I exhaled quietly as the cracks branched out rapidly. I was going to die here, despite having done everything I could have. My upper body tumbled uselessly onto the ground as my lower torso vanished into ash entirely. There was no feeling, no pain. Just the silent erosion of my body.
The streams of grey ash were no longer feeding the sphere, instead choosing to silently ascend into the sky, buffeted by a moaning wind. Even now, however, grey ash was streaming out of me, and there were still quite a few streams of ash rising from the city centre. It was entirely possible that I was the last person alive within this country.
Meanwhile, pieces of reality were breaking off around the sphere, leaving a ghastly black void in its place. Pieces of the grey sky had vanished, and a faint hissing sound was audible. The black cracks were rapidly spreading all around, and it didn’t take long before they ran through my body. Mr. Meng’s, and now my efforts had been in vain.
I closed my eyes. Would I turn to grey ash first or be devoured by that black void? Within the bleak landscape of my mind, I involuntarily recalled the scenes of everyone’s deaths.
“Daddy’s here.”
Mr. Meng’s last words echoed in my mind as the land around me shattered.
Chapter 27
There was a brief sensation of falling, before I appeared what seemed like a sea of stars in space. My body had somehow returned to me, complete with my sight and other senses, clothed in a robe that wouldn’t look out of place in a hospital. I was standing on a floor so white that it easily passed for snow, smooth and cool to the touch. The deep-rooted fatigue I had felt for the past few years had vanished, and for the first time in my memory, I felt truly awake. My mind felt clear—far clearer than I had ever felt it to be.
“About time you came, I think.” Footsteps echoed from behind me, and the view of the starry sky was increasingly obscured by mist, lasting for a good minute before dissipating.
I was now standing in a snowy-white room, filled with furniture colored in various shades of yellow. The room was largely devoid of decorations, with only a single, empty photo frame hanging on a wall.
The owner of the voice now stood in front of me, and I unconsciously averted my gaze. His face was wreathed in something akin to sunlight that obscured his face, and he was wearing a white shirt with a yellow circle in the middle. He sported a pair of velvet pants that looked incredibly natural on him, accompanied by a pair of black shoes.
“So, uh, you like sunny-side up eggs?” My mouth asked, having decided on its own that the brain was malfunctioning and therefore it should be independent.
The glow on his face died down, revealing his face. “I can guess why you thought that.” His voice was smooth and resonant, with a hint of strength embedded deep within.
He toyed with his shirt for a moment as he watched me with his sky-blue eyes, clearly waiting for something.
His mouth twitched as I stayed silent. Suppressing something close to laughter, he asked, “Usually, when people come here, they tend to ask questions related to themselves. Like: ‘where am I’, or ‘am I dead’. Of course, my sample size is small, so it’s natural to have outliers show up.”
“The Key provided me with some very good guesses.” I said, having subdued my rebellious mouth.
I moved over to a sofa and sat down, enjoying the feeling of having a complete body again. The man followed suit, and with a wave of a hand conjured a bowl of sweets and snacks from nowhere. The events of just a few minutes ago seemed like a distant memory, a storm on the opposite bank of an ocean.
“Neat. Can I have some?”
“Feel free.”
There was a moment of silence as I munched on some chocolates. It felt real… as real as the world I had been in. Hazred, the humanoid overseer that I’d spoken to, was most probably telling the truth. An illusory world, repeating the years leading up to its destruction. Yet, everything felt so real to me. The people within, their emotions. It was impossible for every single one of them to be a construct, and their feelings even more so.
They were too natural to be artificial. Mr. Meng’s love for his daughter, the affection that Miles had for us juniors, everything was all too real. Of course, the man in front of me might just be able to replicate them, but I instinctively knew he wasn’t the type to do so. That man in front of me… I knew who he was now.
“The Dawn Protector, right?” I asked.
