Recollection Part 2: Behind the Scenes
After the mysterious truck drives past him... Kuro was lying in the middle of the tarred road.
He sits upright, shocked by what happened. Then in front of him he sees the girl's mother sitting weakly on the side of the street, clearly shaken from seeing her daughter dying in front of her...
However, herself and some bystanders comforting her for her loss glare towards Kuro, looking at him unusually menacingly.
As Kuro keeps looking at them in shock, he sees a pool of blood spreading out from where he was laying on the tarred, cold road.
He looks down slowly to see his hands covered in blood, then a steel rod, usually used for construction, piercing him...
It was at that moment he realised that the pool of blood was indeed his, and more surprisingly, the people that witnessed the whole thing were conducting misguided mob justice, piercing him with even more rods.
However, currently, because his vessel had been damaged and his life was in danger, it resulted in the sync of all three of his soul bodies.
Kuro starts talking to himself saying, "these people's reactions are too unnatural."
"I can't shake off the feeling this is a result of an external influence."
He then had an unfathomable premonition of danger... and the origins of that danger was from himself.
He then starts shouting at all the people to run away... he vomits blood and keeps shouting, telling everyone to run, but his voice echoed in the eerily silent vicinity.
...then some random bystander spills what seems to be engine fuel on Kuro while he lies prostrate in his own pool of blood, then another bystander sets him ablaze.
Kuroshiraga then attempts to slowly stand up while burning and says in a hoarse voice,
"Please run from here."
"Please, I beg of you... I... I can't control-..."
He then drops to the ground in a prostrate position out of weakness and says,
"-myself."
Then the flames that engulfed his body burgeoned and spiraled into a tornado of fire, and at its base a silhouette of a human figure on its knees.
The fire burning him continues as he blacks out.
...
After Kuroshiraga Arufa passes out, his soul body goes into some sort of dreamscape.
In this dreamscape was an illusory sea that spanned in all directions, going beyond the horizon.
Above it, one side of the sky was distinct from the other and at their edges was a clear transition.
To the right: a pale, white, washed-out expanse filled with small, black, dense, countless stars, like an inverted photograph of a night sky.
At the horizon, a black orb sat half-submerged, vast and perfect, its edges bending the space around them into soft lens-distortions. At its centre was a single point of white light.
Before it stood Sorei.
Sorei wore white and gold robes. Long hair cascading from the crown of his head and short black hair at the sides. At the side of his face down to his jaw on the left was a single braid of black hair. His bright blue eyes held the particular quality of someone who found the course of events interesting. A pillar of illusory seawater descended around him from the grey haze above.
To the left: black. A true dark sky, stars white and sharp as broken glass. At its horizon was a stellar black hole, with it an accretion disk illuminated with a bright blue-violet light.
Before it, Kurael floated in a seated position above a whirlpool, its centre a void with no bottom.
He wore a black and grey kimono. His short white hair was combed back, while long black dreads fell from the sides and back. He had a braid of white hair on the right side of his jaw, just like the mirror of his brother who stood opposite from where he was, but reversed. His expression was the expression of someone who had already made a decision.
Between them, at the centre of the illusory sea where neither sky claimed dominance, a transition connecting the two, Kuro knelt.
Back arched. Head down. Both hands resting open on his knees, palms facing up. The posture of someone whose body had given up the work of holding itself together.
His eyes were open. They reflected the sea beneath him. The past eleven years of memories he couldn't remember were pressing against the inside of his skull all at once, like a rusty old nail scraping against the walls of his skull, and the only thing keeping them from breaking through was the fact that there was nothing left in him to resist.
Sorei observed him for a moment before saying,
"The seal seemed to have cracked," he said with the tone a man uses to note weather, rather unbothered.
Kurael said nothing. He was already looking at Kuro.
"Father went through quite the hustle of installing the seal, however..."
Sorei continued,
"The shock was sufficient. The poor kid simply buckled under the pressure."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Eleven years worth of accumulated information... My,... if it releases all at once, then..."
"It won't."
Kurael's voice was quiet. The kind of quiet that has weight behind it.
He straightened up from his floating position and stood upright.
Sorei watched him, and was about to open his mouth, only to grin with narrowed eyes.
"So you'll attempt to carry it?" Sorei said.
Kurael stepped off the edge of his whirlpool and onto the surface of the illusory sea. The illusory water did not ripple beneath him as it drew toward him slightly with each soundless step he took.
"He can't process all of it at once."
Kurael added, "At least not yet."
"And you can?" Sorei interjected.
"I'll use my authority as a base," Kurael said with all seriousness.
As he crossed the plane... the left sky gave way to the right, black stars turned white, the two halves of the dreamscape meeting at the transition directly above where Kuro knelt. He then stopped beside him.
He extended his right hand... slowly, without ceremony... and placed it against the side of Kuro's head.
In the outside world, the physical body belonging to Kuro activated an authority of convergence.
All the energy in the vicinity converged, and all condensed energy nodes, life sources and sentient beings, had a third of their vitality syphoned.
...the fire suddenly burns out like a burned out matchstick, birds and all flying insects fall from the sky... plants and trees in the vicinity wither... electronics all black out and everyone drops to the hard cold ground.
...the clouds suddenly darken when all the energy converges into Kuro's charred body and he regenerates, however something went wrong.
...more than the required energy had converged, and the amount also exceeded Kuro's soul body Ryoku capacity because his soul body's status isn't high enough.
This made his unconscious body deactivate the authority.
The converged energy had nowhere to go, so it had no choice but to explode outwards. The flash of light was as bright as seven suns...
He then wakes up to find himself floating above the centre of a rather exaggerated crater.
He then falls straight down to the centre of the exaggerated crater, which was now filled with water from the damaged underground city water pipes.
