Chapter 1: Darkness
A black space surrounded what remained of Zhīzhū’s consciousness, slowly eating away at it like a parasite. While these pieces were devoured they were soon spat back out by the darkness, and forcibly dragged back to the very soul of Zhīzhū.
The process was excruciatingly painful to her as her mind was torn apart, and put right back to the way it was. Zhīzhū would constantly forget, and remember everything that occurred in her life, over, and over again, both the happy, and the sad memories. There was no release from the torment that is occurring to the very core of her existence, even though she herself sought it out, there was nothing that would ease her pain.
That is not to say that there is nothing that could ease her, but rather there not a single entity out there that would be willing to assist this poor tormented soul that is Zhīzhū. As time went on the pain only got even more intense, it wasn’t so bad if the pain was constant, because that would allow her to cope with it better rather than the rapid fluctuations between torment, and relief.
Her mind though on the very edge of sanity, and insanity had absolutely no option on whether she went mad or not. This is, again, due to the fact that her very being is never the same at one time, there are even moment where she forgets what pain is. In those few seconds of time are when, Zhizhu is in the absolute most pain imaginable.
As time went on, the very core of her existence was being changed, and modified according to the darkness around her. Her soul remained the same while being torn apart and put back together, but ‘Zhizhu’ herself was changing, becoming ‘something’ else. This change was not unwelcome in the least, but rather is felt pleasant to her, as if this was what she was supposed to be from the very beginning, though she had no idea what had changed or why.
Time dragged further on, and a change had finally occurred in her soul. What should have been a dark-blue soul, was instead turning into a mixture of black, and a dark scarlet. This a change in the nature of her soul, and signified that she could no longer be considered human by any standards.
This change to her soul had made her feel empowered and invincible. Though her soul had become fragile due to being torn to pieces over, and over again, it somehow possessed an aura of malice, and overbearingness that could cause even the most battle-hardened veterans to cower in fear. Zhizhu herself was feeling much more comfortable, though that was not saying anything in place of her current torment.
Veins of gold slowly appeared over the soul of Zhizhu, increasing in number as time went on. It felt like countless years had passed since Zhizhu’s death, but time was impossible to tell in her current state, because she had already lived her life thousands of times over, perhaps even millions. Everything was a blur but at the same time so, so clear, the clarity of her soul only increased with the number of golden veins, and so did her fragility.
The vein acted as rope, though her soul was being torn apart faster than ever before, and held small pieces together as if they were the few parts that had finished going through some kind of sick and twisted baptism, and could finally go free. An irregular throbbing had started to occur, this was no normal throbbing since it would send mind shattering amounts of pain, emotional, mental and spiritual, through Zhizhu’s soul.
Soon the golden vein had started to constrict, dragging in the stabilized shards of her soul into the center of her being. Now and again more shard would be added, and would be fused with the core that had slowly started to form. Zhizhu was at long last being brought back together, along with a change to her very being that could spell either disaster or something much, much more than herself.
Nearly 20% of her soul had been solidified into a core, with the golden veins being so numerous and dense that they had formed outer-shell for the core. The rest of the soul was being dragged back towards the core, shattering a lot less often than before, and not because of it gaining more strength but rather that the core was gathering it near. A gold-coloured energy had been sent out from the core, drawing in the rest of Zhizhu’s soul. The gold-coloured energy had started to condense around her soul.
Once her soul had finished gathering and repairing itself, the gold-coloured energy had formed a membrane around her. Her core had formed what was the size of, and looked to be a scarlet-red pearl, while the rest of her soul had formed a soft liquid-like substance that radiated incomparable might. The golden veins had expanded to form a net-like pattern, and fused into the outer membrane.
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Zhizhu’s soul had formed into what seemed like an impenetrable fortress, letting nothing in or out, all while hiding the pearl-like core that held an appearance of true beauty. Her soul had formed into a layout where at the center was her ‘core’ the inner soul, then just outside that was the ‘mantle’ or the outer soul. Finally was the ‘crust’ the Membrane and barrier that prevented anyone from getting close to her.
The darkness had gone berserk, trying everything it can to break her soul, but was stopped before it even got close to the membrane by a single ray of gold-coloured energy. The darkness even took form just to try and destroy her, it formed spears, swords,great infernos and even tried to crush her from all directions at once.
No matter what form the darkness took it could never make it past the single ray of gold-coloured energy the was orbiting Zhizhu’s souls like a loyal guard protecting it’s queen. In fact the gold-coloured energy existed for the purpose of defending against the darkness and had manifested within Zhizhu because her soul had adapted and formed the gold-coloured energy for the sake of self-preservation.
The gold-coloured energy was created to fight the darkness, and had a much lesser effect towards anything else but still had the ability to protect the soul. She had long ago stopped feeling pain, and being forced to forget and remember everything countless times over. That is not to say that she no longer suffers, her consciousness had completely been repaired. Zhizhu right now could be considered as the furthest thing from being sane, she was practically empty.
Her emotions had completely left her, faded with her awakening as if they were only an illusion to begin with. Though this is only what the felt, somewhere deep inside her soul, hidden within the depths of the core of her soul was a small spark of white light shrouded by the dark hues of the surrounding soul making it impossible to see or feel, its size no more than a speck of dust.
Many more countless number of years pass slowly by, with each moment the darkness becomes more and more chaotic. It had already stopped trying to take form, but instead has been increasing the shear might within each wave. Only to fail again, since no matter how much more powerful the darkness was, the gold-coloured energy would always be able to defeat it with ease. After all that was what it was made for, to fight the darkness within this void.
Suddenly, the darkness pulled away from Zhizhu and retreated a great distance away, not that it changed much within the void. Nearby, space started to distort and a giant gate seemingly made from limestone with borders made from a type of gem that was coloured a right purple colour.
This gate was 20m in width and 50m in height. The gate itself was covered in carvings and sculpture of many different types, all of them being on the level of a masterpiece, in fact they all linked together to tell a sort of story. The story involved death and life, of people dieing then living, and most of all of people passing through a great darkness only to be eaten alive or turn insane only to have their own souls implode.
Slowly the gate started to open, releasing a violet coloured light to spill forth into the void, the darkness hissing and burning wherever it touched causing it to retreat further. Zhizhu felt as if this gate was here to collect her, and could also see that this gate was her one and only ticket out of this place.
When the gate had fully opened, Zhizhu could see through it a multitude of other souls being guided towards a planet in the distance, a countless and unending stream of souls in various colours and sizes were moving along, into, out of, and even to far off places that are too long gone to see.
This was the river of souls.
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AN: Please note that future chapters will be longer than this. Chapter 1 was made shorter since if I did the planned content for this chapter it would hav not only dragged on, but I would likely have not finished this chapter due to lazyness and spent another week on it.