The protector of all mortals. It was said that he was the embodiment of every sun, and that he was chosen to become a Primordial some two thousand years ago: relinquishing his freedom for immortality and the power to protect us all. It was rumored that he had caused the Third Collapse, and him appearing here was all too suspicious too.
“Correct.” He relaxed on the couch, looking at me. “I imagine you have quite a few questions now that you’ve time to think. But let me tell you a little story first.”
“A long time ago,” he said. “368 years ago, to be exact, there was a planet named Earth. It was under my jurisdiction as it resided in my plane of existence. When I became a being that was freed from karma, I lost the ability to descend onto any mortal world, so my duties lie in intercepting threats from other planes and augury. Follow so far?”
I nodded.
“Back to 368 years ago then. In a city-state in the region of Southeast Asia, there was a shopping district that was wildly popular. Would you like to see it?” Without waiting for my response, the scenery shifted, and I found myself somewhere quite familiar.
“Orchard Road…?” I looked around and spotted some iconic places.
“Great, you remember this place.” He smiled. “This is the year 2010, of this planet’s Gregorian calendar.” He paused, letting the impact of his words sink in. The hamster wheel in my mind spun furiously as I tried to understand the implications.
Eight years ago, or what passed as eight years ago for me, saw the Third Collapse happen. As for the day, I was incredibly certain that I was going to see it happen in front of me. But that wasn’t the point. It seemed that ‘the cleansing’, as the Key called it, was set in stone on the day laid out in front of me.
“As you undoubtedly have guessed, the Key’s judgement was indeed passed on this ‘year’.” The Dawn Protector gestured, and time passed. The clouds shifted, while the sun continued to travel its customary journey across the heavens. “On a certain day, a building collapsed.”
A building, a good ten floors high, shuddered. The lower floors gave way and crumbled, causing smoke and dust to fill the air. There were sirens and screams as people were crushed under debris, especially as the upper parts of the building continued to fall.
“Normally, nothing much would have happened.” The Protector carried on, all the while watching my facial expression as I continued watching it. My brow furrowed. This scene was oddly familiar. It should be familiar, but the exact memory remained somewhat out of reach. I turned my mind back to the collapsing building, and watched as debris started to fall, pinning people down, while others had died from the impact outright.
For the first time in this place, I felt pain. Not from the flesh, but from somewhere deep inside me. “I was there, wasn’t I?” I asked quietly, as the building collapsed entirely.
“It seems like you’ve begun to remember. You were indeed here, at this tragic scene.” The Dawn Protector smiled sadly, and he continued speaking. “At the site of the accident, there was a young child at the age of thirteen. His very presence changed the fate of this world.”
A hollow monochrome hue spread from somewhere within the building, and everything that was moving stopped as the monochrome domain engulfed them. Bricks that were falling froze in mid-air, and fleeing people halted mid-step. From afar, it might have looked somewhat hilarious, like a magic show of sorts.
“This child inadvertently stopped time in a certain radius around him, executing the absolute pinnacle of Minor Time Laws in a single step. Strictly speaking, even if this happened, I wouldn’t have stepped in.” The s
cene changed, showing a family of three. “Unfortunately…” His voice trailed off momentarily.
The family of three… I recognized them. Or at least, two of them. How could I not? That familiar face and demeanor of steel, tinged with love and affection, was right in front of me. Mr. Meng was holding a younger Aurora’s hand, and that of a woman’s. His wife, probably. But now, the awful monochrome had enveloped them too.
“This girl was the host of the Key.
The Key was not destined to awaken in this era, but she was caught in this prison of Time. As you might have noticed, many things simply do not affect the host of the Key. Unfortunately, it would have been better if it had.” The Dawn Protector shook his head and sighed. “A simple augury I conducted revealed that in the days to come, the girl would still remain conscious, but her body would be locked in time. Unable to move, it wouldn’t take long before she descended into madness, which would trigger the Key to awaken as a protective measure.”
