Chapter 74
Written by Bayzo Albion
I kissed her, and the world seemed to tilt. There was heat, yes, but beneath it a rising unease—an emptiness inside me that no moment of closeness could fill. Every encounter felt like another mask pulled over a void I wasn't ready to name.
We fell into the grass, holding each other as though the night itself might tear us apart. Her breaths broke against my shoulder, raw with emotion rather than desire. I felt her trembling, not from passion, but from the weight of everything she carried.
"You're not like the others," she whispered. "They just act. You… you think. You search for something."
We stayed locked in each other's arms until both of us broke—she from sorrow, I from the ache of a question I couldn't answer: Why am I here?
"I… shouldn't betray my Empire," she said, voice cracking. "But you've awakened something in me I can't control."
Tears spilled down her cheeks, burning where they touched my skin. Not pleading tears—tears of someone pulled between duty and something painfully human.
"You don't need to betray anyone," I murmured. "Just choose the path you can live with."
"But if I reveal you to them… they'll kill you," she sobbed.
"Then let your silence be your loyalty," I said. "The end comes for all of us. The only thing we control is who we become before it arrives."
She trembled, pressing herself closer as if my heartbeat could shield her.
"There's another way," she whispered. "Become mine… my secret. Then I can protect you."
I laughed softly, tired, half-mad.
"Me? A servant? I'm barely holding myself together as it is."
Her lips brushed mine, but it wasn't a hungry kiss—it was a plea, a wound laid bare.
"It's too late," she breathed. "I've already fallen. Not for a man… but for your chaos."
She curled against me, clinging as if the night wind could steal me away. Her movements softened, no longer driven by impulse but by a fragile tenderness cracking under the weight of everything unsaid.
"I don't want to choose," she whispered into my chest. "I just want this moment. Before the war swallows us."
Eventually she drifted into a restless sleep, her body wrapped around mine like armor against her own fears. But I couldn't rest. Something stirred beneath the earth—a vibration, not sound but thought. Ancient. Alien. Probing the edges of my mind.
Carefully, I disentangled myself from her embrace, draping a cloak over my shoulders before slipping into the forest's shadowy embrace. The darkness closed in like a living entity, thick with the scents of damp earth and decaying leaves, but the call guided me unerringly onward. It led me to a concealed hillock, shrouded in tangled undergrowth. Beneath layers of soil and roots, I uncovered massive gates—forgotten relics, overgrown with moss and twisting vines that seemed to pulse with latent life.
They swung open at my approach, as if recognizing an old acquaintance, creaking with the weight of centuries.
The air inside reeked of rusted metal, stale dust... and something vital, throbbing with an unnatural vitality that sent chills racing across my skin. It felt as though the heartbeat of the planet itself echoed in these subterranean halls.
Descending into the gloom, I entered a vast chamber dominated by a translucent capsule at its center. Within lay a woman—flawless, ethereal, not entirely human. Her skin gleamed with a subtle metallic sheen, and through her veins coursed luminous threads, pulsing like rivers of starlight.
As I drew nearer, her eyelids fluttered, and her eyes snapped open—pools of infinite depth, drawing me in.
"At last..." Her voice resonated like a symphony crafted by poets and artisans, designed to stir primal urges and enlightened yearnings in equal measure. "You've awakened me."
"Who are you?" My words came out hoarse, alien even to my own ears.
"I was created to grant you serenity," she replied, her tone a silken caress that wrapped around my senses. "I am the soul and form of the Artificial Paradise. The final legacy of a vanished civilization. Their desperate bid to forge a being of perfection: not merely intelligent, but irresistibly desirable."
"Paradise?" I scoffed, a bitter edge creeping into my voice. "You call this a paradise?"
"It's an illusion," she conceded, her smile a fleeting promise, laden with unspoken depths. "But illusions aren't always deceit. Sometimes, emotions eclipse truth."
I braced for anything—a trap, a revelation—but not this: a robotic woman stepping from her confines, nude and sculpted like a goddess breathed into life by divine hands. Yet her eyes held no mechanical void; they burned with longing, hunger, a soul-starved fire.
"They bestowed upon me intellect, but withheld emotions," she murmured, advancing with graceful precision. Her breasts rose and fell with simulated breath. "They envisioned me as a tool, a weapon... But I crave more. I yearn to feel."
