At this point, I'm starting to lose my sense of self.
I don't know where I am or how I even got here. All I remember was that bastard using the relic on me before they all abandoned me in that pocket dimension. The dimension started collapsing after that, trapping me inside while the spatial distortion tore through everything around me, including me.
I suffered so much. So freaking much that all that was left after everything was hatred. All-consuming, burning, endless hatred.
During those moments, my mind would drift back to the past, back to the stupid and utterly foolish version of me who had come to trust them to the point where I never suspected the possibility of betrayal. That hurt more than anything. More than anything I ever felt in my entire life. From then on, I found myself here.
Wherever HERE is.
If I had to describe it, I would use the word "void." I couldn't see anything, couldn't do anything, couldn't move, couldn't even talk. I was just here, floating in nothing, aware but unable to act. I don't even know how long I've been in this place. A month? A year? A decade? A few decades? Millennia? Centuries? I don't know. Time doesn't exist here, or if it does, I can't measure it.
The only thing that has kept me sane is my memories and the hate I have for everything I once considered a creation of mine.
I'm probably dead. Most definitely dead. But why then am I here? The first time I died, I just woke up as Artemis. I never stayed in a place like this. Or maybe this is just a protective mechanism of the brain—maybe it shut down to protect my sanity from the traumatic experience I went through. I could be alive in that place but just comatose, lying somewhere while my mind hides in here. But if that's the case, then I could be stuck here for a much, much longer time.
That doesn't sound encouraging.
Why don't I just die already? I've had enough. Repeating my memories over and over again is getting old. Even creating scenarios in my mind where I killed them or tortured them as payback no longer intrigues me or interests me anymore. At this point, I'm just bored, tired, and suicidal.
Yeah. I'm back to being Jake.
Sighs.
I wasted my life.
I should have found a way to escape Atlantis. After all, the story was written with the possibility of endless worlds existing beyond it. I just needed to grow strong enough, then wait till the moment the barrier surrounding Atlantis got destroyed. Or I could have straight up escaped while it was still active if I had planned better. Who knows? Perhaps there was a way to punch a singularity through reality that would tunnel to another world.
Yeah, that probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
However, there were still other ways I could have done it. I had gained true emotions—I had become normal, human again. I could have left for a world where the plot I created didn't hold sway over everything, created my own life there, had my own adventures, and died fulfilled unlike my first life. But here I am now, worse off than in my first life.
. . . .
Huh?
I'm still here? Is this how it's going to be forever? Damn it. I'm already losing my mind at this point. Why won't this just—
"Sendal theven backaen."
Huh? What was that?
I'm sure I heard a voice. No—it sounded like a thousand voices layered into one, speaking in unison but out of sync.
"Ithen willok leadus nosael to ithaen."
That was all I heard before a tremendous level of pain hit me.
It was hell.
Hell in its truest, most absolute form. Every nerve I didn't know I still had screamed. My consciousness felt like it was being ripped apart and stitched back together over and over again. I couldn't scream because I had no voice. I couldn't thrash because I had no body. All I could do was FEEL it, every single agonizing second of it, as whatever was inside me began to do something I couldn't comprehend.