Kivas floated between thoughts, awareness fractured and curling around itself like steam over frozen water.
She didn’t know where her body was, if she still had one, or whether the breath she thought she took was truly hers.
There was no pain here. No light. Just the thrum of her own mory, far off, muffled, but persistent.
Kivas rembered dying.
The mont the bell rang, her mind registered the silence, and then the music began. She had felt her thoughts stretch too thin, her perception unravel, and finally, when the sight of Samael’s body cracked and folded, sothing inside her simply gave way to the entropy in her heart.
It felt like she had collapsed. The foundation she had built to hold herself steady crumbled, because it had only been built on a single na. A single presence.
The one string she had dared to grip with hope, snapped in front of her with no warning.
It was snatched away right in front of her, and she couldn’t do anything.
"It was my fault..." Kivas muttered to herself, sorrow lanting her past action. "If only I didn’t try to convince Samael to search for the church..."
Just the quiet knowing that she couldn’t keep herself together anymore, was enough to sink down every little light that she grasped throughout her ti in Fathomi.
She had wanted so little, so simple, so childish...
A hand to hold. A voice that saw her. Soone to anchor her when her soul started slipping again into the places that whispered endings into her ear.
She had gotten it.
And she had lost it.
And maybe, just maybe, the wish itself had been the curse.
Because wanting soone—needing soone—had chained her to a dream she wasn’t worthy of. Sothing beautiful trying to root itself into dead soil with no future, no vegetation in sight.
She drifted through that void of thought, too tired to struggle.
Then a voice broke through the fog of misery, like a god-shaped ssenger entering the periphery of a sinner in their utmost regret.
"Have you ever sinned?"
There was no mouth. No presence. Just the inquiry, clear and dry.
Kivas responded instinctively. "Yes."
It wasn’t sothing she needed to think about. It had happened many tis, back on Earth and Fathomi. als to survive. Selfish action to defend herself, to justify her own ideology. It was not noble. It was not clean.
In fact, Kivas deed her own existence to be entirely made of sin.
Otherwise, how could she suffered so much?
The voice did not pause.
"Do you find delight in lying?"
"No," Kivas answered.
She didn’t enjoy deception. She could do it, sure. She could twist her words and smile like everything was fine, but that wasn’t delightful. That was only for necessity. It was one of the most reliable thods of survival in a world that rarely asked for truth.
"Would you sacrifice yourself for the greater good?"
Kivas hesitated, but only for a mont. "If that greater good gives a second chance... if it brings Samael back... then maybe..."
The space around her quivered in silence.
"Do you dearly cherish your belongings?"
"Yes." Her voice was quieter now. "Even if I don’t deserve to have them."
"Which matters more—the ans or the end?"
"The end," she whispered. "I’ve already crossed too many wrong paths to pretend the journey cleanses ."
"If forced, would you commit evil?"
"Yes." Her answer ca before the question had fully ford in her mind. "If I have to. If there’s no other way. I will."
"Will you betray?"
"Yes," she said. "If it ans keeping sothing. If it ans taking sothing back."
"Have you ever dread of a greener pasture?"
A pause. A breath she didn’t take, but rembered dearly. "Yes. Every single day. I’ve dread so hard I sotis believe I’ve already reached it."
The voice went still for a long stretch. Ti didn’t pass. There was no motion. But she felt sothing settle within her like a na being etched in a place beyond language.
"You have been blessed by the Rembrance of Renenutet."
There was no reaction she could offer. The voice was not congratulating her, nor was it trying to consulate her.
It was more like a divine judgnt, a holy reward for the faithful and the misery.
"To contain its essence, you shall also carry the Frugal Vow."
Then warmth. Spreading from the core of her chest outward, like the air rembered how to hold her again. It pressed into her thoughts with a softness that didn’t ask her to wake, but simply to rest.
She drifted again, but into sothing different.
Her senses began to return, not as a soul adrift but as sothing reanchored. A shape. A form. She could feel limbs again. She could feel breath again.
And when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the black, nor in the Zarangar Valley church.
She stood in a place of ambiguous light and color—no walls, no floor, just a firm atmosphere shaped like a space. The details were unimportant because what stood in front of her took all of her attention.
It was herself.
But younger.
No strange features. No pale skin or white hair.
