Lyanna stared down at her trembling fingers, tracing the path of the solitary tear that had escaped her eye.
"Ah," she whispered, her voice cutting through the oppressive silence of the white chamber. "So, tears do fall from my eyes. But let us not misunderstand this phenomenon. It is not because my soul is fractured by sorrow over his death. No... it is the primal, hardwired fear of consequences. It is the dread of the punishment that follows the act of murder by one's own hands."
A cold, mirthless smile surfaced on her lips as she contemplated the core of human nature.
"Humanity is fundamentally pathetic in this regard. They do not hesitate to commit atrocities, nor do they feel a shred of genuine horror while drowning in sin. What they truly fear is exposure. They tremble at the thought of their depravity being brought to light, and the retribution that the collective society will demand."
Her eyes, mirroring the cold calculations of an ancient demon,
narrowed as her mind drifted toward the grander scale of the world.
"But herein lies the true, unfiltered cruelty of existence:
what happens when someone transcends that fear? What of the individual who has absolutely no dread of exposure? Someone who tears down existing structures and writes their own laws? A monolithic, terrifyingly powerful entity looking down upon the wretched, burdened masses of this earth...
would such a person ever harbor a single second of fear when their atrocious, monstrous deeds are brought to light?"
She paused, the sheer weight of her realization settling heavily in the stagnant air.
"In a rational universe, morality and ethics should be the compass to guide such monsters back to humanity.
But look around. In whose heart does true morality actually reside? How many can claim it? None. Every single breathing soul is drowning in the swamp of their own insatiable greed. The only reason the weak and the impoverished fall victim to this grand meat grinder is not because they are inherently virtuous or pure. They simply lack the brutal strength and the terrifying power of those malicious rulers. "
She paused, then started mumbling again,
" They are victims by circumstance of weakness, not by choice of righteousness.
At the end of the day, if you strip away the layers of societal deception, everyone is cut from the exact same cloth."
Lyanna walked past Vaelith's cooling corpse, her footsteps firm, unburdened by the ghost of the man she had just slaughtered.
"Everyone in this pitch black world babbles about advancing themselves, about surviving and conquering within the parameters of these blind, arbitrary rules. Yet, the very architects who fabricated these laws are the first to violate them. They sit upon their high thrones, watching the entire human race squirm, driven by short sighted greed and petty self interest. A hundred atrocities are committed in the dark, and barely seven are dragged into the light.
How utterly foolish, how remarkably blind these masses are."
She looked up at the vast, boundaryless white ceiling, her gaze piercing through the physical space into the cosmic joke of destiny.
"And here I am. I, Lyanna, now stand in a realm where no matter how colossal the sin, no mortal law exists to punish it. But even this void is a cage.
Someone, some twisted creator, engineered this space and its absurd rules. They sit in the shadows, treating all this agony, all this corruption and injustice, as nothing more than a source of cheap entertainment."
A fierce, absolute resolve ignited within her chilling gaze a manifestation of pure, unyielding willpower that mirrored Fang Yuan's relentless pursuit of absolute freedom.
"I refuse to walk the path laid down by these rules. I refuse to play a game where the dealer is inherently corrupt. To obey the laws of a broken, twisted nature is nothing less than willing slavery. If the world is a slaughterhouse ruled by hypocritical laws, then I will not be the cattle, nor will I be the law abiding citizen. I shall become the anomaly that breaks the scale."
Despite her deadened voice, moisture continued to pool in her eyes. It was as if her own tears were betraying her true thoughts.
A bizarre, unsettling sensation washed over her.
She could feel the warmth of the fluid leaking from her eyes. Raising her trembling, blood stained hand, she pressed her fingers against her cheek where the tear track ran wet. With a deliberate, slow movement, she wiped the moisture away.
She cast one final glance at Vaelith.
Whoever he truly was, he had arrived from the direction of the western front. There had to be a path , an escape route leading out of this wretched place.
With that final calculation, Lyanna turned her face away from Vaelith's body. From this moment on, no matter what horrors or chaos awaited her ahead, she decided she would simply enjoy the ride.
Yet, as Lyanna blinked her eyes , just as she always did the world shifted.
A heavy sigh escaped the fading consciousness. Lyanna understood nothing of what was transpiring...
The stone beneath her feet was submerged in a crimson tide, a pool of blood pooling nearly four inches deep. She was still clothed in her pristine white frock, but the reality confronting her had twisted into something utterly grotesque.
She lay completely collapsed upon the floor, her limbs contorted at unnatural, sickening angles.
Her spine bent into an impossible arch, as though her mind had entirely forfeited control over the flesh.
Sprawled face down, her long, dark tresses fanned across the wet floor. She looked precisely like a broken marionette from the old days bound by invisible, mocking strings, suspended at the whim of a cruel puppeteer.
She was nothing more than a lifeless doll. Her breath came in shallow, trembling wheezes , her body shuddered violently against the freezing, blood slicked ground. Desperate and utterly helpless,
she rolled her pupils, attempting to grasp even a sliver of her familiar surroundings.
Yet, the moment her gaze shifted, a sickening, unbelievable sound echoed through the chamber the faint, tearing groan of ancient leather ripping apart.
As Lyanna's eyes strained to look sideways, her neck twisted into a hideous, unnatural angle. The skin and flesh of her throat fractured like brittle glass. The half severed neck rolled loosely to the side, her head hanging by a mere thread.
