284. Jury’s Assertion

Each door revealed further fragments of her past. The entirety was never shown to her, so gaps in her understanding are bound to remain unplugged.

However, it was just enough for her to know that she messed up somewhere, and that people like the White Wing were closer to her than she could ever imagine.

And before long, after watching moments spent with a smiling White Wing, and shorter fleeting moments with Frost, Elysia began to narrate her memories as she entered the darkness of the fourth door.

This door was bloodied. But the pictures were thankfully intact.

“We had dreams. All of us did. There wasn’t a time when we didn’t struggle trying to make sense of them. Those moments we spent together were our happiest. He granted our wishes. But we couldn’t do anything about his.”

Heat.

Jury suddenly felt a rush of heat engulf her. When she came to, she found herself standing knee-deep in rivers of blood. Streets were flooded with crimson liquid.

The skies were dyed red by flames. The world had seemingly ended as buildings burnt like candlesticks.

And there, sitting in the sky where the sun should be a black amalgamation of golden eye, and in the center, burred deep within its cavity, was a burning man. It reminded her of the One Thousand Eyed Bird. Only vaguely, however, but it was enough to elicit an uncanny sense of familiarity.

That person was a humanoid-organ within its body spewed flames across the burning city. Black ribbons slithered from its main body. It captured the few that survived, snatching sections of buildings and cars filled with crying families.

They were crushed; grinded into a liquid slurry that spilled from underneath the colossal black beast. The crimson liquid she stood within was made from countless thousands of lost lives.

Jury was trapped within this body. Within the perspective of an ancient her with memories she could not decipher.

“That dream was never realized.” When Elysia spoke these words, chaos broke loose.

“Elysia! Elysia! I… I can’t do it! I can’t… bring myself to! That’s ___!” The White Wing cowered, shaking as she held a pale stake in both hands, unable to bring herself to strike the beast down.

… his name is still blanked out.

“SHUT UP GABRIELLA! That’s not ___ anymore! That’s a Faux Angel!” Another Angel, whose hair carried golden strands cried, wrestling with Gabriella for the weapon. “Give me that! The Spear of Annihilation is used exactly for this! HOW ELSE ARE WE GOING TO PENETRATE ITS SOUL!?”

“’It…? Don’t you dare call him it! You… know nothing! Elysia! Please!” The White Wing begged her as Elysia gripped a spear of her own.

This thing. Why does it hold so much power? Frost was impaled by something similar. But it was nowhere near as powerful as this. It’s vibrating. It’s alive. It’s…

“GEN-08 was the only thing in our arsenal that could take him down. All that hatred. All that effort wasted only to realize that there was no way to change things. It broke him. He reached an epiphany that broke something inside of me.”

Elysia was hesitant. The bickering between each Angels never ceased. And because of this…

“Warning. Warning. Warning. Warning. 6 Bodies are destroyed. It won’t stop beeping in my head.” An Angel grimaced, struggling to keep herself on her feet.

Incomprehensible noises filled Jury’s head. Beeping. Screaming. It was if she could hear every living being and machinery at once.

“Death toll: 77,230,203,000… are you happy? Is this the so-called dream you wanted Elysia!? ALL OF YOU!? THROW IT! THROW THE SPEAR! IT’S NOT TOO LATE!”

“DO IT ELYSIA! I’m losing my resonance! That… Pillar is hurting us!”

Elysia’s grip tightened. The consensus was split. Elysia of all Angels was the most proficient at hurling the Spears of Annihilation, which were weapons designed to combat Faux Angels and beings born from the light. From the blood. From the stones.

It was a weapon that could pierce the very lattice of the soul.

Jury’s vision waned as tears began to fall down her cheeks.

“… why… couldn’t you uphold that dream…? Why… are you like that? I thought you wanted to save this world. So why are you destroying it? Please. Come back. Please…”

“On that night which turned into day, I realized how lonely the world was without you in it. Our dreams fell apart. Our wishes died on that day. The girl who wanted to archive the world died, holding onto what was left of you. A burning diary. The city was nearly destroyed. We could fix it. But without everyone… without you in it, then what was the point?

