"Go ahead and ask. If I don't know the answer, I'll check with Avia and the others later."
Wang Yu tossed another chunk of ore into the forge beside him, flipped the switch, and activated the Chariot's power. As molten heat began dissolving the stone, he carefully extracted the impurities and turned to face the Lady of the Night.
It was rare for the goddess to co seeking answers. He wasn't sure what she wanted to know, but if it involved obscure or esoteric truths, his knowledge might not be enough to satisfy her.
"If there is a being," she began slowly, "who once committed great and unforgivable sins—but has since forgotten all of it, even shed its body and power, to the point that the current self shares nothing with the past—should that being still be held accountable for what it once did?"
"Or rather... is the being that exists now still the sa as the one who committed those sins?"
Her voice trembled slightly, betraying a deep inner confusion and hesitation.
"What?" Wang Yu blinked. "Ah, damn it!"
He had been half-focused on refining the ore, but her question demanded his full attention.
As he tried to process what she'd just said, his hand got too close to the forge and was splashed by molten slag. Swearing, he quickly summoned the Chariot to handle the ss.
"A philosophical question, then?" [1]
Wang Yu pulled up a seat next to her rocking chair.
"Philosophy? I suppose it is," she answered, unsure. Unlike Avia, she clearly wasn't used to the Earth-born terms that occasionally slipped from Wang Yu's mouth.
"Well, there's no right answer to a question like this," Wang Yu said with a shrug. "All I can give you is my own take on it."
Who knew how the Lady of the Night had co by such a question?
He leaned back, thinking aloud. "So, I'm a hypocrite. Let's get that out of the way first. For , personally—there's no past life, no future self. I'm , right now, and that's all there is. If soone says I'm just a copy or a remnant of soone else? I wouldn't give a damn. I know exactly who I am.
"And if soone showed up blaming for sothing I supposedly did in a past life? I'd send them to their next one. If I didn't do it, it's not on . Doesn't matter if we share a body, or even a na. Wrong guy.
"But like I said, I'm a hypocrite. Flip it around—say soone wronged in the worst way, and years later they show up claiming they've changed, that they forgot everything, that they're soone else now? I'd still smash their skull in."
Wang Yu scratched his head after this impromptu speech.
"That probably didn't help much," he admitted. "But I guess what I'm saying is—just follow your own sense of judgnt. Don't shoulder a burden that doesn't belong to you. And don't let soone throw off their guilt by pretending they're a brand-new person. Use your eyes. If it looks like a lie, it probably is."
He glanced at the goddess, who was sitting upright in her rocking chair and listening closely.
"I see," she said softly. "I think... I understand now. Thank you."
Her figure began to shimr and fade as she vanished from the Seed of Eden's pocket space.
"Wait! hold it right there!" Wang Yu snapped. He grabbed the base of the rocking chair with the Chariot's power to stop her exit. "This isn't one of those ‘I have a friend who...' stories, is it?"
He had belatedly realized what was going on. It was painfully obvious that the "being" she'd spoken of was herself.
This wasn't soone asking a hypothetical question. And she'd never seek him out just to ask sothing so abstract unless it mattered. No way in hell was he going to just let her walk off without explaining.
"Nothing important," she replied, her voice calm again as she rematerialized. "It was just a question."
"Do I look like an idiot to you?"
Wang Yu pointed at himself with exasperation.
"..."
The Lady of the Night stared at him for a long mont in silence, then quietly sat back down.
"Talk," Wang Yu said. "I'll ask Avia about it later if I have to."
Wang Yu wasn't the kind of person who liked prying into others' secrets. But that depended on the person. If soone like Avia or Sieg told him "it's nothing," he'd leave it at that, no questions asked.
But this wasn't Avia. This was the Lady of the Night—a goddess who, in his eyes, was a little too impulsive and eccentric for comfort. He couldn't help worrying that if she took a strange idea too far, she might do sothing irreversible.
"Lately, I've felt my power growing," she said slowly. "But there are new elents to it, abilities I never possessed before. All of them are tied to darkness... but far deeper and stronger than what I wield.
"I can access them. I can channel them through the Tree of the Night to my followers. But they're not mine."
Wang Yu narrowed his eyes. "You're a manifestation of power itself, aren't you? So... these things aren't you. They're just... available to you."
"Exactly. As you said, I can use them, but they don't belong to . They didn't originate from ."
She paused. "But they've appeared within my domain. They follow . And... they're starting to show mories. Images."
