Chapter 16 — Where It All Began
(MC's POV)
The entity's radiance fills every horizon, neither god nor concept but the pure act of definition itself. When it speaks again, the sound isn't vibration—it is the event of things coming into meaning.
"What do you seek, Lysander Valen?"
For a moment, countless possibilities bloom behind my closed eyes—galaxies I could shape, eternal dominions awaiting ruler. Yet none stir me. I have seen power; I have drowned in its hollow corridors.
"I want," I say slowly, "to start again. As Lysander Valen. Where it all began."
"Return? After universes bowed to your endurance?"
"Yes." I meet its gaze, though it has no face. "I want to live where mornings end, sleep means something, and rain falls without purpose. No dominion. No curse. No infinity."
Silence follows—a silence heavy enough to bend reality. Then the entity laughs softly, like the first ripple ever made in creation.
"Then the circle closes."
Light folds inward. Warmth envelopes me, crushing yet tender. I feel my essence stretch until it brushes both the furthest galaxies and the smallest heartbeat. The Button—the last link to endurance—melts within my chest, unraveling into dust of ancient light.
A new rhythm replaces eternity's pulse: fragile, quick, human.
Atmosphere. Weight. Gravity.
Three words bloom through awareness as sensation assaults me for the first time since forgotten ages. My lungs seize, remembering air; my body convulses against cold soil. The universe shrinks—no longer limitless, a single sky, a reachable horizon.
I open my eyes to dim rainlight. A horizon of mud‑soaked fields stretches outward, bordered by trembling pines and a cloud‑wrapped sunrise. In that smell of earth and petrichor, I feel more alive than in all the ages of divinity combined.
No hum of magic answers my gestures. No aura flares when I breathe. My veins hold only blood; my thoughts no longer spark with cosmic resonance. The entity's parting promise echoes faintly:
"You will awaken without power, yet unbound. The world will not reject your soul again."
I test the truth. I press my palm to the ground—grass doesn't wither. Air does not tremble. For the first time, the world accepts me wholly.
Whatever curse condemned me as foreign, as soul misplaced in wrong creation—it is gone.
Hunger returns first, reminding me of mortality. Then aches, the dull knot of muscles dormant too long. I laugh—an uneven mortal sound—and it hurts the way laughter should.
A river murmurs nearby. I kneel beside it, catching my reflection. Pale, weary eyes meet mine, ringed not with power but life. My hair, no longer ash‑white from endless regeneration, darkens again to its natural silver‑gray. The lines across my hands bear sun and wound alike, not eternal energy but effort.
So this is what being Lysander Valen truly meant: unfinished, vulnerable, capable of failure.
Above, thunder rumbles gently, without malice. Every drop striking skin feels like forgiveness.
Days—real days—begin to pass. I count them instinctively, savoring each dusk as proof that time flows again. The old ruins of the Valen estate lie overgrown beyond a ridge, their stones half swallowed by vines. I camp beneath their shadow, rebuilding a small shelter.
Villagers pass sometimes—simple farmers, wary at first, then kind when they realize I bleed red like them. They know nothing of the labyrinth, the void, or the monster that once carried me away. To them I am only another wandering survivor. That anonymity feels like grace.
Nights are hardest. Habit drags imagination toward silence too deep to exist here. But then wind moves through trees, and an owl calls, and the fear fades.
I begin to write again—recording not ages, but days. The act steadies me. Each page fills with weather and memory: the color of firelight, the scent of bread, the roughness of rope in callused palms.
One dusk, while carving a simple wooden staff, I feel a faint vibration beneath my ribs—a ghost memory of the Button's heartbeat. It doesn't burn; it sighs, content.
Somewhere between stars, the entity's presence lingers, watching without interference. Its whisper reaches through wind and thought alike:
"Live well, Lysander Valen. Remember that being mortal is not losing eternity—it is tasting it properly."
I bow my head, smiling. "Then I'll taste every second."
The whisper fades into the cadence of the evening cicadas.
.
.
.
Epilogue — The Return
Months later, as winter thickens, I walk the path to the ruined lab where the dungeon's upper corridor once led. Snow carpets the stones. I stand where my imprisonment began—no light of magic left, only reflection.
There is no pain. No haunting echo of the Monkey, no tremor of divine judgment—only the peace of completion.
I kneel, press both hands together, and speak into the frost: "Thank you."
Whether the void hears or not doesn't matter—the gratitude frees more than any god could.
When I rise, dawn breaks through snow‑heavy clouds, spilling gold across the frozen river.
Lysander Valen walks toward the village, carrying nothing divine—only warmth in his chest and strength enough to build, to love, to live.
And far beyond mortal sight, a quiet star flares—brief, gentle—marking the end of endurance and the true beginning of life.