The soft lapping of the timeless water against the shore was the only sound that dared break the silence. "And then when your father dodged the attack, I still don't know how; his power was not really suited for combat, you know, a Bunny-de-Solaris could beat him in a fight."
Ism scratched the back of his head and let out a dry, rough laugh that seemed to get lost in the vast, still air above the lake
A cough, unnaturally loud in the quiet, echoed across the lake. "Anyway, he dodged it, somehow. Then he just... plucks a star from the sky, like picking an apple from a tree, and throws it at the Lesser Waareater. Boom. A billion pieces!"
Ism's laughter was sharper this time, a crack of genuine amusement in the serene landscape. This was the twelfth story of Stargazer he had told Lyra.
She listened, her posture perfectly still, her smile wide and unwavering. Her eyes, swirling pools of captured nebula, sprakled a joy so intense it was almost painful to see.
Occasionally, a silent laugh would shake her shoulders, and her hand would dart out to grip Ism's forearm, her fingers seeking anchor in the rush of her joy.
Time held no anchor here. Lyra had no clue how much time had passed, or hadn't passed. But Ism felt it. He always did. A faint, persisting tug at the edges of his perception, a pressure behind his eyes that made the lid of his left one twitch in a barely noticable spasm every few moments.
"So, my father was a hero at the battle of Mók?" she asked, her voice full of wonder.
The name was a key to a lock. It triggered a buried memory: the wet, tearing sound of flesh, the smell of utter death, the sight of E.K., a dark, unstopapable storm, clashing with the towering form of Úriao.
Ism's mind let go of the now, the pleasent warmth of the story, and was violently puled back into the previous.
-
"HEY!" Ism's shout was raw, toen from a throat already painful from the inhaled ash. His men were a chaotic blur a few meters away, a clashing symphony of clanging steel and war cries.
He'd just crushed an adversary's skull with his hammer, the sensation of fracturing bone a dull, familiar vibration up his arms.
He held the mess up, picking off fragments of bone and hair with detached irritation.
"YOU GUYS! FALL BACK!" His men needed to withdraw; the enemy's leader was rampaging nearby. He could see its immense, deer-like horns towering above everything.
He waved frantically at the five men up ahead. They ignored him. Ism sensed the Next, a Planck moment of insight, and sidestepped an axe swing aimed at his head from behind.
He turned, his boot grinding into the swirled, bloody mud, and swung his hammer in a devastating overhead arc. It connected with a foul crunch, slamming the new attacker into the ground with a force enough to fracture a planet, Ism focused all of it on one point, avoiding unnecessary destruction.
The Next screamed a fresh warning. His men were in immediate, mortal danger. He turned to warp to them, his power gathering,
but in that split-second of diverted focus, he missed the silent, sudden presence.
Úriao manifested, and a burning, unbelievable pain erupted in his side as a horn gored him, lifting him from his feet.
-
Ism's consciousness was pulled back to the now. Lyra's face was suddenly too close to his own, her starry eyes wide with panic. He recoiled, stumbling backwards.
His head was damp with cold sweat, his palms clenched into tight fists. His heart hammered against his ribs.
"Are you okay?" Her voice softer than a thousand silk blankets, yet it got on his nerves.
Ism nodded, sucking in a sharp breath before forcing a weathered smile onto his face. "I was just... thinking about the good old days, that's all."
He adjusted his armor, the familiar weight a comfort. His eyes darted around, scanning the place, searching for anything to focus on.
Lyra adjusted her hair, unsettled by his sudden blank face. She wet her lips. "So... My father was a le-" She halted, shook her head.
"So, do you have any idea where my father could be? I have been looking for him ever since The Hillian Campaign."
Ism's head snapped away from her. He turned his gaze towards the shimmering, hypnotic lake. His heart gave a single, hard flutter; it had been a long time since he had heard that name.
The fine hairs on his arms rose.
"The Hillian Campaign?"
"Yes"
The Hillian Campaign was the first mission after The Black Sun. The memory was a cold in his gut. They were to find the soul of Hillian, stolen from the Ahur'kan Foundation by a rogue scientist.
