'Darkness?'
'Stars?'
Within perpetual darkness, stars emerged across the depths of space, bright and dim but each as uniquely beautiful as the last.
'Where?'
Countless humanoid wisps of white swirled from the expanse. Tens, then hundreds. After a few million, it became billions and then infinitely vast as if the very purpose of these white wisps were to blanket the darkness that surrounded them.
Shades of white layered across space. Not too close, not too far. Each one, orderly.
Within the depths, at the very end, condensed lines of gold spread at each layer before the wisps. Seeing this delicious bait cast into the waters of space, the wisps, large and small, rushed forward in anticipation.
At the very bottom, a small grey wisp struggled ahead, slowly gaining what seemed a sense of self.
No sight but a slight touch of perception remained.
A bump protruded an inverted teardrop. At times arms formed as well as legs, only for a while before fading away.
It asked itself something. A few words. It knew the words held meaning yet why it said them or what they meant, it knew none.
No sight but could see. No sense of time but it could faintly tell that time moved witnessing stars as bright as they were, fading into darkness.
Time passed as a sense of self became whole. It knew of knowledge and it knew of meaning, finally asking once more.
'Who am I? Where am I?'
Looking ahead, it could see a slice of space cut with unapproachable finesse.
'I want it! I want to fly through!'
An obsession took from and withered away as fast.
'But… But… But what is it?'
It thought.
'Is that… a gate?'
The bright wisp found itself at the bottom-most layer, slowly pulled toward a roughly skewered and dull splice within the vastness. It found itself to be alone in this layer.
It saw other wisps, or whatever it perceived itself to also be. Brighter, larger and moving faster, right above him. Their speed made it seem as if they had no arms or legs, moving with grace, leaving subtle trails of light as they flew. The higher they appeared to be, the clearer their transparency. These wisps were few and far between, floating atop the currents.
Below, the stars shone with an abundant array of hues, each carrying its own heavenly allure. The wisp found it rather pleasing. More so than the blanket of bright wisps above.
'How long will I stay here? Will I be pushed towards the grey cut in space ahead? Or maybe I'll fade away like the stars below?'
No lived experience or memories, this wisp had little reason to feel dread without feeling delight, leaving only reason and mild curiosity.
After an incomprehensible amount of time, it began to compare. At its most basic level it could tell a few differences between itself and the other wisps. It thought about why the wisps rushed ahead. It couldn't keep up with them, but felt an emotion of what it could only describe as excitement. The higher the layer, the more eagerness he saw to push forward.
The wisps themselves did not seem like they cared about the space around them or the other wisps. Some would try to push toward a layer above, only to inflate and burst, losing their brightness. The Majority of the wisps however were very well behaved, eagerly moving forward.
With nothing to do but wait and observe, the wisp found a deeper discrepancy. As more and more wisps floated past, he could barely make out what seemed to be webs circling the wisps. It seemed all wisps, barring itself, had these webs of light flashing around them.
Time to time, this little wisp would gaze below, witnessing the bright rise and fall of countless stars. And after a while, a true anomaly occurred.
From the very top layer where the largest and brightest wisps shot forward, a dark fissure spread an abominable aura. This fissure held none of the radiance found within the twelve gates. In opposition, it had an unsettling, sinister depth.
Staring at the stars below, the dull wisp barely felt anything untoward at first. The other countless wisps however, felt another force. One had pulled them forward, yet this one absorbed with alarming strength and speed. The mass of wisps felt even more exhilarated. A higher layer attracted a basic instinct to yearn for.
The small wisp felt a force similar to the one pulling forward. It remained stationary for a time, moving the tiniest bit upward.
The dull wisp perceived countless wisps above moving progressively into the newly opened fissure and just as many of the stars below losing their luster.
Slices at each layer began to lose their dazzling light, leaving sheets of gold and sinister darkness to rise.
Soon, all the wisps were eaten. The fissure deteriorated and fell apart, leaving behind a large expansive layer of dark smoke. An even deeper darkness than the space in which it existed.
'The stars… they're all gone.'
There was no longer any force that pushed or pulled, stranded in a deafening abyss, it felt dread for the first time.
'For all the stars I saw, for how bountiful and endless they seemed. Not a single trace is left…'
This lonely wisp drifted aimlessly. With nothing to observe, there was no need to think, lest it try to overcome dread once more.
Spending an eternity alone, the little wisp felt itself become a little brighter compared to its former dull self. Increasingly adept at moving and pushing in whichever direction it pleased.
It finally sensed another strangeness. This time coming from itself.
Image after image manifested, linked by five ethereal tendrils these flashing lights created moving collages. There appeared to be six total shining sets of moving images surrounding the wisp, asking to be gazed upon.
The wisp felt a jolt throughout, finally receiving an answer to one of its questions.
