Argolaith stepped through the veil.
And the world changed.
There was no sky.
No horizon.
No wind.
Only space.
He stood in a realm not ant for the human mind—vast and incomprehensible. The stars here were wrong—so pulsed like beating hearts, others spiraled backward in impossible loops, leaving trails of color that sared across reality.
In the far distance—so far it looked like a myth stitched into the edge of perception—lood the Heartroot.
It turned slowly in the void, its roots stretching across planets, its branches tangled in the curvature of stars. A tree so massive that light bent around its crown.
Argolaith stared, jaw tight.
It's weeks away, he realized. Even if I ran the whole way, I'd never reach it in a day. Maybe not even in a month.
The path wasn't a path.
There was nothing beneath him.
And yet—he was standing.
His boots made no sound. The air didn't shift. But sothing invisible held him, like unseen bridges of force stitched together by thought and will.
He looked down—
And his breath caught.
There was nothing.
Not blackness.
Not shadow.
Nothing.
As if the entire fabric of existence had been scraped away, leaving an absence too total to be described. It wasn't falling. It wasn't floating. It was unmaking.
A faint shimr stirred behind him.
Argolaith turned, hand twitching toward his sword.
Vaerith stood once more—though he had not followed through any gate.
He simply was, because he chose to be.
"Do not look down for too long," the Reaper Beast said softly. "You're not ant to understand what you walk on."
Argolaith looked back up.
Forward.
He nodded once, face set.
"Got it."
"If your mind dwells too long on the nothing," Vaerith continued, "it will try to fill it with sothing. And that sothing will consu you."
Argolaith exhaled through his nose.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
The Heartroot was impossibly far.
And yet—he began to walk.
The space bent.
The stars shifted.
The silence deepened.
But his pace did not slow.
He would walk.
He would run.
He would crawl if he had to.
Because ahead waited the final tree.
The last breath of his journey.
The burden of realms.
And the one thing he had co all this way to find.
Ti blurred.
Argolaith walked.
The stars above and beside him pulsed in rhythms that defied logic. Galaxies spun and unspun. Lights danced like fireflies too large to be real, too far to be touched.
He had stopped asuring ti after the first night—because there were no nights. No days. Just one long, continuous stretch of skyless existence. A direction that felt like forward only because he willed it to be.
The Heartroot remained ever ahead.
Distant. Towering.
Unreachable.
And still—he walked.
His boots never made a sound.
His breaths left no vapor.
His shadow did not follow him.
Sotis, he ran.
Other tis, he simply kept moving, his mind numbing against the weightless stretch of eternity that pressed on all sides.
But the pressure wasn't just physical.
It was ntal.
It began subtly—barely noticeable.
A flicker of movent in the corner of his eye.
A sound just behind him: soft laughter, or maybe a sob.
A shift in the stars, like constellations realigning into a face he half-rembered from childhood.
Argolaith didn't stop.
Didn't look back.
But the illusions beca bolder.
He passed a mory—vivid and full.
His mother, standing by a hearthfire that had long since gone out. Smiling. Reaching toward him.
He didn't blink.
He passed Kaelred's voice calling his na. Desperate. Pleading.
He didn't answer.
He passed a version of himself—wounded, shivering, kneeling on a path of shattered stone.
"Go back," the illusion whispered. "This tree isn't yours. You'll never survive it. You're not chosen. You're not enough."
Argolaith paused.
Not because he believed it.
But because for a mont… he rembered the boy who had believed that. A long ti ago.
He turned toward the illusion.
Looked it in the eye.
And said:
"I already died once to beco who I am now."
The false version of him dissolved like mist.
And the road kept going.
Hours. Days. Weeks?
Argolaith stopped counting.
He ran again, when his energy allowed. Rested when his legs trembled. He rationed food from his ring, drank elixirs when exhaustion clawed at his vision.
He saw entire worlds orbiting in the distance.
Moons cracking open.
Stars birthing trees instead of fire.
He passed ruins drifting in space—fragnts of old civilizations that never reached the surface of reality. Words written in languages not born yet. Faces carved into crystal that wept when he walked by.
He didn't stop.
Even when his thoughts began to stutter.
Even when mories bled into dreams.
Even when the path itself seed to whisper—
"Turn back."
"Rest."
"Just lie down and float."
He pressed forward.
Eyes always on the Heartroot.
And slowly, painfully—it grew closer.
Not by much.
But enough.
It was no longer a star at the edge of the void.
It was a titan, distant but distinct.
Its branches now visible—glowing with veins of silver-blue lifeblood.
Its trunk coiled through rings of drifting matter like a pillar through a galaxy.
He no longer knew how long he had been walking.
Ti in the void had no rhythm. No sun. No stars that moved. Just endless space and the distant, patient pulsing of the Heartroot still far ahead.
Argolaith had passed what felt like years in silence.
He had run until his legs failed. Rested only when his mind demanded it. He had eaten, but never hungered. Slept, but never dread. He moved forward always, never turning back, each step guided by nothing more than will.
And yet—he was only halfway there.
The Heartroot was larger now. A living god of bark and root, pulsing with gravity and light. Its branches curled around planetary rings, and its roots faded into mist like the veins of the realm itself.
Still unreachable.
Still waiting.
Then one day—if days even existed here—Argolaith looked up.
And saw sothing new.
A miniature planet, no larger than a castle, floated just above the invisible path. It spun slowly, trailing faint blue mist in its orbit. Mountains crowned one side, and a quiet forest blood on the other. It was so close—yet impossible by every physical law.
But he felt sothing in his core.
A tug.
Not a trap.
Not an illusion.
A summons.
Argolaith didn't hesitate.
He crouched once.
And jumped.
Hundreds—maybe thousands—of feet straight up into the airless void.
No air. No gravity.
Only willpower and direction.
He soared like a blade loosed from the earth, cutting through the stillness of the void.
And landed.
The miniature planet accepted his weight with a gentle sigh. Grass folded beneath his boots. Air returned to his lungs. And all around him… life.
Uncomplicated life.
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