Slowly descending, Noctis relied on a few threads wrapped around his hand to brake his fall. Their ends extended from his hand and disappeared into the far distance above.
The goal of reaching the nursing fragment of the fate realm closer than ever before.
Today, he would make his attempt.
Wrapped around a branch of a ginormous tree, these threads clung to the wood hundreds of meters above.
The tree dwarfed the cliff where Noctis had been resting and stretched downward to the canyon floor, which he hoped to reach.
Which made the perfect ladder.
As he descended, the red shimmer from above was quickly fully blocked by the cliff to his back and overshadowed by the golden luster of the thread that was reaching and breaking through the sky, making the tree with its lustrous blue leaves look minuscule in comparison.
On complete alert, Noctis was closing in on the floor, the beasts nearby fully able to jump and attack the completely open Noctis, who should have looked like an easy meal.
A few beeted breaths later, waiting for something, anything really to happen, a bit of a perplexed expression found its way onto his face.
Waiting for a few more silent moments, still steadily descending, nothing happened.
More time passed, and the floor was now in sight, only about fifty meters away.
Why was it so quiet?
Where was everybody, everything?
This was highly unusual, to say the least.
Did the creatures in the surroundings notice the signs and migrate in advance?
Holding out his eyes for any abnormalities, he noticed his body feeling slightly lighter.
His descent was also subtly slowing down.
Noctis felt lighter, not just because he was closing in on the golden light, which was a source of nourishment for him.
There was something different.
After all, his descent would stay unaffected if it were just this.
And was it him, or did the blue luster of the tree's leaves dim a little, a dark black vein difficult to discover, spanning upwards from the tree's trunk, giving it a brittle feeling.
Stopping his descent deliberately, Noctis swung his body toward the trunk of the tree with a silent swaying motion.
After fastening his position, he looked at the tree for a few more moments.
In one seamless movement, he then suddenly snapped off a small piece of bark. The ancient bark gave little resistance, which then whirled upward with only a small flick of his wrist.
What he saw was what one would expect, and at the same time, completely unexpected.
The dark piece of bark flew up, way too far, for the little force he had put behind the throw.
Its movements in slow motion, it flew up tens of meters and started its descent, just as slowly. The bark's descent slowed further with each second—it closed in on the floor.
First, easing downward.
Then it slowed, resembling a gliding motion.
And then it started crawling down inch by inch, barely making any progress.
Before stopping in mid-air, floating a few meters above the ground, not even inching forward anymore.
Watching this, Noctis was intrigued. At the same time, he felt a bit hurried.
These were the first signs of the realm's retaliation.
"Are there any creatures left in this area?"
Noctis waited patiently after whispering the words.
A friendly voice resounded throughout Noctis' mind a moment later, a certain somberness hidden in it.
"We are too close to the void, so my predictions won't be very viable… But, I have yet to foresee a singular thread cross our path since entering the canyon."
Rubbing his forehead for a few seconds, he felt a bit of annoyance at the constant interferences with his ability.
First, he was starving, which weakened him substantially, and now there is the void's interference.
What were the chances?!
Tuning out other distractions, Noctis released his grip on the thread, purposefully dropping the remaining twenty meters to the ground below, fully committed to a free fall.
Well, what was the fun of knowing everything beforehand, right?
"Ha, ha." Letting out a laugh, as he heard the winds rush by his ears, the silent nagging of a disgruntled individual rang in the back of his mind.
"Could you please stop risking our lives so thoughtlessly?"
Ignoring the somewhat strained voice trying to uphold politeness ringing in his head, he mused.
Would he not start floating shortly before hitting the ground, as the piece of bark did?
Trapped there in the air, maybe forever?
What a pointless end to a pointless existence.
Of course not. That was unlikely, and even if he were trapped there for the rest of his life, it would be quite a short one, considering everything here would soon be disintegrated, if he didn't starve before that.
Mid-fall, Noctis twisted his body, bracing for an appropriate landing, and touched down with unnatural agility, the sign on his chest briefly flashing up.
His feet landed first, before falling into a crouch to lessen the impact.
The instant he landed, a loud crack shattered the forest's silence, sending a wave of dust into the surrounding area. Peculiar enough, the dust didn't seem to make any attempts to settle, simply floating off into oblivion.
As he stood up from his crouching position, Noctis first looked at the piece of bark pecfully floating next to him, a few bebles having joined it the next moment.
Below him, a rock lay shattered, a huge web of cracks marring its exterior.
