Chapter 01: The White Heaven & The Prisoner of Time
Time infuriated her.
Regardless of how valuable it is or how merciless it can be, the shapeless soul of hers trembled with fury solely born towards time.
Why? One might ask.
Arianna had countless excuses to hate time. Starting with her very first vivid memory she can clearly recall;
The memory of her, staring at her mother leaving Arianna and her little brother behind. She cried, begging her not to leave.
Oh, what a foolish action that was.
What can a ten year old do to stop an adult who made her mind a long time ago?
「I'll come back in a few months.」
Her mother set a timer.
Little Arianna counted every day, holding on to her dearest hope. When she felt like it wasn't enough she counted every hour. Then it turned to every minute. Like a foolish puppy, abandoned on the side of a road, she waited and waited.
When her tears dried out and made their own decision to never pay her a visit ever again, Little Arianna realized; her mother would never return.
Absent, just like her ability to cry.
Was this the start of her damaged fate and cowardly thought process?
Arianna dismissed her useless question. After all, the time that whispered in her ears told her a story she never knew.
A story about how fate is just a concept mortals created to feed their delusions, to blame their failure on something they believed their power couldn't grasp.
Arianna; the shapeless soul, as she walked passed countless white doors and corridors without batting an eye, chuckled softly.
Her almost fading soul essence slowly but surely turning golden, albeit without her knowledge. With her every thought, thousand and million of years passing by, unstoppable by any.
Her mind again shrank back into her past. The past where she was merely breathing.
The time her father carved a path of destruction for countless innocent families, just to have a seat with the losers called congressmen.
The time her father forced her to become a secret agent of the intelligent department of the government just so he could make her one of his tools to commit crimes so freely.
The time all her colleagues and superiors disapproved of her behind her back, judging her solely by her father's massive dark shadow.
Yes,
All the times she was abandoned, ignored and disregarded.
And also…
The time she found out she was terminally ill.
∆ ∆ ∆
As the time moved for aeons, Arianna felt nothingness settle over her heart. As she recalled her now blurry memories, she realized her irritation had vanished as if morning dew that saw the warm sunlight, replaced by an emotion that instead carried deep wisdom; Understanding.
Yes, she was slowly accepting and realizing the truth.
Is this the result of becoming a prisoner of time?
Although she questioned thoughtfully, Arianna did not have the luxury of such grand knowledge. She could feel every minute passing, for she had been trapped in these endless white corridors for aeons.
Arianna sighed, her soul now in the shape of a woman, glittering dimly with a golden shade.
She forced herself to recall the day she abandoned the world the way it did to her.
Arianna couldn't remember the face of her doctor, she could barely even recall his voice.
But she wasn't sure if it was surely his, or her mind just replaced it to fulfill her demands. The first to forget is the voice after all. But why would she care when it has been aeons since she last saw him?
'What was that he informed me about? Ah, that's right...'
∆ ∆ ∆
「It's a rare disease, there's no cure for it.」
Arianna wasn't sentiment enough to cry over spilled milk. She understood the gravity of the situation very well.
And so, for the first time in her 30 years of life, she acted according to her will. A plan of her own.
She quit her job.
No farewell party.
No friend to ask why.
No objection to her decision.
Hence, no regret.
She packed her bags, and disappeared.
Arianna, just as they wanted her to be, faded into oblivion without a trace. She wasn't an agent of the intelligence division for nothing.
At first, she gave in to her desires. She ate whatever she wanted whenever she felt like it. Dragging her tired body everywhere, she witnessed the beauty of nature as much as she possibly could.
Freedom, which she thought a mere dream was within her arms.
Oh, sweet freedom, what a beautiful stepping stone towards inner peace.
She felt as satisfied as a tiny bird who had built a nest at the start of a beautiful spring, with a water pond and an apple garden two hops away.
She played her melodies to her heart's content on beautiful streets.
One day, it was a harp.
The next day it was a violin.
Another day it was an abandoned piano laying on the far corner of the street.
She was truly happy and not to mention,free.
