We step through the doorway and reality shifts again.
It's not like the transition from my childhood home to the pastoral field. That was gentle ripple. A curtain of warm water. This is violent and disorienting. Akin to being dropped kicked into a mountain, I would wager.
My stomach lurches. The ground beneath my feet disappears for a moment or maybe I disappear from the ground, I can't tell which and then I'm somewhere else.
Somewhere dark. I stumble, catching myself against what feels like a wall. Cold. Smooth. Metal?
My enhanced eyesight thank the gods it still works here, wherever 'here' is struggles to adjust. The darkness is nearly absolute. Not the comfortable darkness of night, but something deeper. Emptier. Like the void between stars.
And then, slowly, details begin to emerge.
I'm standing in a room. Small. Maybe fifteen feet across. The walls are curved, seamless, made of some dark material that drinks light. Metal, I think, but smoother than any metal I've encountered. No rivets. No seams. Just perfect, flowing curves.
And there's a window.
A massive window taking up the entire far wall, literally from the floor to ceiling. It's maybe twelve feet across.
At first, I think it's showing the night sky. Stars glitter in the darkness beyond the glass thousands of them, millions, more than I've ever seen in my life. They don't twinkle like stars seen through atmosphere. They just burn. Steady. Eternal. Points of light against the absolute black.
And then I see it. The planet.
My breath catches in my throat. My hand goes to my chest, pressing against my heart that was suddenly beating too fast for my liking.
Because I'm looking down at my world.
I know it's my world. Know it with the same certainty I know my own name. The shape of the continents. The blue of the oceans. The swirl of white clouds drifting across the surface in slow, majestic patterns.
It hangs there in the window like a jewel suspended in black velvet. Beautiful. Impossibly, heartbreakingly beautiful. Blues and greens and browns, all blending together in a tapestry of color that makes my eyes water.
I've never seen anything like it. Never imagined anything could be this... this...
I don't have words for what I'm feeling. Awe doesn't cover it and wonder falls short.
I'm looking at home from the outside. From a vantage point that shouldn't be possible. No mark of power has ever allowed a person to escape the planet before.
How high up am I? How far away? The planet takes up most of the window, but I can see the curve of it. The sphere of it. The way it hangs in the void without support.
My hands find the window. Press against the glass. It's cold beneath my palms.
I'm standing in a room above my world, looking down at it like some kind of god.
My eyes trace the familiar shapes. I can see the Empire or at least I think I can. That large landmass in with the mountain ranges cutting through it. And there, to the north would be where the Federation holds power.
The war I've been fighting suddenly feels absurd. Meaningless. Two groups of people on a tiny rock floating in infinite darkness, killing each other over... what? Territory? Resources? Ideology?
From up here, it all looks so small. So fragile.
I trace the continents with my eyes, following coastlines, trying to make sense of the geography from this impossible perspective.
And then my attention catches on something.
The far side of the planet. The hemisphere currently turned away from the sun.
There's a massive landmass there. Bigger than the Empire and Federation combined. A continent that dwarfs everything else.
And it's dark.
Not the natural darkness of night. This is different. Deeper. Like a stain spreading across the surface of the world.
The landmass is separated from the rest of civilization by a massive expanse of water. An ocean so wide I can see it even from this distance. And on the far side of that ocean, shrouded in that unnatural darkness, sits the continent.
The Dark Continent.
The original home of my ancestors. The land where the First King fled from in terror as the territory was consumed by Chaos, according to Church doctrine. The source of the corruption that the Empire and Federation are supposedly fighting against.
The tales of madness and transformations that took over the first continent and things that used to be human but then weren't anymore as they succumbed to chaos.
But as much for the stories there was never any proof it actually existed beyond the Church's propaganda. Even the monster I fought wasn't proof of some type of widespread corruption.
But now I'm looking at it.
It's real. The Dark Continent is real. And it's massive. And there's something wrong with it. Something fundamentally broken about that entire hemisphere of the world.
The darkness doesn't move like shadows. It's static. Oppressive. Like a blanket thrown over reality itself.
What the hell is that? What could cause an entire continent to look like that from space?
Before I can process further, I hear a sound behind me. Soft and light. The patter of small feet on metal.
I spin, hand going for my sword once again and I blush as for the second time I realize I don't have it, body tensing for a threat I can't fight without my powers.
Standing in the center of the room is a child.
A little girl. Maybe five or six years old. Tiny. Fragile-looking. She wears a simple gown of green fabric that seems to shimmer slightly in the dim light. Her hair is dark, falling in loose waves around a face that's almost ethereal in its delicate features.