...
At the periphery of the crater, a humanoid figure with a male build, wearing a light grey hoodie and black sweatpants. Under the hoodie was a black void, and in that void was a spiraling point of light. The figure, visibly dazed, looks up to the sky and mutters to itself,
"Mnemoscopus... and... a goddess..." he chuckles and walks away from the exaggerated crater. His figure turns illusory and vanishes.
...
In a building near the periphery of the exaggerated crater.
Squirming pieces of flesh, bone and blood converged, piled up upon one another and merged to form a figure of a young girl with a ponytail, but this time she was in a simple black dress with pink accents, wearing a stylish black hat with a fishnet that covered half her face.
She looks up to the ceiling, when the ceiling melts like butter to reveal the clear blue sky... her figure, visibly dazed, mutters to herself,
"Noburu Tenjo..., Mnemoscopus...."
"That old man isn't simple either."
She then makes an exaggerated smile and snaps her fingers. Her body burgeons and then forms the figure of a woman in a stylish black dress with a stylish fishnet hat. The whole building melts like wax to reveal the exaggerated crater.
She starts walking away, and as she does, a girl in casual clothing, with two long braids and blonde hair and azure blue eyes, appears and bows lightly to Ayame.
"Tami dear, look after the boy at the centre of the crater before he drowns."
The girl with the two long blonde braids bows her head and agrees to the task, as Ayame proceeds to keep walking until she turns illusory and vanishes.
The girl then approached the exaggerated crater to look down at Kuro and sighed.
...
In a nearby park, not too far from the exaggerated crater.
Sitting on a bench was an elderly man in white-yellow robes, with the general demeanour of someone who had lived long enough to develop a very specific kind of dignity. On his lap lay a silver-inlaid walking stick. His eyes were closed as he stroked the walking stick, which gave off a slight silver glow. He looks to the direction of the exaggerated crater and says in a calm voice,
"The hill sleeps, as a little feeding gaze, not of this era, feeds upon the sleeping hill."
"The little scheming goddess focuses her attention upon the sleeping hill."
"The Undying Revenant Thrall switched fates with the sleeping hill that was destined to be destroyed by a falling star."
"The Undying Revenant Thrall uses the hill's fate to meet the little scheming goddess in her kingdom."
"The little old retainer distracted the little scheming goddess' attention by influencing her senescence."
"The curious little lord of havoc pokes upon the sleeping hill."
"All unbeknown to them all, the wounds they gave the hill taught it what it was."
"...and it had awoken, only to become a mountain."
The old man looks down, stands up... and walks a few steps forward.
"My great master will now have worthy prey. He has long awaited to satisfy his boredom. Praise be to the great master, Tenkiroshi."
"This is all according to your prophecy, my liege. Your grace and power sees no bounds, lord Kasdeja."
On his right cheek beside his mouth, a bloody crack appears.
An illusory yet dignified voice is produced from the bloody crack.
"You humans sure are shameless, serving two masters without the slightest hint of dignity or virtue."
The old man replies, "Humans are wild beasts that learnt to walk upright. They all indulge in their instincts and judge one another for indulging differently."
"I serve two great beings beyond human comprehension. If both my masters are satisfied, I believe that I have killed two birds with a single stone."
The bloody crack chuckles and adds,
"It's your loyalty I question."
The old man then gives a gentle smile with a solemn expression and says,
"I am but a wild beast, am I not?"
The crack arcs downward and makes the shape of a sinister yet holy smile, and continues,
"It's about time I head to the Aegis of Hermon."
The old man bows, holds his right hand to his chest and says,
"Your will is my command."
He straightens his posture while his right hand still remains pressed against his chest.
He then uses his right hand, now in a pinched position, thumb and middle finger touching, placed against the centre of the chest, then drawn slowly upward and outward as the fingers gradually open and release...
Then he makes both hands in an "X" shape, index fingers hooked, knuckles facing each other, then both wrists rotate simultaneously in opposite directions so each hand ends up where the other started...
Immediately, a rather wide radius of about five metres of the ground below the old man's feet suddenly carved inwards and formed circular webbed cracks with him at the centre, as if an outrageously heavy object had appeared out of nowhere and compressed the ground beneath, except he was that heavy object.
His fairly long white hair grew slightly longer and turned to a deep dark black. His eyes narrowed as his skin received the lustre of youth. Around him, grey feathers with a silver shimmer slowly cascaded downward.
The man now looks to the sky and says, "Alas, my children have risen from their slumber."
He slowly turns transparent and disappears from where he stood.
...
In a mysterious space that appeared to be within a spherical space, like the internal view of a human eyeball.
The walls' surface seemed to be embedded with many different and mysterious eyes of different species and of different sizes. Within this space were tubular-like appendages with ridge-like folds and small eyes spaced randomly on these tubular-like appendages.
All these wrapped around a figure in a foetal-like position, with its face facing the opening of the mysterious space that had an eerie glow and a concave-like shape.
The figure had white and black hair, thick eyebrows and a fair face. This was Kuroshiraga Arufa's body.
...
A man with a wide-brimmed conical hat, layered robes and scars across his face watched a holographic-like scene, the very scenes that Kuroshiraga Arufa had experienced a little over two years ago.
Behind the man was a large eyeball, and behind this eyeball a pinkish cord with veins extended to the end of this cord. A brain-like formation with branch-like extensions of a spinal cord sat at the end, and at the frontal lobe of this brain-like formation was a bright crystalline orb that was the source of the projection of history the man was watching.
Behind the man was the black pupil of the giant eyeball. Upon a closer look, a figure of a male with white and black hair could be discerned.
And this figure's eyes suddenly opened, slowly.
End of chapter.