For awhile Lily did nothing.
She simply solemnly embraced the darkness that came with her death.
All the questions she'd had moments before just melted away, even the pain was nothing more than a memory as she drifted into the dark.
What was the point of trying to understand it anyway? Nothing in that game or dream or whatever the hell it was made sense, and then she woke up and died in a situation that made even less sense.
Perhaps it was for the best that she just let it all end, what could one lone sickly girl do against an event like that after all.
If the governing bodies and whatever higher powers that may exist allowed it to come to pass then who was she to stop it?
So she left her mind drift into the nothingness.
Slowly continuing to become nothing herself... until suddenly her senses began noticing things that weren't there a moment ago.
The smell of petrichor and sandalwood hung heavy in the air, along with a notable amount of citrus mixed in.
Cool and soft grass touched the palm of her hands and cushioned her a bit.
Insects chirped, ones she didn't recognize at that.
As she opened her eyes a strange and unfamiliar light greeted her... a little orb of pale blue light no bigger than her palm that was floating gently through the air.
Lily remained fixed on the lights, a sense of comfort and ease finding their way into her heart as she followed them, only sitting up as she finally processed a sound she hadn't noticed before.
Waves, gentle and soothing ones but still waves nonetheless.
What Lily finds is that she's on an island, a relatively small one at that... only big enough for say maybe a small cabin to be built upon it, yet its rather barren. All that is on the island is the grass, a small beach barely big enough to lay down on, and then it was Lily and whatever bugs were chirping.
The ocean stretches off infinitely in all directions, and only the strange floating lights and the night sky above give any sort of illumination.
Was this the afterlife? If it was it was one Lily had never heard of, it wasn't exactly the spitting image of heaven or hell or anything like it... but it was comforting in its own way.
Isolated in a comforting veil of night, not too hot but not too cold, and the gentle sounds were enough to make her tired all over again.
Yet something pulled at her as she made her way towards the waves, as every so often she swears she could see some sort of light from them or even hear a few strange sound that didn't sound like the typical ocean noises.
Upon reaching the edge of the water and looking down she saw something she couldn't process, glowing bubbles rising and sinking within the dark ocean waves... each one seeming to contain... something? People? Voices? it was hard to tell from the surface.
If only she could get a closer look she thought, it might be easier to understand what those bubbles were then.
All she had to do was get a little closer.
Ever so closer.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, it's easy to get lost in those waves." A familiar voice called to her from behind, snapping her out the daze she'd been in only to find herself now almost waist deep in freezing cold waters.
When she turned around and began making her way back to the island she saw a figure that wasn't there before.
A man? or woman? someone wearing a long cloak that reached down to the ground, obscuring their entire form, and the hood hid their face perfectly to where a single detail couldn't be made out. The strangest part about this though was the material the cloak was seemingly made of as it looked like the night sky itself had descended to hide this persons form.
The patterns, stars, galaxies, planets, all moved and stirred across the cloak as the figure watched Lily carefully approach the island again.
Even now getting closer to them Lily still couldn't make out any defining features of the person, not even the simplest detail such as body shape or height, it was as if her mind couldn't even properly process who she was looking at. Despite this she didn't feel afraid of the figure before her, instead she felt comfortable with him, as if she was looking at a friend she'd known for years.
"Who-"
"Who are you?" The figure interrupted her, their voice while still familiar didn't fit cleanly into Lily's mind. It was masculine yet feminine, somewhere perfectly in the middle to where it was impossible to tell gender from the voice alone. "Well I go by many names and am always being called new ones, though I suppose the most common ones for this instance are 'Nameless' 'Infinite' 'Gap' 'Origin' all things like that."
"Thanks, but that doesn't tell me who you are." Lily replied as she stepped back onto the grass, surprised to find her clothes already dry.
"Oh but it does, it's just an answer you do not yet understand, one of many endless fractal and repeating mysteries that exist within the universe." the figure responded calmly while stepping or perhaps more aptly gliding closer. "You, my dear friend, have to find the truth behind those mysteries yourself though it'll take you a long long time."