But her eyes. Her eyes are the same.
The same vast, ancient intelligence I've seen in my mother's face and the old man's face. The same presence that makes my skin crawl and my instincts scream danger.
The little girl smiles and it's warm and Innocent. The kind of smile that should be disarming.
But I know what's beneath it. Know what this thing actually is.
"Yes," she says, her voice high and sweet. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
She's talking about the planet. About the view from this impossible vantage point.
I don't answer. I don't trust my voice. So I just stare at this cosmic entity wearing the shape of a child.
The girl walks toward the window, her small feet making soft sounds against the metal floor. She looks out at the planet with what appears to be genuine fondness.
"Let me tell you a story, young Ayato Daath," she says.
And then she begins speaking, and the world changes.
I'm not in the room anymore. Or I am, but I'm also somewhere else. The girl's voice wraps around me like a physical force, pulling me into the narrative, making it real in a way that transcends mere words.
I can see it. Can feel it. Like I'm actually there, witnessing the events as they unfold.
"Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty."
Two figures appear in my mind. Old and weathered. Sitting on the edge of a massive cliff that overlooks... everything. The world spreads below them, vast and incomprehensible. But they see none of it.
"They sat atop the world's highest cliff, overlooking the land and seeing nothing."
I can feel the wind on their faces. The warm stone beneath them and the vast emptiness in front of them that their sightless eyes cannot perceive.
"'Can beauty be taken from a man?' the first asked the second."
The first man is curious and is deeply philosophical. His blindness is old and familiar and because of that he's learned to navigate the world without sight.
"'It was taken from me,' the second replied. 'For I cannot remember it.'"
The second man's voice carries pain. The pain of something lost and never returned or healed. He remembers having sight. Remembers seeing colors and shapes and the visual splendor of the world. And that memory makes his current darkness unbearable.
"This man was blinded in a childhood accident. 'I pray to the God Beyond each night to restore my sight, so that I can find beauty again.'"
I can feel his desperation and his longing. The prayer he sends up into the void, hoping for mercy that never comes.
"'Is beauty something one must see then?' the first asked."
"'Of course. That is its nature. How can you appreciate a work of art without seeing it?'"
"'I can hear a work of music,' the first said."
The first man's voice is gentle and patient. Like a teacher leading a student toward understanding.
"'Very well, you can hear some kinds of beauty - but you cannot know full beauty without sight. You can know only a small portion of beauty.'"
"'A sculpture,' the first said. 'Can I not feel its curves and slopes, the touch of the chisel that transformed common rock into uncommon wonder?'"
"'I suppose,' said the second, 'that you can know the beauty of a sculpture.'"
"'And what of the beauty of food? Is it not a work of art when a chef crafts a masterpiece to delight the tastes?'"
"'I suppose,' said the second, 'that you can know the beauty of a chef's art.'"
"'And what of the beauty of a woman,' the first said. 'Can I not know her beauty in the softness of her caress, the kindness of her voice, the keenness of her mind as she reads to me? Can I not know this beauty? Can I not know most kinds of beauty, even without seeing it?'"
I see her now, in the vision. A woman with a kind face, reading to the first blind man. Her voice carries warmth. Love. And she Intelligent and gentle. And he knows her beauty not through sight but through every other sense he possesses.
"'Very well,' said the second. 'But what if your ears were removed, your hearing taken away? Your tongue taken out, your mouth forced shut, your sense of smell destroyed? What if your skin were burned so that you could no longer feel? What if all that remained to you was pain? You could not know beauty then. It can be taken from a man.'"
The vision shifts. The first man stripped of everything. Reduced to consciousness trapped in agony. No sight. No sound. No taste. No smell. No touch except pain.
Isolated and alone. Cut off from all the beauty in the world.
And the question hangs in the air: Has beauty been taken from him?
The girl's voice continues, but now it's directed at me. No longer telling the story but asking me to engage with it.
"What think you? Can beauty be taken from a man? If he could not touch, taste, smell, hear, see… what if all he knew was pain? Has that man had beauty taken away from him?"
I'm standing on that cliff with them now, in the vision. Looking out over the world they cannot see. Feeling the question press against my mind.
"Let us say the pain changes day by day. Then, perhaps, beauty, to that person, would be the times when the pain lessens."
The insight cuts through the scenario. If all you know is pain, then the absence of pain even temporary, even incomplete becomes beautiful. The variations in suffering become the landscape you navigate. The moments when the agony eases, even slightly, become treasured.
