I didn't return to my quarters. I found myself in the one place in this sterile, god-forged environment that felt real: the observation deck. It was a simulation, a panoramic view of a star system being born, nebulae swirling in vast, silent explosions of color.
I was looking at creation, and all I could feel was the void inside me. Anya's empty eyes were seared onto the back of my eyelids.
« SYSTEM: HOST PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE INDICATES CATALYST EVENT. » « REPEATING QUERY: ORIGIN OF HOST SELF-IMPOSED RESTRICTIONS? »
"I know what it is," I whispered, my voice raw. The star-dust seemed to drink the sound. "I've always known."
The memory wasn't a ghost anymore; it was a cage, and I was rattling the bars.
The cold floor. The sticky warmth pooling beneath me. The metallic taste of blood. The sound of my own heartbeat, slow, too slow. The world shrinking to a pinprick of fading light. The absolute, terrifying certainty of it… of nothingness.
Oblivion.
My breath hitched. A full-body tremor wracked me. The fear was a living thing, coiled around my spine, whispering its poisonous mantra. Stay small. Stay safe. Power is the door to this room. Never open it.
« CONFIRMATION: SUBCONSCIOUS TRAUMA NEXUS IDENTIFIED. NEAR-DEATH EVENT. » « HYPOTHESIS: HOST ASSOCIATES PEAK POWER OUTPUT WITH THE MOMENT OF MORTAL EXTINCTION. »
"It's not a hypothesis," I choked out, tears streaming down my face freely now. I wasn't crying from pain. I was crying from the sheer, monstrous weight of the truth. "When I reach for it… I'm not reaching for power. I'm reaching back into that moment. I'm feeling my own heart stop again."
The System was silent for a long moment, processing.
« CONCLUSION: THE WARDEN IS A PROTECTIVE INSTINCT. A PHOBIC RESPONSE TO SELF-ANNIHILATION. » « THE LOCKS ARE NOT MEANT TO IMPRISON POWER. THEY ARE MEANT TO PRESERVE CONSCIOUSNESS. »
"How do I fight my own will to live?" I asked, the question a plea to the uncaring stars.
« ERROR. PREMISE FLAWED. » « YOU ARE NOT FIGHTING YOUR WILL TO LIVE. YOU ARE SURRENDERING TO THE FEAR OF DYING. » « TO LIVE, TRULY LIVE, REQUIRES THE ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH. »
The words hung in the air, simple and absolute.
To live requires the acceptance of death.
Anya lived every second on the edge of annihilation. She embraced the fight, the pain, the risk. That was why she was alive, so vibrantly, terrifyingly alive. And I, in my desperate attempt to stay safe, to avoid the shadow of death, had simply stopped living. I was a preserved specimen, not a man.
I saw it then, with horrifying clarity. My choice wasn't between power and weakness.
It was between a long, safe, and meaningless existence as a ghost in Anya's world… or the risk of truly living, even if it meant staring into the void again.
I thought of her empty eyes. That was my future. An eternity of that silence. A king of a corpse-mountain, ruling over a kingdom of one.
No.
The word didn't form in my mind. It was a tremor that started in my soul. A single, seismic crack in the foundation of my fear.
"I can't live like this anymore," I said to the stars. "I'd rather die."
It wasn't a dramatic statement. It was the quiet, sober truth.
I stood up. I turned my back on the beautiful, simulated supernova.
I walked back to my training sector, my steps slow but deliberate. The door hissed open. The single, Nuisance-class demion stood there, waiting.
I didn't look at it. I closed my eyes.
I stopped reaching for the ocean of power. Instead, I turned inward. I walked, in my mind, back to that cold floor. I let the memory come. I didn't fight it. I let the cold seep into my bones. I let the feeling of my life bleeding out wash over me. I felt the terror, the absolute, primal fear of cessation.
I embraced it.
And I spoke to it.
You are a memory. You are not me. You do not get to dictate my future.
I reached for my power, not as a weapon, but as a part of myself I had abandoned. And as I did, I felt the familiar, suffocating hand of the Warden try to clamp down.
But this time, I didn't pull back. I leaned into it. I pushed through the fear.
It was agony. A psychic scream that tore through every fiber of my being. It felt like dying. Truly, honestly dying.
The demion lunged. Its stone fist aimed for my head.
My eyes snapped open. They weren't filled with fear anymore. They were filled with a terrible, serene acceptance.
I didn't try to bend space. I didn't try to summon fire.
I simply looked at the demion and, for the first time, stopped being afraid of what would happen if I failed.
A spark. Not of lightning. But of something else. Something deeper. A flicker of pure, silver potential, born not from desperation, but from a quiet, devastating peace.
The demion's fist stopped an inch from my face. The air around it had turned to crystal, frozen in a perfect, transparent lattice.
It wasn't Spatial Divinity. It wasn't any divinity I had ever tried to use.
It was something new.
A single, perfect tear traced a path down my cheek.
The Warden was still there. But I had just picked the lock.