<16/6/843 of the Unified Arcanum Calendar (2869 CE)>
His mismatched eyes were the color of honey and stormy blue, sharp, upturned, and feline-like with the elegance of royalty, and his hair was the epitome of classic, graced in silver. Perfectly tousled and parted down the middle. His face was youthful, boyish, and soft, yet sharp when it counted, always carrying a certain smirk that became his signature of sorts.
But now? They lacked all color, the vivid nature of his eyes, drained lifeless. His hair was tainted and matted with his very own blood, and his face drawn tight with a tangle of negative emotions as he stood at the center of the hall, the ceremony hall in which he was just recognized as the Crown Prince. The ceremonial hall that was intended to celebrate him, and indeed it did.
But when? he asked himself.
Time lost all meaning in this very moment, the track of it, useless still, for what was the point of time if there was no more time to live? At least that was the excuse Sora had told himself. He knew that day was no longer, and that night had fallen; he knew from the slivers of moonlight that came through the arched panes, painting the gilded floors and extravagant walls silver, but as the night lengthened, they could only illuminate the nightmare in which he stood within. Thus, time became a meaningless charade.
He lived for pride, for arrogance. He was over-confident and egotistical. Four were one and the same, yet oh so vast in difference; they were the very shield he had used to protect himself, the very blade that cut down his foes, but his loved ones too. These emotions of his were his beloved; they were this mask of his that he rarely ever removed. Truly, he was a narcissist. One who has been in an eternal war against the world itself, the same world that forced him to kneel.
But I refuse.
Never kneel. That was the philosophy he lived by. Kneeling was weakness. Kneeling was defeat, and kneeling… he was never good at.
Honestly, I've had worse days.
It was a lie, of course. A blatant, pathetic attempt to keep his ego from bruising as easily as his skin. But as his eyes darted frantically across the never-ending hall, realizing he was utterly alone. He thought some entitlement to his self-delusion would've sufficed.
All alone. Nothing, nobody. Just the silence, me… and her.
He should've died immediately.
So why? Why am I still here, hopelessly hanging on, delaying the inevitable?
Dying slower than he should be. As if Death herself enjoyed the delay.
Pleasuring herself with me.
Sora stumbled. Backward, or forward, unable to really tell. Pain didn't make sense. Weight didn't either. Was he falling? Perhaps he was floating? So much pressure but none at all. His mind screamed questions, but never an answer to say.
Heat flooded through him, white-hot. Searing skin. Screaming heat.
Blood pooled down his chin, but he wasn't coughing. He simply couldn't, not when he had no lungs to do so. No lungs, no cough, no breath. Just the slow, humiliating delay of death.
Then his gaze drifted downward. His hands instinctively went to his torso… and found nothing. Nothing to grasp. His eyes widened with the realization. Only warm blood pooled across his palms, thick and metallic, sliding down over his leather white gloves, soaking his hands through the seams.
His legs trembled, but somehow, he was still standing. Somehow, he hadn't collapsed yet. Still alive.
Nothing held him together. No spine. No organs. Not even bone. Nothing but weak fragments of skin and ruined tissue was barely connecting his upper half to his lower. And yet… he hadn't fallen.
Had I ever been standing at all?
The same blood poured freely from the perfect circle carved through his torso just beneath the curve of his lower chest, where his abdomen used to be.
Horror flooded through him, engulfing him in its very existence. But not only horror… Relief as well.
The world began to pulse at the edges of his vision, and the lights of the hall dimmed to black as his vision faded. Was this it? Did he finally reach the end?
Sora De Astra was never good at kneeling. Especially now, as he found himself no longer dying in his very own ceremony, but alive and well somewhere else… sometime else, entirely. He stood in this unfamiliar place, failing to make sense of what his eyes perceived.
And yet my body understands.
Taking it all in was all he could do. The ground beneath his feet was hard and gray—a regular sidewalk, really. But it wasn't right. It seemingly stretched on forever in straight, senseless lines. Voices moved around him, too many to count, and never-ending. People passed by wearing regular clothes: short sleeves, thin layers, colors that did not belong together. It didn't make sense, because despite the ordinary… he died.
And yet… And yet he watched as the people around him laughed. They talked. They lived. They lived, not subject to oppression. They lived like humans and not lambs for slaughter.
The air was heavy with carbon, it was heavy with oil, with smoke, and more he couldn't recall yet somehow recognized. Devoid of the cold of death. Rain fell heavily despite the scorching sun above, soaking his hair, slick against his forehead, soaking his clothes, clothes unfit for a member of the royal De Astra house—running shoes, black in color, and a plain blue tracksuit. Not regal at all.
