Soulburned: The School of Souls
Chapter 30 (Part 2): The Fragment
Lyra fell, forever in the dark.
The cold Void had long ago consumed her sense of time and self. She saw nothing. She heard nothing. She felt nothing. No landmark to mark her descent, no rush of air to chill her flesh, no breath to fuel her screams.
She was nothing but a Fragment of the Void.
As she had always been.
As she always would be.
The Void was everything, and yet nothing. It was all time, yet divorced from its passage. It was both the wound and the knife that carved it. Every drop of ocean water and every grain of desert sand. The end and the beginning.
The Void, long and everlasting in its silent contradiction, had all at once become, and yet, had always been, alone. After aeons of sending soundless cries echoing unheard into endless oblivion, it longed to be material... to have form.
It longed to be.
In that piercing moment of awareness, it shattered into Fragments.
From One, Three.
From Three, Nine.
From Nine... millions.
As the Fragment that was once Lyra floated here, held suspended in the Void, in its first and final home, memories began to return. Memories of continuous deaths and rebirth, of countless ebbs and flows into and out of the Void, like the steamy breath of some unfathomable giant.
The longer the Fragment remained, the more it would remember, but also the harder it would be for it to return to the Material Plane.
Many Fragments had plunged into the depths of the Void, early in their return, brought not from death, but from the Trial. Not all returned to their Forms.
Their Logos might break, unable to comprehend their own infinitesimal scale, and be forcibly pulled back into the One. Some would stare into infinity for so long that their material Forms were lost as they starved for the Fragment's Eros. Some Fragments, overcome by their Thymos' longing to be whole, would choose to stay.
Already this Fragment, this Lyra had lingered too long. Its Form on the Material Plane was beginning to weaken. This one had clung to individuality longer than most. It had clung to the tenuous bonds of its flesh like one would clutch a buoy amongst the crashing waves of a tempest.
That delay had shortened the time it could remain.
The pulsing thrum of the Void called to the Fragment, beckoning it to rejoin with the Whole. To let the One envelop it in the the cold embrace of oblivion.
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The tiny Fragment paused.
It found that it wanted to fully embrace the Void, to become one with the whole. The pull was strong and almost irresistible.
Almost.
Something held it back.
It would be leaving behind other Fragments, other Forms... It would be missed, it would be mourned. It would mourn.
Such a short existence...
And while all those Fragments would at some point return to the Void, and be embraced by the One, that sorrow would not be forgotten. Even now, as the Fragment melded tighter and tighter with the One, it became more aware of the agony of the Void.
The Void had splintered itself into a billion infinities, a billion different Forms... and they all mourned.
It mourned being separated from itself, yet even more, it mourned that these Fragments most return, for their experiences... their lives, their deaths, their little victories and quiet losses, were its own.
And then the Fragment felt it. Its connection to the Void deepened... and it remembered.
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When the Void had fragmented itself all those aeons ago, it had made itself less. Vulnerable. Exposed.
In that primordial moment of creation, when it was at its weakest, it caught the attention of something from beyond. Built from some Form that was somehow other. Its very existence in this place felt wrong.
The Beyond latched onto the Void like a parasite. It drank deep and greedily from the Void, sucking the very components of creation, the Three, from the Void in a desperate attempt to make itself Material.
The Void struggled against the Beyond in an incomprehensible titanic fury. A shriving fire raged through and across the Void, scouring the Beyond from existence wherever it came into contact with the alien Form, but The Beyond was not defenseless. Great eldritch tentacles lashed against the Void, tearing great swaths from the Void.
Formless Fragments were ripped away from the Void and sent hurtling to the Material Plane. Broken and twisted by the Beyond, these formless Fragments become the Accursed.
The Void was losing, and it knew it.
The Void was growing ever smaller, ever less. It would not be able to repel this invader, not while Fragmented. With each passing generation, the Void grew weaker and weaker, slowly being devoured by the Beyond.
In a last, desperate act of defiance. The Void split itself again, sending its own formless Heart into the Material Plane. It broke apart and rained down upon the Material Plane like the coals of a fiery eruption. It may not be able to defeat the Beyond, but as long as these coals remained out of its tentacled mass, the Void could persist.
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Lyra recoiled from the Void. In a sea of raging nothing, she managed to claw her consciousness back from the brink. The shock of seeing this beyond, had forced her back to her senses in disgust.
She needed to get out, she needed to get away from this thing.
Then she could feel it, the Void, in respecting her decision to return to the Material Plane was showing her the way. Lyra could sense her body, her Form. It hung in the cold winter air of the Iris. All she had to do was reach for it.
Lyra once again found herself standing on the roof of the Iris, her own body suspended in front of her, held in the air by prismatic lightning.
She rushed towards herself and began pouring her consciousness into the empty vessel.
Lyra froze. It wasn't an empty Vessel.
Somthing was in the way. A different Fragment.
An Entity.
Lyra raged.
She pushed and pushed, but was rebuffed. Again and again, she dashed her consciousness against the cold wall of Logos that barred her from regaining her body and ending the Trial.
She failed, and her consciousness was drawn back down into the dark.