Chapter 310 Volume V - Chapter 28: Everything in Order
I heard voices. Tens, hundreds of voices. They were whispers, mostly meaningless. But... most importantly, they were getting louder and louder.
Sometimes, rarely, I could understand what a few of them were saying.
It hurts, one of them said.
Come closer, said another.
Please... die.
Will it end?
Disappear...
Finally...!
Break apart...
Stop resisting.
I'm scared...
Have mercy...
End our suffering...
The voices kept whispering. Behind me, in front of me, under me, on my sides... everywhere.
But that wasn't the only thing that happened in the endless darkness.
There were hands, dark and excited hands. Hands that encircled my whole body, grasping every part of me so that not a single space was left.
The hands that gripped my shoulders tried to dig their nails into my flesh as if they were trying to tear it apart. Then others grabbed my arms, then my legs... even my neck.
All I could do as my body was torn apart was... watch, feel, and suffer. I could only let out silent screams as the darkness tore everything apart and... tried to take my place.
Watching was all I was allowed to do, even as they reached for something else rather than my body.
In the endless darkness, with my eyes already gouged out by countless fingers... I saw... or felt... a radiance.
It shimmered in the darkness with a tiny glow. As the dark hands tried to reach out toward it, I also moved closer to it.
Finally, when I got a certain amount closer to it... I saw that it was actually not one glow but two glows orbiting each other.
One was a pure white. It looked like a semicircle with jagged edges, and it wasn't even clear if it had corners. Blue stripes seeped through the white color. Like veins, they seemed to be trying to reach toward the center of this pure white thing. They seemed to be advancing, albeit slowly, as time passed.
The other... was a bright purple. It kept changing, it never stayed the same. It was literally... chaotic. At times it was trying to reach out to the pure white half it was spinning with, but it was failing.
Together, they seemed to be in... harmony.
But they were under the non-existent gaze of those who aimed to disrupt this harmony. Dark hands kept approaching them, just like me.
As time passed, the dark hands, instead of approaching these two glows from all directions... began to merge. Hundreds, even millions of them came together to form a single, gigantic hand. And in the center of the palm of this gigantic hand... stood these two harmonious glows that had no idea what was happening.
The dark hand paused for a moment. I suddenly stopped moving toward them. The next second... the gigantic hand, with the glows still in the palm of its hand, suddenly closed its fingers fiercely.
The glow of the sparkles disappeared between the closed fingers as if they had never existed. Dozens of times what I had felt as my body was being torn to pieces suddenly overwhelmed me. My whole being, let alone my body, felt like it was being crushed. I felt myself collapsing in on myself as if I were the thing inside the clenched fist of the dark hand.
But it was so short-lived that I didn't even realize whether I could actually feel it or not... Because what really mattered was what permeated my mind after that moment.
It was something much more painful than the crushing of my being. There were so many images playing in my mind at the same time, so many sounds that I couldn't stand it. Yet some images were particularly prominent in my mind.
In one image, I saw two people sitting side by side on the shore of a sea that seemed to stretch into infinity. Their faces, their appearance... everything was blurred. Only... it was clear that they looked like people. And... the feeling they gave me was strangely distinct, even if I couldn't distinguish them.
The person on the left felt much calmer, dignified. He was like a bright light. The one on the right... was like the opposite. He was dark, but this darkness didn't feel strangely evil. It was just... like someone who was restless, excited. Yes, he was really excited.
The image changed. This time, I saw these two people in a closed room. The bright one was sitting at a desk, writing something. The dark one... again, he was not still. He was circling around the bright one, occasionally moving to a point and swinging something like a sword in his hand. They seemed to be having a conversation with each other. And... they seemed to be having fun despite their contrasts.
I saw the same duo at the top of a staircase reaching up to the sky. Both of their bodies were covered in blood. Their clothes were in tatters. Both of them had their hands on each other's shoulders, supporting each other. So, in this way, these two people slowly started climbing the stairs to the sky, one by one.
I saw the same two together again, the glow of the bright one much more pronounced now, the darkness of the other just as... deep. They were side by side as in the first image. But this time, they were not on a seashore... but in the sky itself. The bright one was looking sadly down from the sky. The dark one was right next to him, as if trying to... console him.
The next second, the two disappeared. In the middle of nowhere, in a desert-like place... the bright one suddenly appeared before my eyes. He was staggering, even exhausted. There was a sword in his chest, a sword that seemed to pierce where his heart was.
And then, there was the sky. Dozens of people who seemed to be standing on clouds, many... beings who seemed to represent different colors.
