Chapter 372: Skyclad Observer, Part
Was I... am I... asleep now? Doesn’t feel like... I think... I’m thinking...
I’m thinking?
Who thinks in their sleep?
Was I... awake?
But this blackness, that means I’m... can I open my eyes? No, wait they’re already open, I’m blinking, I’m looking... this blackness before me wasn’t me, wasn’t my eyelids...
It was the world.
There wasn’t anything. Ria was nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t like before, in that world of pure white.
.....
Now it was just an infinite chasm of the deepest, darkest black. There wasn’t an up to look at, nor a way down to ever fall too.
I could feel my feet, but not the ground. I feel my hands, but not how I swing them.
My body felt... existent, but I think it isn’t. For some strange reason, I don’t feel real... I don’t feel like I was here...
Wherever here was, being here...
I found out I could still hear, when suddenly a distant rumbling began to sound.
I found out I could still see, when suddenly something exploded.
The darkness exploded.
A burst of bright white flashing from up high, from a sky, a dark, murky horizon that appeared so sudden.
It gave way for more things to be heard, to be seen, casting away the world of black – like a blanket being pulled, unveiling, bringing to light, to life, what really harbored beneath.
The sky poured the heavy tears of rainfall down onto a world cast in a gloom by an endless stream of dark murky clouds above.
I saw them from up above, saw droplets fall directly towards me... yet I couldn’t feel them hit me.
I was like a ghost. In this new world, I still wasn’t real.
And in this world, everything looked to be in different states of rot and neglect.
The grass shriveled and withered, the skinny trees scattered few and far with skinner branches swaying empty and naked in a harsh, heavy wind.
It was as if the world itself had turned its eyes away from this little secluded place.
There was a tower of stone and brick that stood afar in the distance, shrouded by fog, thick in mist. I wouldn’t have known it was even there, had it not been for a smidgen of light shining from a windowsill.
A sign of life.
I tried moving closer towards it. But of course, I couldn’t, not even an inch, I had no feet, I had no nerves to move those feet. If I really was a ghost, I couldn’t even hover.
Simply put, I was just a seeing, thinking piece of absolute nothing.
And I felt calm. I should be confused, shocked, I knew how I should be feeling in this current condition, I just couldn’t feel any other emotion.
It was just a calmness, an indifference, as if I was only allowed to see and feel with a funnel of absolute normalcy.
I had no mouth too, I wish I did, I wish I could speak, then I could ask what was happening.
For a moment, I simply listened to the chaotic disharmony of rain pellets pouring into the mud. I’ve resigned myself to heeding all the soft splatters of brown puddles, thinking there to be nothing more to be heard, to be seen.
Until I heard it, until I saw it.
That crimson glow in the clouds, a pulsating ball of light blazing a trail of smoke and cinders in the grey murky skies.
I watched it as it soared, and I watched it as it plummeted.
Landing in a resonating echo and explosion of fire, splattering hard into the mud before me.
Emerging from the impact, stumbling out from the thick swirl of smoke and fire gradually waning, a little girl fell clumsily to her knees.
Coughing, wincing, planting her arms teeming with bleeding cuts and gashes to the dirt to stop herself from fully collapsing.
Her skin was tainted in mud, her clothing was left in tatters, and her hair, long and disheveled, seemed to be on fire.
Ria.
She coughed again, and along with her spit, sputters of blood drifted alongside it, floating, rocking violently in one of the many brown puddles.
Eventually, her coughs and gasps for air would be overtaken by her frightened, quiet whimpers.
Something fell from one of the many torn holes in her clothes. something light, something that floated and landed in the dirt in a flutter.
A letter.
“No!”
Her soft whimpering instantly to a loud yelp as she hastily reached for the letter, seizing it, before it could be tainted any more by the cold apathy of nature’s wrath.
Ria laid there, clutching the letter close to her body, using her small slender frame like a makeshift shelter from the harsh weather.
It was with her sudden appearance that things finally started clicking into place for me.
Perhaps I should have known already beforehand. But either way, it didn’t matter now. I know now.
This was a memory. Her memory.
Of what exactly? What has happened here that led to this moment?
With her bleeding, with her crying, through stifled lips, the subdued, silent moans of utter grief?
Suddenly, she slowly lifted her eyes stained thickly in dirt and tears, and stared up at me.
For a moment, I thought she might have been looking at me. It took only another moment after to realize she was merely staring through me, behind me.
At the tower of stone looming from afar.
Like a beacon of light, a glimmer of purpose, it glimmered brightly in her gaze.
Ria steadied herself, silenced her whimpers, and with a grunt aching and painful, she rose to her feet, taking one shambling step closer to the tower.
Then one more, and then another.
I watched her go, I watched her stumble past me, and I watched her small figure become even smaller in the distance.
Because that was all I could.
All I could do was watch.
Except I didn’t want to. Why do I have to?
Couldn’t I just move? Couldn’t I just walk?
If I had a mouth, I would scream to myself, force myself, do everything I could to do what I should.
I wanted to go, I wanted to see, I wanted to –
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