after all.”
Saying so, Alnea shifted his attention back to the Origin Sea, to the Mystery that had come so suddenly. As usual, the manifestation of the Mystery had put a blanket silence around him. The Origin Sea had stopped attacking his senses, while the Aspects were swimming far from him, from the Mystery. Only the endless layers of Oren remained around him. Just the layers of Oren, their endless variations, and the Mystery that was manifesting itself through those variations.
From simple, regular ripple like waves, to giant waves, that surpassed even mountains in heights, the layers of Oren were fluctuating with all kinds of waves. Waves, that were, at times, even submerging himself as a part of them. Maybe that was the reason why the sudden manifestation of the Mystery had hit his Spirit, and Heart so hard. Yet the size of the waves did not say anything about them.
Or maybe it did, but he was just not strong enough to understand. In any case, in his opinion, when seen from the perspective of the Origin Sea itself, even the giant, mountain like waves were just tiny waves, a small fold in the endless layers of Oren, that came, and went with the fluctuations of the Mystery. No—It was supposed to be the other way around. The Mystery was supposed to come and go with the fluctuations of the wave.
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And even before that, how could there be a giant mountain like wave there in the first place? It was not like the Mystery had manifested in the entire Origin Sea. It had manifested just around him. So, the wave that was looking like a mountain… was just a small wave even smaller than the small fold in the skin of his fingers. But then, why did it feel like he was part of those waves? Why did it feel like he was being pressed under a mountain? Why did it feel like he was… being constricted with the chains of his Oaths?
Enlightenment dawned on Alnea, as he finally understood what that familiar pressure on his Spirit was. It was—
No, there was no enlightenment. Neither did he understand what the familiar pressure was. He just knew that pressure of the waves was similar to the pressure that the chains of his Oaths gave to his Spirit, but he still could not understand what the pressure was. Or where it was coming from. How was Oren putting so much pressure on his Spirit in the first place?
The pressure was so great, that for a moment, he thought that it might even affect his Heart. And he had not even made any attempt to the comprehend the Mystery yet. He had even figured out where to begin...
Shaking his head, Alnea shifted his attention back onto the layers of the Oren around him. To the layer closest to him. He already knew what type of waves the layers of Oren were producing as a whole, so this time, he was trying to look at the waves from their individual perspective. To look at the waves, that from the very beginning, started out as circular waves.
However, for some reason, these waves were not moving, or propagating. Instead, they just stood in their place, rotating on their own axes, keeping a circle as a plain circle, forever. There was a taste of eternity in them. A taste of time. A taste of…
Before Alnea could delve further into his observations, and thoughts, the waves began changing. It started with the circular waves vibrating, and shaking, before the circles broke off, turning into countless smaller thread like waves. But instead of staying as simple threads, and rippling to create normal waves, these waves gathered together to form an even bigger circle than before. A circle that existed in not just one plane, but in all planes of existence. Even in the plane of thoughts, and imagination.
A ball… or sphere… Calling the wave as such would be an injustice to the wave, Alnea thought. A sphere was not enough to describe what the wave was. But he did not have any other words to describe it either. It was as if it was the origin of all the spheres in the world. It was the origin of all that was circular. It was the origin of pressure. It was… It was…
Once again, before Alnea could get any further into understanding what the wave was, it began vibrating, shaking, quaking, in all planes at the same time, before collapsing in onto just one plane, the material plane, and exploding into many smaller spherical waves that moved around in a chaotic swarm. Yet, somehow, that chaotic swarm had a pattern to it. Or maybe, he just saw a pattern in it. And the moment he saw, he could not unsee it.
No, it was not that he could not unsee it. It was as if the waves were able to sense what he was seeing, and were somehow copying it, down to the very last detail. It was to such an extent that after a few moments, he could not see even a single trace of chaos within the movement of the waves. They behaved in the most orderly way, moving around the point that the big wave had exploded, going around it in circles.
But that should not have been possible. A Mystery could change its form, and the way it displayed itself according to the thoughts of the Wanderers, but only if the Wanderer had interacted with the Mystery in the first place. And he had just observed the waves. Yet the wave had still changed as per his interpretations. It was as if his observations itself was enough to interact with the waves…
Maybe that really was the case, Alnea thought. And once that thought came to him, it kept repeating itself in his head. So, to check out whether he was right, or wrong, he looked at the waves, and began observing them again, watching their circular movement, trying to find some chaos in their order. Because where order exists, so must chaos. Where Day exists, so must Night. Where—
The small spheres, going around in circles, began losing their speed, wobbling in their paths. And just moments later, they began collapsing towards the centre of the circle. Not directly, of course. They still revolved around in circles, if those could even be called as circles anymore. It was just that the size of those circles reduced after each revolution, until all the circles, and consequently, the smaller spherical waves collapsed into the centre of the circles, creating an explosion that shook the Origin Sea itself. Or so Alnea perceived.
All he saw though was a bright golden light, before everything collapsed in his senses. It was only after a while had passed that things began returning to their normal self. However, not everything was normal. From the point where the all the waves had collapsed, and exploded at, waves after waves of fluctuations were spreading into his surrounding, creating intense waves that did not seem like a part of the Mystery, but more like its aftereffects. So intense were these fluctuations, that they were making entire layers of Oren fluctuate, and move like waves, even as the Oren in those layers were forming their own waves.
Or maybe that was part of the Mystery, Alnea thought, as he noticed how the two types of waves were starting to resonate with each other. Just as they were resonating with his Spirit, giving him a very subtle, and unreal feeling. As time passed though, the subtle fluctuations died down, just as the intense fluctuations of the waves died down, returning the Origin Sea back to its calm. An eerily quiet calm, leaving just Alnea, and the strange circular waves, that stood in place, rotating about their own axes.