'What…!'
'What's happening?'
'My body…! My... my senses…'
The world thundered, then slowly collapsed into silence. His wounded torso jerked against an oak beam, tattered and scarred.
Oren Xianrath felt a relentless sensation that urged him to scream.
It surged through his torso, then crawled up his neck, stopping at his head... leaving everything else utterly hollow and empty.
It was like was drowning, with no arms to swim, and no lungs to breathe.
Because he had neither.
His limbs were gone, flesh and ligaments strewn across the floor, tangled in the torn fabric of his dark robe.
Oren tried to look around the ruined attic... but he couldnt move.
He was to weak, the pain was excruciating... and it wasn't faiding!
'Why isnt it fading!?'
'Get up! Move! Move now, damn it!'
'F**k, I need to move. I need to get up...figure out what's wrong!'
But all he could do was look up, into the jagged opening above.
Warped beams and shattered planks leaned precariously, as if the structure might collapse at any moment.
Beyond the chaos, the dark grey sky loomed.
The lucid warmth of his blood pulled him back to reality for a moment.
Yet even as time passed, his body was not healing.
'To hell with it! Why isn't it healing?'
His gruesome wounds refused to heal, though they should have been healed already. How was that even possible...?
'How is this possible? '
Even forming that thought took effort.
But a being like him should not face irreparable damage so easily.
Yet, for some odd reason, Oren felt as though he would not recover from this. He would not obtain the peace he wanted.
'Damn the heavens! Am I really going to die here?'
Oren shivered.
'In a world I do not even belong to!?'
A heavy breath escaped his torn lips.
Oren had fallen into the world, then into the clock face of the cathedral house. His arrival had been grand but short lived.
Even now, faintly, he could hear them in the dead of night.
The mortals.
Their distant voices were strained with fear, reaching him from the third district below. He was in the outskirts of a city, or so he thought...
Panic, confusion, talk of an invasion, the Light Festival.
And despite the tone in their voices betraying any warmth, envy filled Oren's eyes as he listened, alone.
How he wished to be full of life like those mortals.
How he wanted to stand up and move.
To walk, laugh, shout, and eat.
To indulge, cry, and experience the best of life.
The simplest things mattered most, in the end.
At the end, he yearned for them, longed for them more than anything he had ever possessed.
But maybe, just maybe, if he had been born a mortal man instead of a damned divine being, this would never have happened.
A wry smile cracked Oren's dry lips.
Because an entity like him should not die like this.
But he was going to die, so there was no point in holding onto such a useless notion.
'It had been worthless, anyway, hadn't it?'
If it meant he could live for even a moment longer, such a sacrifice weighed lightly on his mind.
Oren groaned.
I'm spouting nonsense… but I wouldn't be here if it weren't for my anchor.
Something meant to be forged at birth, intricately bound to the soul, to think it had betrayed him—
No, He did not understand its inner workings, but he recognised the shift he felt when he used it.
A warning… one he had dismissed.
It was supposed to take him "home."
But instead it led him here, into the dephs of a Revos Verum, a ruined realm.
The name surfaced slowly through the haze of drifting thoughts. Like mortal myths, a ruined realm was a myth amongst the divine, meant not to truly exist.
He let out a bitter chuckle, the sound clawing at the air.
'Ruined…! This place?'
Oren could not help but laugh through the pain.
Because what was shown to him upon entering the Revos Verum was not ruined at all. It looked beautiful…
… or had it only seemed that way?
The wind hummed around him, bringing forth the biting cold of autumn, making Oren shiver faintly.
Only when he questioned it did everything beyond him feel darker.
Laying there motionlessly, Oren's battered ears gradually muted the world.
But before it faded completely…
A loud splash echoed through the attic as his thoughts slowly faltered, and his chest tightened.
A wistful breath escaped his torn lips as his abyssal golden eyes darkened a shade.
His mind grew hollow, giving way to memories of his past, surfacing like illusions he could watch for wretched entertainment.
His abyssal golden eyes remained fixed upward through the tangled beams and chipped wood.
Light shifted faintly infront of him.
He tried to watch, but the world no longer held steady.
Oren's body suddenly twitched.
Someone was there.
Standing beyond the shattered beams of the attic.
In his final moments, he never lived to see the sun reach its zenith.