She walked through the passage of time relatively fast.
Autumn; the year's last colorful echo welcomed winter's cold tide and blue sun.
She felt her body changing rapidly. She could no longer feel nor control some of her fingers, her desert colored eyes losing its light day by day as her vision deflected from time to time. When she lost her firm control and will, she collapsed often.
Then one day, she woke up to realize she couldn't feel her arms anymore. Paralyzed, she could only look at her violin and smile bitterly. Doctors and experts gave her three months. But she had outlived that timer they set.
At the time, Arianna laid on the hospital bed and wondered alone; Does that mean she won against the time for once?
∆ ∆ ∆
Realizing her naive thinking of yore, Arianna now laughed. Her featureless face clearly drowning in disappointment towards her past self. For the reason that she now knows what time truly is.
Once an individual has mastered time, they'll understand just how much people had dismissed the true meaning of time and underestimated what it had truly taken from them.
In a sense, time is a coin; all beings are born clutching it on one hand. Time, appearing as a merciful coin, gives them all a chance to determine how they spend it.
But alas, most take the coin for granted.
They get caught up trying to find a way to spend the time they so painstakingly saved all their life, wholly to end it all without even getting a chance to look back.
Or they put their coin in other people's possession, letting those to spend it for them.
They realize it too late that time, which appeared so merciful in their eyes, is in fact unbelievably merciless in reality.
Arianna, one of those who also realized it too late, oh what a fool she was.
Arianna was well aware she spent her time so carelessly, without any purpose, letting others take it as if she never had a choice. All of her actions and decisions in her life were planned by others using that very same coin.
Yes, in the long run, it seemed fortunate and well balanced. But what good it is if it wasn't planned by her but by those above her?
If she had fought for her wellbeing from the beginning, she was certain she would've won. Howbeit, the coward she was, she merely made excuses to play the victim.
—How pathetic—
Remniciencing her blurry old memories, she growled. The dim golden hue slowly ignited sparkles.
Time, valuable and merciless time. She feared it more than death. The thought of hating the world, humans and herself, time made her put an end to it all together. She learned it was pointless and a waste of her energy.
Arianna now recalled the day when she felt a new emotion that she never experienced before for the first time in her life; Satisfaction.
∆ ∆ ∆
When the cold winter went into slumber and the colorful spring speared its lovely wings, bringing warmth and joy, Arianna mustered up all her strength.
Her half-numb legs dragged on hospital corridors, passing wards filled with the sharp scent of medicines and isopropyl alcohol.
Her final destination?
The sea.
The lovely and mysterious sea.
Arianna knew she had her old regrets. Nevertheless, at least the last few moments of her life were worth it.
On a beautiful night filled with the aroma of refreshing flowers of darkness, when only bright stars gazed at her from above; bearing witness to what she was about to do, when ocean's spring breeze; so lovely and cool that it felt as if a mythical fairy was brushing her hair with all the care in the world greeted her cheerfully, Arianna stood tall on a hill. Her eyes detached from the world she no longer hated yet never loved.
The high cliff bore a striking resemblance to a painting she once saw in a museum where she had to work on a special case.
The sound of sea waves called for her with a mysterious hymn. She was bewitched, truly. A small smile appeared on her pale and dry lips.
Thus....
She jumped.
Embraced.
And went to a deep slumber.
∆ ∆ ∆
When Arianna regained her consciousness, she was here. Inside what seemed to be a white castle, with endless floors, spacious corridors and giant doors.
The whispers of time called this place "The White Heaven"
Only beings entangled with time could enter it.
To some, it might be a home.
A resting place.
Or a prison.
Arianna didn't need anyone to tell her which category she belonged to.
Because she knew instinctively. She knew that she was no longer a human. Flickering between something similar to a soul and a mere ego.
At first she was formless, one second away from fading into oblivion. However, as she began to walk through the white marble corridors, her soul became more firm, colorful and knowledgeable. Whispers of time had taught her so many secrets of the uncanny and esoteric universe.
