Ikai had been trudging through the sand for days, not knowing where he was going, why he was living, or who the hell had put him on this frying pan. Each step sent a jolt through his feet, as if the desert had decided that he had too much skin and needed to melt it down a bit.
"If this is the path to enlightenment, then their enlightened ones have serious masochistic issues."
He stopped and froze, cautiously scanning the area ahead.
"What is this pillar doing in the middle of the desert?"
The mysterious pillar stood by the road in absolute silence. It looked lonely and dilapidated, like an old man who had long since been abandoned.
A strange shimmer appeared on its surface, faint but evocative. It was like a spark trapped in the heart of the structure, neither fully extinguished nor rekindled.
This spark belonged neither to the world of the living nor to the world of the dead, but to a place in between, a reflection of the line he had long since come to feel within himself.
He took a step closer, peering cautiously at the pillar.
Its texture was unexpectedly rough, like metal that had been exposed to the most secretive abyss of the universe.
The surface seemed to have been corroded by time and star-dust, creating an illusion of something alien to all earthly images. And at its very center pulsed a mysterious core.
It was a dense mass of inexplicable energy that caused the air around it to shimmer and shudder.
From the core came something that sounded like a song, but devoid of the usual sound or voice, its melody trying to express its essence through an echo that resonated somewhere in the space of his perception.
He couldn't help but make an irritated comment, expressing a mixture of fatigue and bewilderment.
"Well, of course! Here, normal people find sources of water, shady places to rest, or at least some ordinary watermelon in the middle of this heat. And fate sends me a singing column with a clear hint of cosmic origin. It's amazing!"
Ikai Liu slowly stretched out his hand, as if he wanted to grab something intangible. Around the core, other Echoes slowly rotated, pale and silent. They did not call out to him, nor did they wail in despair. They simply existed, like shadows of something that had long since disappeared.
Fragments of other people's lives drifted like floating bits of memory, their ephemerality like the saliva in one's mouth after a lie is told—fleeting, quickly disappearing.
He felt he could almost reach out to them. Almost absorb them, let them in. But suddenly, an inner voice, not foreign but his own, sharp and harsh like a collision with an unwanted truth, broke through the moment.
"If you try to take it, it's over. Hello, goodbye. You won't be yourself anymore."
The words made him freeze. Deep inside, an icy ball of uncertainty ignited.
Then he chuckled, a crooked, painful sound, but with a hint of defiance.
"So what? I don't know who I am anyway."
Ikai's fingers touched the core, and the chill that ran through him was astonishing. It wasn't just on his skin, but deep within his bones. It was like a sharp premonition that made his heart race.
The moment he touched this mysterious object, the world around him seemed to disintegrate into thousands of small pieces, disappearing into the abyss.
Ikai screamed. The sound burst from his chest as if he were part of the destruction himself. He didn't understand what was happening, but the world he knew no longer existed.
Alien memories crashed into his mind like blades tearing the fabric of reality. Every vision, every memory was like the point of a star falling into the void.
A woman appeared to him. She bled in a dark dungeon, her hands trembling as she gently stroked the cheek of a dead child. Her eyes reflected a deep sorrow, and her lips whispered words of hope:
"You will return. I know."
Her smile suddenly disappeared into the darkness, and she turned into a glossy doll with a moth fluttering around her.
These words, filled with pain and love, made Ikai gasp. He felt something in his heart breaking, something that should never have been seen.
The next vision was of a boy on a bridge covered in ice. He stood alone, his breath visible in the freezing air. He was waiting for someone, but that someone would not come. The person he was waiting for had already left this world.
Instead of a familiar person, a sand moth appeared around the boy, taking away his smile. Expectation and despair filled the scene, and Ikai felt a coldness penetrate his soul like a knife piercing the darkness.
Ikai Liu felt a gaping star in his chest, and he heard a voice:
"Save yourself from the six-legged puppeteer..."
"Please find that place."
In the next vision, Ikai saw a faceless creature. It was shrouded in dark shadows, and in its place was a purple-tinted mask that seemed to reflect the darkness of the night itself.