I wish… that I could turn back time. This guilt. It crushed me. I lost everything. Everything that mattered to me was lost.”

The spear was never thrown. Her vision faded to black. She imagined the aftermath and wondered if anything could have changed. Jury saw the similarities of the memory with the current state of Frost and began to worry.

She heard the sound of hacking. Screams. Friends begging. Friends questioning. Friends that cried. Elysia was among them, and she cried the loudest.

“Our cozy resident librarian who amounted to so little. The magician who tried to keep our spirits in check. The director who tried to orchestrate your rescue. The Arbiter who died sitting on the summit of her pride. There were so many more. Like those stars you told me about… it all just faded. What was supposed to be a trickle became a hailstorm. Then a monsoon. My nights became eternal. Your woes changed everything. It brought upon an apocalypse… and our precious paradise was lost.

I always thought you were human. I never knew what you were. I never understood you.

Suddenly, she found herself within the desolate gardens, gracefully cupping onto an egg of light. But to Jury, it looked like an apple. Elysia’s body was blood-soaked. Unbelievably so. Like a snail, a trail of fluids followed unsteady steps as the feathers stubbornly clung to her apparel.

These feathers did not belong to her.

“I believed I could change things. I… had to. I…”

Standing in the place she first met Frost, Elysia brought the ‘egg’ to her mouth.

“I took the forbidden bite. To this day I still don’t know if what I did was right or wrong. What mattered to me most was seeing them all again.

When the clock turned back, I fondly remembered Michaela’s face. How it contorted when we met again. I unleashed something unnatural from that day forward. People could now break down just like him.

* * *

“Elysia! Elysia! Hey~! I had a weird dream the other day! That we all died or something! Turns out everyone’s had that dream.” The White Wing exclaimed, cheerfully waving at Elysia in a colorful meadow. “What’s with your wings? And your tail! You need to start washing yourself more. It’s good practice.”

Suddenly, the world devolved to chaos once again. The White Wing was left bleeding in a pool of her own blood.

“I’m sorry… Don’t cry. I’m sorry… that you have to see me like this. We couldn’t… do anything.”

* * *

“Elysia! Everyone’s talking about you. They think the dream’s real, but I think it’s just a case of grand delusions. People need to be careful with that nowadays. Lose yourself for a moment and you’re a monster in the next second.”

… what’s happening?

Jury was confused. A severe sense of deja’vu struck her as she watched familiar memories play with only slight alterations. They flickered like the pages of a picture book, and the result would always end with the total loss of their world.

She watched them for what felt like years on end. An endless, monotonous repetition of her failures. It was always focused on the White Wing. But slowly, she began to notice that her body was slowly changing.

Then she realized something.

Time… is being reset…

“I failed. Over and over again. Everything that was important to me was also important to this world. I had to fix it.”

Then, as if Elysia was also present, a prompt appeared before Jury’s eyes to narrate the number of repeats that transpired.

< 20th Reset >

“Elysia. That’s… not a dream anymore, is it? Elysia… what’s going on?”

< 42nd Reset >

“Elysia. Please. Something’s not right with you. Your wings are so withered. And your tail! Please… please just listen to me. The others don’t want to talk to you but I… I know you! Since you were so little! I… you can trust me, can’t you?”

< 120th Reset >

“Elysia. Why do I remember so much pain? I don’t even know if these memories are real or not.”

< 432nd Reset >

“Elysia. The Pillar of the World is so much larger than before. It will only keep growing! You can’t keep doing this! What’s going to change!? You’ve killed your younger self enough times! Us too many times! It’s… it’s not too late!” The White Wing was at her breaking point.

“Angels and the Primordial Demons could never forget. Others had already resorted to Lailah’s memory erasure. But she… she was one of the few that held onto the belief that I could be saved. I… wonder how much could have changed if I had only just listened. With each reset, the cost grew exponentially. A day when I could no longer resurrect this dream would one day come. This wish… was my curse.”

