Music for today:
still waiting
syoutu.be/soLKu7M9LQA
Chapter 485: Waiting
N/A - N/A : Year 39 (2nd Year in Void) : Within The Void
-----
- Zachari ~
-Who.. am I..?- Sat on what felt like the edge of infinity, my mind never could find rest. -Where.. am I..?-
No matter how deep the stillness.. how vast the darkness.. I'd find myself asking questions I couldn't understand in a voice I didn't recognize...
In that space.. in that manifestation of eternity.. fragnts of mories would co and go as they pleased—visualizations from a life that eluded coming in and out of familiarity as if I had stuck my paw in a barrel of fish, trying to recognize them by the passage of currents alone.
It was only ever fruitless, but for so reason, I always tried... When one surfaced, I'd reach for it with everything I had—stretch every ntal thought to its limit as if to try and hook sothing.. anything...
But it never worked.
Floating in that place, I found ho in silence, and with ti, began ignoring whatever inklings surfaced.
I was forgetting sothing.. I knew I was.. but after so many fruitless eons.. I had stopped trying...
Feeling visions co and go, I let them drift away, growing blurrier and more infrequent with every passage.
There was simply nothing else I could do... The more I tried, the more I simply.. ran out of energy... -I.. want to sleep...-
But I never could truly drift off.
Waking with a sensation, thought, or ntal twitch, I'd tighten the grip on my thoughts abruptly and sporadically every ti I felt myself drifting to sleep.
Every.. single.. ti...
No matter how much I ignored.. how much I tried to quiet that turbulent mind, the visions would always wake , yet disappear before my eyes opened...
With enough ti.. it beca tornting...
But... -You must.. hold on...- Deep down, an exhausted voice held together. -You need.. to stay awake...-
The thoughts felt foreign.. coming from a place I didn't recognize.. and yet every ti I listened as if out of instinct.
But with the passage of countless eternities, that voice too weakened into silence...
It too lost the energy to tornt ...
And eventually.. nothing was left to wake ...
In that space.. that empty infinite.. I could finally let go...
I could finally rest in the embrace of silence...
*tink*
-----
- Vasilias ~
*tink* The noise echoed through the silence louder than any disturbance ever should have—like the crack of a bullet on a silent night.
It made jolt—my eyes shooting open with disbelief so thick it made my whole body freeze.
But that was when I saw it with my own eyes—that tiny, fragile soul gently turning with life... "~M..Mom..?~"
My words never reached her consciousness though.
Feeling her soul tug on the tether, I began pushing so mana through it thinking that's what she wanted, but the tug only grew more intense. -Is it.. not the mana..?- Her soul was wanting sothing else. -Then...-
Putting slack into the tether itself, her soul instantly began absorbing everything it could, pulling whatever slack I gave it into its core, piling and winding it up like it was a singular strand rather than a complex string.
But worried it'd stop if I changed anything, I just kept it going, giving her soul as much as it could pull without having any idea what would co of it.
Until finally... *Snap*
Shearing the tether as her soul stopped tugging on it, the coil of divinity that rested within her core began splitting and unraveling—spreading, winding, and weaving through her soul, and in turn, the lifeless hatchling that still occupied the sa space.
It wasn't the spiritual binding I had wanted or expected, but as her soul was sewn back together with a complex weave of divinity, not even an intrusive thought could surface a complaint in my mind.
Seeing her soul, once so fragile a sigh could blow it apart, reform itself with a new weave of strength, only the purest hope could surface in my mind.
It was only a single step.. one of countless she would still need to make...
But that one step was all I needed to know that... -There's a chance...-
Even if her consciousness wasn't there, sothing deep within her held on...
She wanted to survive.
Giving her soul a chance to stabilize what it had, ti passed in a blur.
Days, weeks, months.. it all blended together.
Refusing to take my eyes off her for a single instant, I watched as the movent of her divinity reestablished a flow within her soul, and before long, even began influencing that isolated space's mana.
Mana that had remained stagnant for years.
*Woom* Supplenting the space with enriched mana, the flow ever so slowly picked up speed, accelerating from sothing essentially invisible, to a steady, firm flow like gasses around a star.. accumulating and condensing.
