"Blood will rain."
"Blood."
"Will."
"Rain."
Flip.
Simma's eyes burst open as a savage ache cleaved through his skull, each temple hammered as though the gods of strength themselves were forging weapons upon his head. He tried to speak, but his words dissolved.
Only a trail of air bubbles fled his lips and spiralled upwards like tiny ghosts escaping to the heavens.
Realization struck. He was submerged. His awareness sharpened with the suddenness of lightning.
In a swift motion, he flung his arms and legs, cutting through the water with desperate grace, bubbles streaming upward as if mocking his urgency. His chest burned; as his lungs screamed for reprieve.
Then...
"Nghhhhhh!"
He erupted through the surface, dragging a glorious breath into his starved lungs. Air flooded him, sweet as ambrosia, and his heartbeat, which was sluggish and slow moments before, rekindled into a fierce rhythm.
He swept a trembling hand across his face, sending water droplets flinging like fractured diamonds, as his eyes scanned the endless expanse.
He ignored the whisper that still echoed in his skull, the same ominous voice that haunted his dreams, always accompanied by visions that reeked of nightmares. He had grown used to it, though it carved dread into his very marrow each time.
But looking around, all those thoughts were swept away and replaced with a worried expression, the kind that made him feel he was stuck again, but this time not in a time loop, but in… in… he didn't even know.
But now... now the terror was displaced by bewilderment. The vast space was all water. Nothing but water. To his left, right, ahead, and behind, an immeasurable ocean stretched beyond sight, calm and infinite, its surface unbroken save for the gentle ripples born from Simma's own struggle.
"Hello!" Simma bellowed, and it was like his words bounced around four different corners of an invisible wall, echoing into the distance and beyond.
He looked up, the sky was immaculate blue, patched with drifting clouds, tranquil and oblivious to his plight.
"How long am I meant to swim?" he muttered, doubt seeping into his voice. "And is there even an end to this place?"
Perhaps this was a test. The strange man had said this was another session. Maybe he was meant to summon his dragon here, fly away from this watery prison.
"Hey, dragon!" he shouted half-heartedly, though his chest sagged with the futility of it.
"... Aaaaand, no answer... Yeah… I'm screwed."
But then...
Something else started happening. It was as if the water started to boil, Not heat, but motion. Its surface just started popping up and down, heaving and bubbling violently.
Simma trembled. His heart gave a skip, wanting to escape his body. He tried to steady his breath, but his feet... his feet felt something. Solid. The impossible.
Land.
It wasn't a mere feeling, it was real.
It rose beneath him, pushing him upwards, lifting him like some colossal beast rising from the abyss. Higher and higher it carried him, until the endless ocean sprawled far below, a glittering plain of liquid sapphire.
Wind lashed his hair back, whistling through his ears like a chorus of spirits, while the very atmosphere thickened as he ascended. Soon, he pierced through the cold flush of the clouds, the air turning colder, sharper, each breath tinged with the taste of eternity.
He staggered to his feet upon the strange, flat mountaintop that now bore him heavenward.
Now he was starting to get worried.
"What kind of trial is this?" he whispered, a tremor of unease threading his voice. "Or… is this what the fall looks like?"
Maybe he was going to fall off this high earth. Or was there any other information the strange man was trying to pass to him by sending him here?
Before he could finish his thought...
"What are you thinking about?"
A voice cracked the air like ancient thunder, echoing high through everywhere. Deep, seasoned, with the rasp of age. Apparently, it came from an old man.
Simma spun.
There, not far behind, stood a man. White robes draped his frame, a crimson sash slanting across his chest from shoulder to ribs. His hair was silver, his moustache thick and bushy, carrying the dignity of time. He looked like an ascetic monk from forgotten temples, yet not bald, his crown instead crowned with age's silver.
Simma froze, words snared in his throat. He stared, unblinking, as though the man were some apparition that had torn itself free from myth.
The dressing was ancient, and he looked like one of those temple monks, except that he didn't have a shiny bald head.
The stranger smirked faintly, a knowing glimmer dancing in his weathered eyes, before pacing leisurely across the mountaintop with hands clasped behind his back.
The high earth on which they stood was wide, though not too wide. It could possibly contain about a hundred individuals without them being squished together.
"Simma… ah, just Simma," the man drawled. Raising a brow. That was all his name, Just Simma.
Simma wasn't someone that didn't talk. No.... whatever bothered him, he said it out loud.
