The One Who Waits

Lynn froze. Every hair on her body stood up in shock. It was like the memory she was witnessing was interacting with her directly. She turned around. No one was there. Who else could Weissilde be referring to?

“Is the saltiness… just right?”

Once again, the Mage asked. But it was not a question. It was a threat. Every fiber of Lynn’s being reacted with terror to the overwhelming malice being exuded. Invisible crosshairs locked onto her. She has seen too much. A voyeur who overstepped into the boundaries of the past.

The Mage approached the panicked princess with slow, excruciatingly nerve-wracking steps. Lynn’s heart was practically exploding, begging to escape from the prison that was her ribcage. Her senses screamed at her in silence. This cannot be happening.

Her survival instincts kicked in. Whether it was reality or illusion, it didn’t matter anymore. She didn’t want to find out. She broke into a sprint. Her feet carried her towards the exit of the cavern, only for Weissilde’s arm to extend like a harpoon eager to snag her.

Lynn dodged the shot. Almost. The edge of the razor-sharp appendage nicked her shoulder as she dashed to the side. She only realized she had been hit a few seconds after the fact. Not because of the pain, but because of the cold.

The sensation of frigid steel lingered around her upper arm. Warm blood leaked out into icy skin. Seeing red spreading throughout her shoulder filled her soul with dread unlike any other. Her injury was not an illusion. The burning fire in her flesh that followed was as real as it could be.

Her vision blurred for a brief moment. Eyes trembled as the gravity of the situation crept into her mind. She barely had time to process the situation before Weissilde sent another strike flying her way. This one fluttered like a gymnast’s ribbon, flowing unpredictably in defiance of physics. Impossible to dodge, Lynn slammed the ground with her palm out of pure reflex.

But nothing happened.

There was no magic in the ground. Nothing for her Gift to talk to. The earth was silent because it wasn’t the earth. It was a mirage.

Lynn refused to believe it. Her palms. Her feet. Her tried-and-true methods of activating her Gift were failing. The more she poured her magic into the earth, the greater the despair that flowed back into her veins.

Fear. Anger. Hatred. She had all the emotions she needed, but no way to use them. With no way to express them the way she knew how, she found herself backed into a corner in the cavern. Unable to run. Unable to defend herself.

Unable to wake up from the flashback-turned-nightmare.

The warrior in her was silent. What was left was prey. She was used to life-and-death situations, but never once did she feel this powerless.

Within the imagined confines of the Insanity Engine, did the king’s immortality still apply? If she were to die here, what would be of her real body—the one resisting the waves of salt through an armor of stone? In a split second, her mind already traveled far and wide, but could not find a way out of her predicament. Only dead ends.

Two flashes of silver sliced through the air. Her damaged mind could no longer tell what those were. Spears or scythes—the type did not matter anymore. They were all the same. Death. The surface of her eye reflected that final flash of gray.

Weissilde’s entire journey played back across her mind. From when she first met Harlow to his demise. Discovering immortality when it was too late. No, the Mage was not immortal. She was not even alive.

She was already dead the day she lost him.

Lynn braced herself for the finishing blow. The metal husk of a human seemed to move both too fast and too slow at the same time. A strange feeling. Was this how it felt for one to come to terms with their mortality?

But then, everything stopped. Weissilde’s spear-arm hovered fractions of an inch over Lynn’s unblinking eyeball. Death hung by a single thread.

“You humans never listen. Always thirsting for knowledge, only to drown in it.”

An unknown male voice resounded throughout the chamber. Lynn had no idea where it came from. Realizing she escaped certain death, she slumped to the ground, back sliding against the craggy wall. She almost suffocated in her own breathing, her lungs not realizing how long they had been frozen. The ice in her blood thawed. Color returned to her skin.

“You were warned not to look too deep. All you had to do was blissfully ignore the events that transpired. Tell me, why do you still gaze into the abyss knowing it will bring about your end?”

She looked around. Weissilde’s body was motionless, suspended mid-attack. Whoever was speaking to her appeared to have frozen time. No. This person was interfering with the effects of the Insanity Engine. But there was no sign of him. Was he friend or foe?

“Who are you?” She asked the cavern itself.

“Again, you seek answers inconceivable for your feeble brain. Your body may be immortal, but your mind is not.”

The weight behind his voice grew with each word. There was an authority behind it beyond anything she had encountered. She didn’t know what or who it was, only that she was in the presence of a godlike being. Simply trying to look for him was causing her blood to boil. An indescribable heat swelled within her body the more she tried to perceive him.

“Is this more to your liking, foul Antediluvian?”

For a brief moment, the cavern and everything inside it blinked out of existence. But when it returned, a humanoid figure stood in the middle. A silhouette like Byzantium and Harlow, shrouded in shadow from head to toe. His size was normal, but everything else about him was not.

The heat in her body vanished. Even the wound on her shoulder. The pain she felt wasn’t just gone; it never existed in the first place. Sweat trickled down her forehead, clinging to the bottom of her chin, hesitant to even fall in the presence of such an unfathomable being.

Silence followed uncertainty. The figure awaited an answer, but Lynn didn’t know how to respond to his question. It wasn’t fear that was preventing her; it was the understanding that she was but a mere cell under a microscope. And yet, in spite of the inexplicable gulf between her and the being, she still sought to unravel him.