The Foundation rarely asked for help, but they had no other choice; a heavy price was the consequence, if the soul was not found.
"We had no one left," Ism said, his voice hollow. "The Eternal Knight, Gonk, Heliterna, Ytetra, Kima, Mongo, Butterfly... so many names Oblivion has already claimed from me. All gone. Killed or broken beyond repair.
It was just me, Stargazer and Ytoia. Ninety percent of the Custodes Dei... wiped from existence by the Black Sun."
He shook his head, as if to remove the image. "It ended in the destruction of the universe we were standing in. Stargazer stood by my side in the screaming chaos, and he said to me, 'I don't want this anymore.' And he just... walked away. Into..."
Ism closed his eyes, pressing his hand over his mouth. "I have no clue where he is, Lyra. But I do know he is still alive... I have to believe that."
Lyra let out a shuddering sigh of relief. The tension she'd carried for so long, the belief that her father was dead, the desperate reason for her quest to this lake, evaporated, leaving her feeling hollow and dizzy.
Her head spun; her stomach clenched with a sudden, profound nausea.
But Ism's reality was already bleeding away, his thoughts narrowing to a single, burning point. His own goal.
His wife's smile. The phantom feel of her silky smooth skin under his fingers.
His sons' hyperactivity, running around all day, eagerly consuming all he showed them.
His...
Are they even alive? Are they?
"I must save them..."
The mental fog imposed by his master cleared, the strings severed by the sheer force of his need. He felt, for the first time in ages, truly alive. Whole. His fists clenched so tight the leather of his gloves strained.
The fog in his mind cleared, the strings cut, he felt... alive, whole again.
He snapped his gaze towards Lyra, but looked straight through her. He ignored her pale, unwell state, stood up with a groan of old joints, and walked towards the lake's edge.
His steps were slow, deliberatem and filled with a terrifying determination. He would wield Eternity's true power. He would go back and erase the moment that thing ever laid hands on his family.
His boot sank into the shallows, sending perfect, centred ripples across the water. This essence was an old game to him. The scent of the past, of sun-warmed water and old laughter, flooded his nostrils.
He missed it. He truly did.
A memory surcfaced, unwanted; E.K.'s stern, shadowed face after he'd defeated Úriao and hauled a wounded Ism from the dirt, followed hours later by his low, rare chuckle in the barracks amidst the clatter of dice.
Ytetra's sharp wit, Gonk's booming voice, Heli's confident smirk. The bond had been...
True.
"No..." The thought was a whisper.
The hand was on his shoulder. The cold was not a temperature; it was an absence. It brushed every feeling, every memory, every shred of purpose.
The need to save his family, the love for his brothers-in-arms... it all vanished, replaced by a profound, gaping nothing.
"I am here..." The voice was differentr now. It sounded so, familiar... So... warm.
Ism turned, the Next utterly silent, offering no warning. Only the now existed.
As he completed the turn, a woman stood before him. She smiled, a radiant, heart-breakingly beautiful expression, her eyes full of hope and love that felt like a physical blow.
She lunged forward, and wrapped her arms around him, holding on with a bone-crushing, desperate strenght. She smelled of salt spray and the ocean breeze.
Ism remained a statue, stiff and uncomprehending. Why? Why would this woman hug him?
She felt something was off. Her embrace loosened, and she pulled back to look up at his face. Her brilliant smile faltered, the light in her eyes dimming more and more.
She took his hands in hers, squeezing them lightly. Her skin was like silk.
"It's me..." her voice soft, coated with a forming, terrible hurt.
Ism's mind was a clean, empty slate. A void. He looked down at her, the sensation of her skin mere data with no associated meaning. His heart knew it should know, but the knowledge was gone, scoured away.
"Who?" The word left his mouth, flat and dead.
He saw her face fracture. The last pieces of happiness dissolved into pure, uncomprehending shock.
"What do you mean?" She whispered, her voice trembling. Her hands fell away from his.
