"How long have I been in this room?
Those decrepit celestial! How dare they take me away from my family. I don't care if I'm the one they call the Celestial sage. I Sephina am the Celestial Sage healings power 2nd only to the celestial priestess. What could these worthless scum want from me anyways? Who is it that needs my healing powers? Most importantly how did they know where to find me? The Amulet of Brothek should have hid me and my son's strength."
From what I know this room is roughly 6ft wide, 5ft in height. There is no windows it's been completely dark other then the dim light I see when I get my daily scraps. This time all alone not a single conversation for I don't know how long. Is it me that they want and if so what could I possibly be used for. Or are they wanting my sons?
Suddenly the door swings open a man grabs me by the face and throws me against the wall. He looks at me with a snarl and says, "So this is the Sage . Doesn't look like much if you ask me. How could she possibly have the power to restore the Relic of Deretta?"
Then a women appears one I recognize. She is a coward! Her name is Yatari she is the Matriarch of madness. She's tall, hauntingly elegant, with crimson skin like dried blood and long silver hair braided with bones. Her eyes shift constantly between black voids and swirling violet spirals. She is considered a Calamity class demon. Her strength matches that of a lower class A celestial due to the fact she has not ascended yet.
She walks towards me, puts her finger underneath my chin and pulls it up to look into those horrific eyes. "I got a update for you Sage . Your little cubs are on their way to come save mommy. They have killed 4 of my generals so I must insist we work quickly now. That being said I kidnapped you to heal this relic." She then walks up to me kicks me to move me out the way so she could unchain me. Yatari then pulls me to my feet saying. "You're about to get blindfolded." When I step out of the cell I'm actually really surprised to see my self in an extremely secure facility the technology is so advanced that it's mind blowing. There was an extremely rare metal called celestite used for structure of this building. . Those chains must have nullified my sense/use of magic, because the amount of demonic energy I feel around here is insane. Then I was blindfolded.
She stands up and opens a portal then the man picks me up and throws me in. On the other side was something I have never seen in my life. This Relic of Deretta was alive, or struggling to be at least. How am i supposed to heal this I don't even know what it is let alone what domain I'm in. The ground around me looks like we are in the stomach of something the smell also indicates the same. So if that's true this "Relic" is really just a heart. But then what is wrong with it.
Yatari spreads her hands wide and looks back with an unsettling smile. She then walks towards me, "This is your workstation Ms. Sage by our calculations this should take you maybe 2 years to completely heal this. But I need you to do it in 1 year. And before you ask why you should just remember this me and my crew, we aren't the strongest we work for some crazy strong people and if you don't want you sons to die because of them then i suggest you get to work bitch!"
She then pushes me to the ground kicks me in my side repeatedly over and over blood starts coming from my mouth. I lift my hand up to try to heal myself but Yatari wasn't going to have that nor was this mysterious man who wasn't even showing his face it was hidden behind a kudahari which is just a scary mask. He grabbed my arm and pinned it to my back in less then a second, who could this possibly be then I understood but it was too late. The man then stabbed me in the back with a mmcc(man made celestial controller)commonly known as kokoro no kusari(chain of the heart) My mind felt like it was under attack, whatever he put inside me I can feel it! It feels like my entire body is being reprogrammed. Then all of a sudden I start using my healing magic but it wasn't me. My body starts walking without me wanting to. I try to speak… but nothing comes out. I try to concentrate my will to break the will inside me. Inside my head as soon as I do that. A voice speaks to me, "I have taken your body and I am the only one who can give it back. You cannot overwhelm the kokoro no kusari. All that's left is to watch as we flip the world on its head. But as a punishment for trying to regain control writhe in pain!" The moment he said those word it felt as if my blood was gonna explode inside me I started crying tears of blood and could barely breathe "Please…" I say before passing out to the pain.
"Please…"
The word barely existed by the time it left me.
Pain swallowed the rest, folding inward until even thought collapsed under its weight. I didn't fall so much as I was emptied, my consciousness pulled away like a thread yanked too hard, snapping clean and leaving nothing but darkness behind.
When I came back, I didn't know if it was minutes later or days.