What am I made of, these days?
Staring at the sight, with amusement, his body had not the slightest scratch.
"Ha, ha, ha." He let out another chuckle, his hand covering his eyes. He found the scene so terribly funny, for whatever reason.
The slow decay of the word. It was just so similar…
So similar to the decay of his own...
Noctis slid one hand into his pocket, then tapped a pebble hovering in front of him with a light finger. He watched as it drifted away, retaining its full momentum throughout.
This was truly an intriguing event.
"Ha, ha"
Laughing once more, a bit self-deprecatingly this time.
At least this effect won't be hindering me too much in my own goals.
This phenomenon was one of the signs from the space realm that it was about to retaliate against the intruder that had made its nest in its own body.
It was gathering strength, weakening the gravitational pull surrounding him, for it to come back with far greater force, at a later time.
Noctis himself was far less affected for the moment, since he was not of the Space realms descent.
And one of the fundamental rules of authorities was that members of the same Authority could influence one another more strongly than members of unrelated authorities.
The space realm, of course, had less control over him than the surroundings, creating this bizarre effect.
After all, most of the plants and minerals here were born of the space realm and so were part of it, and therefore, were affected by it to a far greater extent.
While he was an outsider, his species coming from the hearth realm, the birthplace of humanity, and he himself was a wielder of a fate fragment, an authority of another realm.
However, such environmental disturbances would only intensify over time, eventually growing strong enough to crush even him, who was less affected by the anomalies.
Walking through the tightly packed forest, Noctis noticed the flora growing less and less vibrant blue the closer he moved towards the golden light.
Trees grew small and brittle, the remains of flowers falling apart, dark veins disrupting their bluish glint, carcasses and bones, spread throughout the environment.
What was this place before the descent of fate?
Judging from the unnatural number of long-decayed corpses, either a beast of the death or a change authority had made its way through here, or the place as a whole had a special meaning beforehand.
Thinking about it, why did that bird try to intimidate the void sea so vehemently, even when by all means its instincts should have told it to run?
As the one-man party closed in on the center of the circular canyon, the number of corpses began to increase, and the black decay, infecting and absorbing the plants, grew visibly stronger.
The source of this decay wasn't hard to guess.
Unlike the corpses littering the vista, it seemed new, foreign to these lands. A
verting his gaze from a particularly liquifide plant, its leaves no longer leaf-shaped, the stem of the plant, all that was left of it, drenched in a layer of black sludge. Surrounding it, a puddle of the tar-like liquid had formed.
Observing the sight with an apathetic gaze, his eyes eventually landed on the source of it all.
Before him spread a near-endless sea of black sludge. Beyond it, a golden string—obscured by a dark, foggy substance—shimmered.
This string had broken through the world barrier, allowing it to invade and corrupt these lands.
Was this intended by the god of fate or a mere coincidence? Noctis could not tell, not nearly arrogant enough to guess the thoughts of the gods.
Watching the substance with a deep-seated primal fear, a fear he thought he had long laid to rest.
Focusing his eyes for a split second, a magical yet terrifying sight revealed itself before him, as his eyes lit up with a golden glint.
Golden threads, before unseen, were all pulled towards the sea before him, turning black in the process, fading and eventually decaying.
Every single one of them showed a possible fate of his, every single one revealing how he could end up, what he could become if a single misstep shattered his path.
The sight struck him with a cold, gnawing fear—the kind that settled into his bones and threatened to paralyze.
Each future unraveled like a delicate thread before his mind's eye, some ending in darkness, some riddled with agony or despair. Yet beneath the heaviness pressing into his chest, awe flickered, mingled with a stubborn resolve not to become just another broken strand.
His heart pounded, determination rising to meet dread: whatever awaited him, he refused to let these visions define him.
After all, fate was not absolute… not anymore.
Noctis inhaled slowly, brow furrowing, and fixed his gaze on the golden light ahead, letting fear sharpen his purpose.
But what had he truly to fear, after all?
People could only fear if they had something to lose.
What had he to lose? Nothing but a pitifully meaningless life.
What had he to gain? The opportunity to prolong that pitifully meaningless life.
So in the end, it was all meaningless.
At least it would be exciting, right?
His smile bloomed once more, his eyes reflecting the dark, never-ending emptiness in front.
Deep within, he knew someday he would be part of this corruptive entity, just like all those others on the path of Authority.
This was the fate designated for them all.
A shared fate for all.