Everything began to become clearer, like a hazy fog was finally lifted from over my mind. I found myself lying on what felt like a cloud. I shifted my body until I was sitting with my legs tucked under me and to the side, taking in my surroundings, but I was greeted with a light blue-gray void, absent of everything, trying to figure out where I was and what was going on in the world and in the Everlasting Isles. The last thing I remember was fighting some powerful monster that ravaged the leylines before I decided to intervene, but after all that, nothing. Are the Isles safe? I wondered. After all I have done for the Isles and everything I had sacrificed for them, it better still be there if that monster was defeated, that is. I channeled my mana and created an orb in my hands, and focused my mind on the Everlasting Isles and then projected my thoughts onto the orb. A moment passed, and an image of the Everlasting Isles manifested in the orb. That took longer than it should, but the Isles are still there.
I took in a sigh of relief, glad that the Isles were still there, and then took a mental note of my diminishing power. "Since the Isles are safe, I need to figure out what happened to me," I muttered.
I stood up and closed my eyes, focusing my mana once more and began channeling the leylines which held the memories of the world with it, but as I tried to access them, I was met with resistance, sweat started to form, and I had begun squishing my face from the excess effort that I shouldn't need until I was pushed out. I was pushed back from the mana backlash, and I started to take in deep breaths from the exhaustion.
"I-Impossible," I said, my golden eyes glowing with mana as I gazed at the leyspace. "I am locked out?"
That should have been impossible, as I was the one to create the network of leylines that bind the Everlasting Isles, and yet I was locked out of accessing them. There weren't many beings in the world who could do that to me, but they didn't have any reason to interfere with me and the affairs of the Everlasting Isles. Due to this roadblock, I couldn't access the direct memory of the Isles, but I knew of another way. I closed my eyes once more and focused my mana and then the aether I wielded, and saw the current state of the Isles and myself. Not what had happened only in the moment, as my control of aether was minimal for some reason, but all of that was relieved to me. I opened my eyes and took a step back, falling to my knees in a cold sweat.
"H-How did this happen?" I whispered to myself in disbelief, " I am a spirit, but how?"
I had lost my body and was now a spirit. I wasn't dead, more like on the verge of death, existing at the crossroads of life and death. Thankfully for what I was, I was able to maintain myself and mana in this state. But there was another problem: I wasn't a free-roaming spirit; I was bound to a magic rune made from my body, and most of my power lay in a rune that was stuck, isolated from the rest of the world, unclaimed by any mage. There were seven runes in addition to the one I was stuck in. The mana they emitted was formally to me, belonging to beings I once knew before my memory went completely blank, but the runes were in safe hands. They were powerful magic runes, fractions of my power that were able to empower beings that could surpass me if they could harness it completely. The Isles on the other were safe, the Three Clans still ruled it as I had ensured long ago but there was dissonance in the mountain clan, a change of monarchy and many people filled with fear and angry which was strange as everything seemed fine but I couldn't really see what was going was a mere feeling of the state of the Isles from what little ley lines I could interact with my aether.
"Good, everything seems fine," I told myself.
But a feeling then filled my entire body. Strange, everything seems fine, but why do I feel despair? Was there something hiding from my power? Most likely, I had lost most of it when I created the runes, and other than the dissonance in the mountain clan, everything seemed okay. So why did I feel this way? Perhaps something was lurking in the shadows, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I was trapped in a rune after all, tucked away in ruins that no one would explore. Is this my fate, to be left alone for the rest of eternity? I thought. Perhaps this was my fate for the things I did long ago, before I even touched the Isles, Fate laughing at me for one last time. I sighed.
"Very well, Fate, if this is your plan, so be it. I won't go down without fighting." I yelled into the void.
I fell to my knees, holding them close to my chest as my internal emotions betrayed me, as I knew there was nothing I could do, as I lacked the power to do anything to change my fate, if one could change their fate, that is. Fate was already set in stone. Sure, you can alter fate in some regards, but it wasn't anything significant. You merely chose one of many paths that Fate has chosen for you, one merely as the power to change how they get their. I wondered where my fate would have ended if I hadn't helped those people, letting them suffer the fate of all those who carry that blood. Perhaps I just prolonged the inevitable, a fate worse than death until the world ended by a mad mage. But now I'll just wait to the end of times after all what else could I do.