Awareness returned first as sensation—raw, invasive, impossible to ignore. My back burned. Not the sharp, tearing pain of a wound, but a deep, persistent pressure, like something embedded there was still settling. The kokoro no kusari pulsed once, slow and deliberate, and my body reacted before my mind could catch up. My breath hitched. My fingers twitched.
I was still on the floor.
The living surface beneath me had shifted while I was gone, rising slightly, cupping my weight as though the chamber itself refused to let me lie flat. The air was warmer now, thicker, heavy with a damp heat that clung to my skin and made every breath feel labored. The smell—sweet rot layered over scorched stone—made my stomach churn.
I tried to move.
My arms responded halfway, trembling, palms scraping weakly against the slick ground. The effort sent a spike of pain through my spine as the kokoro no kusari tightened in response, not violently, not yet—just enough to remind me that movement was a privilege now, not a right.
My vision cleared slowly.
The heart loomed before me, impossibly large, its surface glistening in the low, organic light of the chamber. It looked… fuller than before. Less collapsed. Thick cords ran from it into the walls, pulsing faintly in time with a steady, confident beat.
It was still weak.
I could feel that instinctively, the way a healer knows when something is close to death. But it was no longer dying.
That realization hollowed me out.
My hands lifted on their own.
There was no command spoken aloud. No warning. Just the kokoro no kusari asserting itself, threading intention through my nerves like wire through flesh. Power gathered in my chest, familiar and foreign all at once, and poured down my arms in a warm, sickening rush.
Healing sigils bloomed in the air.
They formed faster than before, more complex, layered tightly together in a way that left no room for hesitation. I watched them assemble with distant horror, recognizing patterns I'd once needed hours of preparation to invoke—now executed flawlessly, effortlessly, without my consent.
My palms pressed against the heart.
It shuddered beneath my touch, not in pain but in response, as if my presence itself triggered something deep within it. Heat surged up my arms, and for a brief, terrifying moment, I couldn't tell where my body ended and the Relic began.
The kokoro no kusari pulsed again.
Time dissolved.
I don't know how long I knelt there, pouring restoration into something that did not deserve it. Minutes, hours—meaningless distinctions. The only markers were the cycles: the heart's pulse strengthening, the chamber subtly reshaping itself to accommodate that growth, and the intermittent waves of pain when my thoughts strayed too far from compliance.
When exhaustion finally dragged at the edges of my mind, the kokoro no kusari adjusted.
Sleep was allowed.
Not rest—never rest—but a shallow, fractured unconsciousness that dropped me just far enough that my body could continue functioning when I woke again.
This became the rhythm.
Wake. Heal. Suffer. Collapse.
Over and over.
Days blurred first.
Then weeks.
I stopped measuring time by hunger because food came irregularly—sometimes daily, sometimes withheld until my body shook and my vision dimmed. When scraps were thrown through the portal, my hands would reach for them automatically, even when my mind recoiled from the act. Chewing felt mechanical, my jaw moving while my thoughts drifted elsewhere, anywhere but here.
Pain changed shape.
At first it had been explosive, overwhelming, impossible to ignore. But the kokoro no kusari refined its methods. Pain became precise, targeted. A tightening around my lungs when I tried to slow my healing output. A crushing pressure behind my eyes when I thought of my sons for too long. A sudden spike through my spine whenever defiance flickered, even faintly.
It learned me.
And worse—I adapted.
My body began to anticipate the kokoro no kusari's responses, flinching before punishment arrived, adjusting my posture, my breathing, my thoughts to minimize the severity. I hated myself for that more than anything else.
The heart noticed.
I felt it in subtle ways at first: a faint pull beneath my palms, a low vibration that didn't match the chamber's ambient pulse. Then, gradually, awareness sharpened. When I healed certain regions, resistance met me—not physical resistance, but something closer to will.
It didn't want to be repaired evenly. It wanted certain pathways prioritized. Certain structures reinforced.
And the kokoro no kusari allowed it.
That realization hit me one cycle like a blade to the gut. The control wasn't absolute—not over everything. The Relic had influence here. Enough that the system deferred to it in small ways, optimizing my healing to align with its preferences.
I tried to sabotage it.