Before dying and gaining awareness in the boundless darkness around him, Adelius was an Imperial Prince of an empire in its Roatumn Dynasty. With his mother passing away during childbirth, Adelius was not the first or second, but the thirteenth prince. Life is lavish and peaceful for the young and ignorant, so Adelius spent his time watching koi as he read books, unlike his siblings chasing power. A quiet home with only a sigil carved into his robe to remind him of his life as a prince. A runic sigil. If he recalled correctly, it meant life.
Soon enough, his brothers and sisters came to play a game. Adelius! We've bought gifts! His oldest siblings, as always, were absent. Nonetheless Adelius felt moved at the prospects. That some did not forget him.
And what gifts were bestowed upon his remembrance? Well, instead of giving, they took. A tongue, an eye and both feet. They did not kill him upon finding this younger brother had not utilised an ounce of life force. Adelius knew of the spiritual imprint to enter the first path yet refined none, simply reading through swaths of books with a game of chess to pass time instead of putting theory into practice. His mundane lifestyle knew nothing of violence. After a few laughs and jives, these scions threw him to the outskirts out of righteousness.
Adelius rolled through the streets on a cart he carelessly built, begging from those who would spare a glance his way. Adelius couldn't see well through his remaining eye, but could hear their whispers as a few bent coppers fell into his bowl. They felt sympathy but none in these parts would dare to stand up for someone without prospects. Alas, this was his life.
Not appealing enough to beg for pity in the richer districts, Adelius rolled his way to a small village. After his cart broke during one of his weekly beatings, he would drag himself instead, across dirt streets and fields to gnaw on brushes by the stream.
Having reached the age at which the world considered him an adult, he felt that people treated him differently. It was acceptable to have homeless children roaming the streets, they were pitiable. But when one becomes an adult, even if a cripple, all that remained was an eyesore.
In these begging days, Adelius found a peculiar pastime in painting again. With both hands deformed from constant scraping, Adelius would painfully grind chalk and charcoal with stone, find a wall and rub his knuckles with powder. Channeling pain he couldn't verbalise or write, onto the wall through antagonising images. He set himself after passersby took offense to some of his work. But, he would always come back to those same walls he used to draw upon until the villagers toppled them with hammers.
When his wheezing body felt incapable of being dragged and his bony hands became rigid through rough travels, they decided to put him out of his misery.
Not a single villager wanted to touch Adelius except a local drunkard. Losing patience for his next drink, he simply tied a hemp rope around Adelius' leg to drag his body into the stream, the one from which Adelius drank, letting the steady waters drown and carry him away.
Adelius' form awakened from what seemed to be an inescapable slumber. His mind sizzled for some time over his last life.
In the silence of space, he stared at the illusory images. Each trying to pull him into the river of his past life and letting him relive it again and again. He remembered vividly yet couldn't help but feel something missing. He was not the same person he had been in his last life. Or perhaps he was, It all felt like a dream and Adelius soon found it was not the only dream he had lived.
He wanted to know more. Adelius wanted to see who he was. More than the ruined beggar's life.
Adelius' next life was not much better. Everything else such as the use of life force remained the same, except for the encrusted tools these peoples used. Great machines adorned with blinding aether gems, thirsting for life force as if starved of it. The two suns of this world also stood out to him. Unusual differences.
He found himself to be a miner, dying at the age of nineteen from a mass cave in. He was raised by his aunt, who promptly sold him to a mining guild stationed close to his hometown. Adelius became a slave, given an aether sensor and a strap of primitive tools before being sent into the abyssal pit to mine. Aether drills did not work in the pit. A network of noble houses found it intriguing, sending millions of slaves to tunnel deep into the earth, either out of a vie for power or just to satisfy their curiosity. In these vast worlds, lives were meaningless, just as much as they were plentiful.
Adelius found his broken sensor and tools strewn across his cavern moments after fighting with another miner over a ration dispute. Many in the mines were delirious, growing sadistic over time. It was a commonly expected occurrence.
Each of Adelius' lives was incomparable. Differing worlds with strange customs and innovation flashed before him. The only consistencies he found were in his name as well as his dreary life. Greed and human machination seemed to find him easily. As if each world had a vested interest in his demise.
In another eventful life, Adelius built an underground network of savages. Of course, this ragtag team of geniuses turned on one another soon enough, leaving Adelius nothing but crippling addiction, debt, scars and hate.
This was his longest life. Just before he turned thirty, he scaled the tallest peak of which he could climb, and jumped. He remembered the moons awfully bright as he fell, drained of their usual bitterness.
His longest life ended via suicide.
Only his first life was the least tumultuous. A life he felt quite a bit of connection to.
In this life he found his younger years quite fulfilling. Learning to fish with his father then cooking alongside his mother. Life was quaint.
When his parents died Adelius moved into a new world his parents had hidden from him. His relatives were part of a merchant sect, plentiful and plump. They had wealth and power to refine, standing strong within the kingdom. However, their greatest weakness was the constant competition within. To perhaps alleviate boredom or release tension, they allowed their nephew to be a family jester. A role that did not involve true bitterness or degrade the order.
