Uriel looked at the rivers, then back at Ophanis, confused and lost.
"They are ?" His brows furrowed. "What does that an?"
Seeing her trembling lips and the slow rise and fall of her chest, her eyes smouldering with fury, only deepened his confusion.
Ophanis remained quiet for a few monts, observing each river as if she wanted to imprint them into her mind and never forget them. Only then did she turn back to Uriel.
"Each river is you. Each river represents a version of who you were in past tilines that the regressors collapsed."
Uriel’s eyes widened.
"Each river contains an echo of your soul, with your mories and experiences. Each of those rivers is a piece of you, Uriel."
"I said that when we signed the root contract, I beca a sort of conduit for the past to the present, allowing past, yet dead, versions of you to reach out."
"They reached out and fixed your Spark," she continued, her voice softening. "But they also remained."
"This is a sort of graveyard of... you."
Uriel peeled his gaze away from Ophanis, slowly panning to stare at the world of rivers around him. Looking at it all, he felt as though he had forgotten how to breathe.
His heart hamred against his ribcage, the sight of his endless lives of failure and death shocking him to his core, his very root.
Suddenly, his jaw tightened.
"And that is the price," Ophanis said, her voice so low it might as well have been a whisper. "You must choose."
"You must choose between the present and the past."
His eyes trembled.
"If you reject the sin, you’ll regain all your mories of the past, as well as your mastery and spiritual strength. You’ll imdiately bridge the gap between you and all other regressors."
"The reason why Thoryl is after you, the truths of Ayah, the matters related to the church, to Lirik, to Arthur—it’ll all be concluded as your mories return."
"You won’t be powerless anymore, nor will you be a pawn in their gas. You’ll return to your rightful position as a player."
"But everyone will forget."
Uriel’s heart skipped a beat, her words like a bucket of cold water poured over his body.
"If you reject the sin, you will rember, but no one else will. They’ll all forget you, and over ti, even as you reforge your bonds with them, those bonds will fade and be forgotten under the might of the Sin."
"You’ll essentially be a shadow."
Ophanis stared at the rune, at the Sin. "But if you accept the sin, you, in turn, will forget."
"Or rather," she corrected, "you won’t be allowed to rember. These rivers of mories will burn, and you will never rember the past."
"But above this, you’ll inherit the emotions of each river, without any context of mory or history. All the ache, with none of the experience."
"You’ll inherit the burden of n much stronger and older than you may ever beco."
Uriel closed his eyes.
"So I either hurt myself and those I love," he murmured, "or only myself."
Ophanis didn’t speak.
To say it was a hard choice would be an understatent.
On one hand, Uriel would be forgotten by everyone. Not only by his loved ones, but also by his enemies.
And considering what his grandmother had told him, it seed he had far more of those than he’d hoped.
Lirik, Thoryl, Celeste, Salazar, Lady Emt, the Loom, the governnt, and most likely the sentinels—the list was long. Truly.
Not only would his enemies forget him, but he would rember them, and most likely all of their weaknesses and future paths of developnt.
But he’d be alone. Forever.
Such a fate ensured he’d never be rembered by anyone or anything. He would exist in isolation, endlessly.
Was such a life worth living?
And beyond that, if he regained the mories of all his past lives, as endless as they seed to be, would he still truly be... him?
Would he still be Uriel, or a chira of past echoes?
If he pushed the thought further, and rembered that Thoryl’s plan wasn’t rely to kill him but to cripple all those around him, who was to say that forcefully erasing their mories wouldn’t bring about the sa harm?
What if their souls instantly collapsed?
On the other hand, there was a path that would most likely lead to his death.
He would never rember. Never. No matter what anyone did, the past would be gone forever. And not only that, he would inherit the emotions of all iterations of himself.
Their rage, sadness, madness, joy, affections—he would inherit all of it. And as soone with a Spark rooted in emotion, Uriel could easily understand the form of hell he would be trapping himself in.
He would forever lag behind the regressors. They would always know more about him than he did about them, and every day would be a gamble.
He would be, as Thoryl had once called him, a lamb—a lamb anyone could seize and slaughter.
"..."
Uriel sighed.
He stared up at what lay above him: a white void tainted gold.
"What is the Gate of Truth?" he suddenly asked Ophanis.
"Sothing beyond my comprehension?" he added before she could answer.
She nodded. "So is the Eye."
He humd. "And you say... Thoryl was able to indirectly use those things to try and kill ? And past echoes of myself used them to fix my Spark?"
She nodded again, unsure where he was going.
But he didn’t elaborate. In fact, he went entirely silent.
...
Uriel let the silence reign, a deep stillness washing over him.
’How peaceful.’
He was only just noticing it now, but the ghostly form he inhabited within his Mind Palace wasn’t his physical body.
It was the first ti in his life he was conscious while not being in his body. The first ti he was aware without his disease gnawing at his sanity.
The pain, the burns, the weakness, the aches, the numbness, he felt none of it.
For the first ti in his life, he felt free.
It was as if he were floating in a void of nothing, yet everything, free of sensation, yet overwheld by a world of calm and quiet pleasure.
For the first, and last, ti, he felt free.
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