'Good.' Eyes, purple and grey mixing like endless worms swimming in a loop, black hair, unnumbered colors shifting on it, through it.
Original took a step forward in their shared inner world.
"Zenith is doing well. Now, let me take care of the promise I made to you, Echo."
"Original, uh, I mean I could do it alone. I was just unsure."
"Do not worry, I wanted to clear some things, so that is why I am joining. On the other hand, I know you are not sleeping, Aethyrion."
The scenery of the galaxy and the endless black shifted as his yellow eye opened.
"I see you remember my name... What do you want?"
"What I want," Echo said, stepping past Original, "is to thank you."
Aethyrion's yellow eye narrowed. An eye so huge it could be mistaken for a planet — just this small movement was enough to change the world. "For what?"
"Your words, your tone has changed, but I can tell it was you who helped us."
"I gave you the stories of your own lives, your own memories I saw before you forgot them. There is nothing owed for that. And didn't you lot say your thanks already?"
"That's the words. And a quick word was not enough." Echo's hair shifted silver-blue, catching light that wasn't there. "I'm talking about the tone."
"Tone? That is not a thing to thank."
"It is when it changed." Echo held his gaze.
"The first times you spoke, I — or rather the boy I was — couldn't understand you. Couldn't even hold onto it. It just tore through my head like it wasn't made for me to hear. I thought I was going mad."
Aethyrion looked away, toward a horizon that didn't belong to any real sky. Vertical slit pupils moved around lazily. "That is coincidence. A voice settles the longer it speaks. It would have happened regardless of who was listening."
"Would it?"
"...It is not something worth dwelling on."
Silence. Original watched, arms crossed, saying nothing yet.
Aethyrion's gaze stayed on the false horizon. "Do not mistake things for something they are not. We are not friends, little one. What I am is not built for that word."
"I never said we were."
"Good." A pause, longer than it should have been.
"After so much time together, I inadvertently looked at you, and it was simply... irritating, to watch what was done to you." He stopped himself there, like he'd said one word too many.
Echo didn't push. "I know. That's why I'm thanking you. Not for the stories. For making yourself small enough that I could keep them, understand them."
Aethyrion said nothing for a long moment.
"Insufferable." But he didn't leave, didn't close his eyes. "You are the first who meant his words of thanks to me, all the way down. But do not make me say it again — I am not your friend. I will not help again without reason."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Original finally spoke. "Now that the sentiment's handled — Aethyrion. About that promise." A beat. "Actually. Before that, I must ask."
"Ask, then."
"How are you even in here?" Original's tone was even, unhurried. "You're not one of us. You were never born from us."
Aethyrion was quiet long enough that it almost read as refusal.
"...I do not stay anywhere," he said finally.
"A body ends, and I am elsewhere. Somewhere new. Never chosen, never the same twice. That is simply how it has gone for me for some time now."
"Yet you said 'after so much time,' referring to us?"
"This one — your life — keeps finding me, or rather does not leave me be." Something flickered behind the yellow eye, old and tired.
"I did not seek you out the first time. The life where we met, or rather where we started together, was the same for me and the same for you. I usually never interact with the body I am in, so we have never spoken either. Not in the first life, or the next few to come."
"..." Original frowned, not wanting to interrupt but also having questions.
"I noticed it instantly, but I did not care. Me being born in random mortals, or being born in a specific one, had no real meaning. But wherever he — you lot — was sent to be born again, I was sent there too. Again. And again. Enough times that I, at least once, stopped and looked at you."
"So you started watching."
"I started remembering. His lives, before I meant to. Pieces I was never owed." The black around the eye moved, the uncountable dark scales of this galaxy-sized dragon shifting with it.
"I do not know what asked it of me. But once I had seen enough, I could not go back to not seeing. The rest you should already know."
Original nodded slowly, filing it away without pressing further — there were many things unanswered, and Original knew the dragon had them, but if not spoken the first time, asking again would carry no more weight. This was the kind of mystery best left with its edges intact.
"That'll do. For now."
"It will have to."
"Hmh?"
"Because if you want more answers, you will have to answer me too."
"What is it you wish to ask?"
"Your name was the Original, but I suppose you are not *the* original."
"You are right."
"But my real question is." Aethyrion's yellow eye squinted once again. "Why do you wish to die so badly?"
"..." Original's face didn't change, but he stood there motionless. Echo couldn't help but look back and forth between the two, not knowing what would happen.
Suddenly, Original's hair — black at the roots, yet infinite colors at the ends — switched around. It was just a blink, yet Original's whole presence shifted.
"Death it is, then. I see — revealed you had nothing more to hide..."