Lily just stares blankly at the figure before sighing and sitting down on the grass. "Yeah well i won't be solving anything right now, i'm dead after all."
A mysterious chuckle escaped the figure now "Are you though? Your soul says otherwise... regression magic of that caliber wouldn't fail to go off after all."
"Huh? you mean that thing that... someone..." Lily pauses, surprised to be unable to recall who or what had engraved the spell on her soul in the game. Their name, face, even voice unable to be remembered clearly.
"Something the matter?" The figure asks as it walks up to her side.
"No i just... think i forgot something... whatever, it doesn't matter anyway because that's just a game and i'm dead now." Lily snaps as she lies down on the grass now, all she wanted was for this stupid conversation to be over and for this story to come to its close.
"My my, you truly are slow on the uptake... it was a game yes but due to the larger forces at play it's become so so much more. Even to the point that i'm impressed by what's been pulled off with it."
The figure calmly sits on the ground next to Lily, looking over at her while doing so... for the briefest of moments a singular eye could be seen. Deep blue with what looked like bits of white flecked in surrounding an impossibly dark pupil.
"You see, what's happened is complicated, even by my standards... in fact i'm sure this situation couldn't have occurred without such a perfect storm of misevents beforehand..."
"Alright stop beating around the bush and just tell me. This has something to do with what that freaky guy Ryder was fighting, right?" Lily replies, now opting to roll onto her side to look away from the figure.
"Yes, the process of ascension, the pathway for a new god of creation to arise in the absence of the old one... normally this process isn't this rough but, frankly put, due to existing circumstances it's as if you've loaded a glitched or corrupted version of the process."
"How did it get glitched or corrupted? Is there any way to fix it?" Lily asks, though not feeling a shred of hope as she does so.
"Ah now that is a long and complicated story, and a fairly complicated question to... i'll just give you the basics for now. Essentially someone killed the current god before their time along with all known candidates, however they missed you due to your condition causing that process to begin while your mind was already in the game... that was the big moment where things went wrong."
"Why? Why would playing a game make things go wrong." Lily rolled over to face the figure now, genuinely curious about what they would say next.
"Well that's because when one goes through ascendance their subconscious begins taking in information from the future, all of them, and with the magic of creation flowing into your soul. alongside a cataclysm occurring right outside putting stress on your body the magic amplified to try and protect you causing reality, both physical and virtual, to distort and warp around your soul and the information you've been subconsciously processing." The figure pauses, gazing out at the ocean before them. "Along with this many other factors have been keeping you and the others from moving on... the egg, time rewinding, the regrets of those that've been trapped, all of this culminates into one massive nightmare that no one can wake up from. In order to escape you've got to unravel their stories and wake them up one by one."
"You make that sound like it's so easy... what, am i just supposed to go back and die over and over again until i manage to fix this situation?" Lily dryly asks, her mind growing more and more tired by the second.
It was strange, the longer she spent here and the longer she spent listening to this person or whatever it was all she could feel was her body and mind both growing heavier and more tired, as if some part of her was finally relaxing, every little bit of fear, stress, worry, all of it was gone. Even though she'd died and was now hearing so much information that her mind was being fried trying to understand it none of it mattered. To Lily in this moment it felt like she was finally at home again, resting in a bed she hadn't felt in years, it was... nice.
"Well you won't have to die, i'll make sure of that... but that'll be a problem we can talk about later. I see your eyes getting heavier now friend. Rest, it's why i really brought you here." the figure spoke in a more gentle tone now. "When you wake you'll be ready to face the day head on."
"Friend... why are we friends?" It was a simple question Lily asked, but it was the only one she had on her mind as her eyes closed now, content to just listen.
"That's something you'll find out in the future. It's a story that's a long way off. However all you need to know is we will meet again... In another place. In another time."