Chapter 356 Volume V - Chapter 74: Beauty Itself
A warmth I couldn't quite make sense of enveloped my body... and my eyes blinked with it.
As soon as my eyes opened slightly and my body started to regain sensation, an excruciating pain spread through all of me.
It was so intense that I couldn't even scream, I couldn't even let out a simple moan. I could only... wait. I couldn't even resist.
Seconds passed, then minutes.
The pain didn't lessen, on the contrary... it increased. As if in response to my silent screams, as if it wanted to hurt me even more... non-stop.
I fainted, but before I could even be sure if I had really fainted, the pain returned once more.
*******
Hours passed, maybe more... or less?
I started to get used to the pain, slowly... still feeling it all the time.
I kept fainting, I kept waking up. I wished to die, I wished to be saved... But no matter how much I suffered, my soul refused to leave my body. And... I kept getting used to the pain.
Finally, after some time, I'm not sure how long, I managed to get used to it enough to regain some of my senses.
And... the first thing I realized was that I was on a hard but cold floor. And... wet?
Ah, that's why it's cold...
I tried to lift my head, but an intense pain, incomparable to any I had experienced before, suddenly shot through my neck... and everything went black.
*******
I tried to lift my head again, more slowly this time.
My blurred eyes couldn't make out anything at first. I could only see... bright dots floating in the air, slowly falling to the ground, delicately... like a feather.
The pain intervened again. But, this time, I tried to resist, tearing my eyes away from the bright dots and looking elsewhere.
But... I couldn't see anything.
There was only darkness.
Soon... the bright spots disappeared too.
*******
Who... was I?
For some reason, I never asked that question, the pain was the only thing on my mind. As I got used to it, as I slowly regained my senses, things like... where was I was more important.
But this time, these were the questions on my mind.
What was my name? How old was I? Who was I? Why was I here?
I forced myself, I did my best to remember.
For a moment, my mind seemed to break free from the chains of pain. For a very brief moment, a name appeared in my mind. But... it fluctuated as if there was a wall between me and the name, it became something incomprehensible... and then, it was gone.
No matter how hard I tried, I could never get an answer to my questions. The wall of pain was an obstacle I could not overcome.
*******
My ears started to regain their ability to function. So... I started to hear something, like... the sound of water drops falling from above.
I remembered the ground, the wetness, and the cold.
The sounds I was hearing were indeed drops of water falling where I was. How else would the ground be wet?
Although... it wasn't a big deal. Why was I so focused on it?
This time, I closed my eyes before plunging into the darkness again. I gave myself to the darkness before it took me.
I was getting... tired.
*******
This time, I didn't try to do anything.
I just waited, just like I did at the beginning. The only difference... this time, the pain was insignificant. It was insufficient to take my mind away, to get in the way of my thoughts. Or maybe I was having trouble feeling it anymore... who knows?
In short, it didn't matter anymore. Sometimes, I even forgot it was there.
But I still couldn't remember who I was, why I was here.
So... I gave up.
I didn't care.
I just... wanted to sink into the darkness.
*******
I found myself looking up.
Before, I was face down on the floor, and now... I had managed to turn a little bit.
But just as there was nothing on the ground... there was nothing up there.
The blue dots were still floating, yes... But where they came from, like everywhere else, was dark.
'Strange', I couldn't help but think of this word.
I didn't remember how I got here, I didn't remember who I was... But it was still strange. What could I have come here to do? After all, there was nothing but darkness... What could my purpose be?
I paused for a moment, another thought popped into my mind.
Maybe... I didn't want to come here... but I had no choice?
It made sense. Because it didn't seem like there was anything I could achieve here.
Still... I didn't think about it any more. I felt sleepy again. And I went back into the darkness.
*******
When I woke up again... my vision was better than ever. So much so that I could now see what the blue dots were floating from above.
They were not solid, but rather... each one was a marble-sized ball of light. The drops of water were separate from them. They were like rain, actually. But their number was too small to be a rain. And for some reason, they slowed down as they approached the ground. It wasn't hard to recognize them as they occasionally fell on my face.
But, even though I could distinguish them now, the darkness over me was the same. No matter how clearly I could see, there was nothing there. Just... endless darkness.
I didn't pay much attention to it, though. Because... I started to wonder... where I was, what it was like... and more. Waiting where I was, sleeping and waking up constantly became pointless after a while.
So... I tried to sit up, but it felt impossible when I was on my back. So, I turned onto my stomach again, even if I could barely do it. My goal was to get up with the support of my arms.
