His body staggered, legs wobbling as he collapsed to his knees. He clutched his head in both hands, fingers digging into his scalp until it bled, teeth grinding in pure resistance against the echoing static that now riddled his brain like a corrupted transmission.
He had seen something. Something he wasn't meant to see. Something not meant to be seen at all. Not by anything that walks, breathes, or thinks.
And yet—he had.
Words. Shapes. Symbols? Hah, laughable.
They were too alive to be that. They had meaning not as language, but as a law. They rearranged him. Just perceiving them made his thoughts fold like broken wings, his breathing ragged, the pain the worse he had experienced since he had been teleported to the weird locations.
"What... what was that…?" he gasped, his voice foreign in his own throat his eyes darting on the lifeless ground, his eyes wide to their extreme.
The flash had etched itself into the back of his eyelids, dancing like afterimages that refused to fade. Even blinking hurt.
His brain pulsed with unfamiliar rhythms, as if his mind was syncing with something beyond the concept of comprehension, his thoughts rippling in his mind like waves would in water.
No.
He wasn't syncing.
Panic overtook him, his anxiety reached it's peak.
His sanity had almost slipped.
He was being
Overwritten.
His pupils dilated violently. His vision pulsed, glitching at the edges, as if the world was struggling to render around him.
The constellations above restructured into a circular dial, then spiraled inward like a collapsing iris. One star—the unmoving one—now burned a deep violet, pulsing once every few seconds like a beacon, or perhaps… a countdown.
His deepest fears became true. He felt as he was losing his control over his mind, as if it was simply slipping. No matter how much the will of a individual was strong, once pierced in the heart, his life would be no more.
He breathed heavily, body still trembling as his instincts clawed their way back into the front of his consciousness.
He realized this place wasn't death, it wasn't even what came beyond it.
It was more accurately a buffer zone between time and oblivion. And the sword. That enormous, sky-piercing sword in the distance—he realized now, it wasn't stuck in the world. It was the world's anchor. Pinning something beneath from rising.
The Golden and Red runes were circling around the sword, the star in the sky aligning as bright as ever.
RESTS HERE THE CHAMPION, THE GRAND EMPYREAN, IMPERFECT AND GLORIOUS, FIRST OF KNIGHTS. HIS WORK IS DONE. YOU ARE SAVED.
The stars were waking up.
Xin stood wobbling, but trying to defiantly. Black blood trickled from one nostril, a slow, dark drip tracing the corner of his lips. He didn't wipe it, the pain slowly easing a bit but still lingering like a stubborn knife embed in the chest of one.
Not this time. He didn't have the energy to retort like previously, no, he had trouble even breathing or looking in front of him properly.
His eyes raised slowly until they looked at the at the base of the sword, slowly raising until he reached the top of the sword, the hilt. The sword was tilted a bit from the earth, however, he took two step backs as he saw something akin to a figure standing atop the hilt.
His thought process was changing, and he didn't realize it. The figure seemed to be made from paper, yet red paint was drawn on the paper.
Xin starting walking back slowly, before he broke into a sprint, his heart pounding furiously in his chest as if it was about to burst.
He cut through the wind rapidly, adrenaline pumping through his veins violently. His foot entangled, getting stabbed by a four inch thorn, yet, as his shoes degraded, he paid them no heed and continued running, ignoring the pain.
He ran a distance away, his breathing incredibly heavy, blood and sweat dripping off his body.
"Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" With bloodshot eyes, he kicked a tombstone, only for his toes to break in the process disfiguring his foot. However, instead of yelp of pain, this only fueled his relentless anger, and using all the strength in his body to punch the tombstone using his fist.
CRACK
His knuckles fractured, and it was only at the time that he felt the pain of bones cracking. The pain was even worse than of breaking bones, holding his swollen hand that had turned to purple, his only functioning right eye slowly teared up.
His left eye had burst on the way of his escape, the intense pain in his head had assaulted him midway, before he had lost his eye.
Tears formed for the first time in his life, other than when he was five. His memories were jumbled, and when he turned eight, he had discovered that he had lost his memories due to a bullet wound to his skull that, with only a few centimeters more would have sent him to the river Styx.
A tear rolled down his eyes hollowly, as he for the first time felt alone in the world.
"W.. hy?" He croaked, his voice barely inaudible.
His head tilted, looking at the sky that seemed to ignored him, he looked to his right at a tombstone that had red writing on it.
"DREVAN WELT.FIRST SON OF STARDUST.FORGOTTEN EVEN BY HIS BONES."
His body spasmed for a moment before he looked to his left slowly, his sole eye trembling as he saw the writing.
"HERE LIES A TRADER OF LIVES.VALUE: 0.WORTH: NEGATIVE."
"... Why?" More tears rolled down his eyes silently, as he silently questioned the place around him.
No answer.
"...Why.. me?" He cried out with his heart, sniffing as his eye turned bloodshot.
"Why, why, why, why, WHY?!"
His screams pierced the heavens, yet no response came to him. His heart was in pieces, his mind in disarray. His future seemed gone. His present seemed hopeless. He continued to sob his heart out, his tears glinting in the beautiful light of the bathing celestial objects.
His ears were ringing, yet he slowly stood up, staggering, as he raised his gaze to the front of him, his eyes empty. They stumbled upon a a statue several thousand feet tall, of an entity with eight arms of varying lengths and a head featuring hundreds of closed eyes.
Its eight hands cradle dan energetic construct resembling the singularity of a black hole. The object's gravitational field drew in vortices of air, clouds, and small objects such as leaves, but did not appear to have any effect on the monument itself.
"... God?" He mumbled, as he walked a step, then a step, then a step slowly, his hand reaching out to touch the statue slowly.
Yet his body betrayed him and wavered, and he collapsed subconsciously to the ground with a 'Thud', his mind dizzy.
His mind had shut down to the risk of brain damage, making him enter the realm of dreams for an indefinite amount of time.
He wouldn't realize what had happened to him later on.
That the first thread of his sanity had permanently collapsed.