Amidst the ocean of blood, her life now depended on a single, fragile strip of skin. At any moment, it would tear completely, allowing her head to drop and shatter upon the floor , much like a broken clay idol dissolving into dust.
Lyanna couldn't understand what she was supposed to do anymore.
She couldn't even tell whether these were truly happening to her ? How had she ended up here…?
That single question echoed endlessly inside her mind like a curse whispered through an empty cathedral.
Lyanna's condition had become so dreadful that even thinking felt unbearable. Her body trembled weakly against the unforgiving ground while shadows crawled silently around her, as if the darkness itself had awakened to witness her suffering.
The air smelled of rain, blood, and ancient decay.
Unable to endure the pain any longer, Lyanna slowly closed her eyes.
....
Lyanna blinked, the fleeting darkness of her eyelids lifting just as it always did.
"What... what was that?" she murmured, her voice trembling.
The moment her vision cleared, a crushing wave of despair washed over her. She was back.
Once again, she found herself trapped inside that familiar, pristine white chamber. Her hand shot instantly to her throat, her fingers frantically clawing and tracing the skin, searching for the horrific laceration that had just severed her head.
But there was nothing. Everything was perfectly intact.
Lyanna froze, utterly bewildered. Her gaze snapped downward, scanning the floor, but Vaelith's corpse was gone. There was no blood, no body ...he had vanished completely, leaving behind not a single trace of his existence.
The sheer, repetitive absurdity of these twisted events was beginning to hollow her out, leaving her bone deep weary.
Sinking into the bleak void of her own mind, she brooded over the madness ,
I don't understand what just happened. Every single time, it is the same , I close my eyes for a fraction of a second, and when I open them, I find myself in a completely different place, discarded like a broken doll. I felt everything. That agonizing, near fatal torment... I experienced every single bit of it. It was a horror far worse than death itself. And yet, the moment I closed my eyes to embrace that death, I was violently pulled back here.
My neck... it feels so incredibly heavy right now. It feels as though someone took a severed pieces and crudely glued them back together,
and the unnatural weight of that adhesive still lingers on my skin . And Vaelith... his corpse is entirely gone. As if he never even existed in the first place...
Staring into the empty, blinding white of the room, Lyanna spoke aloud, her voice dropping into a flat, chillingly detached tone of absolute resignation,
"So... then this is how it begins,"
Refusing to waste another heartbeat in idle despair, Lyanna bolted forward, sprinting hard toward the west.
Time was bleeding away, and the longer she lingered in passive waiting, the further the answers to her burning questions slipped from her grasp.
She needed to move. After covering a vast, exhausting distance through the bleak emptiness, a faint, slender glint of green light caught her attention.
It looked like a stray beam of outside light filtering through a narrow crevice. Guided by that emerald sliver, Lyanna pressed on until she reached a distant corner of the massive chamber.
There, embedded in the structure, she spotted two windows adorned with archaic, intricate designs.
The moment her eyes locked onto them, she rushed over and flung a window wide open, peering out into the great beyond. What met her gaze was a staggering, dizzying sight , windows upon windows, stretching out into infinity.
They lined the vast expanse like boundaries marking endless different pathways. Somewhere out there, hidden amidst those thousands of cascading windows, lay the one true threshold , the solitary path that would finally lead her out of this living nightmare...
...
"Lyanna..." Vaelith gasped, his eyes snapping wide open as he bolted upright in his bed.
His hand instinctively flew to his abdomen, clutching the flesh. The ghost of that phantom pain lingered , he had felt every agonizing second of what had just transpired. Lost in the terrifying echo of the memory, his thoughts began to spiral,
Why is this happening to me? First, that unknown girl haunting my dreams, and now... now she is Lyanna..
The memory of the betrayal was vivid, a jagged scar in his mind , the cold weight of the blade as Lyanna mercilessly drove it into his stomach.
He couldn't fathom why such a horrific nightmare would plague him, nor could he comprehend why Lyanna of all people would murder him.
Yet, beneath the confusion, an inexplicable, gnawing anxiety for her safety took root in his chest. Driven by an urgent impulse, Vaelith cast aside his doubts, stood up, and headed straight toward Lyanna's room .
Meanwhile, in that starkly contrasting domain...
It was the same godforsaken realm as before. Skeletons loomed menacingly on either side, casting shadows over a landscape steeped in bloody, visceral death. Man eating, predatory insects swarmed the perimeter, leaving only a narrow, divine pathway cutting through the horror.
A short distance down this path stood a massive, towering staircase, and upon the grand throne at its summit sat Eryndara Malveris.
At the foot of the stairs, a figure clad in pitch black robes stood with his head deeply bowed, his features completely masked by the shadow of his low hanging hood.
"The Forgotten Divinity..." Malveris murmured, taking a slow, deliberate sip of a dark crimson fluid from a crystal goblet.
Her gaze drifted down toward the kneeling figure. "What do you think is about to unfold now?"
"The Forgotten Divinity..." The enigmatic man repeated the words softly, a grim, mocking undertone weaving through his voice as he echoed Malveris .
Stepping forward slightly, the cloaked figure tilted his head, his tone shifting into something cold, sharp, and detached ,
"Yes , quite a fitting title for someone like me. If you are asking what I believe... it seems that after that fateful day, my dear brother was actually contemplating placing his trust in someone. But now, you can rest assured he has finally understood his own worthlessness. Betrayal... has met betrayal."