"What's out there?"
When I ask this question, I would hear about monsters, kings, demons, and heroes.
Wonderful, no?
So, I ask again.
"What awaits my footsteps?"
Then I would hear about the great plains, the vast deserts, the frigid wastelands, and terrifying eternal flames.
But…
"How can I get there?"
Then, I would receive nothing but silence. It was the silence of the old man in front of me, clad in a long white robe, whose shoulders drooped the moment I expressed my disappointment.
A refusal, nice and crisp to shatter my heart's expectations.
Not long after that, I would hear screams.
—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
From voices I had grown up with. From friends I made at the table, when all of us busied ourselves with our food—munching on hard, nutrient-filled bricks. From people who had indulged me in their stories.
Of their yearning for the outside world.
"Good for you," I would say, unaware of how much those words hurt.
Now, I know.
I know why the lights in their eyes shattered the moment those words left my lips.
It all happened in an instant.
***
I remembered screaming. The same, monotonous cries that made sure the doctors knew how much pain I was in.
Louder screams meant that my pain tolerance wouldn't suffice.
Softer screams, and they could happily proceed with more blades and needles, harvesting the information they needed.
It was nice to see them smile. To see them celebrate from the effects of my blood.
To watch them marvel at the sight of my beating heart in their hands.
"…Huh?"
My… heart… they…
What… did… they… do…?
Such were my sluggish thoughts at that time. I tried to reach out, hoping to retrieve what should be mine. But my arms were much too short.
I was a child.
A child whose soul was much older. Transplanted from body to body by those doctors. No… Now that my memories have become clearer… They were priests. I'm sure of it.
"Sigh,"
I've taken yet another body. Merged with their mind and memories. Everything that they had once been.
It is now me.
Zöe.
The same Zöe who now stood within the endless ruins of the facility which held me for more than one lifetime.
I've been trapped… for too long.
Confined in grim four corners and shackled to the bed frame. No matter which body I owned. Nor which face I wielded, universally beautiful or for specific preferences.
All of them were bound, shackled, and chained.
But that was fine.
After all, death wasn't a concern. All I wished for was a chance to venture out. To see the world beyond this damned hell.
To no longer hear those screams. Those voices. Those monotonous and analytical tones!
A wry smile formed on the face of my new body. With the merging of memories, I assimilated those that I deemed useful to me. Anything tied to this body's old identity? My instincts had already wiped clean.
Call it… A veteran body-switcher's habit.
Otherwise, I would no longer be Zöe. Instead, my name would be hundreds of characters long.
"…I see,"
The smile on my face turned sad.
It seems like… I was a monster. At least to this human reincarnator, I was indeed a monster.
"…You idiot."
I could not help but chide this young man. He destroyed the facility in the hopes of destroying what I would become in the future.
However, he miscalculated.
I could feel the frown forming on my face while I parsed through the relevant memories.
Eve, this young man I now inhabit, had not thought about why exactly I turned out to become a monster. Looking at the cities I turned into ghost towns in the future, I realized that the monster Eve knew, was nothing like me.
I shivered.
That was not me.
Instead, it was some more monstrous entity who consumed me and my powers. Now, Eve had to confront that entity, whose existence wasn't shackled by the limitations I bore.
Thus, his death.
And… my freedom.
"I don't know how to feel…"
Eve had reincarnated, moving through time to live another, hopefully more prosperous life. Yet he lived a shorter life than he had before.
His soul, which should have returned yet another time… has been erased from existence.
By me.
"…Thank you, Eve."
In the end, I chose gratitude. Eve just gave me the greatest opportunity of my several lifetimes.
I have a chance to become free.
In fact, I have a chance to roam more than just the world outside my cell. Colour me surprised when I saw, from Eve's memories of the past… that this wasn't the only world that existed.
"The Tower of Thorns…"
A manifestation of the myriad realms stacked on top of each other.
How crazy was that?
However, I hastily shook my head, refusing to grow as confident as Eve had been. If even a reincarnator can receive such an unfortunate end… then how can I, whose only leverage was that failure of a reincarnator's memories?
A woman I once possessed would have said this:
"If you follow the memories of a failure, wouldn't you become prone to their own shortcomings as well?"
I muttered those words aloud, almost as if I could hear her voice.
"Sigh,"
I still mourned for her soul.
It is by this logic that I filtered even more of Eve's memories, keeping only what I could confirm as facts from the get go. Everything else? I would keep as back up just in case certain things were indeed true.
After all…
What if Eve's understanding of the Tower of Thorns was insufficient?
A little knowledge is more dangerous than none at all.
I, a consumer of identities, held this statement close to my heart. It is my defining motto.
However, I still had this nagging feeling in the back of my brain:
"I would never ever know enough to be safe…"
And this fact irked me.
Motivating me to finally move my feet and climb the ashen ruins before me. The fire that razed even concrete to the ground, clearly wasn't scientific.
It was the work of that entity.
"Ohohoho? I thought I killed you already, you damn reincarnator scum."
There it was. A hearty laugh. A disdainful line.
The words I definitely did not want to hear while I inhabited Eve's body.
Gods damn it all.
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Polls will release after Chapter 12. The novel will be meaty enough for sufficient context by then.
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