[NOTIFICATION]
TI BEFORE YADRED’S REBIRTH – 26 HOURS LEFT
The notification lingered before my eyes, the glowing text casting an unsettling light in the oppressive grayness surrounding . My gaze shifted upward, drawn to the source of my unease... the floating tower that dominated the horizon. The Tower of Rebirth.
It hung in the air like an aberration, defying natural law. Its jagged edges and grotesque spires twisted upward as if clawing at the ashen sky. The base pulsated with a crimson glow, a rhythmic thrum that I could feel in my chest even from this distance. Below it, a beam of raw energy stabbed into the earth, carving deep into the ground with relentless speed. Every pulse of that light made the air around it shimr, warped by its unnatural heat.
I stood at a distance, the blood-soaked landscape stretching out before . The ground was a morbid tableau, thick pools of darkened red ichor staining the mud. The tallic tang of blood and the cloying stench of decay hung in the air, suffocating and inescapable.
My eyes caught movent on a nearby hill... a figure sitting atop a jagged stone.
It was Geralda.
Her presence was unmistakable. She sat with a composed stillness that felt at odds with the chaos around her. Her armor was a void-black carapace etched with ash-gray patterns, the faint pulsation in the markings making it seem alive. Crimson hair cascaded over her shoulders, a stark contrast to the pallor of her skin, which looked like it had been drained of all warmth. Her brown eyes, flecked with hints of glowing gold, were fixed unblinkingly on the Tower of Rebirth.
She was waiting.
I didn’t need to guess who she was waiting for.
With a wave of my hand, I de-parasited the mutated Uricott I’d ridden here. It shuddered violently as the mist I had embedded within it dissipated. Without my control, it dissolved into a lifeless heap, breaking apart into nothing more than a bubbling ss of flesh and ichor before dissolving.
Anything infected by my mist couldn’t survive once I severed the connection.
I stepped forward, my boots sinking into the thick, blood-soaked mud. Each step felt heavy, as if the earth itself resisted my advance. Above , the ashen gray sky swirled, streaks of red, white, and yellow lightning tearing across the oppressive darkness.
When I reached her, she didn’t move. Her gaze remained locked on the tower, unbroken by my approach.
I found another stone nearby and sat down, keeping my distance but close enough to feel her presence. My eyes followed hers, settling on the tower as the silence between us stretched.
Finally, she broke it.
"Gary has left," she said, her voice calm and asured, as though discussing the weather.
"Yes," I replied, my tone carrying a bitter edge. The weight of what I had witnessed clung to like the stench of this battlefield. But her words stirred a question in my mind, one I couldn’t ignore. "Who was he?" I asked, my voice quieter now, my gaze still fixed on the tower.
The silence stretched again, broken only by the distant crackle of lightning. When she finally spoke, her voice carried the weight of sothing ancient, a tone layered with both regret and reverence.
"Gary," she began, her words slow and deliberate, "was once a great alchemist... a teacher of his craft." She paused, as if letting the mory settle. "But then, he was cursed. Yadred’s grief…" Her voice faltered montarily, the words hanging in the air. "It turned him into a Forsaken. He beca a Roar."
She let the statent linger before continuing.
"But even as a Roar, he was extraordinary. He ascended to the top of the evolutionary chain, becoming an Oga Roar... the leader of all Roars." Her gaze lingered on the tower a mont longer before she added, "And that was when he rembered who he had been, before the curse."
I turned to look at her, studying the faint lines of her expression, searching for sothing I couldn’t quite na.
"So, he was the only one who rembered?" I asked, the question slipping out before I could stop it.
She shook her head faintly, her voice steady as she answered. "Others may rember fragnts. But their minds are trapped, unable to think beyond the instincts forced upon them. Even the most intelligent among them live only to evolve. That is their curse.... Everyone’s curse."
I nodded slightly, understanding the grim reality of her words.
