Kivas remained silent.
The question had been asked, and the vastness around her seemed to hold its breath.
Would she like something in return?
She watched the celestial formation around her flicker, the ritual's embers still suspended in soft motion. The wings of the titans pulsed gently, their countless eyes still and waiting.
Kivas lowered her gaze, her thoughts drifting, scattered like ashes in deep water.
"I… I don't think I need anything," she finally said.
The words sounded strange. Even as she said them, they felt disconnected, floating above the depths she hadn't yet dared to explore.
A soft vibration moved through the space. The titan nearest to her responded.
"Is that the truth?"
Kivas flinched.
"I'm… unsure," she admitted.
The admission stirred something inside her. She pressed her hand to her chest. There was no heartbeat she could feel, but the weight behind her memories throbbed like phantom pain.
"I remember Earth. I remember being human. My name, my room, the lonely meals, the silence between days. Even the time where everything is still unbroken," she repainted. "All of that is intact. But so is the part of me that counted for eons in the dark. The version of myself that didn't speak, didn't move, just floated endlessly…
"But, does it even matter?"
As her words trailed off, her body began to shift.
Her arms thinned into strands of darkness, her legs coiling into slick tendrils that reached outward. From her back, more emerged—flexing and curling, searching the space around her.
Her skin deepened in tone until only the suggestion of form remained. No limbs. No face. Just presence, veiled in reaching shadow.
The transformation felt effortless as if she willed it herself.
One of the titans asked, "Are you still a human?"
The question came without emotion, but it landed with weight.
Kivas stirred because of it. Her limbs, if they could be called that, recoiled. The shadows retracted, folding inward, spiraling down into the core of her being. Shape followed. Form returned. Her legs straightened. Her arms flexed. Her skin found its texture. Her eyes reopened.
"Yes," she answered as a human.
The titan's wings shifted. Light swept through their many eyes.
"What do humans yearn for?"
She considered the question carefully.
"Survival," she said, with realistic consideration.
Another pause.
"Is that enough?"
"No," she replied.
This answer came faster. Clearer.
She stared at her own hands, clenching and unclenching them slowly. The act grounded her. Made her feel present in a space that barely acknowledged the concept.
The space shimmered with quiet, ambient glow. The formation around her rotated with unerring precision. The booming voices then returned in resonance.
"What is it you truly desire?"
The pressure behind the words slipped through her thoughts like a warm breath on glass. They pressed gently at the corners of her soul, encouraging her to peer inside, to look past the responses shaped by fear or fatigue.
She gasped as the question opened something deep.
Her thoughts spiraled inward.
The scenes came in flashes. Rain on her old apartment window. The ache of silence. The way her voice used to echo in an empty room. The laughter of others, always distant. The warmth she only ever dreamed of, arms imagined but never felt.
The time before the world was put in chaos, the time where there were still people smiling for her, and giving words to her.
From the beginning, even before the death, before the void, before the ritual—this truth had been buried in her.
Tears collected at the corners of her eyes. Her chest trembled.
She whispered, as if speaking to herself, "I want to be understood..."
The words cracked from her.
Her lips quivered.
"No more probing alone in the dark. No more endless silence."
And the tears spilled freely now.
"I want to have someone… someone who holds me when I feel bound. I want to feel that warmth. To be cuddled like I matter."
Her breath hitched.
Her voice trembled.
"I want to be loved!"
The plane shifted.
From beyond the ritual circle, a deep sound rose—horns unlike any instrument, shaking the skies and the foundation beneath her.
The tone was vast and layered, woven from stardust and gravity wells. Each note peeled across the realm, vibrating against the ritual's glyphs and the distant curves of space.
A signal.
Her desire had been heard.
The wings of the titans closed in slightly to surround the moment. The world itself leaned forward. The ritual threads burst into new color, weaving faster, flowing into the core of Kivas' presence.
Her body rose from the ground.
Light poured from her chest, her limbs, her skin. Her features softened as if wind was pulling her into the stars. Her form shimmered with radiance, threads of her being lifting and curling like petals in reverse bloom.
She looked up. Her vision dimmed, but her heart felt weightless.
The final word from the titans came through her very soul.
"Your wish shall be granted."
Then, she dissolved.
Her memories flared one last time, and her last sensation was a warmth cradling her very essence.