"Who are you?" he asked, raw but direct, while still rooted to the spot and not daring to take his eyes off this man. Whatever he was up to, he didn't want to miss a bit of it.
The man twitched his mouth, moustache quivering as if to answer on its own.
"Well, let's just say I'm your ancestor," the man replied.
"My… ancestor?" Simma frowned, suspicion sharpening his eyes.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
The man continued his amble movement, slow and annoying.
"It can mean many things, Simma." The man's voice was measured, almost languid.
"Perhaps that I walk your Azren line. Or, if you prefer, your Azrax line."
Simma opened his eyes in realization, but they still never left the man. He took note of all his movements, making sure to catch any suspicious one.
He remembered that his echelon Seal had said something about Azren line. something interconnected with within beast or thereabout
"So you are trying to say that you also have a dragon as a within beast?"
The man hesitated a bit, just a fraction, then answered,
"Yes… but that was a long time ago, before I found myself here."
Simma's suspicion grew; his eyes narrowed, as though he could strip the man's soul bare with a glance.
"Then what is this place?" he asked. He needed not to push further asking him how he found himself here, because he knew that this four-worded question would yield a far better result as an answer.
The man halted. His brown eyes bored into Simma's with the gravity of millennia.
"This," he said, "is no realm for mortals. Your time here is brief, and if you linger… eternity will chain you."
Simma arched a brow, which automatically said, 'You haven't answered my question; rather you tripled it.' But that didn't deny the fact that those words terrified him. His brow furrowed, silently demanding answers.
The man continued, seeing the confused state his words had left Simma in.
"This place is the Realm of the Transmigrated," he said, his voice echoing louder than before, "a resting ground for cursed souls… who at last found redemption."
" cursed souls?" Simma asked, one question out of thousands.
"Yes, Simma" the man stepped forward, his tone weighted with sorrow. "There are those whose sins condemned them, therefore were bound to the Azrax entity's curse and forced to reincarnate without end, each death only a passage back into torment. True rest, the final reward, is denied them… until they undo what was broken."
He cleared his throat.
"Just like w'all know... Our world, one must enter rest after death.... that is the greatest reward that comes after life."
His voice faltered, touched with regret.
"I kept reincarnating until I had fixed what I ruined. I think I... I lost count of how many vessels I condemned to oblivion. And seeing you here, Simma… NO, it is no coincidence. The door opens only for the cursed."
'oblivion' Simma pondered.
He wanted to talk when the ground rumbled beneath them. The edges of the mountaintop cracked and lumps began to fall; the sky convulsed, darkening into storm, it seemed to be descending, as though the world itself rejected Simma's presence.
And there it was... the green door. The portal shimmered to life behind him, emerald flames licking its edges.
"Your time ends," the man's voice thundered. "Simma, thread cautiously. Every choice carves your fate. One mistake can lead to your undoing."
But Simma had no chance to respond.
"No, no, no..." He had more questions, but very little time.
The world fractured. A storm howled with apocalyptic fury. The sky fell. And from the chaos... a dragon emerged, vast and terrible.
Its brown scales shimmered like armoured stone, spikes jutting along its back down to the tip of its tail. Its blue eyes glowed with ancient fire, and its horned wings had a trace of velvet colour lining the edges.
The dragon roared fiercely, raising its short front limbs and pounding them on the floor, its gaze fixed on Simma as the man mounted it with practiced grace, his voice barely audible above the roaring chaos:
"…Also know this, Simma: every mistake demands the right action, and at the right time, to be undone. Fail… and oblivion will claim you. Now you must go, because if your body touches the ocean of stillness below, you will be drowning in it over and over again till eternity. And also you must interlo...."
Simma didn't hear the last statement, even though he listened with utmost sincerity. They were thus swallowed by the noises of the storm that was already crackling fiercely.
"I DIDN'T HEAR YOU! HEY!" Simma called, but the man was already gone.
Where he stood gave way, and half of it collapsed into the ocean.
"Crap," Simma muttered, and then he quickly opened the door.
"The hell…" he muttered. Right at the other side he saw himself, head bent and motionless. He stared at it for a while, and for a fleeting moment he didn't even remember the disaster behind him.
His breath caught. He raised his hands, staring at it in disbelief. His form was ghostly, blurred, unstable, twitching at the edges as though reality itself refused him.
He had left his body behind when he walked through the door earlier.
KRRRRRRR!
The storm cracked like the wrath of the heavens jerking him back to consciousness. With no time left, Simma hurled himself through the green door.
Just as the mountain dissolved into the abyss.