As he spoke, a golden-red radiance blazed into life around the young Aurora briefly, before the monochrome domain extinguished it. “Even the Key would be powerless against the peak of Minor Time Laws. Likewise, it was still aware and conscious, but the Key’s body was still unable to move, and it would pass an automatic verdict. The moment I had this revelation, I had to step in.”
The scenery changed once more, this time showing the entire Solar System.
“As the Dawn Protector, there were certain things I could do. I had a few applications of True Time Laws available to me, and I used one of them to cast the entire Solar System into absolute stasis, one that even the Key nor its host couldn’t resist. I couldn’t interfere with the Minor Time Laws already present, but I could supersede them.”
The varied and myriad colors of the celestial objects of the Solar system disappeared, replaced by a solid spiral of black and white. “In its place, I decided to create a simulacrum of the Solar System by using the myriad futures possible as a reference, which was what you call the Third Collapse, to source for a possible solution.”
The frozen star system vanished for a split second, before being immediately replaced by another one with little drama. I sneaked a glance at the man standing beside me. His words were light hearted, but what he described and did was downright horrifying.
Engrossed in his storytelling, he didn’t notice my glance. “Eventually, eight years later, the recreated world was finally freed of the shackles of Time. As expected, the verdict that the Key had passed down was already set in stone, and another eight years after time resumed its flow, the Key wrought its Judgement.”
As he spoke, the verdant green and blue of the planet I was looking at was engulfed by an ominous grey. Immediately afterwards, the whole Solar system flickered and vanished, replaced by another Solar system.
“It was fortunate that I acted when I did,” said the Dawn Protector. “The real Key has not awakened, and the future is still salvageable, which will require your cooperation. For now, do you have any questions?”
He looked at me, and I let out a breath of air that I had been holding on to. I didn’t even know if I actually needed to breathe, but it felt better that way. The words of the Dawn Protector carried too many implications. A little tremor ran down my spine as I asked, “Who was that child who stopped time?”
The surroundings blurred, before morphing into the interior of the collapsing building. The building was in rough shape, with cracks everywhere and chunks falling from the ceiling, and from the looks of it, the building would give way soon. A man and woman were pinned under a metal beam a few meters in front of me, and everything was still… except for a young boy, wearing a T-shirt and pants. He looked barely a day older than thirteen.
The Dawn Protector’s gaze was unmoving as he said, “That child was you.”
Chapter 28
The young boy tugged at the unmoving metal beam fruitlessly, and I instinctively strode forward to help, but my hands simply passed through everything.
“Apparently, there was another force at play.” The Dawn Protector said as he continued to watch the child tug fruitlessly at the metal beam. “The creator of a domain where time was frozen should be able to interact with his surroundings. Anything he wanted to interact with would move as the creator pleased, free of all Physical Laws. Naturally, you were able to interact with almost anything caught in the disaster. However, that metal beam and your parents weren’t among these things.”
The boy, exhausted, slumped on the floor. “Every single incarnation of you thought the same way,” said the Dawn Protector. “That perhaps, only after saving everyone else, could you save your parents. That it was a divine trial, a chance for you to undo this tragedy.”
Everything accelerated, like a video in fast forward, and the boy was a blur as he pulled trapped people out, one by one, struggling to carry and bring their frozen bodies to a safe place. Occasionally, he would return to the site where his parents were trapped, tugging at the beams fruitlessly, before returning to save more trapped people.
“Seven years. It took a total of seven years for you to extricate everyone you saw.” The Dawn Protector’s voice was somber, some measure of pity hidden within. “In the end, however, your parents remained utterly immobile. Of all the people you could save… It didn’t take long before you went insane, crushed by a combination of depression, loneliness and mental fatigue.”
The scene shifted to the boy, who scoured the building over and over, before returning to the place where his parents were trapped. He pulled at the beams, kicked at it, rammed it… everything he could conceivably do to the beams to move it, he did, to no success. Finally, he slumped over, collapsing onto the ground. I couldn’t hear it, but it was clear that he was crying, screaming over and over.
