Chapter 1 - An Act of Effort

My eye, for the value I had once given you.

My sword, imbued with the sins that once guided you through life.

My gavel, fending off the weakness that stabbed you through the heart.

My mirror, carrying copies of everything I had once loved about you.

My cage, limiting you to an area of deadly comfort.

My identity, carefully built by an architect just to drip onto the floor off a golden throne.

Faint memories of a life that I had never lived flowed through my head.

I needed to think. I needed to get to the truth as quickly as possible.

I was not alive. I was not a god. I was not a human.

I didn’t know what I was.

Szzt!

I didn’t know anything. Trapped inside of a prison of beating flesh, my senses had been dulled over time. Or whatever time I believed had passed. I didn’t remember if I had senses to be dulled. Knowledge was shot into my head every time I had a question.

Szzst!

Another piece of information pierced my mind.

My name was Nell Moren. I was going to be a human.

Szzst!

I didn’t like this. Humans like and dislike, judging the things they see off of a perceived value. I was already observing my condition. My dormant body began to shiver at the thought of waking up. I had never existed, and yet I could tell there would be no warmth in the world I was soon to be thrown into. I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to open my eyes. I didn’t want to exist.

My ears began to work. Senses were the only way that I knew of for humans to observe the world. My mind, stimulated by my senses' inception, began racing with empty thoughts. I heard a rip after every small segment of time had passed. I couldn’t tell how long it had been. The nerves in my arms were discovered, and next were my legs. Then, my torso and the rest of my body, until I realized… I was really cold. Something in my chest started beating, the same way the walls around me had always beat. My muscles started twitching and flailing aimlessly, but were caught and tied up by large blood vessels.

My fist reflexively clutched as a bit of detached flesh sputtered in the palm of my hand. My skin was so soft that the blood burnt me.

I felt something for the first time.

Szzt!

It was called pain. I didn’t want to feel anymore.

Riip!

The flesh prison ripped again. A bit of clear liquid started pooling near my bleeding and burnt hand.

Riiiip!

I was going to have to prepare myself. I felt it coming.

My perfect eternity was over.

The final tear in the flesh prison occurred as I was flung onto the freezing floor and assaulted with the gift of sight. I opened my eyes and observed the world I was unwillingly thrown into. Countless bright fractals were strung across the black sky, emitting a brilliant light. My mouth shaped itself unconsciously as water ran down my face.

Szzst!

This was a confusing feeling. My existence had been confirmed at that moment, due to the observation of the stars falling down on me. But my feelings couldn’t be further from “confirmed”. I couldn’t understand anything. My thoughts were too scattered to piece any information together.

My eardrums were shattered by the loudest noise I’ve ever heard throughout my entire, albeit short, existence, when I hit the floor.

Blood was pouring out of my body. I needed this blood to survive. But the blood didn’t wish to stay in my body, which was odd. Maybe it didn’t want me to survive.

Around my body was a silk robe, dyed red from the blood. I quickly moved it around to stop the bleeding near my torso. As I was doing that, I turned my head in front of me.

An oddly shaped creature was shaking in front of me.

It was a human. Communication was a unique skill of this species. I was also designed to be human. Comfort would come if I spoke to them. So, I attempted to. I held out my hand to them as I laid on the floor.

“Please, human. Guide my hand.”

“Ah… Ah.. AH! Get him to a hospital! Somebody!”

Many people rushed towards me. I had the ability to count them, and yet my thoughts were too unclear to connect the symbol of the number to the value of the number.

The people around me started to murmur to each other.

“Is he from Cittaglia? I don’t sense any magic from him.”

“Doesn’t matter. We need to get him to the hospital.”

“Can the Maylem even pay the bill?”

“Don’t say that!”

This was irritating. My body was in pain, but they were concerned about my magic. I wanted to express that, but my mouth froze. Communication was much more difficult than I had known it to be.

My thoughts began to slow down and my eyelids grew heavier. My consciousness faded. I had been in a state of unconsciousness before I existed, so this was no issue to me.

…

I wanted to go back.

…

…

My thoughts began to come back to me. Along with my consciousness, a cold sensation began to invade my body. I shivered and shot up. I was inside of a bed.

I looked around. It was too bright. Tens of people rushed around the room I was in. Bright white walls with a level of sanitation only matched by the castle of a king enclosed the area. I believed this was a hospital. The needles injecting a freezing liquid into my bloodstream helped confirm this theory. The skin on my hand was the same consistency as the bedsheets I laid in.

