"It hurts. It hurts so much."
Levi's voice was thin, broken. He didn't even know if it was sound or just thought. The pain was too much to tell. Too much to measure. It all blended together until there was nothing but burning, nothing but tearing.
He floated. Not in the black canvas of his soul. Not in the white void where he had seen his soul twist into a leech. No— this place was emptier. Pure blankness. No shape. No direction. No up, no down. Just him and the pain.
The pain of the jugged nail sliding deeper into his soul.
His body— his soul— felt like it was being pulled apart strand by strand. Every memory he clung to was slipping, unraveling like old rope. The time he almost smacked Cecilia, the heat of fire, the taste of blood when he bit his tongue in anger. Gone. One by one.
He wanted to scream, but there was nothing left to scream with.
"It's mine…". The words barely clung together, cracked like dry leaves. "My soul. My choice."
He didn't know if he believed it anymore. But he repeated it. Again. Again. Each word an anchor, a nail he hammered into the void to stop himself from drifting away.
Even as the pain burned through him, even as the jagged nail throbbed at the seam where man met leech, he forced himself to keep muttering. To remind himself.
Because if he stopped— just once— he knew he'd be swallowed, not by the leech this time, but by the pure undiluted, soul devouring pain.
Atlas his voice faded to extinction, all that was left was the quiet throbbing of soul scorching pain. And questions.
Why?
The voice the question belonged to sounded like his, but as the same time it sounded so foreign to be his. It was paradoxical.
Why? Why had you implanted the leech?
For a moment there was silence, silence so loud it was deafening. Until a sound, or thought broke the silence.
"To... To escape the t-term servant....". Levi started to feel again, the blankness residing like the tide against the shore of a beach.
Why? The voice resounded again.
".... I refuse.... I refuse to abide by so prepared script". He ragained his senses, although the pain lingered, it wasn't as severe as the beginning.
Why?
For a moment Levi paused then he responded in a deep pain stained voice.
"I don't need a reason to want to live!". At the beginning of his journey in this world he already knew it would be filled with pain and struggle.
But he embarked on the journey anyway. Why? Because he wanted to, not because of what happened in his past life, not because of so things his parents said, not because he had something to prove.
Not to go against some grand plan, or rebel against the tapestries of fate— though that was a plus. Because him surviving past this point already meant spitting in the face of this world's script.
But simply— because he wanted to.
".... Damn..... Damn it all....".
And at his last words, the jagged nail drove itself home.
His soul split with a screamless rip— cleaving into two. One side, the warped leech. The other, Levi's humanoid form.
He was no longer whole. He was divided.
In the physical realm, the limp leech suddenly twitched, its pale body shuddering like a drowned rat dragged from the deep. Then, without warning, it let out a wet, beastly roar — a sound that carried both pain and madness.
Its swollen frame jerked violently, thrashing up and down, sideways and back again, as though something inside was tearing it apart.
The movements grew more frantic, until the creature's spasms drove it tumbling forward. It crashed into the bed of golden ashes just a few meters away. The moment its misshapen body touched the glowing layer, the leech convulsed once more.
Then— silence.
Fire licked up from the ashes, wrapping around its form. The body burned almost instantly, no flesh, no bone resisting, leaving nothing behind but drifting fragments.
Even the ashes of its remains did not linger— they thinned into fine dust, scattered by an unseen current, flowing away into the unseen void.
What remained was the golden ashes themselves, warm and alive, stirring with quiet purpose. They rose like a tide, coiling and folding in slow arcs, before wrapping around the two broken spectral figures nearby. The glow spread like a blanket, embracing them in its gentle, almost mournful light.
The fragments of each soul shivered as the warmth sank in, their jagged halves beginning to soften. The golden ashes pressed deeper, filling the cracks, and even out the torn edges.