"To be human is to seek beauty," the girl's voice says, and there's weight behind the words.
"Do not despair, do not end the hunt because thorns grow in your way."
The vision releases me.
I'm back in the dark room, staring at the little girl in the green gown, my mind reeling from the experience.
What the fuck was that? Some kind of telepathy? Mental manipulation? A shared hallucination?
I felt like I was actually there. Actually experiencing the story as it unfolded. Not just hearing words but living them.
My hands are shaking. I ball them into fists.
The girl watches me with those ancient eyes, waiting for... what? Understanding? Revelation?
I scowl, shaking my head violently. The confusion and frustration that's been building since I woke up in my childhood home finally boils over.
"I don't understand," I hiss through clenched teeth. "I don't understand what the point of these fucking riddles is. What the point of any of this is."
My voice rises, anger bleeding through. "Just tell me what you want! Stop speaking in parables and metaphors and just say it plainly! What do you want from me?!"
The girl doesn't flinch at my outburst. Doesn't look surprised or offended. She just continues watching me with that same patient, knowing expression.
"You could just tell me," I continue, my voice cracking slightly. "Whatever you're trying to communicate, whatever lesson you're trying to teach; just say it. In words I can actually understand. Why does everything have to be a riddle? Why can't you just—"
I cut myself off, breathing hard. My chest is heaving. The powerlessness I feel the inability to access my marks, the inability to understand what's happening, the inability to control any aspect of this situation is crushing me.
The girl nods slowly. Acknowledging my frustration without trying to dismiss it.
Then she raises one small hand and points at the window. At the planet hanging in the void beyond.
"Do you wish to return, child?" she asks simply.
The question stops me cold.
I stare at her, indignation flaring hot in my chest at being ignored again, at having my demands for clarity brushed aside like they don't matter.
And then my brain catches up to what she actually said.
Return. Do I wish to return.
I pause. Fully comprehend what she's asking.
"You can..." My voice is barely above a whisper. "You can make me come back to life?"
The girl doesn't answer directly. Just continues pointing at the planet with one tiny finger.
But her eyes shift. Move from the general view of the world to focus on something specific.
I follow her gaze.
She's pointing at the Dark Continent. At that massive landmass shrouded in unnatural darkness. At the stain spreading across an entire hemisphere of the world.
"There will be costs," she says quietly..
The word hangs in the air between us. Heavy and ominous.
I should ask what she means. Should demand clarification about what "costs" entails. Should get details before agreeing to anything.
But my mind is already racing in a different direction.
I could return to life. Could go back and be alive again.
I think about Helix. About Lopez and Imara and Sola. About Vihaan's sadistic grin and Hudson's quiet competence. About Caldera's steady leadership.
I think about Lucian. About the bond we share. About how he must have felt it when I died his mark being severed him becoming aware of the fact I died. I think of Cain and how maybe he would be sad too once he found out.
I think about Cecilia.
Gods, I think about Cecilia. About her hazel eyes lighting up when she saw me. About the way she believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself. About the warmth of her body against mine.
About whether would cry for me when she finds out. Whether she's regretting the time we wasted. Whether she wishes we'd had more moments together before I died.
And I think about the Midnight Rose figure. About Teleb. About that obsidian mask reflecting my dying face back at me.
About how badly I want to smash that mask. How desperately I want to make him pay for what he did to me. How dare he kill me.
The rage that thought brings is clarifying. I want revenge. Want it with an intensity that surprises me.
But more than that... I want to live.
There's so much I haven't done. So much I haven't experienced yet. So many things I wanted to accomplish. And I am not willing to give it up.
That can't be the end. That can't be how my story finishes.
I look at the little girl.
"I do," I say firmly. "I want to return."
The girl nods as if the answer was not surprising. As if she knew what I'd say before I said it.
"Will you accept the price?" she asks.
I hesitate.
This is the moment where I should be smart. Should be cautious. Should demand to know what the price actually is before agreeing.
But I'm also aware that I don't have leverage here. Don't have bargaining power. This being could unmake me with a thought. Could leave me here in this dark room above the world forever.
If it's offering me life offering me a chance to go back then refusing because I'm worried about the cost seems foolish.
"I suppose I don't have a choice now, do I?" I say, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice and failing.
The girl looks at me and when she speaks, her voice is layered with meaning I can't quite grasp.
"To choose is to create," she says.
But I nod. Give my consent.
The girl smiles knowingly.
"Rise then, Child of Light. Rise Half- Mortal"