I had just woken up, so my mind was still jumbled.

I… I needed to get out of here.

A young woman walked up to me.

“Are you feeling better?”

It took me a couple seconds to think, and yet nothing of use shot into my mind like it usually did.

“Better…. Uhmmm… What is better?”

The doctor had no clue what I was talking about, and to be honest, neither did I. She told me to lay back down, but I didn’t. Why would I need to follow orders from her? I needed to get out of here more than anything.

I… I needed to find somebody. I wasn’t sure who, but I felt as if I needed to find them.

But, first of all, I needed to get my thoughts together. My mind was moving too quickly. I took a deep breath.

My thoughts and knowledge gradually came back to me as I stared at her, spacing out.

I had been unconscious for five days. During those five days, I learned much more about my current predicament. I had learned of my background.

I was the creation of a god.

The reason why I was created was still unknown. Humans naturally looked for purpose, and yet the only thing I could focus on was survival. I didn’t know if I was human or not. I was designed after a human, so I counted myself as one.

There were two people of importance in the knowledge I had gained.

The first one was the God of Time. I wasn’t informed of my relation to her. I imagined her in my mind. She had… long white hair, and an extravagant white dress. Her eyes were golden as well. I didn’t know much of her other than that. She appeared familiar to me. But… that feeling of familiarity was not one of comfort. It was a harsh familiarity.

I didn’t know why I had received knowledge of her.

Then, there was the second person.

Her name was L’eau.

I was told she was a romantic partner of mine, but I had no interest in gods, or anybody for that matter.

This was what I saw as another lie. Useless information about her had been implanted in me. She had long black hair, and an extravagant black dress. Her eyes were the same golden color as the God of Time’s. She felt slightly more distant and cosmic. I understood even less about her than the God of Time.

At this point, I had enough knowledge to do whatever I wanted. With that knowledge came the realization that no comfort would naturally befall me. I had to work for it. That chase would give me a direction. That was what I needed.

I turned my head to the doctor and asked her a question.

“L-L’eau.”

My question didn’t come out as a question. As I said, communication was incredibly difficult.

The doctor smiled and laughed a little bit as I spoke.

“No, you’re in Jeti silly. Not L’eau.”

Jeti? As in Jeti, the country? This was useful information. She spoke as if L’eau was a country, which confused me.

“Where is she… Where is L’eau…?”

The doctors side-eyed each other and told me something that made me doubt everything that I had been told.

“She's… the first ruler of L’eau has been dead for 2,300 years sweetie. You hit your head pretty hard, didn’t you?”

My mind instantly grew tense as I stared dead into her eyes. So many new feelings flooded in at the same time that I couldn’t keep up with it. I didn’t like these doctors. I… just couldn’t. They were too demeaning.

“Please stop calling me sweetie.”

The doctor scowled at me.

“It's a part of my job.”

I didn’t want anybody calling me anything other than my name.

Over my time asleep, I had learned much about this world. I had previously known that a day was made up of two halves of a day. I had just recently learned that it was actually made up of 24 hours.

Also, as I said, this was a hospital. Hospitals are for people who need healing. Fortunately, I didn’t need healing. So I could leave.

Standing up from the bed, I stumbled out of the hospital room. A doctor saw me and yelled something, but I couldn’t care less. I started sprinting down the hallway and opening every door I could, looking for the exit. I began to run out of energy and sat on the floor, only for the doctors to chase after me again.

After a bit of searching, I finally found a unique room. I went in and locked the door so those people couldn’t take me back to the bed. Unfortunately, there were 2 people already there. The first human was sitting on a white chair device with his pants around his ankles.

He looked at me, terrified for some reason. But he seemed confusing. I saw a similarity between the way he acted and the way I did. This was surely because we were both humans.

The second person was an anomaly. I looked at him and he looked back. He was seemingly trapped behind a piece of glass. I could relate to him in that way. I believed this was called empathy. I spoke to him to see who he was.

“Salutations.”

The man mouthed the words that I said back to me without speaking. Out of nowhere the man who was sitting on the chair interrupted me by yelling over to me in an agitated manner.

“The fuck are you doing? That's a mirror dipshit, ever heard of it?”

Mirror? I see. His name was Mirror. The man on the chair had no reason to insult me, though.