Just an ordinary girl with black hair tied behind her head in a loose knot, wearing the kind of clothes you’d find in Earth’s dying cities.
Her expression was tired. Eyes dulled by too many nights awake, but not empty yet.
And still, that girl smiled with lancholy.
"This is not the end," said the girl.
Kivas blinked, startled. "You’re..."
"," the human girl answered. "Before all this. Before Fathomi. Before the Curios, the deaths. Before I beca sothing else."
Kivas took a step forward. "How are you—"
"That doesn’t matter." Her smile never wavered. "I’m not really here. Just a part of you that never ca along. After all, I’ve always stayed back. Watching. Waiting to see if you’d fall apart again. Waiting to be the last person you could fall back on."
Kivas opened her mouth, but words didn’t co imdiately.
"Can you still endure?" the girl asked. "To walk through the pain, to chew glass and bleed your tongue. Do you still have the willpower to keep on existing?"
Kivas let out a quiet sigh. Her shoulders slumped. Her mouth pulled into a crooked line.
Then she smiled.
"When there’s nothing waiting for , I still have myself huh?" Kivas bitterly chuckled, pathetically. "I... I think I get that now. But, I feel like... I don’t know if there is a sliver of hope within anymore."
"Is that so?" The girl nodded. "Can you say it with confidence that you no longer carry a light within you?"
"To carry a light within ..."
The lancholy on the girl’s smile disappeared, widening in warmth. "Hope doesn’t exist in certainty. That’s not what it is. Hope shines the strongest when everything else goes black."
She lifted her hands slowly, palms up.
Between them, a star began to form. Not a literal star, but sothing in the shape of aning. Radiant. Pulsing. Not hot to the touch, but warm with significance.
"I know you want to die sotis," the girl said. "I know you don’t think you’re worthy of being loved. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe what matters is you still want it....
"And that’s okay."
Kivas stared at the light. "What is this?"
"Nothing. Everything. Sothing to cling to when no one else is left. The void that had always been in your heart. The stress you put into your action. The thoughts that muddle and weigh in your head as you try to scramble for answers...
"You don’t have to believe in the world. You don’t have to believe in a future. Just believe in yourself. Just once."
Kivas hesitated. Her hand lifted, shaking slightly.
"The ocean’s dark," her past self continued. "But even when you can’t see, the act of reaching through it ans you haven’t given up on yourself. That act is what keeps you from drowning completely." She held the star out further. "As long as you can move. As long as your feet still touch sothing solid...
"You can choose a different path. A different hope. One that’s yours."
Kivas reached forward slowly.
Her hand hovered just above the light.
And she let herself hope again.
Even if just for a second.
Even if it was only herself that believed it.
Even if the world had already ended.
She reached out.
And touched the star.
The light welcod her.
"Okay.. it is starting to blind now..."
Maybe a little too much.
And before she knew it, the light slowly dissipated.
Pale gradients started to turn into colors, and sensation began to envelop her whole being as if she had reclaid her physical body.
A sensation of diving at extre speed towards the ground.
"Aaa?"
With a startled confusion, her form spun awkwardly as gravity claid her.
She plumted toward the world below, limbs flailing in a spiral that ended with a trendous crash.
She landed headfirst.
The sound echoed like a dropped bell.
Her legs stuck out of the earth, straight and twitching.
The world around her vibrated in confusion, dust puffing around the crater of impact. Feathers flopped loosely. Her wings beat once, lazily, upside down.
There was a muffled scream.
"AAAAAAGHHHHH—!"
Her voice was smothered by the soil, but the sound continued—high-pitched, furious, and thoroughly confused.
With a powerful grasp on the soil, she easily extracted herself from the ground like a plucked radish.
With a cough and a grunt, she flopped over, sitting in the shallow crater she’d made, hair tangled, wings splayed like a collapsed tent. Her eyes crossed slightly, then snapped open wide with realization.
"Wuh!?"
Feathers fluttered off her wings as she regained the long sensation that she had lost for a while.
Her halo pulsed indignantly.
She brushed dirt off her face, stood up with exaggerated effort, and inspected her reality.
Her glowing two-toned silvery white and golden hair sparked faintly. Her skin flickered with residual energy, with no imperfection aside from the small bruise that could barely be seen on her forehead.
The world around her stayed quiet, seemingly stunned.
"Did I just go back in ti...?"
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