Tall structures loomed overhead, stacked stone, marble, steel, and glass clawing at the sky, arrogant fingers breaking the cloud barrier between ground and space. Between the unfamiliar and the cosmos beyond.
Tilting his head back, his chest tightened without his will with familiarity despite the unfamiliarity.
Everything that surrounded him was so… familiar. And yet so… in the past.
The rhythm of footsteps, the distant roar of some gargantuan, ancient vehicle rushing past, exuding dangerous gases. He didn't know. He shouldn't know. But his chest ached like he had been here before. Like he had walked these streets a long time ago. Like he belonged here, the warmth of the air against his skin resonated like muscle memory. Like a life he had forgotten how to remember.
What is this? Where am I?
His hands lifted on instinct. A watch with a silver strap wrapped around his left wrist, the navy analogue, glinted a deep, rich blue under the blazing sun. His gaze lingered for a moment… Uncalloused at the palmar pads. In fact, his hands were smooth and unscarred altogether.
That's not right.
Someone brushed past his shoulder.
"Hey, watch it."
The words shouldn't mean anything. He was just a man. An ordinary man in the most unsettling way. Dark hair slicked back, faint stubble along his jaw, tired, downturned eyes half-focused on whatever ancient-looking device he was holding in his right hand. A crease lined his brow, irritation mild and fleeting, nothing important enough to linger on.
A dark strap ran diagonally across his chest, bag slung at his side, pressing against his brown suit.
He was human.
Better yet, he's Real.
Their eyes met for the briefest moment. He saw him, actually saw him. Not a crown prince, not impudent, not arrogant, nor prideful. Just… someone in the way. And for the first time in his life, He wasn't looked down upon.
I'm not looked down upon…
The ordinary man sighed, already stepping past Sora as his attention drifted elsewhere.
"Pay attention, man."
And then he was gone.
Simple words that shouldn't have meant anything.
They don't. They don't. They don't.
But they did.
His heart lurched as more people moved around him. Bumping shoulders. Brushing arms. Laughing, arguing, and living. Their heat pressed in from all sides, bodies colliding without any trace of politeness. Someone clipped his elbow. Another nearly ran into his chest whilst the crowd continuously flowed.
He turned in place, disoriented.
Wait.
The air thickened. The ground felt less solid. The edges of the world rippled like water struck by stone.
WAIT!
His left hand shot out, fingers closing on nothing but space between moving bodies. A middle-aged lady swatted his arm away with an annoyed grunt. Another shoulder slammed into him, hard enough to stagger him back a step.
"Hey!"
"Watch where you're going!"
"Move!"
Their voices overlapped, resounding sharply in his ears.
Am I dreaming? No, I couldn't be. Not while I'm at death's door. Not when what I'm seeing is… all so—real.
Please.
The world shuddered. The edges blurred, bending inward like glass under pressure. Sound stretched and warped eternally, screaming infinitely, yet silently.
I don't know what this place is. I don't understand it. But I know… I know—that—that I don't want to leave it.
And so I reach again, clawing between the onslaught of individuals now, desperation burning hot in my chest. My hands pass through empty gaps where people just were. My body, already half-gone.
"Wait. Please," I choke out.
The pull tightens violently. My voice cracks, thin and desperate, nothing like me. Nothing like me at all.
"I don't want to—"
Cold fingers wrap around my ribs, yanking me backward as the crowd stretches and smears, faces blurring into streaks of color and sound.
"Please!" I beg, voice breaking completely now as my fingers grasp at air one last time.
"Don't—don't take me away, please!"
Then a single second, a glimpse of his reflection from one overly polished window, and suddenly he was all alone, the surrounding crowd gone as if they never existed to begin with. The city around him faded until it was only him and the window… His reflection looked back, and it was not a silver-haired boy in regal clothing; his eyes were not sharp nor cat-like, his eyes weren't elegant nor dissonant in color.
No.
His eyes were argent in color, round, and wide set rather than upturned and sharp, gleaming with curious wonder behind round, frameless glasses. His hair was brown, and not silver. His face was boyish and youthful, much like his own, and yet this wasn't his face. He knew this for sure, for his face had no beauty mark beneath the left corner of his lips. And yet this face did.
So, who was this? Who was he? Who am I?
And the answer? A flash of nothing. It was not darkness, it was not blindness, it was a space of inevitability, a space in which nothing starts or ends, a space in which nothing existed.