"Who are you?" Ism asked again, the question devoid of any malice or recognition. It was a simpple, clinical inquiry.
She covered her mouth with a hand, her crystal-green eyes welling with tears that caught a strange light. She took a step back.
The hand was on his shoulder once more, its cold leaching trough his armor. The Walker's voice rasped from behind him, a sound like grinding nothing.
"Kill her..."
"Why?"
"As a warning... to show what happens when one does not listen to me..."
Ism didn't hesitate. His hammer, Aetm, materialized in his grasp with a silent, pressure-wave. He lifted it high, a perfect, efficient motion, and brought it down.
There was a wet, final crunch. He looked at the red ruin at his feet, then straightened up, his gaze blank and forward.
"Who did not listen?"
"You."
"Wha-"
The hand was gone. The emptiness, the corpse, the metallic scent of blood, the psychic pain of heartbreak, it all vanished.
Ism stood confused. A moment ago he had been stepping in the water. Now he was back on the solid, grey shore. My hammer? He didn't know why it is in his hand, he dismissed it.
He looked around for Lyra. He could not see her, but his senses, attuned to the unique signature of Stargazer's bloodline, felt her essence nearby. He followed it, his footsteps quiet on the barren ground.
Behind a large, weathered boulder, Lyra was curled into a ball. She trembled violently her pupils dilated into black pools that swallowed the starlight in her eyes.
Her heart beat a wild, terrified rhythm against her ribs.
She had seen it.
Her Stargazing eyes, gifts that could perceive the unfathomable, had seen what walked behind Ism.
Not a thing, but a Nothing.
A walking tear in the fabric of is.
The moment Ism had stood up and walked towards the lake. It was then, when she had seen what walked behind him, that... nothingness. That which tore the world behind him.
It did not move; it was, and the world ceased in its wake. Sound died before it could reach her. The air grew cold not from a drop of temperature, but because heat itself was consumed.
That utter defiance of what she had ever seen. Her eyes gazing upon that which is the absolute. She had never seen this before; even though her eyes could comprehend it, her mind could not begin to understand what was leached to him.
Her consciousness, unable to hold the shape of this impossibility, did the only thing it could: forming a logical conclusion to that which is illogical.
A humanoid silhouette that consumed all light. A walking blasphemy in the beauty of creation. It did not move through the world; it simply was.
This manufactured image screamed a single, silent truth her eyes alone could translate:
a verdict of absolute nihilism. Nothing Matters.
Her rational mind shattered against this notion. Leaving one final, terrible insight to flow through her before the lightless consumed her, a decree of the cosmic truth it presented.
Not just that nothing mattered, but that she was nothing.
"I am nothing."
Her being declared.
Her memory in all declared.
Her everything declared.
The Lightless had declared she had never been.
V
Ism stood confused. A moment ago he had been stepping in the water. Now he was back on the solid, grey shore. My hammer? He didn't know why it is in his hand, he dismissed it and looked around for...
For...?
He didn't remember. The Next, the Previous, the Current were all silent. "Hm. Nevermind then," he muttered to himself.
He gazed out at the lake. It was beautiful. It reminded him of a time visiting a mortal world, the scent of sand, salt, and roasting garlic filling his memory. A faint, genuine smile touched his lips. He scratched his forehead. "I miss those days."
"I have a new mission for you." The voice was a parasite in his mind, cold and familiar. Ism's mouth filled with the taste of bitterness, his eyes narrowing with bright, impotent anger.
"What is it?" he hissed back, silently.
"You will find and kill a group of people who may hinder our progression."
Ism's brow furrowed. "Why me?"
"Illirim has... been dealt with. Ajnido is occupied. I am merely a fragment; my focus is elsewhere. That leaves you."
Ism let out a loud, heavy sigh, the sound of a man falling under an immense, invisible weight. "Fine."
He had already foreseen this. The Next had shown him. With a dismissive flick of his hammer, he stepped sideways out of the Now and into the Next, leaving the silent lake and its shattered secrets behind.