Tiny things at first. Micro-delays in regeneration. Slight misalignments that wouldn't be obvious unless you knew exactly what to look for. The kokoro no kusari caught the first few attempts instantly, punishment slamming into me so hard my vision went white.
But then… one slipped through.
I felt it—an imperfection left intact, buried deep where neither Yatari nor her masked enforcer would think to check.
Hope flared.
The kokoro no kusari reacted a heartbeat later, too late to stop it but quick enough to make me pay. Pain tore through me, dropping me forward as my scream echoed wetly through the chamber.
I laughed through it.
A broken, hysterical sound that shocked even me.
Footsteps came soon after.
Yatari's presence swept into the chamber like a stain spreading through water. She didn't speak at first. She never needed to. Her attention alone made my skin crawl, the air warping subtly around her as if reality itself didn't quite agree with her existence.
"Still trying to be clever?" she asked finally, crouching just out of reach.
I couldn't look at her. My neck wouldn't turn.
"That's good," Yatari continued lightly. "I'd hate for you to become boring."
She stood and gestured toward the heart. "You've done well. Better than projected. Derreta's stabilization curve is beautiful."
The name made the heart pulse harder.
I felt it resonate through my chest, through the kokoro no kusari, through the fragile pieces of me that hadn't yet been ground down completely.
Yatari leaned closer, her voice dropping. "You ever wonder why she's still alive?"
I didn't answer.
"She destroyed an entire universe once," Yatari said casually, as if discussing the weather. "Not in a grand war. Not with ceremony. She unraveled it. Piece by piece. Laws first. Matter after. When there was nothing left that could end… she moved on."
My stomach twisted violently.
"She's not the strongest thing out there," Yatari went on. "Never was. But she's efficient. Persistent. A god of destruction who enjoys the process."
She straightened. "She picked a fight with the wrong god eventually. Got torn apart and thrown so far down the ladder of existence she landed here. On this planet. Thought it was dead."
Her gaze flicked to me.
"But destruction doesn't die just because it loses," she said softly. "It adapts." The chamber hummed, the heart's pulse growing heavier, more assured.
"She stayed alive because she wanted to keep destroying," Yatari finished. "And now? Now you're helping her remember how."
Yatari left me there with that.
Months crawled by after that conversation.
The chamber changed as Derreta did. The walls thickened, veins branching in more complex patterns. The ambient energy grew denser, oppressive, making it harder to breathe. My body changed too—leaner, harder, movements stripped of wasted effort. The kokoro no kusari no longer needed to correct me often. I complied before correction was necessary.
I hated how natural it felt.
There were moments—rare, fleeting—when something else brushed my mind through the kokoro no kusari. A hesitation. A slight misfire in the control signal. Not mercy. Not help. But doubt. And in those moments, I felt another presence beyond the system, distant but real, like someone watching through a crack they weren't supposed to see.
I didn't know how I knew. I just did.
The connection never lasted. The kokoro no kusari always reasserted itself violently afterward, as if furious at the intrusion. Pain followed every time, worse than before, as though the system were punishing me for being observed.
Six months were gone.
Derreta's pulse filled the chamber, heavy and deliberate, each beat sinking into me like a weight I couldn't push off. My hands were still pressed into her surface, fingers half-sunk into living tissue that responded to my touch with obedient warmth. Power flowed out of me in a steady stream, not because I willed it, but because the kokoro no kusari demanded it.
I didn't fight anymore.
Not actively.
Fighting had become pointless. The device corrected resistance before it could become action, shaved down defiance until it was nothing more than a dull ache behind my eyes. I existed in a narrow channel now: breathe, channel, stabilize. Over and over. Days blurred. Weeks dissolved. Time became something measured only by Derreta's growth.
Then the pressure changed.
The kokoro no kusari tightened—not sharply, not painfully. It settled. Like something heavier had leaned its full weight onto me.
My thoughts slowed.
No—they were being slowed.
A presence slid in behind my awareness, cold and precise, aligning itself perfectly with the pathways the device had carved through my mind. I felt exposed in a way I hadn't before, like something was standing behind my eyes, looking out through them.
A voice followed.