< 648th Reset >

“Elysia. Please just end it already.”

< 1,235th Reset >

“Elysia. You won’t give up. If I find you again, then I’ll make it my mission to end this myself. Why is that you’re allowed to indulge when the rest of us have to suffer!?”

< The Last Reset >

“Elysia. The next time we meet… I’m going to kill you. I missed you when you were innocent. I missed you when… when you’d just stuff your mouth. This isn’t what they would have wanted. You damned everyone with your dream, but you truly believe that it was his. Maybe he was right. This world isn’t worth saving. Maybe it’s for the best that we indulge. You… I see. You're worse than when we first met. You've lost your ability to speak."

The White Wing was identical to the one she knew today. The aura she wielded caused the meadow to wilt. The White Wing lost all faith in Jury at the very end of her tale of inevitable self-destruction. Jury, being in Elysia’s body, was wracked with guilt.

Her hands were chained together. Elysia no longer appeared like an Angel. Neither was she a Demon. She was an abomination of life. The White Wing took out a familiar pocket watch and showed Elysia its hands.

“It’s not perfect. But we’ll be heading back. So far back that this world may as well be a barren rock. You… don’t deserve a second chance. But your copy… no, she won’t be you. If she does, then I might as well just die on the spot. You’ve become the opposite of everything our light was.” The White Wing hummed, smiling devilishly with moist eyes.

“She’ll get all the second chances in the world. I’ve made arrangements. It’ll be a matter of her making contact with the Pillar of the World. Our nexus. Goodbye, Elysia. Lailah will erase these forsaken memories. I want to live out my own dream now. And if it succeeds, then maybe there was a silver lining with your selfish wish.”

* * *

“… this is who I am…?” Jury suddenly found herself suspended in the darkness again. Her body was horrific. Her eyes were dull, and her tail carried infected warts that oozed with noxious puss.

The mental toll of the revelation nearly broke her. Jury didn’t know just how catastrophic her history was. She realized that she was the one that began the Corruption. She was the one that caused the misery of many. That she perverted the dream of saving this world, only to damn it over and over again.

The past was still fragmented. But it was enough to pain her a villain. Jury was tidally locked with her past despairs as she floated in this empty space of self-reflection. Maybe this was where she was for those last 14 years.

“This world is not a new world. It’s the same one as the old one.” Jury lamented. “Things must have carried over. It was never a true reset. I… did… I…”

Did horrible things. Was what she wanted to say out loud, but she recalled Frost’s words as she wallowed in this pit of despair.

“Learning what I was won’t change who I am now. Frost… thank you.”

Frost’s words were like a strand of light. A hope that she reached out for and pulled into her chest, missing the warmth of her lover.

“… my name… is Jury. This… isn’t my past. I refuse to accept it!”

Her sudden outcry caused warts to shed from her skin as more of the light flooded into her.

“This world… why does it matter that it’s the same! I was born here! THIS WORLD IS MY HOME!” Jury shouted her affirmations. Her heart steeled, and her soul warded away the corruption that was Elysia’s grasp.

Jury was Jury. She knew it. And it would be the first thing Frost would tell her. Even if her past was full of misery, it did not change that she lived in the present. The putrid, rotting mass continued to shed. Soon, her tail returned to its fluffy form, and her eyes regained their vibrant color.

“ALL MY EXPERIENCES! ALL MY TROUBLES! ALL MY FRIENDS! AND EVERYTHING I LOVE IS HERE WITH ME! Don’t drag me down to your level, ELYSIA!” Jury villainized Elysia as if she were present. As if she was the one who tried to bend Jury. To transform her into something she was not. “I can’t be held accountable for what happened! I will not let anyone do what the Impuritas are doing to Frost! I did nothing wrong! Because –!”

She felt herself begin to rouse awake, and the moment she was greeted with the light of the Piece of the Fallen Star, she cried out at the top of her lungs.

“– I AM JURY!”