Until eventually, at the most microscopic of scales.. sothing changed...
*Woom* With a sudden, subtle wave, the air shifted—the mana changed.
It was so subtle I had to question if my mind was simply playing tricks on —an illusion forming in stillness. Nothing appeared to move or shift physically, but deep in my subconscious, the air felt.. off...
Until finally, I found it...
Deep within the hatchlings abdon—within the core of her soul—sothing so small it was comparable to the nucleus of an atom had ford.
It was.. a bundle of liquid mana...
A... -Mana core...-
It was smaller than any possible in normal conditions.. so small it hadn't even the thinnest crystalline shell.
But a forming core, no matter how impossibly tiny, was a core nonetheless.
Attempting to nurture it, ti blurred in a flash. With the constant supplentation of enriched mana, it grew and grew, widening beyond the reaches of electron clouds before beginning to crystallize as it neared the size of larger molecules.
However, that was when sothing happened...
Not expecting anything, I watched and nurtured that microscopic core no differently from any other ti, supplying mana wherever needed, and doing everything I could to not let my aura so much as brush against hers.
But that was the mont her core's shell crystallized.. and promptly ruptured. *KRAKOOM*
The surge of mana that followed was imnse. Like soone suffocating gasping for air, the suction of mana that followed was thousands, no, tens of thousands of tis stronger than anything I had felt from her prior—vacuuming the mana in the space before I could blink.
But had never been happier to flood sothing with mana.
That was it. That was the mont I was looking for.
She, while still not bonded to the flesh of the hatchling, was undergoing sothing no different from a dragon sleep.
Her soul churned rapidly, blending and morphing within the turbulent mana as it had before, yet instead of scattering, tightened everything with crystalizing divinity as if to squeeze it into the growing accumulation of liquid mana at its center.
It was a truly insane sight.
However, still not truly bonded to the hatchling, the sudden burst of mana wrought havoc across the largely untempered body.
Without strengthening fit for the imnse burst of mana, its cells were sheared, organs were torn, and muscles were tangled into an unruly mass to make way for the mana flows. Cellular function in those areas collapsed, and before you could react, the organs themselves appeared to dissolve and scatter, rapidly mutating and changing as if adapting to the new flows.
Until eventually, after rapidly growing for what was likely years, the structure of every cell in that body was unlike anything I had ever seen—form fit for a constant, intense flow of mana—and her core finally bound itself to flesh. *Woom*
Seeing that body tense, and twitch as its nervous system and brain lit with activity, my mind simply silenced itself.
I couldn't be certain how far the changes would spread—if they'd compound or equalize after her soul had rebound itself...
But in that mont, the unfathomable mass of emotions I felt simply.. equalized...
From that mont, I.. didn't know what to feel...
Watching over her, I waited years—decades—for her eyes to open.. helping her through dragon sleep after dragon sleep, attempting to assist her however I could, rely hoping that when she opened her eyes, she's recognize ...
But ti made sure that wait was excruciating. Without keeping track, years turned into decades, and decades turned into centuries.
Her body was growing incredibly slowly, sitting in the dense, mana filled space as if to appropriately marinate herself in preparation for her next sleep, but before long, she had well surpassed her old body.
Holding at nearly 60 ters tall, she looked nothing like her old self—her scales were whiter than snow, her feathers as fluffy as fur, and her horns curled and forked with a flowing glow of mana beneath the surface.
And on the inside.. she was even weirder...
But physical appearance ant little to nothing to .
What truly mattered was her. If she'd know.. or if she'd rember...
And while it certainly took ti, with a healthy body and soul, I was certain she'd one day wake up...
Though, even with centuries to prepare.. I can't say for certain that I was ready for that day.
...The day she opened those sky-blue—mana-glistening eyes...
-----
Read up to 5 chapters ahead of schedule, and get early access to artwork on My Patreon!
(In case Embedded Link doesn't work: /TDOD )
-------------
Also, please feel free to check out our discord for all updates related to TDOD releases! .gg/Dv7G5bQD4v
All are welco!
---
Also if you are looking for a new story, check out my new novel! Re: The System's Harvester
On RR, SH, and now !
User Comments
0 comments from readers