She glanced at him again, her voice quieter than before.
"mories and visions, huh? I'm guessing those are what made you co ask that question. Show ."
Wang Yu rubbed his chin thoughtfully. What the Lady of the Night described stirred a mory in him, one that demanded more details. He needed to see the rest for himself.
With a wave of her hand, flowing darkness spread across the Seed of Eden, coalescing into visible images and sound.
The stars shone brilliantly in a sky swept clean of clouds. Sea breezes stirred up gentle waves that lapped softly against the docks of a tiny coastal fishing village. A few wooden huts still glimred with lamplight, but most were already dark. Snores rose and fell like the tide, mingling with the occasional murmur of whispered conversation.
A middle-aged constable, an advanced knight-in-training, walked alone through the village streets. It was his nightly patrol to protect this poor, defenseless place from ocean predators and thieving raiders from nearby settlents.
His steps halted. He looked up. Sothing in the sky caught his eye. Where the stars had shone clearly just monts before, a strange darkness now gathered—as though sothing unseen had smothered the heavens.
"A storm coming, huh... better remind the old fishern not to head out tomorrow," he muttered. "If the rain hits and the wind picks up before they get back, we'll have a real problem."
A veteran of coastal life, he understood the sky's moods well. Clouds that rolled in at midnight often heralded foul weather co morning.
The village sat nestled in a narrow cove between two sea-facing mountains. The lighthouse on the cliff was often obscured by the terrain. In fog or heavy rain, sailors returning from sea could easily lose their bearings—and if they missed the harbor, they'd be swallowed by the open waters.
When that happened, the result was almost always the sa: they would be devoured in the dark by sea monsters or deep-dwelling fishfolk. Sotis, an empty boat would drift back. More often, nothing returned at all—not even bones.
The constable turned his gaze away. He trusted the old sailors. They were seasoned, and so were even worshippers of the Lord of Sea and Storm. They knew how to read the ocean better than he did. He just needed to give them a heads-up.
What he failed to notice was this: there were no clouds over the sea at all. The stars hadn't been covered. They had been erased.
The sky and ocean had turned pitch-black, as if every star had been swallowed by an unseen force. Even the faint light from the lighthouse, normally capable of piercing the gaps between the twin peaks, was gone. It had vanished.
And from the sea's edge, sothing crept in. A shadow, silent and consuming, washed over the village. It erased everything in its path, swallowing houses, trees, paths. Even the unaware constable's body was slowly eclipsed by the darkness lapping at his side.
And then... silence. The fishing village, obscure and unimportant as it was, faded from the world. Every light extinguished, every sound silenced.
When the first rays of dawn pierced the night between the twin mountains, all seed unchanged—except for one thing. The village was gone. There was no wreckage, no survivors, and no hint it had ever existed at all.
"I saw it," Wang Yu said. "A colossal black arm, stretching from the far reaches of the sky and sea, grasping that entire village in its fist. And the next day... nothing was left. That's the presence you ant, isn't it? That ancient being commanding darkness."
The visions had been shared with him not as re mories, but as sothing more, sothing shaped by the goddess's divine perspective. In that rendering, the terror was palpable, and the scale cosmic.
The Lady of the Night nodded. "Yes. That is Its power. It's far deeper than mine. If I am the night... then It is absolute darkness.
"My domain is concealnt, shelter," she continued. "But Its domain is... oblivion. Forgetting. And now, that power—Its power—has begun to manifest within . A voice whispers to ... that I am It."
Her voice wavered, filled with disquiet.
Wang Yu folded his arms, brow furrowing. "Okay, first of all, you're overthinking it. It is It, and you are you. End of story. These thoughts—this confusion—did they co from a follower's influence? That can happen. But you already have the Tree of the Night. It should've filtered that out."
He paused. A more troubling idea erged. "Wait... what if this power bypassed the Tree altogether?" He frowned deeply. "I've seen that happen before, like with the Flawarden, or that librarian, Samuel Hayden."
This situation mirrored the rebirth of the fallen God of Knowledge, whose essence had reawakened in a human body. Except this ti, it wasn't a human. It was a god.
"If that's the case, then the condition for Its resurrection must have been t." Wang Yu frowned. "Soone rembered that fallen god. Soone looked at you and believed you were It."
He pieced it together step by step.
"So... the visions you're seeing—the thoughts, the power—they're not your own. They're the mories of a follower. A new follower."
1. Ship of Theseus, basically. ☜
User Comments
0 comments from readers