"Jesus Christ," it said quietly. "You're a mess."
The sound of it made my stomach drop.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't angry. It was flat, bored, edged with contempt so casual it felt practiced.
I froze.
"Don't stop," the voice added immediately. "Keep your hands where they are. If you interrupt the flow, I'll light up your nervous system so hard you won't remember your own name."
The kokoro no kusari reinforced the command instantly. My muscles locked, power surging harder through my palms. Pain flared just enough to remind me it was real.
My heart started racing.
"There it is," the voice said. "Fear response still intact. Good. Means you're not completely fucked yet."
I tried to pull my thoughts inward, to shield whatever part of me was left.
It didn't help.
"I know what you're thinking," he continued, irritation creeping in. "You're wondering who the hell I am and why I get to talk to you like this."
A pause.
"I'm Takitsu."
The name meant nothing to me. The way he said it told me it didn't have to.
"I run the kokoro no kusari inside you," he went on. "Every command, every correction, every time you hesitated and decided not to? That was me letting it slide."
My chest tightened.
"You should feel honored," Takitsu said dryly. "Most subjects don't get this much attention. Usually I strip their awareness once they start breaking down. You, though? You're useful even when you're scared out of your mind."
Derreta pulsed beneath my hands, stronger than before. Heat rolled up my arms. The kokoro no kusari adjusted immediately, forcing my output to compensate.
Takitsu noticed.
"Yeah," he said. "That's the sweet spot. You're terrified, exhausted, and still working. Perfect."
Something inside me screamed.
"Don't bother begging," he added, as if responding to the thought. "I won't hear it. And even if I did, I wouldn't give a shit."
The word shit landed heavy—not because it was crude, but because it was dismissive. Final.
"You're not a person to me," Takitsu continued. "You're a function. A biological interface strapped to a cosmic fucking disaster because it turns out you're good at keeping her alive."
Derreta's pulse steadied, confident, almost pleased.
"You feel that, right?" he said. "That thing under your hands waking up?"
My breath came shallow and fast.
"Yeah," Takitsu went on calmly. "That's on you. Every day you're here, every cycle you survive, you're helping her remember how to destroy everything she touches."
The kokoro no kusari tightened again, not punishing—finalizing. Something locked into place inside me.
"And before you get any cute ideas," he said, voice turning colder, sharper, "you don't get to die. You don't get to break. You don't get to be a martyr."
A faint, humorless scoff.
"You work until I'm done with you. And when you're not useful anymore?"
A pause.
"I'll shut you off like a fucking machine."
Silence followed.
Not relief.
Not absence.
Just the crushing certainty that he wasn't leaving.
He was installed.
And Derreta's heart kept beating beneath my hands, stronger than ever, as the remaining six months stretched out in front of me like a sentence with no end.
The last six months were worse than the first.
Not because the pain increased—though it did—but because pain stopped being the point.
Derreta no longer fought the healing. Her heart responded instantly now, tissue knitting together with terrifying efficiency, internal structures stabilizing the moment my power touched them. There was no resistance left to exhaust myself against. No struggle to measure progress by.
Only improvement.
Only growth.
The kokoro no kusari barely needed to correct me anymore. My body anticipated its directives, my magic flowing before commands were fully issued. The feedback loops tightened into something seamless, smooth, horrifyingly clean.
Takitsu noticed.
"You've stopped hesitating," he said one cycle, voice cutting through my thoughts like a scalpel. "Took you long enough."
I didn't react.
I couldn't tell if that was because I didn't want to—or because I no longer knew how.
Derreta's pulse had changed again. It was no longer just steady. It was deep. Resonant. Each beat carried weight, authority, presence. When it pulsed, the chamber responded—walls thickening, veins glowing brighter, the air itself vibrating faintly with power that made my skin crawl.
She wasn't whole.
But she was no longer fragile.
Sometimes—more often than I wanted to admit—I felt her attention settle on me. Not like before, not as a distant pressure or unfocused awareness. This was direct. Focused. Curious.
Evaluating.
I tried not to think about what that meant.
Yatari returned near the end of the sixth month.