A thought surfaced, unbidden, of sothing she had told when we first t. It gnawed at , refusing to be ignored.
"If Yadred… finally leaves this life," I began, my words hesitant, "will the ones he cursed also be freed?"
"Yes," she answered without hesitation, her tone soft. "That is what we hope for. Though…" She trailed off, her gaze lowering montarily. "Hope is scarce in this forsaken land... All I wish is that when this is over, this place will finally be freed from its unending grief."
Her voice faded, the final words almost lost to the crackle of lightning above.
I wanted to say sothing. Anything.
But then, in an instant,
everything froze....
It wasn’t the kind of stillness one finds in monts of quiet... it was absolute. The world stopped breathing. No rustling wind, no crackling lightning in the ash-gray sky. Even the faintest vibrations, the subtle hum of existence, were gone.
My detection flared, searching desperately for the faintest sign of life. Nothing. Not even the pulse of my own heartbeat.
It was as if reality itself had been stripped away.
And then, the world was gone.
I wasn’t on the blood-soaked battlefield anymore. I wasn’t sitting on that cold, jagged stone next to Geralda. Instead, I found myself in an endless void.
Pitch black.
All-encompassing.
It wasn’t just darkness. It was the absence of everything.
The air.. or whatever passed for air in this place... was thick with contradiction. It pressed against like a suffocating weight, yet it was boundless, stretching endlessly in every direction. It felt infinite, yet unbearably confined. Stifling and silent, yet filled with an unknowable presence.
I tried to steady myself, but my hyper senses betrayed , overwheld by the strangeness of this place. It wasn’t just a physical space; it was sothing else entirely.. sothing that defied all understanding.
I couldn’t tell if I was still in Ithelvaire, or if I had been pulled into sothing… other.
Faint silent whispers drifted through the void, fragnted and disjointed. They weren’t voices, not entirely. They were more like the echoes of mories... shattered screams, grievings and sobs, overlapping and fading into one another.
The sound wasn’t loud, yet it pressed against my ears, filling my head until it felt like my skull might split at any second.
And then, I realized.
This place wasn’t just empty. It was alive.
Sothing was here.... And I know what.
"What do you want?" I said, my voice cold, though I didn’t dare look around.
The words vanished into the void, swallowed by its oppressive silence.
And then, I heard it.
A sound... soft, rhythmic, almost soothing.
Footsteps.
They echoed through the darkness like ripples across still water, slow and deliberate, each step amplifying the weight of the void around .
The echoes grew louder, though they were far from threatening. They carried an almost lodic quality, like a lullaby sung in a language I couldn’t understand.
Then ca a chuckle... low and playful, breaking the rhythm of the footsteps.
"Well…" A voice, feminine and teasing, drifted out from the shadows. "It isn’t bad to greet a friend who’s on a date."
The air shifted, warped, as if the void itself bent to accommodate the figure stepping forward.
She erged like a painting coming to life, her form sharp and vivid against the pitch-black backdrop.
It was a young girl, no older than sixteen, though there was sothing unmistakably wrong about her.
Her long white hair flowed like liquid silk, unnaturally pristine, stark against the darkness. Her eyes were a deep, unnatural blue... beautiful yet terrifying. They glead with an otherworldly light, piercing and unrelenting, as if they saw far more than they should.
Her expression was playful, almost innocent, a smile tugging at her lips. But that smile...
It carried an edge.
Sothing sinister, sothing ancient, lurked behind it. It wasn’t just a smile... it was a promise. A whisper of inevitability.
The void seed to contract around her, holding its breath as she spoke again.
"Hello again…."
"Agon.."
My na left her lips like a song, the syllables stretching, twisting, echoing in the empty expanse.
The silence that followed was deafening, a vacuum that swallowed everything except the sound of her voice reverberating in the void.
It was like the beating of a war drum, slow and deliberate, each echo a reminder of the imbalance that had invaded this space.
And for the first ti in a long while, I felt it.
Fear...
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