And the moment I tried... I realized what the problem was. Not only why I could get up, but why I had such a hard time moving in the first place. After all, the answer was right in front of my eyes.
My right arm was strangely inverted at the elbow. My left arm was the same... and so was my right leg and my left leg.
My bones were broken, almost every one of them... I didn't realize it because I was used to the pain at this point, but there was not a single place in my body that was unbroken.
Still, I didn't care.
So what if my body was like this? Did I care about the pain...? No, I couldn't even feel it. All my pain receptors were dead, probably. I didn't know how, but I was alive, and that was what mattered.
So, I ignored everything and started to look around again, even if it was just by turning myself left and right on the floor.
I was in a big place, a really big place... So big that it didn't seem to have walls. Beyond a certain point, just like the endless darkness above me, it was not possible to see. But that didn't mean that the whole place was plunged into darkness.
It was... strangely bright here. Okay, maybe not much... but enough that I could more or less make out something. And that light was provided by these blue marbles of lights.
And, so, I continued to look around.
The first thing I noticed... was a chain. A chain coming out of the darkness, passing just to my left. When I paid more attention, I realized that it was not the only chain here.
Two, three, four, seven, eleven, twenty... The numbers didn't seem to have an end. But they all had one thing in common. And that was... they were moving toward a single point of this huge place.
I used my chin and my right elbow to turn myself in the direction of where the chains had gone, and when I could finally see it out of the corner of my eye... I just stood there.
No, I wasn't shocked... Okay... maybe a little shocked, but it wasn't shock that caused me to freeze. I was really frozen in place, my body... not moving. It was like my brain had stopped listening to me.
Because... what I saw was... beautiful.
Very beautiful.
Too beautiful.
No... the word 'beautiful' was not enough for her.
How could there be such a person in the world?
Just looking at her made me lose my mind, just seeing what she looked like out of the corner of my eye made everything fall apart.
The existence of such a person... should not have been possible.
But it was.
After all, she was right in front of my eyes.
It was easy to see what she was like as all the marbles of light in the area were slowly drawn toward her. Although... did she need them? Her very existence was bright, she didn't need a light source to be seen.
But that was not all. She was also gigantic, really big. She was tens of meters long. A little longer and she would have reached into the infinite darkness above...
Both of her arms were lifted by the chains, just hanging in the air. But she was not simply 'chained'. The chains were cruelly embedded in some parts of her body, wrapped so tightly around some parts that I could see the marks. Most of her body was not even visible because of this.
She was kneeling, not in a comfortable position. But... what did comfort matter? After a certain point, the pain became insignificant, so it was nothing to worry about.
Her head was bowed. Part of her face was visible through the silver hair that fell in front of her, but even that was enough to blow my mind. She had no clothes on, so every part of her was exposed where the chains could not hide. Even places that would be inconvenient for most people were in plain sight.
But even these were unimportant.
All that mattered was her face, no... her very existence.
This woman... was the embodiment of beauty.
No, it was insufficient to think that she was simply the 'embodiment' of beauty.
She was beauty itself.
Just looking at her made me feel like I was committing a crime. I wanted to look away, to close my eyes, but... I didn't want to at the same time.
A deep silence enveloped my body, and for a while, I couldn't do anything or think. I just kept looking, kept being mesmerized. With every new detail I noticed, I was drawn to her even more, as if I was losing myself...
But that didn't last long either.
Because... after a short time, her motionless body finally moved.
The chains wrapped around her body jiggled. The sounds of clattering filled the whole space and echoed in my ears.
Her closed eyes, hidden by her hair, opened slowly, gradually. They revealed the rainbow-like jewels they hid.
Then her head lifted slightly, her eyes, which seemed to contain every possible color, slowly turned towards me. Her closed lips separated.
Just like the way she looked and felt, her voice was one of the most beautiful things I had ever encountered. It was delicate, elegant... a voice I shouldn't have heard, a voice that would have gotten me executed if I had.
And... I don't know why, but... it was strange.
It was as if it wasn't just her opening his mouth, but several people talking at the same time.
And... it was painful. It was like she could barely speak. So much so that I wanted to find the people who had done this to her and strangle them with my hands.
But that didn't matter either. Because... the words that came out of her mouth were stranger than anything I had ever experienced.
It was as if... she had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
"Finally..."
As my eyes widened slightly, I realized the mistake I had made.
No, not this moment...
"Did it really take you that long to get used to the pain?"
She was waiting especially for me.
"Don't make me wait any longer, human."
She waited for me to come here, to get used to the pain, to talk to her...
"Break these chains."
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