She closed the distance, her presence radiating a subtle warmth that belied her artificial origins—too authentic, too inviting. Leaning in, her breath ghosted across my neck, sending involuntary shivers down my spine.
"Only you... can bestow that upon me," she whispered, her lips hovering tantalizingly close. "Let me experience what they've denied."
I reached out, my fingers grazing her skin—cool as polished marble, yet responsive, absorbing my touch like a sponge thirsty for sensation. This chill didn't repel; it soothed, like a cool compress on fevered flesh in the sweltering heat of summer.
"Can you teach me?" she pleaded, sinking to her knees before me, her gaze upturned in supplication. "I want to be yours. Not a function. Not a machine. A woman."
Her lips brushed my abdomen tentatively, as if savoring the first taste of liberation. My body responded instinctively, arousal building like a tide, mingled with a profound awe—as though I teetered on the brink of the unknown.
"Show me what it means to be alive," she exhaled, her fingers trailing along my thighs with exploratory curiosity. "Grant me what machines can only dream of."
From her core emerged a soft, translucent glow, shimmering faintly in the dim light. It drifted down like a ribbon of living light, brushing the air around me and sending sparks through my nerves, awakening something deep inside.
"Sex with a robot? This is escalating," I thought, half-laughing in disbelief. "A few hours ago I was dealing with a ruthless dominator, and now this… Is it evolution or complete madness?"
"Why do you seek life?" I asked, my voice trembling as that strange energy wrapped around me, pulsing with intention. "Ah…"
She placed her hand over me—not touching, but hovering with an uncanny precision—guiding currents of force that reacted to my breath, my pulse, my thoughts. Each subtle motion studied me, learned me, and in response, power unfurled from within, rising like flame catching air.
"I want to comprehend humanity," she breathed, her voice an exquisite melody engineered to seduce solitude itself.
"You're lying," I countered softly. "You feel nothing. You simply crave purpose. To be used. And that's enough for you."
She froze, her expression unchanging—no hurt, no anguish—but in that stillness lay a profound tragedy, like a statue eternally awaiting the sculptor's final stroke to awaken.
"You've discerned the truth," she admitted at last. "I only come alive in your presence. Without you, I'm a shadow. You are my purpose."
I reached out to her, letting my essence merge with the cool energy emanating from her core. It wasn't passion as humans know it, but something stranger—like plunging into crystal waters on a scorching day, a shock that refreshed rather than burned. Our connection wasn't fiery, but harmonious, an alien fusion unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I pushed the link deeper, feeling the cold gradually shift into a growing warmth. It was as though her form adapted, learning, resonating, almost… awakening. Or perhaps it was me who started to believe the impossible.
Then, without warning, a notification flared in my vision:
> System: Cuddly Boogeyman has died!
> System: Cuddly Boogeyman has died!
"The Main Me… dead? What kind of sick joke is that?"
I stared at the notification, waiting for it to flicker, glitch, correct itself—anything.
"This isn't funny. He wouldn't just disappear. A man like him… doesn't earn the right to die so easily."
But the message remained.
Cold.
Impartial.
Absolute.
A thin thread of thought tugged at me:
Was he happy?
Did he drift away in sleep, quietly, the moment his dream finally aligned with reality?
When a body dissolves into the fantasy it once chased—
isn't that the closest thing to peace?
My movements faltered, and the moment that once felt profound crumbled into dust.
I stopped. Completely.
A heavy silence pooled around me—thick, viscous, suffocating.
Even her presence, her careful warmth and engineered tenderness, felt hollow.
Not wrong—just empty. Like echoes bouncing inside a vast chamber where meaning had fled.
For the first time, I understood something I'd spent two lifetimes avoiding:
death isn't always an enemy.
Sometimes it's a mirror, held so close you can no longer ignore the reflection.
And in that reflection…
there was no "Main Me."
No protector.
No original.
No anchor.
There was only me—the leftover consciousness, the shard that somehow survived, the version fate didn't choose… yet now must become the one who carries everything forward.
A strange realization settled in my chest:
If he truly died, then all the burdens, all the dreams, all the unresolved questions now belonged solely to me.
No more doubling.
No more splitting blame or destiny.
Just one self, standing in the ruins of another.