The bright one stopped for a moment. He slowly turned his head back, the white glow on his body brighter than ever, fading with every second. And then... he saw darkness. Darkness that seemed to reach out to the whole world. He was so angry that it was as if he couldn't hold the darkness in his body. It was draining all the light, making everything around it look like it.
Suddenly, chains descended from the sky. They wrapped around the darkness, tangling and tangling until there was not a single spot of it that could be seen.
In the final image... the bright was nowhere to be seen. The darkness wasn't supposed to be there either, really. But... every now and then a fragment of it would leak out through the chains, spreading out toward the world and beyond.
And those in the sky... instead of trying to stop it, at first they ignored it completely. After a while... they tried to run away from it, as if there was nothing they could do. Only when they realized there was nowhere to run did they try to stand against it.
The image froze at this moment. Nothing moved, even the pain stopped. Even the sounds I heard disappeared.
Darkness, light, presence... literally everything slowly disappeared as if pulled by a vacuum. After a short silence and nothingness, something reached out to my non-existent body and pulled me out of the darkness.
*******
My eyes flew open. I found myself literally bathing in sweat. My whole body was aching in pain.
The sky above me was sunless but blue. It was devoid of any clouds. It even resembled an overly calm sea with no waves. This... gave it a special, pleasant air.
I stood for a moment doing nothing as my eyes widened. After a short while, though, I just swallowed, and after I had prepared myself... I finally spoke.
"W- what did you show me?"
My answer came shortly after, right next to me. In an emotionless, soulless voice.
"Everything I can show you for now."
I quickly turned my head in the direction of the voice. As I straightened up, ignoring the pain in my body, I looked at the figure not far from me.
One of his legs was slightly extended and the other was bent upward at the knee. His right hand was on his bent knee, his left hand on the grass. His gray eyes were as empty as ever, and his expression was no better. His black hair swayed gently in the non-existent winds.
Everything he can show...?
He didn't show me anything I could understand properly! He only confirmed my thoughts, that's all!
"Well, okay... I can more or less understand your part of it. Lunerra goes through a loop with each 'failure', and you not only have these memories as a result of the experiments, but also... become the vessel of Knowledge. Thank you for confirming my thoughts! I more or less understand that this is the tenth and final loop, but there are still tons of things you haven't answered! For example, the last images..."
Aiden turned slowly toward me without saying anything. His gray eyes, looking ahead into infinity, locked on me this time. They really seemed to be staring into my soul.
"Everything in order, Ethan. There are tons of things in this universe you don't need to learn, and even more things that if you do, you'll be doomed before you know it. Why do you think I have to deal with you and tons of other things when I can finish everything myself?"
His eyes narrowed for a moment, something in his emotionless expression that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
"Knowledge is not a blessing, it's a curse. It has been so from the beginning and will remain so until the end. The saying 'ignorance is bliss' is more true than you think, and also incomplete. Ignorance is not only happiness, it is also the thing that removes obstacles."
Just behind him, at this very moment, a figure appeared out of nowhere. The purple-eyed me, Ethan, or rather... Alaric. With a serious expression on his face, he said only one thing.
"Aiden."
But Aiden didn't even take him seriously.
"This is the foundation, the continuity, and the end of the universe. Everything runs on knowledge. This universe itself is based on knowledge. But that's why the more you know, the closer you get to the truth, the more it limits you. The more you have access to, the more weight you have on you, and the more this weight holds you in place. That's why we need someone who doesn't belong to this universe, but that's also why we need someone who has a piece of this universe."
"That's really enough."
Aiden slowly turned to Alaric. His expression was so blank, his emotionlessness so evident, that Alaric stiffened for a moment. He stepped back involuntarily. And Aiden said nothing more to him. He ignored him again and turned toward me.
"You will learn only as much as you can, each time. If you don't want to be constrained by this universe itself, if you don't want to be stuck where you are for that reason alone when you crave power, you will do everything in order. Do you understand?"
Do you understand...
It was a question directed at me. But at the same time... it felt like a threat. His empty eyes seemed to peer into my soul, his expression made me feel like he could get rid of me in a second if he had to... everything about him emphasized it.
So much so that I found myself silently moving my lips without even realizing what was happening.
"I- I understand..."
There was silence between us for a few seconds. Alaric just stood where he was, staring at Aiden, while I... I could only swallow.
Finally, Aiden nodded his head in satisfaction as he continued to stare into my eyes. Alaric simply sighed when he saw that. As for me... I could only scribble something brief but important in my mind.
Well, it seems that Aiden is someone who shouldn't be pissed off...
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