Adelius was a messenger for grudges, a toy to duel against, a puzzle for poison, and live bait. They took bets and as always they won and Adelius lost. Other days Adelius would be used to represent the merchant sect. His mother and father already ostracised, the outside world knew of him as a traitor. Thus, when problems arose, Adelius was sent on the families behalf, to taunt their enemies with his presence. A proxy for punishment.
Adelius died when his oldest cousin threw a smack in anger. They needn't let him refine and found it peculiar his parents never took precautions to protect him before their deaths. The maids scooped his corpse and tossed it to their abyssal steeds. Unfortunately, even these winged beasts refused to eat his remains. A Refiner's pet had pride. This meat was beneath them. Pity.
Adelius drifted, reliving each cycle of life one after another.
Again, and again, and again, he watched himself grow to wilt away in each of his six lives. After a moment that could last another lifetime, Adelius began to wonder.
"Is life truly worth living?"
Even though Adelius gained control as a wisp, he still felt his innate desire to seek life.
"Perhaps this desire pushed the wisps above to rush ahead. Did the light at the end lead to reincarnation? Is this why I have re-lived each of my dreary lives? What about me? Would I also have been reincarnated?"
Adelius thought for a few moments.
"Then it's reasonable to assume that I'm a soul. I am my soul..."
Reincarnation was not what he wanted, he rejected himself. He glimpsed his own life and those lives at the upper echelons of each world he inhabited. He saw those who lived each with rhythm in their voice and a confident gait in their steps. He didn't envy but loathed them. He felt their greed firsthand.
His first and last lives were devoid of early human interaction. He was introverted and tended to keep to himself.
His last life was the only life in which nobody had killed him, directly. But as fulfilling as life was, he found it to be one of his worst deaths.
From being at the bottom layer of all the wisps, to feeling how dim his soul felt, Adelius began to put two and two together. The worst prospects were layered at the bottom, flowing into what seemed to be a gate leading to reincarnation.
"Reincarnation…"
Time passed as Adelius thought once more.
"What is the point of life?"
He stared at the collages presented, stripping him of autonomy, forcing him to live through a shell once more. Adelius realised a few things through each life that would give him reprieve.
In his sixth life, seeing his stubbed fingers smearing black chalk and blood across broken walls, manic and lost, to his second life in war-torn cities, covered in blood and sweat of species unknown, humming to his own tune to strum strings that flicked blood across his lute. Adelius found a trace of meaning.
He spent silent hours waiting for fish to catch, then created simple yet mouth watering dishes from the various spices everyday, experiencing completely distinct flavours.
'Experience…'
Adelius lost himself for another stretch of time. This stretch of time lasted the longest. He neither moved nor drifted, floating statically in space, thinking and replaying his most precious moments.
'What is life other than experiencing your desires? No matter if it's painful or painless. Even those who tread upon me do so for their own desires. Whether for survival or to climb a ladder to greater power, they had their own ambition and desires.'
'What do I desire?'
He thought for a time, with his mind falling back onto his past lives. How he coped with pain, reminiscing of his broken art, the unfinished games, uncaught and uncooked fish. Books yet unfinished and strings left unstrung. Even his rough paintings chiseled across stone walls, slaving away for nothing.
Looking above, Adelius saw the sinister clouds left over from the fissure.
'Should I have also been sucked into the fissure?'
From when Adelius awoke till the fissure appeared, an incomprehensible amount of time passed. Adelius couldn't tell but based on the increasing brightness of his soul, he felt he should have reached the lowest gate of reincarnation a long, long time ago, when his soul was barely alight.
He felt some relief. He did not want to truly reincarnate through such a gate or be sucked into the darkness of the fissure that made him feel a sore aversion. Without a source to be pulled toward, Adelius found his thoughts settled once more on his lonely journey, stranded.
'I'm beginning to forget those stars.'
His prior lives were fresh in his mind yet he lost his current memories to time. He steeled himself.
Adelius began to move upward, leaving a sparkling trail as he ascended. His speed was unmatched, his soul turning transparent and lucid, more so than those who inhabited the highest layers. Inexplicably, a golden thread took form within, radiating through the transparency, turning his whole soul a shimmering gold.
Adelius approached the stranded smoky clouds, feeling his soul tremble and try to pull away.
"There's nothing left here. To ruminate about my past for eternity is not what I desire. If there is nothing but the end above me, then I must welcome it with open arms."
Adelius accelerated toward the haze, he knew it would take an age or an eon before he reached it. Just as he began to ponder, Adelius felt a pull. He had floated for longer than he spent below the layers of wisps yet he hadn't forgotten the slight feeling of force.
A new fissure tore through the darkness, sending out waves of bright power.
It clawed. The bright white fissure ripped darkness from space, swallowing the helpless clouds and bright golden soul, leaving nothing but inexistence.