She watched longer than usual, arms crossed, head tilted as Derreta's heart thudded beneath my hands. Her expression was unreadable, eyes shifting slowly between void-black and spiraling violet.
"Well," she said eventually. "You did it."
The words didn't register at first.
Did what?
"She's stabilized," Yatari continued. "Core integrity restored. Vital circulation normalized. No catastrophic decay." She glanced at me. "Congratulations, Sage. You healed her heart."
Something inside me lurched.
I waited for relief.
It didn't come.
Instead, dread settled deeper, heavier than anything I'd felt before.
"Why do you look disappointed?" Yatari asked, amusement threading her voice. "Oh. Right."
She smiled.
"Because this doesn't mean she's ready."
My breath caught.
"Derreta wasn't damaged in one place," Yatari said casually. "She was ruined. Systemic failure. Multiple vitals compromised across different domains." She gestured vaguely. "Heart. Core. Neural lattice. Existential anchors. You've fixed one piece."
The chamber trembled as Derreta pulsed, reacting to the words—not angrily, not weakly. Patiently.
"She still can't move," Yatari went on. "Can't manifest properly. Can't exert her will beyond localized influence." Her smile widened. "And that means you're not done."
My vision blurred.
"No," I tried to think. "I—I did what you—"
Takitsu cut in instantly.
"Shut the fuck up," he snapped, the words slamming into my mind hard enough to make me flinch. "You're done when I say you're done."
Yatari laughed softly. "Relax. This part isn't on me anymore."
She stepped back as the chamber began to shift.
The living walls peeled away, not tearing but unfolding, space bending inward as Derreta's presence swelled. Power surged through the kokoro no kusari, locking my body in place as the heart beneath my hands moved.
Not beating.
Traveling.
The world folded.
The pressure was unbearable for a fraction of a second—then reality snapped into something new.
I was no longer in the chamber.
I stood—no, knelt—on a vast, living platform suspended in an impossible space. Structures stretched out in every direction, colossal and alien, composed of the same living matter as Derreta's heart but arranged into complex, interlocking systems. Pulsing conduits. Lattices of glowing tissue. Massive, dormant organs embedded into the architecture itself.
Vitals.
So many of them.
Derreta was no longer just beneath my hands.
She was everywhere.
Her presence wrapped around the space, immense and suffocating, no longer fragmented into a single focal point. I felt her awareness settle fully on me now, vast and undeniable.
Understanding flooded in.
This wasn't a workstation.
It was a body.
And it was still broken.
My chest tightened painfully as the realization crashed down on me, crushing what little resistance I had left.
This wasn't another six months.
This wasn't another year.
This was long-term.
Indefinite.
I sagged forward, strength finally leaving me as my mind struggled to process the scale of what lay before me. My hands trembled, magic flaring instinctively in response to the surrounding damage.
Derreta felt it.
The space warmed. The conduits brightened. Power responded eagerly to my presence, systems aligning, pathways opening.
She needed me.
And she knew it.
Something inside me cracked completely then.
Not violently.
Quietly.
The last fragment of hope—the idea that endurance might lead to an end—collapsed into nothing. There was no escape. No finish line. No version of this where I went home.
I would be here.
Working.
Until there was nothing left of me but function.
My emotions dulled first. Fear faded into numbness. Anger evaporated. Even despair burned itself out, leaving only a hollow, weightless emptiness where my will used to be.
I didn't cry.
I didn't scream.
I simply… stopped.
By the time Takitsu found me again, I was still kneeling in the center of that vast, living construct, hands resting limply against one of Derreta's damaged systems as my magic flowed automatically, strong and precise despite the emptiness behind it.
He studied me in silence.
"Well," he said finally. "There it is."
No insult. No irritation.
Just acknowledgment.
"You broke," Takitsu continued calmly. "Took longer than expected."
The kokoro no kusari adjusted, reinforcing the connection, locking my empty awareness into a stable configuration.
"But your output's still clean," he added. "Still strong."
A pause.
"Good," he said. "That means you're still useful."
I didn't react.
I couldn't.
I was still alive. Still powerful. Still healing.
And whatever I had been before—all the things that made me me—were gone, scattered somewhere far behind me, unreachable as the life I would never return to.