Although I didn’t know how long the boy stayed in this mental state, I had an inkling that it was far longer than what it seemed to me.
Eventually, however, emotions flooded out of his face, leaving him with a blank, vacant expression. His blank, unknowing eyes looked around, and he pushed himself up. There was a flight of stairs near him, and he walked towards it lifelessly, before tripping and rolling down the steps, disappearing from our sight.
The Dawn Protector turned to look at me, and said, “One year after you lost your mind, you lost your memories, allowing time to flow once more.”
Color came back to the world, and everything came crashing down. Bricks, metal… all kinds of debris fell right through the incorporeal forms of the Dawn Protector and I, and my heart twisted as I saw two people fall past me. For an instant, my outstretched hand met theirs, but our hands passed through each other and they fell out of sight.
Everything had disappeared into a world of pure white, leaving me with a feeling of utter desolation despite knowing that everything I’d seen so far was within an illusory world. It didn’t matter that the people who had died weren't real in the sense of the word.
“This explains so many things, doesn’t it?” I closed my eyes. “So many people died, just to bring me here. I saw the world end, the truth of my world, all in less than what, fifteen minutes? I find out that everything’s my fault. If not for me…”
My voice choked up, and it took me a while before I felt up to speaking again. I could still feel the weight of the little wooden sword that I’d… killed Mr. Meng and Aurora with. I had brought Hao Wei, only to see him die without being able to do anything. My chest shuddered as I made that admission to myself.
It was true, after all. Fatigue flooded my body at that thought, and I found myself craving release from my mind and heart. Everything was my doing.
“You know, I just feel like I want to end it all. Maybe… it would be better if I didn’t exist. Would everything have changed if I wasn’t here?” my eyes flicked open as I said those words, and every single law present twisted to create a little wooden sword in my right hand. It was an exact replica of Mr. Meng’s, but somehow, I just knew that this sword could erase me and every othe
r incarnation of myself from existence. All I needed to do was to plunge it into my chest, and everything would end. As for what came next… it wouldn’t be my problem anymore.
As I gripped the sword, I had the feeling that if I wanted to, even an almighty Primordial like the Dawn Protector couldn’t do anything to stop me. It was an end that I was permitted to have, and its giver… a single word floated into my mind as I looked at the little sword. Providence.
“A force that maintains balance. Omnipresent, omnipotent, it also serves as a counterweight to a practitioner’s power, as it should be.” The Dawn Protector looked at the little sword and sighed, his body unnaturally still. “For fate to intervene in my plans…”
So, it was a release, then. A chance for me to close my eyes and absolve myself of each and every sin. A response to a young boy’s desire to save his parents, only to lose everything at the end. An answer to my fear towards the future. There was only one path left to me, and the little sword was my ticket off it.
It would take a simple stab to end it all. It probably wouldn’t even hurt.
But I couldn’t do it. Even though I didn’t want to continue to carry these emotions. Even if I wanted peace. Even if I was tired. I owed them far too much, even if it was all in an illusion. If there was a way that I could change everything, I had to at least try it. The Dawn Protector obviously didn’t show me everything that happened for the fun of it. There was something I could do to change this unwavering fate, for me and for everyone else.
“It all boils down to this at the end, doesn’t it?” My grip slackened. With a clatter, the sword fell onto the featureless floor, breaking into fragments of gold light. Without waiting for his reply, I smiled tiredly and said, “You say that I can change things. Very well. What would you have me do?”
“Supplant the will of your true self and allow time to flow once more.” The piercing eyes of the Dawn Protector met my gaze for a few seconds, before breaking away. “Time Laws are called upon to attain a goal. Without reaching that goal—which in this case is saving your parents—time will not return to normal, unless dispelled by force of will or the goal abandoned by the creator. But since that’s impossible, you’ll need to take over your true self’s body and free time consciously.”
To Fling a Light Page 19