Original reached out, looked at Echo. "Go explore and develop your own world, Echo." A snap of the fingers, and Original made Echo disappear without a word.
Original now turned to Aethyrion. "Do not speak of me such. You will regret it!" Another snap — this time Original disappeared himself.
"Mature like a child. Well, not like it matters much. If it will matter, it will be revealed anyway." Aethyrion closed his eyes, and the Galaxy and the white platform faded.
...
An endless grey space, purple clouds moving around.
Original appeared here, stepped ?forward? and began to ?fall? ?upwards?
He moved his head and the world changed — now instead of up it was down, and instead of falling he was walking down.
This world of his, every moment, after every move, after every thought, up, down, left, and right — everything changed into a different thing.
Original's face remained unmoved, the changes going on for a while, when — falling upward again — his moves froze as a coffin appeared in front of him.
The coffin looked decorated. It was filled with burgundy cushions. Fully prepared to welcome a body.
Original stared at it for a while, his face, his eyes, unfazed.
"When will I die?"
He pushed himself up, but up was already a different space.
Black all around, yet in front of him — a giant black gate with red ornaments.
Original reached out. A gentle push.
The gate opened without sound; only a soft hum came from something inside and the low sound of sea waves.
Original stepped through the gate — or perhaps he had always been stepping through, since the beginning.
Below him was just a patch of ground and the sea... an ocean wherever the eye could see.
But this ocean, it was not water. As the red reflected up and down, faint ringing of distant chains sounded.
The air was heavy with the scent of iron and flowers.
The red ocean reflected the blue moon above, black chains descending like rain — hundreds of thousands, chains that never reached the ground yet locked the two reds of sea and sky as one.
Out in the distance, a few more islands were visible, just like the one this gate was placed upon.
Suddenly a path appeared, leading to the biggest patch of dry land, where a tree rested and a figure beneath it.
Original walked, but left no ripple; his feet never touched the path — just a semblance of respect given to those who made this path for him.
The still path beneath his feet wasn't stone — a slow drift of bodies, numb and rigid, faintly breathing with the pulse of something long dead.
Original did not hurry.
For a long while, nothing stirred except the soundless hum of the world itself.
Then, as he neared the small island and the lone tree with its blue petals bleeding into the crimson sea, he finally spoke — not loud, not quiet, but in a tone that belonged only to memory.
"Your moon hasn't changed."
A pause.
"Always bleeding... always chained."
He stopped beside one of the floating forms — a man, a woman, maybe something else entirely — and looked down at it.
"Do you still remember them all?"
The wind didn't answer. Only the chains above shifted slightly, letting a droplet of red fall upon the surface.
Monster's voice came softly from beneath the tree — calm, almost indifferent — though whose voice that calm belonged to, even the quiet around them seemed unsure.
"All that I can... though remembering..." His sentence was never finished.
Original continued walking until he was close enough to see the faint light shifting in Monster's crimson eyes.
"I thought I'd forgotten how to find this place... but maybe I was fooling myself." Original leaned against the other side of the tree. He was quiet for a while.
"Monster, I..." He went quiet again. "I— forgot..."
"Original— I didn't want to fight them... We were finally together."
A small exhale — half a laugh, half a sigh.
"I know, brother, I know... Maybe that's why I came. Maybe I wanted to say something...
Hah... Or maybe I just walked too far, and your sea was in the way."
Monster looked up at the moon. The chains hummed like faint voices.
"You never do anything without a reason, brother."
"That's the problem. Even when I don't know the reason, one exists anyway...
I should know all, to keep everyone safe."
The silence returned, long and full. A single blue petal fell from the tree, landing on the sea — turning red before it sank.
Monster hummed. "The petals used to stay blue."
Original followed. "So did we."
Another pause. The sea breathed. The moon stared down.
Monster lowered his gaze, now looking at the reflection, not the real moon. "You should go before the tide rises."
"It never stops rising, does it?"
"No... That's why I sit. It will never reach me, so I must sit here."
Original stepped away from the tree. He watched Monster for a moment longer, the faintest trace of a smile flickering in the dying reflection of the moonlight.
"Then keep sitting. Someone has to watch it."
He turned, his steps retracing the path over the floating dead — the sea closing in like a tide behind him, without a sound.
"Brother..." To Monster's call, Original turned around.
"Do not let others' random words affect you. You are alive, brother, and I am here to die for you."
Two petals drifted down — one before each of them.
Their eyes followed, as both petals touched the sea at the same time... yet they remained blue and never sank.
As they both looked up, a faint smile formed...
"Thank you, brother." Finally the gate closed behind Original, and the sound of a wave swallowing it echoed. The blue moon bled on, and Monster kept looking up, as if the silence itself was all the company he ever needed.