Elias felt his whole body tremble in pain. Cracking sounds filled his ears as he felt his leg slip out of the warm blob.
A deafening sound echoed on the river as water splashed around, Elias closed his eyes and gritted his teeth in pain. He could not feel his hands entirely and was being tormented by agonizing pain in his legs.
After the initial shock of falling into the river, he opened his eyes and frantically moved his head.
The blob was nowhere to be found, enduring the pain Elias swam towards the nearest sharp rock
He started to inspect the rock thoroughly; After few minutes of inspection, he sighed and smashed the rock
Could it be hiding in a crack?
Elias started smashing all the rocks he could. At first he counted them, but soon lost count after one hundred and thirty. Before he could destroy all the rocks, he had to rest and sleep, if he could do that in the pain.
Elias was now swimming towards the cube; his body was firm enough to swim against the currents, but right now he was barely swimming.
The blob… I understand it now
Elias relaxed his muscles and mind. He closed his eyes and forcefully ignored the pain. He opened his mouth and forcefully sank into the river.
Water entered his mouth, and he drank it; he forcefully breathed in the water and made sure that he did not let out the water.
He was drowning.
He felt burning pain in his lungs as if someone had set his innards on fire. He heard a pop sound in his ears as his eyes burned horribly.
He kept sinking
He felt as if something was squeezing him from all sides, as his brain scrambled for relief. He instinctively started swimming, but then forced himself to stop.
He saw a red tiger run towards him; it bit off his hands before he blacked out.
The water churned and turned around his chest before compressing on it. His wet purple hair fluttered in the water as the whole river's flow changed. A whirlpool formed with his tan chest as its base.
The water level started to decrease as the whole river started getting absorbed into him. Elias's body rose from the water as the whole river disappeared into him.
The surrounding mist entered his mouth and condensed within him, filling him up completely.
Wild winds blew as the heavens seemingly collapsed, and the earth shattered. Elias was the focal point of it all.
If was conscious, he would have recalled the legend of the Faceless boy
Legend of the Faceless Boy was an old folk tale which stated the starting of the world.
Its first chapter was aptly named 1. Beginning.
It stated that once everything was one. Water existed as fire, and air was wood. Everything was one. However, at the call of something, everything separated into heaven and earth. No one knew what called them, but something did.
Heaven consisted of time and space. Earth consisted of material and energy.
They existed in each other and were dependent on each other. The heavens were meant to expand for eternity, and the earth was meant to react with itself for eternity.
Somewhere between eternity, heaven and earth felt lonely. They felt the distance between them was infinitely apart, as if they were in suspension, being so finely mixed that differentiating them was impossible but being so far that they never truly interacted with each other.
thus they tried to create a bridge.
When the earth tried to mix itself to form the foundation for the bridge, it found itself unable to. So, it created a small bridge within itself. This new, small bridge allowed material and energy to mix and react with itself.
The heavens expanded and created Fate and life force to bridge the gap between itself and Earth. Fate guided life force, and life force acted as the core of the bridge.
When fate and life force mixed with material and energy, the world's first beast was formed.
When heaven and earth observed the beast, they were deeply disappointed. The bridge they had built was too fragile, too small for them.
The heavens expanded time and allowed the beast to grow. The beast created more beasts, and with time; it created beasts which looked different from each other.
After the bridge was nurtured by time, it turned into a single faceless boy.
The faceless boy was then used by the heavens and earth as a bridge. The surrounding space fluctuated, and the boy aged randomly. It was constantly taking different forms and felt hot and cold without any pattern.
The heaven and earth had to control themselves for the bridge to not collapse, thus they cut themselves into smaller parts.
That was when the Faceless boy could finally breathe its first, carefree breath.