Chapter 46: Don't die.

22 3 1
                                        

Chapter 46: Don't die.

Now before the Fall:

"You can't die here," the soothing entered my voice and I opened my eyes to dark expanse of space. It was pitch black but in the distance strikes of light I could barely make out seemed to cross the darkness. Then again, they could have been a hallucination. The voice however was not.

"I remember you," I replied. "You've spoken to me before haven't you?"

The voice ignored my question and instead repeated herself, "You can't die here."

I recalled what had just happened. I had jumped in front of Aria. For my current self, a rank 5 Rift Walker was still too much. The barrage of spears had broken into my body and though I stopped them from reaching Aria, I died on the spot. I felt tears begin to pool into my eyes out of frustration. All the effort I had put in, only to discover the Rift Walkers were already on Earth, and then before I could even truly begin, die.

"You can't die and so..., you haven't died yet," the voice spoke firmly.

"What?" I looked towards the source of the voice but saw nothing. "Isn't this the afterlife?"

"This is the Void," from nowhere a finger touched my chest, pointed above my heart. "The Void breathes through you. You will die one day but today is not that day. You must choose for it not to be today. Otherwise, the End will come."

"The End?" I blinked confused. "The end of what?"

"She is the End. The strongest of us all. She will choose when the story ends. Without you, she will choose now. Her mind is fragile. Her body tired. She has not accepted who she was. She cannot accept who she can be. She is afraid."

"You're talking about Aria, aren't you?" my hands shook, and I tightened them into fists. My voice grew louder in anger, "Aria isn't the End! She's my sister! She wants the world to live as much as anyone else."

A hand rubbed my cheek ever so gently, "A choice can be made at a single whim. Whether regret follows... that is up to the bearer."

"What are you?" I focused on the word's she spoke. She said Aria was the same as her.

"You already know."

"Witch of the Void," I spoke her title.

The voice continued with little emotion, but a warmth spread from her finger into my chest, "Witch.... That was what I called myself. The title now spun in slander. We are and are not Witches."

I understood what she meant. The Witches Areithia believed in, the connotations of ruin that their name brought. While to some Witches it was true, to others it was not. The Maiden of the Oni had said the same and it dawned on me then that I had looked at puzzle incorrectly. I had looked for traces of Witches, the stories that Areithians wrote but though some Witches bore the name, history may not have.

"What do you believe a Witch is?" the voice asked directly, whispering in my ear.

"A person," I replied. Yes, they were gifted with incredible power, they held responsibilities I couldn't fathom yet. They had ruined nations and saved others but other existences had done the same. They had a role but in the end whoever they were, they were still just one person. In the case of Aria, she was a Witch but before that she was my sister.

The voice withdrew and acknowledgement whelmed in my chest, "Indeed."

"You said I can't die here. What do I need to do?"

The Game Before the FallWhere stories live. Discover now