RE:WRITE

7.0 Ignis_Chapter 1: Haze

At first I felt nothing.

No heat, no cold.

No pain, no joy.

No sorrow, no happiness.

I had my senses but I felt like I was behind a veil.

I could see, I could touch, I could listen, I could smell and if I'd ever eaten anything, I'm sure I could taste, but I just couldn't process any of it.

It was like I simply didn't care about anything. As if I was perpetually indifferent.

Of course, I always carried out my duties, but in retrospect, those duties seem very strange.

I was supposed to bless anyone that came to my shrine or heal anyone that came to my church, but almost nobody ever came.

I vaguely remember blessing a knight covered in glowing armor or healing a shadowy figure wearing robes. But no ordinary people ever came to my shrine or to my churches.

Even the priests and the priestesses only prayed to me whenever the shining knight or the shadowy figure spoke to them, and they never asked to be healed or blessed.

They seemed just as indifferent as I did.

Yet I never thought about any of this at the time because it didn't matter to me. Nothing mattered to me. All I cared about was fulfilling my duties.

But sometimes, I'd feel a change in my existence. As if someone was tampering with my soul.

But then again, maybe I didn't have a soul back then?

I can barely remember any of this, because all of these memories were vague, indistinct and hazy.

I couldn't even tell the time back then, so I don't know how long that state lasted. A few days? A few months? A few years? A few centuries?

I didn't know and I didn't care.

Then something happened. I felt a prickling sensation on my toes, which started going up through my body all the way to my head.

For the first time ever, I felt something. I felt as if there was a cold, hard surface touching the tips of my toes.

Then I felt something gently brush past my back, followed by something with a smooth, silky texture that rippled across my skin.

I felt a slight chill, but it was soon replaced by warmth. Warmth that came from my own body.

I could sense something else too. Something fresh and sweet that drifted into my lungs with each breath I took.

These changes were shocking, to say the least, so I stood in the same pose that I'd always stood in and explored my newly discovered senses.

Although sight wasn't a new sense for me, everything I saw was certainly more distinct and the colors felt more lively. The red tiled floor, the red walls, the red ceiling, the red curtains and the red stone pedestal that I was standing on made the entire room pulse with an aggressive energy that captivated me.

Red, such a powerful color.

A while later, I felt a familiar sensation. It was as if someone was calling out to me from a the bottom of a tower.

Is someone seeking my blessing? No, this feeling isn't coming from the shrine. It's coming from...

I frowned. I could sense the direction from where the feeling originated but I didn't know what lay in that direction. Whenever I'd felt this sensation before, my vision would blur and then it would clear and I could suddenly see the inside of a church or the shrine but this time, nothing happened.