I continued staring at Mirror. He had dark brown hair that went to the bottom of the back of his neck, with one out of place wide strand on the front going past his chin on the right side of his face. His eyes were an unnatural radiant gold. His eyebrows were slightly thick, and his face was rather feminine for somebody who appeared to be a male. His eyelashes were a bit longer than regular and his skin was unusually clear. He was wearing that same silk robe I had on. He seemed to be approximately the age of 17 with a medium sized male body type, his muscles and stomach thin from what I could see.

The surroundings overwhelmed me. My mind couldn’t focus on the man insulting me, and Mirror copying me. It was painful. I wanted to block out all my senses and go back to sleep.

“I’ll free you if you cease your mocking!”

He then proceeded to do it again. Out of anger, I slammed my fist into the glass he was behind and walked away, dragging my feet on the floor behind me. Mirror walked the same way as me, but couldn’t escape the glass.

I looked down at the floor and scoffed.

“Fool.”

After my first ever successful day of communication, I figured it was time to continue trying to escape. I opened the door, waved goodbye to the man on the seat, and pushed the doctors who were trying to contain me onto the floor. Blood dripped from my arm, but the hole closed up immediately after I noticed it.

Walking down the hallway again, I finally found the exit doors. The doctors eventually gave up chasing me, probably because they knew I was too healthy to keep there. Opening the door, I was blinded by a burst of light. Another new feeling was shown to me.

Disappointment.

The worst thing I had felt by far. Worse than pain, despite the similarities. The brilliant shining dots were gone and instead sat a massive ball of light, searing my eyes shut.

If this was what effort turned into, I would never put effort into anything again. This ball was called the sun. A star much larger than the ones that I enjoyed. It didn’t acknowledge my existence. Its gaze didn’t give me anything I wanted. It was an overpowering body that I couldn’t help but steer my vision away from.

I looked to the side. I didn’t know what to do. My only option was to get up and move, but I didn’t want to put effort into that action. But I had to. I simply needed to try.

I got up and dragged my feet on the floor behind me.

After a couple minutes of walking, I found another group of humans. There were actually a lot of them. More than I could actively count. There were like… twelve of them. I knew how to count well. I just couldn’t call upon the information. My brain was too jumbled to count.

Groups of people walked along a row of shops and businesses. Hundreds of conversations from hundreds of people besieged my ears. The hot air would have burned my skin if it hadn’t gotten stronger over the time I spent asleep.

My body started doing something I’ve never seen it do before. It began to tremble. I tried to ignore it and continued walking. Usually, when I was confused about something, information about it was injected into my head. But this time, that didn’t happen.

I was aimless.

A man with short black hair and a suit bumped into me, forcing my thoughts onto the ground. I turned to him. It was yet another confusing human. He had the same feeling as the man on the toilet. As if they were the same person. I couldn’t tell them apart. My brain was starting to spin.

He looked down at me as I fell over.

“Sorry.”

He turned around and kept walking. This was my only chance. I needed to stop him.

I grabbed his shoulder and spoke to him. He seemed like a person who would know the answer to this question.

“T-The God of Time. Where is she?”

He side-eyed me and kept walking. Maybe communication was hard for him too. I didn’t want to blame him, but I was angry. And I was still shaking.

I needed to find out why I was shaking. My eyes weren't helping me, nor were my ears. I decided to use my nose. I smelled the air. There was only one thing that didn’t smell like sweat in this entire area. My legs were shaking too bad to walk, so I crawled over across the pavement.

My elbows burnt. The pain from that heat was nothing compared to everything else I felt.

The indifference of this world was all but gentle.

…

I stopped moving and stood in front of a baker. Inside the glass case, there were three croissants. The more I looked, the more it seemed the entire stall only had croissants.

“You want a croissant, young man?”

I nodded my head and went to grab it, but my hand was immediately slapped away.

“You got any money, kid?”

Ah, money. I had forgotten all about it. Money was one of the worst things in this world. To get money, you needed… a job. That was the thing I wanted the least. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t get a job. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

“You gonna pay for that?”

“I’ll pay you later.”

I was lying. Lying to help themselves was a normal thing all humans did, I believed.

“No the hell you won't.”

I ran off with the food in my mouth while the man chased after me. After a bit of running, I had finally escaped from the evil man only to bump into somebody else. There were two people wearing a lot of metal clothing. They didn’t seem to want to take away my croissant, but I was still not going to trust them due to the last interactions I had with humans. I decided to play it safe and only say a single word.

“Hello.”

And my hunch turned out to be right.

“Please come with us. Justin Beckwith would like to examine you.”