“I-I… W-Who… Are you an Aberration?” Her mind stumbled its way out of her mouth.

“I am a messenger, an avatar of [ ].”

She heard a name. She heard nothing.

The Spire’s Cognition Filter redacted the mere mention of it, erasing it from reality. While she did not comprehend the gap in her mind, she knew no answer would be found if she tried to look deeper.

The figure continued with his introduction. “I am known within your reality as The One Who Waits at the End of the World.”

The weight behind that title forced gravity itself to pause. The light around his shadowy figure appeared to bend even further as a sign of respect.

Lynn wondered aloud, “So… does this mean the world has ended? Tim lost?”

“Far from it. The spell has been undone. Rejoice human! Your world lives still, in all its brokenness and dwindling.”

Despite the good news, Lynn didn’t feel that much relieved. Perhaps it was the tone he carried. The figure almost sounded disappointed that the apocalypse had been averted.

“That’s it? You came all the way here just to tell me this?”

“I’ve been here since the very beginning. You simply chose not to perceive me.”

Confusion struck her like a rock thrown at her face. Grimace twisted her expression. “So where is ‘here’ and how do I leave?”

“Here. This space. The memories you’ve witnessed. Everything is taking place within your own mortal mind. Even the Mage’s attempt at your life.” His shadow glanced over at Weissilde, still preserved in her last position like a painting, before turning to face Lynn once more. “You attempted to take your life.”

“What do you mean? You’re not making any sense,” she protested.

The figure snapped his lightless fingers. Wessilde faded like ashes carried by the wind. Indestructible metal dissolved into figments of imagination.

“Sense,” he stated as a matter of fact. “You were explicitly warned to ‘kill all your senses.’ You failed. But you’re not the only one.” He sighed. “The Lord of Death overestimated your capabilities.”

“W-What?”

“A word of advice, human. Should you wish for things to make sense, make it. Or is that even too much to ask of you?”

The perplexed expression strewn across her face did her no favors. She was lost. He was frustrated. This was getting nowhere.

With a sigh, the being enlightened her. “The Insanity Engine is a containment device that houses a multitude of cognitohazards. Sentient and non-sentient alike fall victim to its powers. At full strength, the engine causes ‘existence itself to commit suicide.’ What you experienced is only a mere quark of its potential. And you weren’t even the intended target.”

Despite the insult being smeared all over her face, there was no expression. She was more intrigued than offended. So when he said he’d “undo the spell,” he meant making it kill itself. Would it work on an Immortal? Or would it result in an endless loop of suicide and revival?

“Your thirst for knowledge exceeds you, human. Do not tempt fate by desiring more.”

“And yet, here you are, messenger. You invaded my mind to tempt me, no?”

“No. I am only a ghost of the past. I was present in every single memory you saw. The only invasion here is from your own lust for the unknown.” He scoffed. But despite being enveloped in shadow, Lynn could hear him smiling. “Very well. Allow me to give you a welcome gift before my message. Behold—the present.”

The figure raised his hand in a crescent-like motion. A circular portal appeared, and with it, the curse of knowledge.

Lynn’s eyes widened to an impossible degree. At the other end of the portal was Glacies, bedridden and missing an arm. The queen was surrounded by servants and physicians, panic visible on their blurry faces.

What? When? Why?

The moment a torrent of questions flooded her mind, a sword impaled her chest from behind. Her sword. Her Regalia wielded by a carbon copy of her.

She slumped to the ground, choking in her own blood, as the other Lynn flicked the dirty red liquid off the edge of the blade.

The figure laughed. Sadistic. Disgusted. Insane. As if he just watched a dog eat its own dung after being warned not to. “Does it feel good to drown in curiosity, Terilynn, Daughter of Acritae?”

She couldn’t answer, only gurgle. She was more shocked that he knew she was born without a father. That her mother gave birth to her through a Regalia. Even as her doppelganger kicked and stomped her body, her mind was so full of questions, there was no room for pain.

“Hark! I now present a message from [ ]!” The figure lifted both his arms to his side, ignoring the scene unfolding before him. “This timeline has now shifted. [ ] corrected it. Thanks to you, Terilynn, Daughter of Acritae. As a reward, you shall know your fate.”

Lynn’s vision blurred, then darkened. Her hearing was the last to go.

“On your head will be the crown of the Kingdom of Antediluvia. And with it, you shall plunge the Spire into chaos, ushering in a new age of darkness. We look forward to the day.”

The world faded to black. Everything became cold as the figure’s deranged laughter accompanied her final moments. But at the very last second, it vanished, replaced by a trembling voice. Sad, almost on the verge of tears.

“And know this, human. The Lord of Death shall die by your hand.”

When her eyes finally opened, she gasped for air like she had been drowning. There were no injuries on her body. No blood. No pain. Only the same questions left in her mind as she found herself back in the cavern.

The salt vanished. The ominous magic circle, gone. All that was left was Tim, kneeling on the floor, holding Weissilde’s motionless body. He was tired. Eyes swollen, as if he had been crying for quite some time.

Raising his head, he looked at Lynn as he asked, “Could you help me bury her?”

The princess was stunned. Not because of the request, but because of what she learned from The One Who Waits at the End of the World.

She could never look at Tim the same way ever again.