Chapter 27: Revelation

There was no sky here.

There was no earth.

Just an endless sea of fractured light and broken reflections—shards of existence suspended in a void where time did not move. Where the very idea of direction, or distance, or memory seemed like a lie.

Aria stood in the Higher Realm.

Her body—once so radiant, powerful, godlike—now trembled. Not from weakness, but from proximity. Something immense stirred around her. It was not watching her.

It was her.

She took a step forward. Reality folded beneath her feet like paper dipped in water. The stars above breathed like lungs—inhale, exhale, flickering in and out of being. Her mind, trained to understand pain and silence and wrath, couldn’t grasp this place. It was like standing inside a thought that had never been spoken aloud.

Then the memories began.

Fragments of the Self

One memory.

Then a thousand.

Then millions.

Visions struck her like lightning—images of past lives flashing across her mind, each a life. Each an Aria.

A girl on a battlefield, crowned in fire, screaming as she pulled her dying body across ash.

Another Aria with wings of glass, ruling over silent cities made of bone.

Another—sobbing in the rain, holding a child’s corpse.

Aria dropped to her knees.

“I… I don’t understand—”

You do.

It was her voice. But older. Ageless. Everywhere.

They surrounded her—not physically, but in thought. The past Arias. Some wept. Some screamed. Some stood silent, gazing with eyes that had long forgotten how to cry.

“We are you. You are us. This is what you sought. Godhood.”

The First

One voice rose above the others. Sharper. Sharper than all pain.

The First Aria.

She had been cursed by the Unseen that had no name back then, the same type of curse that had befallen the current Aria. The obsession to ascend to godhood and destroy the Unseen was planted, much like how the curse drove the current Aria to ascend to destroy the entity.

Aria saw it now: how that curse took root. How the First had fought to ascend, to break free of mortality. And when she reached the Higher Realm, she realized the truth—

The Unseen was never here.

It resided beyond this place. In an even higher realm, the Transcendent realm.

The Unseen was a force born from the collective agony of the universe—pain made sentient. The most powerful being in existence.

And it had tricked her, the First Aria.

Aria watched in horror as the First was trapped. Time outside, in the lower realm restarted. The universe was reset, according to the Unseen’s will. But not here. Here, she remained—alone, abandoned.

The next universe played out exactly like the first. The Aria in that universe was cursed, planting the obsession of attaining godhood.

And when the second Aria arrived, she merged with the first. Two of the same beings cannot exist separately in the same plane after all.

The universe was reset. Again.

The Arias remained.

The next Aria reached the higher realm, merged. And then the next.

The Entity, formed from the merger of billions of past Arias, was born—not a god, but a prison. A conduit. Every pain from every new world was drawn to the Entity. The pain was felt by the entity. And the Entity, comprised of billions of Arias, multiplied that pain into mana—feeding the Unseen who was tethered to it.

The Curse and the Loops

The Entity spoke again.

“We have fed the Unseen for billions of iterations.”

“You… cursed me,” the current Aria whispered. “You started this.”

“We had no choice,” the First said. “The Unseen forces us to curse the next. It is the cycle. He demands it. To feed.”

“But why Ren?” Aria asked. “Why did he try so hard to kill him?”

All around her, the Entity stirred—voices shifting.

“We tried to break the cycle. We found him and we made him into one that cannot feel pain. Our last rebellion.”

“The Unseen feared him,” said another voice. “He should have died in every loop. But in yours, he lived because you took an interest in him due to his inability to feel pain.”

“And because of that,” said the First, “you are not like us. You feel more. You remember more. You resist.”

The Merge

Suddenly, her body cracked. Light poured from her skin. Voices screamed inside her skull. The merging began.

The Entity surged toward her, trying to consume her. Trying to make her one of them.

“Complete the loop,” they cried. “Finish the equation. Become us. Become the perfect converter.”

Aria’s jaw tightened. Her stance didn’t waver, but her hands trembled with power.

“Is that all I am to you? A function? A tool? Did you give up on rebelling the loops?”

“You’ll waste their pain,” the Entity warned. “You’ll make it meaningless.”

“It won’t be meaningless!” she roared. “I won’t let the cycle continue!”

Images of Ren surged into her mind—always beside her. The warmth of his touch. The sound of his heartbeat when they kissed.

Her will sharpened like a blade.

The merge shattered.

The Entity howled.

Aria collapsed, panting, alone—still herself. But changed. She had seen too much.

The Door

And then she looked up.

Above her, suspended in silence, was a glowing door. Fractals of light cascaded around it. It pulsed—not with warmth, but with a presence.

The Transcendent Realm.

Where the Unseen waited.

Her heart sank.

She was still not done.