This image gave Ikai a strange feeling of familiarity, as if he had already encountered something random.* ( Chapter 6 )
The creature's voice was not human; it was composed entirely of numbers, as if reality itself were disintegrating into mathematical formulas. 87. 14. 3. 7. These numbers sounded like a chant, repeating in an endless cycle.
The creature was dying, repeating the same words:
"He has come. He has come. He..."
Ikai fell to the ground. The sand did not show any sympathy as he approached. He was cold and merciless, like fate itself. Ikai's chest burned as if a core of fear had melted into his heart, gnawing at his essence like a glass parasite that penetrated deep into his soul.
He couldn't breathe. Every breath was difficult, as if the air around him had become thick and impenetrable.
"Finally. He dead. Good..."
The thought was cut short because he was still breathing. It was a terrible, rasping breath, but he was still breathing. The realization of this fact filled him with a deep-seated rage.
A storm raged around him, and a fierce, burning fire ignited within his star.
Ikai Liu tried to stand up, but his legs trembled as if they didn't belong to him.
His fingers, clenching in uncertain movements, resembled those of a stranger, someone who had never known what confidence was.
He felt something pounding in his head. It wasn't a voice trying to warn him, and it wasn't pain that gripped him. It was a pulse. A sensation that tied him to life, to the present moment.
An unknown reality unfolded before his eyes. He saw it: within himself, in his heart, there was a mark. A star, ten-pointed, but surprisingly, only one of its facets breathed as if it were alive.
It was the First Limb. It didn't shine with a bright light, as any other person would expect. Instead, it whispered, as if sharing a secret with him that most people couldn't access.
Ikai could feel the air vibrating around it. Space, time, everything seemed distorted, as if he was in the middle of a whirlwind.
Or maybe he was already experiencing a fever, and his mind was starting to panic?
"The first of ten."
He said it barely audibly, as if he were afraid that his words might awaken something dangerous.
"What's next, will it grow a tail?"
This thought that came to his mind was both absurd and frightening. He didn't know what this mark meant, or what consequences it might have for him. With each passing second, his fears intensified.
He realized that this wasn't just a metaphor. It was a reality that was waiting to be revealed.
Ikai touched his chest, and his fingers trembled slightly as they touched his skin. It was almost charred, as if a fire had been burning beneath it.
But there were clear outlines that seemed to pulse under his fingers. It was uneven, as if someone had drawn it with the trembling hand of a dying blind man.
The lines were deep and jagged, unlike anything he had ever seen before.
At that touch, the space around him... flared. The air was filled with energy, and the very fabric of reality seemed to ripple.
The world didn't just explode; it burst at the seams, as if the boundaries that held everything together were suddenly torn apart.
The sand rose into the air in swirling whirlwinds, driven by an invisible wind. The rocks trembled, and their ancient surfaces cracked and split under the strain.
The air was filled with a glassy creaking, high-pitched and unnatural, as if another reality was trying to break through, to overlay this one.
Ikai felt it immediately, a presence that didn't belong to him. He was no longer alone. Something was nearby, yes, but also... within.
It was a shape, a silhouette, a limb that wasn't there. It wasn't a hand or a foot, nothing so recognizable. No part of this body was so... unnatural, and yet it defied all understanding of what was natural. It simply was.
Ikai collapsed to his knees, the weight of what was happening pressing down on him like an invisible force. The inner voice howled again, louder and more insistent this time.
"You're empty. Let me be you."
The words echoed in his head, each syllable so heavy it threatened to crush him.
"You haven't gotten any stronger. You just became someone else."
The voice was right. He could feel it, the emptiness inside him, the space that had once been filled with something he couldn't quite name.
And now... Now there was this. This thing that was a part of him and yet wasn't. It writhed within him, a living, breathing presence that demanded attention, that demanded obedience. Ikai clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms, trying to hold onto what was left of him.
But the voice was relentless, and the presence grew stronger with each passing moment.
[ To Be Continued ]