It was somewhat fun. Leastwise she wasn't bored, there were countless thoughts to review, countless arguments to explore.
Time passed.
Along the way, in aeons worth of journey, she obtained a shape.
Now, without any facial features, she had regained a human form. Although it looked like a doll figurine with a transparent body, Arianna wasn't worried.
She wasn no longer human anyway. And she accepted it more calmly.
She felt more and more time passed. Yet she continued to walk. Now some of her past life memories were dark and blurry. Only the wisdom and newfound strength kept some of them still intact to her mind.
She walked and walked and walked.
The endless, eternal looking fancy corridors and giant doors, empty space, everything was foreign yet familiar. She walked with purpose.
Her instinct—honed for billions of years— told her she'll find something, anything eventually.
Just as she believed, she actually did find it in the end.
It happened after one more aeon of aimless walking. With accuracy, she knew she had been imprisoned in that space for exactly ten billion years.
—Ah! A remarkably strong soul! How did you come here through all those restricted lines and barriers?—
When Arianna, who didn't even remember her own name anymore, entered a colossal space; dazzling marble floors and mesmerizing golden pillars greeted her silently as if sound did not exist there.
Enormous crystal chandeliers imitating vibrant colors she'd never seen before hovered above her proudly, their countless facets scattering light across the polished marble floor below.
Amidst all the divine allure, miraculously soothing voices reached her non-existing ears, scraping against her mind; distorted and fragmented, as if it came from multiple mouths at once.
Arianna never missed the golden and purple aurora in the vast black velvet sky she saw from the large hole right in the middle of the ceiling. Countless stars and planets displayed their majestic presence.
The entire environment gave off a gentle radiance of something akin to peace.
Yet that was not what she wanted to face. Her non-existing eyes searching for the owner of the pure diamond like voice, the one hovering right under the beautiful dark sky.
The moment her eyes landed on the said entity, she lost all her previous vigor, a slowly burning sensation in her body rose without her will.
Two pairs of pupil-less pitch black eyes gazed right at her.
For a moment, Kyriaki saw the universe within it. They were so eternal and peaceful, overflowing with kindness and wisdom, it felt almost suffocating to endure.
Arianna felt as though time had stopped, and all that existed was she and the entity before her.
She could feel herself being in the presence of something truly divine, something that transcended her understanding of the omniverse to a whole different level.
Aside from those otherworldly eyes, Arianna unconsciously discerned something more shocking.
Their figure; the entity's form danced between the fine line of recognition and unrecognition. As if the universe itself was preventing her mind from grasping the truth. She watched in a daze as their figure flickered between something almost human yet something unknown.
Bearing all the beauty one could find in the entire omniverse, from the beautiful cosmos and milky ways to northern aurora lights inside their ever changing body, the entity let her examine their appearance with a serene yet undeniably authoritative aura emitting from their otherworldly face—if one could deem it was a face.
Truly, it seemed to be a mystery how an entity like them existed, hidden away from the defiled gazes of mortals, for they were both comforting yet horrifying, both peaceful yet chaotic. They were everything at once. The most beautiful yet terrifying being Arianna had ever seen.
Indeed, they were…
Ancient.
Holy.
Permissive.
Unknown yet well familiar.
They were…something beyond the concept of beginning and end.
They were completely free from the concept of rules binding the known and unknown, as if they belong yet they weren't.
Suddenly Arianna felt her eyes burning in pain making her momentarily speechless, for she was sure she lost both her eyes and physical senses aeons ago.
It was as if looking at the entity was a heinous crime, and she wasn't worthy of such fortune to gaze at them.
It felt as if she regained her sense of pain just to be punished for that very crime.
A sharper pain erupted Arianna's eyes, going through all of her non-existing nerves and pressuring her mind. She wasn't prepared for something like this.
In the end, when she couldn't withstand the pain, Arianna fell on the floor.
—AHHHHH!!!!!—
…Her agonizing scream echoed in the grand hall.
∆ ∆ ∆
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."
—Theophrastus, disciple of Aristotle, From dimension Earth-prime—